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Chapter Text

The Test

Looking down at the positive pregnancy test, Pete can’t remember the last time he’s been so terrified. 

Okay, that’s a lie. If he wasn’t on the brink of shutting down completely he’d be able to remember how it felt to look a yellow-eyed Patrick in the eyes as he charged. Or the frozen look of fear on Joe’s face as he took his last breath. Or the way he felt leaving Andy behind in a room of cult kidnappers. 

But right now, none of that compares to this feeling. It kind of feels like the end of the world. 

He’s faced the end of the world before. He’s stared a crow-beaked ender of days in its black hole eyes and stepped towards its hulking frame fully confident in their ability to put it in its place. This piece of plastic is nothing compared to that and yet it is so, so much more. 

The main difference between the two, at least in his opinion, is that when he faced the demon he didn’t do it by himself. Right now he’s by himself in a hotel bathroom, shaking so badly that in the next moment the test slips from his fingers and clatters to the tiled floor.

It’s the middle of the tour and the guys know he hasn’t been feeling great. He had thought it was a cold. Why couldn’t it have just been a cold?

It had only recently popped into his head as a possibility. All he knew is that he hadn’t been feeling like himself. He knows the guys think he’s just having a rough couple of weeks mental health wise but he knows himself and he knew it wasn’t that. He mostly got the test just to soothe his stupid paranoia but no, it had in fact been the answer to all his questions. 

The guys aren’t here because he sent them out. Told them to go enjoy their time in the city before they’re confined to buses again. He felt dirty for doing it just so he could go behind their backs and get a fucking pregnancy test. 

He stares at the stupid piece of plastic with disdain like it’s the test’s fault and not his own fucking body’s. And then he stops. 

Something is growing in him. Like, right now. Right now, he’s beginning to grow, what- life? That’s extremely bizarre to think about for too long. He thinks about it as a foreign body for about all of five seconds before becoming extremely overprotective of it, though it’s not much just yet, is it? But it could be. He could grow a whole fucking baby if he really wanted too. Right now, it isn’t much but.. Well..

He tries to figure out the last time they had sex. Sometime before tour cause sex on the tour bus is for younger, hornier, men and they’re usually exhausted by the time they reach their occasional hotel room. And then Pete had been feeling too low for anything either. So roughly.. three weeks? Give or take? Not long.. how long would..?

A couple minutes of frantic googling later and Pete is first relieved to find that he doesn’t have to keep it if he doesn’t want to and then immediately cursed with the knowledge of exactly how long it would have to take before he’d really have no choice. He calls it a curse because he’s not so sure that’d be such a bad thing. Keeping it, that is. 

A baby. He likes babies. He likes kids. It would be like, really fucking cool to bring one of those things into the world. He could just make one. That’s crazy! And the guys-! Uh...

He’s not exactly sure where they’d stand on it. On kids in general. Well, on if they want them or not. It hadn’t really been a conversational topic between them.. ever. Now, after everything else, it had certainly been on the bottom of the list of things to talk about. But he does know that the guys aren’t assholes and they’d respect whatever choice he ended up making. They wouldn’t walk out on him if he kept it. They’re not like that. 

Sometimes.. Sometimes Pete is scared that they’ll leave him. He’s scared that he’s not enough to make them stay. A baby though? They’d almost definitely stay for a baby. Even if Pete doesn’t know which one of them is the father. He likes to think they’d all raise it and it doesn’t matter because it’s all theirs. A well and true Fall Out Baby.

The idea makes him laugh. A little Fall Out Baby. 

And then he frowns because since when is this something he’s genuinely considering? A baby? He can't have a baby. He's fucked up. He's beyond fucked up. How could he possibly have a baby? How could he not fuck it up too?

The guys wouldn't fuck up a baby. They're too good for that, too perfect. Their perfectness would rub off on it and they'd raise like, some ultimate human. So maybe they'd balance him out. They kind of always have. 

He's not sure the guys would be open to the idea of a baby. He's a little worried the scars would be too fresh, but they're in a much better place than they were two years ago. Things feel normal, even. And he knows that they're more than capable, they just probably wouldn't believe him if he said it. 

But still, he can't have a baby. 

He kind of really wants a baby. 

He feels like he's losing his fucking mind. 

Patrick texts him that they're on their way back and Pete scrambles to find a way to dispose of the stupid fucking life ending stick of plastic. 

There's time to think about it, he figures. And besides there’s this tour and this album and things have just finally settled into something good and he really doesn’t want to fuck that up right now.

Morning Sickness

He should know by now that hiding things from the guys is an impossibility. They know him and they can tell that he has not improved in all the time since he started feeling like shit. He’s still been feeling decidedly.. Off except now that’s begun manifesting in something just as impossible to ignore as it impossible to keep hiding this from the guys. 

Sitting here, knees pressed hard into cold tile, head resting on porcelain, intermittently throwing up what must just be stomach acid at this point, Pete knows what this is. He’d be stupid not to. 

Morning sickness.

Andy is sitting on the edge of the tub rubbing his back and Joe is leaning up against the counter, his face screwed up in concern, and Patrick is standing in the doorway. Far away from him. 

His stomach drops even further and this time when he retches into the toilet he’s fairly certain he can’t blame it on morning sickness but rather that horrifying feeling that Patrick is piecing it together. Pete regrets ever speaking the word cryptophasia into existence. 

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, miserable as he sits there collapsed like a damsel in an oil painting. When he says it he’s not entirely sure if he means it in reference to this secret he’s been keeping or in reference to waking them all up in his mad scramble to the bathroom. 

“Don’t apologize,” Andy murmurs soothingly, “Don’t even worry about it.”

Pete scoffs a laugh at that. God, if he knew what Pete really had to worry about. But he regrets it immediately when he dry heaves, choking on the laugh.

“Maybe we should take him to urgent care,” Patrick thinks out loud, talking about him like he isn’t even there. 

Joe presses the back of his hand to his forehead and hums, “He’s not warm.”

“Well still, I just think-”

“I’m fine,” Pete says, trying to put an end to things quickly, “It’s probably just food poisoning, I’ll be fine in a few minutes.” 

He can feel the silent look of concern the three of them share above his head and he wills himself to get better. 

“Are you sure?” Joe asks, “You haven’t really been feeling yourself recently, could this be that?”

“I’m fine.” He insists with more bite than he intends. He immediately feels guilty for it. “I’m fine,” he repeats, trying to sound calmer. And then again, to himself, “I’m fine.”

Maybe if he says it enough it’ll be true. 

It’s early November and he hasn’t totally ignored his problem since he learned of its existence. No, he’s certainly thought about it. Quite a bit. Almost incessantly. He could hardly enjoy the AB/AP tour because of it, too wrapped up in trying to figure himself out and getting lost in daydreams about being pregnant. Which is apparently a thing he does now. 

Okay, admittedly, that part isn’t all that new, sue him, but the actually being pregnant thing is really adding fodder to that whole thing. 

He keeps reading up on stuff in secret. Keeps silently panicking about different things when the hypothetical Fall Out Baby isn’t even a little cooked yet. But he keeps looking in the mirror and keeps trying to see a difference anyway because he’s lost his fucking mind. No real baby bump yet. But the thought of one sets him on fire. And then thought of actually having a baby, a little friend, a piece of himself in the real world, well that pulls on his heart in a way he can’t even begin to put words to. 

So.. needless to say he’s kind of already made a decision. He thinks he may have already made that decision the second he saw the lines of the pregnancy test. 

He wants this baby. 

But telling the guys makes the whole thing terrifying all over again. 

The next time he goes to say “I’m fine” he ends up actually finding some more stomach acid to throw up. 

Reactions

Patrick isn’t stupid. When Pete sits them all down to “have a talk” he has some horrible idea of what it’s all about. 

Pete makes them sit down on the couch and watch him pace back and forth as he tries to figure out what exactly it is he needs to say. Patrick is silently and selfishly praying for it to be anything but what he thinks it is. 

“You need to calm down,” Joe says but the worry is obvious in his own voice, “Whatever this is about, I promise you it’s not as big of a deal as you think it is.”

Pete pauses long enough to stare at him and then do some sort of hysterical laugh before pulling at his hair and continuing to pace. “I promise you, it is,” he says. 

“I promise you it’s not,” Andy chimes in, catching Pete’s arm as he passes by again, “Look, we love you, alright? We’ve been through a lot of shit together, there’s nothing you could say to us that would change that.” 

Pete looks like he’s about to cry. He glances at him and Joe and Patrick fights to put as reassuring of a smile on his face as he possibly can but he’s fairly certain it comes off stilted and awkward. 

At the mention of shit they’ve been through together Patrick gets a surge of phantom pain in his missing hand, like his brain had gotten used to it not being there any more and then upon being reminded that there used to be a hand there it decided to stab him in it out of pure spite. Patrick loves Pete to death but that alone is reminder enough that he’s not equipped to handle much beyond the Pete that he currently knows and loves, even if something’s been wrong with him for a little over a month now. Even if he’s been different. 

Pete takes a deep breath and tries to steady himself like the performer that he is and then.. he speaks. 

“I don’t think there’s a graceful way to put this so.. I.. fuck, uh.. Okay, um, I’m pregnant.” 

Patrick had been expecting it but the world stops spinning anyway. 

Pete cringes, bracing for the resulting shock waves. 

Joe’s jaw drops, his eyebrows shoot into his hair, “What?” he asks delicately. 

Pete refuses to open his eyes, “Please don’t make me repeat it.”

“No, No, hey..” Joe amends, reaching for Pete and grabbing his hands gingerly, “I’m not.. that’s… you just..” his eyes bounce to both Andy and Patrick but Patrick’s admittedly still in shock and Andy is stone faced. Joe reaches his point on his own, “You have to tell us if this is good news, Pete.”

“Oh,” Pete whispers, like he forgot that it was all up to him. Of course it’s up to him. Patrick braces for what he knows is coming. “I.. I personally, uh, I think it’s good news.” 

Joe reacts appropriately. His face splits into a grin, “Then it’s great fucking news, dude.” He says before standing and wrapping Pete in such an enveloping hug Pete nearly disappears into him, “That’s so fucking cool,” Joe murmurs into his shoulder, eyes screwed tight like he’s really feeling it, “You’re pregnant!” he stresses, “You’re gonna have a baby,” he pulls away to look at Andy, who’s abandoned his serious demeanor in exchange for a look of pure thrill, and corrects himself, “We’re gonna have a fucking baby!” he says and he opens an arm to pull Andy into the hug. 

Pete laughs as Andy all but crushes both of them. “I can’t believe it!” Andy says, “A baby? Like for real, a baby?”

“Why would I lie about a baby?” Pete says through a smile. 

Andy shrugs desperately, he in turn looks like he may cry, “Sounds too good to be true.”

Pete looks so incredibly relieved. He looks almost like himself again, instead of the anxiety riddled shell he had been prior to this. And Patrick ruins it like he ruins most things because Pete looks at him and his lack of a reaction and his face falls so dramatically Patrick feels sick. “Patrick?” he asks quietly, sounding somewhat terrified. Then Joe and Andy are looking at him too and somehow Patrick feels like he’s been here before. Been the villain. Been the one they looked at with fear in their eyes. 

He stands and he.. He tries. “Sorry, sorry, that’s.. No that’s.. Sorry it’s just a lot to process. I’m.. that’s really cool, Pete, I’m happy for you.”

“But you’re not happy?”

Patrick sighs, “That’s not.. I’m scared, alright? I mean.. Look, I’m not trying to fuck this up I’m-”

“No,” Pete challenges, breaking away from the guys, “Say what you want to say.”

And it all comes tumbling out in an incoherent stream, every doubt he’s had about this whole thing since he got an inkling as to what it might be. “We.. I know that you’re excited but we can’t have a baby that’s.. Do you know how complicated that is? I mean, not just within our own lives as.. as celebrities but within the dynamic, I mean.. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re kind of fucked up, man! I don’t… I don’t think we’re the right people to raise a child! Four PTSD ridden dads, I mean, how.. And then… You know you’d be putting yourself through a lot too, right? Having a baby is not easy or simple it’s-”

“You think I don’t know that?” Pete snaps, “You think I haven’t been thinking about all the things that could go wrong since I found out about it? You think I haven’t been trying to figure it out? You think I’m not fucking terrified!?” he all but cries, “The worst part is that I knew you’d react like this. I’m not fucking stupid, Patrick. I’m.. I’m not. And I don’t think the situation is as terrible as you make it out to be if we just.. fucking work together! It’s just.. I.. I want this Patrick. I need you to be on board, please.”  

It’s deadly silent after that. Patrick hesitates for too long and Joe scowls and grabs his arm, “Let’s have a talk,” he grounds out as he starts pulling Patrick out of the room. 

“Joe..” Pete calls out tiredly. 

Joe waves him off and drags him into another room, slamming the door behind him. 

“Look, I-”

“Nuh uh,” Joe says, “What the hell is your problem!? Pete is clearly freaking the fuck out and you dump all that shit on him!? Who does that!?”

Patrick stands his ground, old anger bubbling to the surface, “I’m being realistic! It’s a baby! How are you not freaking the fuck out!?”

“I am freaking the fuck out!” Joe snaps, “But I don’t have the right to freak the fuck out becaise I’m not the one who’s fucking pregnant!”

“He kept it from us, you know that, right?”

Joe rolls his eyes, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Since I found out,” he mimics, “His insistence that the obvious morning sickness was nothing, he’s known about and he hid it from us.”

“Because he was fucking scared! And apparently he had every right to be because you’re acting like an asshole right now! Why can’t you just be there for him? You really think he’ll be that shitty of a dad!?”

“No!” Patrick stresses, “No, he’ll be a fucking fantastic dad, you all will be! It’s just..”

Joe softens just a bit as he reads Patrick’s face, “You’re gonna be a great dad.”

“No I’m not,” Patrick snaps, “No, I’m not gonna be a dad at all, let alone a great one because I.. I can’t do this shit, I can’t you guys have it under control, you guys can figure it out but I just.. No. No, I’m sorry,” and then he shoves past Joe and out of the room. 

Joe goes flying after him, “What the fuck are you talking about!?” But Patrick ignores him, instead hunting for his wallet and keys. “Are you seriously running away right now!?” Joe yells, “You fucking coward, you’re leaving!?”  

Pete and Andy wander their way just as Patrick reaches the door, essentials in hand. “You’re leaving?” Pete asks so quietly that it shatters Patrick’s heart. 

He hesitates. 

“Don’t do this,” Andy says, “Where are you even going?”

“I can’t do this..” he pauses and thinks about things for longer than five seconds and corrects himself, “Right now. I can’t do this right now, I just..” he sighs and looks at the guys, Pete well and truly crying now, Joe more pissed than he’s probably ever seen, and Andy giving him a face that says if looks could kill Patrick would be dead. “Congrats, Pete.”

And then he leaves. 

He drives out of the city. 

He drives until cinder block buildings give way to desert and he drives until his car nearly runs out of gas. He drives until he reaches the first rest stop, somewhere between LA and Phoenix, because he is a coward who runs when things get too tough. 

It’s easier than the alternative. 

He’s leaning against a railing that overlooks a pretty steep drop into some rocky foothills because if he runs any further he doesn’t know what the consequences will be. This isn’t the first time he’s gotten so scared he’s taken off like this but he’s never run so far so fast. It’s embarrassing. 

Patrick scares easily these days. Not that he doesn’t think his fear in this particular situation isn’t justified but in the sense that he’s so afraid of causing more harm than good that he freaks out and removes himself from the equation. He hasn’t done it in a while. Actually, you know, recently things have been good, he’s been good. He’s finally begun to.. accept himself. But this complicates things.

Every time he freaked out on them the guys beckoned him home. Back to them. They treated him with kindness and understanding that he never truly thought he deserved. He returned to them like a wounded bird, hurt and scared but desperate for saving. He looks at the prosthetic in place of his hand and thinks of broken wings. He needs them and they say they need him but he’s never thought that was actually true. They love him but they don’t need him. He pictures Andy and Joe hugging Pete when Patrick was too shell shocked to even move his feet. They don’t need him. Which is kind of why he ran. 

But also.. A baby. 

Patrick can’t raise a baby. Maybe he can be adjacent to it, like some other type of relative, but he can’t be a parent. He just.. He can’t. He’s broken. For fucks sake, he ran away from the whole situation! You can’t just do that when you have a baby!

… Sometimes Patrick has nightmares about blood on his hands. He dreams about Joe, dead and terrified. Pete, bleeding out underneath him, gurgling on his own blood. And when he wakes up they’re all still there, fine as they’ve ever been. But it reminds him of what he’s capable of. 

He hasn’t intentionally hurt anyone in years. But how can he possibly hold a baby with the same hands that killed its father? How can he be sure he wouldn’t.. Hurt it?

Pete and Joe and Andy would be perfect parents. Not a second of his doubts have been about them or their ability to be enough. He’s projecting, if anything, and he knows it. But despite that it all still feels too complicated. He can’t help but feel like they’d be setting it up for failure. People are invasive, he knows that first hand. He can hardly protect himself from the public, how could he protect a child? 

He can’t fucking do it. 

He checks his phone and sees no messages. If this were any ordinary situation they would be blowing up his phone. But this isn’t any ordinary situation. He knows Joe was right, he knows he’s being selfish, and he can’t imagine what Pete is going through right now, what he’s been going through for as long as this has been going on. His mind wanders to all the things they, or rather, Pete should actually get on if he wants to keep this baby. Not if. He does. The sooner Patrick accepts that the better. His anxious tendencies make him think of doctor’s appointments and dietary restrictions and vitamins and he mentally starts making a 12 step plan on how to best go about creating a healthy and happy baby before he even realizes what he’s doing. 

Shit. 

And then, out of nowhere, his mom is calling him. And he picks up, despite himself. 

He doesn’t have time to get a word out before his mom starts in strong with, “Oh, sweetheart! Thank god, Andy called and told me you ran off again? I thought you were over this, you can’t keep scaring everybody like that.”

He tries not to feel like he’s been stabbed and takes a breath, “I was gonna come back. I always come back.”

Silence on her end. Then, “He didn’t sound certain you would. What happened?”

“Look, mom, it’s…” he trails off. He wants to brush it off, act like it’s nothing she should worry about, but he’s about two thousand miles away from his hometown and his chest aches like it would when he was a little kid and all he wanted was for his mom to fix all his problems. Like it did at all the rough moments in his life. Like it did when he was drugged out of his mind sporting freshly sewn shut wounds. Like it does now, with the knowledge that his boyfriend is at home, pregnant and scared. So he spills his guts, “Pete’s pregnant and.. And it really freaked me out.”

“Oh! That’s.. Wow. What are you guys going to do?” She attempts to ask politely. 

“What?” he asks, “No, mom, he’s keeping it he’s already decided, that part is over.”

“You didn’t talk about it?”

“No, no, I- what’s there to discuss? He made his decision and I’m.. well obviously I’m gonna stand by that.”

His mom sighs, long and suffering, “Patrick, I say this with so much love but I don’t think you four are equipped to handle a baby right now.”

“That’s what I said! I mean- wait. No, it’s.. Mom it’s me, I’m the problem, I’m not.. I can’t do that, I can't raise a child. Pete and Joe and Andy, they’d figure it out and they’d be great but I’m not.. I mean mentally I just..” 

“Mentally,” she stresses, “They’re not exactly perfect either, are they? You four have been through a lot I just think-”

“Please don’t say that,” he says, “Don’t.. You don’t need to pity us, alright? What happened, happened but that’s.. That’s not all we are, you know that, right?”

“Of course I know that! You’re all incredibly strong, it's just.. It’s an unfortunate situation, is all.” When Patrick doesn’t respond immediately, mostly because he’s trying to stop from snapping at his own mother, she continues, “I’m trying to put this delicately, Patrick.”

“Mom, I.. I’m not a teenager anymore, you don’t.. You’re acting like this is some pregnancy scare, we’re not kids, that’s not what this is about. Pete is a grown adult who made his decision and I.. I need to stand by him.”

“Then why aren’t you?”

“What?”

“Why did you run away again? Why are you talking to me and not celebrating with your guys?”

“Because I’m scared, mom, I’m..” he trails off.

His mom continues, “Maybe I overstepped, I’m sorry, but you know how I worry about you. All of you.” Of course he knows. He’s scared her dozens of times. Sometimes with panicked phone calls, sometimes from a hospital bed. She goes on, “But you’re right. You’re not a kid anymore, Patrick. This isn’t a problem you can run away from. You can be scared but you can’t be scared alone. You’re strong, like I said, and.. Honey, I think you should go home and figure this out with the people you love.”

He knows she’s right. Still, like a child, he says, “I love you.”

“I love you too. But you know who I’m talking about.”

He knows that too. 

He drives straight home, sun setting behind him. 

Reconciliation

It’s late when he hears the door swing open and then slam shut. The TV is on a low volume and Pete, who’s squished in between him and Andy on the couch, tenses so hard Joe wants to punch Patrick in the face. But he doesn’t do anything because as mad as he is, he’s sitting on the couch waiting for him to come home just like the rest of them. That was never going to change. Patrick finds them instantly and before any of them can say anything he’s talking. “I’m scared,” he says, “I’m scared and that’s why I ran and it had nothing to do with any of you and I’m sorry.” 

Joe knows that this is true because he’d had a five second conversation with the guy before he ran off and clocked it immediately. But just because this was the case didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. If you ask him, what Patrick did was cruel. They were all scared, so what? It didn’t mean they had the right to up and leave. 

But he’s been silently mulling it over all night, working through his own feelings and trying to understand Patrick’s. For him, as daunting of a task as it is, he decided pretty quickly that having a baby would be the coolest thing to happen to him ever, probably. He’d love the hell out of it and so would the guys and that would be enough for him. That was all that mattered. Everything else he’d figure out as they went. But he also understands that Patrick’s situation is uniquely different. He understands that while this isn’t the only time Patrick’s run from them it is the only instance that didn’t have to do with him being afraid of hurting them again or having something to do with what happened two, almost three, years ago now. And then he thought about it and realized that this instance totally had everything to do with that and he kind of felt like an asshole about the whole thing but at the same time.. priorities. 

He loves Patrick to death, he really does. But sometimes he doesn’t know what to do with his ever looming guilt. Joe doesn’t know what else he can say to Patrick that conveys how deeply he’s forgiven him for his actions. Actions that weren’t even his. Joe probably forgave him the second the pain of having his windpipe crushed ceased and all he could think about was if he’d ever see the guy again. His mind has failed him on occasion, however, and he still has the odd nightmare here and there, but in his heart of hearts he’s over it. As over dying as he can be. It doesn’t matter by whose hand. And he’s expressed this to Patrick damn near a thousand times and Patrick still keeps leaving. So forgive him if he’s a little fed up. If this were any other situation he’d be more than happy to do the usual song and dance that comes with Patrick’s shameful return to them, tail tucked between his legs. But Patrick had made Pete cry. Not for the first time, probably not for the last time, but that wasn’t what had bothered him. It was the way Pete had cried. Usually, he fought. Hot, angry, tears. Yelling and fighting like they had a thousand years ago only now things were generally much less petty and more like having too many complicated feelings and too much PTSD under one roof until it all boiled over. 

But tonight Pete hadn’t fought at all. He barely said anything to them as he and Andy tried to assure him Patrick would come to his senses about the whole thing, like he always did. He was just so defeated, silent tears trailing down his face and an absentminded hand on his stomach with his brain somewhere else entirely. 

That is what had made Joe so angry. 

That is why this apology isn’t enough. 

Joe stares at him, unrelenting. Out of the corner of his eye, Andy is doing something similar. And Patrick looks.. Not scared. But like he feels guilty as fuck. Good. Joe realizes that Patrick is rightfully looking at Pete with this heartbroken expression on his face and breaks the facade by looking at him. 

Pete’s fine. All cried out. But the evidence is there, tear stained cheeks and bloodshot eyes. It reminds Joe of so many other nights, some much other pain, and he feels anger bubble up again. Wonders desperately if Pete will ever get to know peace. After an extended silence Pete finally speaks, “Okay.”

“Pete, I'm sorry,” he repeats, “I'm sorry, I'm.. I'm not gonna leave again, okay?”

“I don't want you to stay if you don't want to,” Pete whispers.

“I do!” Patrick insists, “I do. I'm just scared.”

Pete nods. “Yeah,” he agrees, “It's scary. But I made my decision and Patrick, I love you, but it's final.”

“I wouldn't ask you to change it.”

Pete stares at him for a second and starts picking at his nails. “You hurt me,” he admits. 

“I know,” Patrick says, “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are. You’re always sorry. I always forgive you. But this is.. This is bigger than us, you know that right?”

“I know,” Patrick insists, “I’m really starting off on the wrong foot here, I know. And I understand if you don’t entirely trust me right now but I am telling you that I am here. For the long haul.” And when he says it he makes sure to look at Joe and Andy too. Joe’s heard a lot of empty promises in his life. He’s been told a lot of things only to have the rug pulled out from under him more times than he can count. And maybe he’s a little lovesick, or maybe he’s too scared of losing anyone again to think otherwise, but he’s choosing to believe that this is not one of those moments. Patrick continues, “Look, I can’t promise that I’ll be perfect every day. I can’t promise that I won’t have bad days. But I can promise that I am going to try.”

Joe looks at Andy, whose gaze has softened considerably. It’s a similar story for him. Maybe for all of them. They’ve lied to themselves and each other endlessly in the past. This can’t be that anymore. But he understands the want to keep doing it. This is serious but so was dying. So was losing each other. You want to tell each other that it’s not gonna happen again. You want to give in. Right now, they want to believe that this isn’t just another lie. Andy is gonna try to be realistic about it to try and justify the maybe-a-lie-maybe-a-truth and predictably, he does. “We all have bad days,” Andy says, “It’s not gonna stop when there’s a baby but.. I mean there’s enough of us that.. You know if we need to step back we can. You can step back without running away, you know.”

“I know,” Patrick says, “I-”

Pete cuts him off, “You’ll figure it out eventually.” And he’s kind of smiling when he says it. Like it’s an inside joke. It kind of is. Pete and Patrick’s roles used to be reversed, way back when before Patrick killed them. When the most offensive thing they ever did to each other was exchange punches. Pete used to run like Patrick does now. Patrick used to never move, always chose to wallow in the pain while Pete ran from it. Now Pete’s the one who’s stagnant and Patrick’s the one who always leaves. And Joe has always struggled to find where he fits in all the suffering. 

Right now he fits tucked up against Pete’s side. The anger quickly fading. Patrick huffs a little laugh at Pete’s comment and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I will,” he sighs briefly, “I’m sorry,” he says again, exhausted now that the fear and anger seems to have seeped out of the conversation. 

Joe is the one who relents. Because at the end of the day it’ll always be them. Even when they all suck. Even when they all suck, they will slot perfectly into each other. And even when they all suck, Joe will throw in the towel. Call it a day. “Shut up and come sit with us,” he says quietly. 

Andy scoots over and Patrick, predictably, fits right in the space between him and Pete. Like he always has and always will. But then all three of them are looking at Pete, who clearly has something to say. 

He clears his throat, “We’re gonna have a baby,” he all but whispers, anxious for another bad reaction. 

This time, Patrick doesn’t hesitate, “Fuck yeah.”

Pete grins, big and toothy, and it’s the perfect re-do. 

“Oh!” Patrick says, “That reminds me, I need to make a list of everything we have to do- we have to get you to the doctor like, ASAP, by the way…” he says almost absentmindedly as he starts fishing for his phone to make note of everything. Then, under his breath, “Fuck I have so much research to do.”

“Hey,” Joe scolds gently because this is making Pete too happy to do anything about it, “Leave it for tomorrow?”

Patrick pauses and then relocks his phone, “Yeah. Sure. I’d rather do it with a pen and paper anyway.”

Chapter Text

On Being A Celebrity

“I really do think it’s time to face the music on this,” Their manager says to them. “I mean, you don’t exactly have all the time in the world now, do you?” She gestures to Pete as she does it, who’s wearing a hoodie three times too big- not in any real attempt to hide the bump per say but to be comfortable. Any successful hiding it does is an added bonus

Pete is kind of trying to hide the fact that he’s pregnant from the general population. It’s a fact that very few people are privy to, least of all the public. Other than his baby doctor this is something they’ve kept between friends and family and.. Well, their manager. Because the whole baby thing kind of interferes with the job. It’s getting harder and harder to hold a bass in front of himself, let alone jump into the crowd for Saturday. So, some people had to know. But now..

They can’t be this inactive forever. At least without explanation. 

The thing is, the idea of telling literally fucking anyone else makes Pete want to throw up more than whatever perfume this lady’s wearing (which is really saying something, even if he always wants to throw up about everything these days). Pete has spent his fair share of time in the tabloids. He has fucked around in them plenty, sometimes intentionally saying shit and sometimes having shit said about him that he’d rather forget about. So he can kind of predict how this would go down. 

Because Pete Wentz being pregnant is scandalous to those that don’t know him. Gasp! He doesn’t know the father! Well yeah, there’s three potential biological fathers but they’re all gonna be the fathers anyway so it doesn’t matter. It’s not that dramatic. And then it’d be, Golly! Pete Wentz is fucking every member of his band! Because god forbid someone isn’t monogamous! And after their relationship is made public they’d bring up the cult and the kidnapping and the injuries. Fall Out Boy unfit to be parents! He can picture it vividly. They’re too fucked up, too traumatized, too vicious to raise a child. 

Sometimes he agrees with that last one. On days when the nightmares are so bad and his body aches so horribly and Patrick refuses to look him in the eye. Sometimes he thinks it may be true. 

But it isn’t even just that. The cult. The cult isn’t dead. 

They did their job three years ago. Saved rock and roll or whatever. And the cult died with the beast and they crawled out of the proverbial Hell on Earth and they left it all behind. Ideally. Because according to detectives that reach out to them on occasion, there’s inklings of the cult still out there. People talking about it online. A logo showing up in the aftermath of a robbery. 

Nobody knows if it’s remnants of the group trying to come back or people who are fascinated with the true crime case that is their life or people who just fucking hate them specifically and were disappointed when they survived. But it’s out there. Probably always will be. The police tell them not to worry about it too much but since Pete got pregnant it’s basically all he’s thought about. The police say that they’re not in danger but Pete has to wonder what this born again cult would think if they found out the guys who killed it the first time had a baby.  

There are a lot of reasons as to why he’d like to keep it to himself.

“Pete,” Joe whispers kindly but he’s not the only person looking at him in concern. Patrick slides a hand to his knee and Andy puts a hand on his shoulder and their manager frowns because she knows. He knows she knows. And he knows that she knows that he knows that she’s right. 

“Sorry,” he says, “What do you mean?”

She sighs softly, “You can’t keep it a secret forever. Would you even want to?”

“If it meant she was safe, yeah.”

“I’m not trying to push you, any of you. But you have to face the facts here. This is your career, your livelihoods. This is your job, this is what you need to make sure she is safe. You can not hide this forever.”

“I know,” He whispers, hand on his stomach. “It’s just scary, right?” And he looks at the guys to help him out. 

“Terrifying,” Patrick agrees. 

“The fucking worst,” Andy adds. 

“I understand that,” She says. 

Joe shifts, “What would we even do? What would we even say?” 

“That’s for me to worry about,” she says. “There’s tactful ways to go about it, quiet and subtle ways to go about it. An instagram post of a sonogram, an interview with someone you can trust, and then you’re quiet. Don’t give them more than you’re willing, for fucks sake, don’t give them more than you have to. But give them something. Because trust me, if the world finds out after the fact or if god forbid something happens to you or her, you don’t want that to be the way it goes public.” 

Pete is suddenly struck with an ice cold fear. Clearly, it doesn’t go over well with anyone else either because the guys are now on high alert, somewhere between angry and terrified. 

Their manager backs down, “Give it some thought. That’s all I’m asking right now.” 

They leave without saying much more. 

In the car, Pete rests his head against the window and watches the scenery pass by. Nobody says anything. They’re upset because she’s right, because everyone will find out one way or another, because it’s better to control the narrative than fall victim to it. Finally Pete says, “I wish we weren’t famous.” 

“Yeah,” Joe says, half way agreeing with him and half way pushing him to continue.

So he does. “Yeah,” he says, “I know we wouldn’t be here if we weren’t but.. I just want this baby to be ours. Nobody else's.”

“It’s not fair,” Patrick murmurs. 

No, Pete thinks, It’s not fair at all.

Naming Conventions

“Bowie,” Patrick suggests confidently. 

They all groan. “We are not naming our baby after David Bowie!” Pete asserts.

“It’s a good name!” Patrick insists, “And you already shot down Ziggy, come on!”

“No David Bowie or David Bowie references will be included in the naming of this child,”  Joe says like it’s the law, gesturing loudly as says it. 

“One day she’s gonna get really into Bowie and she’s gonna ask us what we almost named her and she’s going to be devastated that we didn’t name her Bowie, I promise.” Patrick says, up on his music snob high horse.

Andy finally chimes in, “That’ll never happen because we didn’t almost name her Bowie, it was a terrible suggestion and barely graced anybody’s mind.”

Patrick all but pouts as he mutters, “Sounds like it’s on everybody’s mind.”

They all roll their eyes at him in near perfect unison. 

The great baby naming debate of 2015 is well underway by Pete’s second trimester. Had been underway less than halfway through the first one. Honestly, they’d started throwing names around probably no later than a week after the pregnancy became known to them.

Because of this, they’ve been leaning toward gender neutral names. They had already been to the doctor’s appointment where the currently (possibly appropriately) named Fall Out Baby’s gender had been revealed to be a girl, though that really didn’t matter one way or another, hence the continued attempts at gender neutral names. They only cared about having a healthy baby. But… their doctor threw “girl dads” at them in the moment and it’s kind of stuck. 

Andy thinks it’s cute. The idea of being girl dads. He can smell the cliches being thrown their way, the “oh she’ll never be allowed to have a boyfriend!” from a stranger is practicality inevitable. That is, if the stranger doesn’t judge their relationship arrangement first. But it’s still sweet. He’s kind of always thought that should he end up a father he’d be.. Well not great at it but he’d be especially terrible at raising a son. He was a shitty kid. An even worse teenager. He put his mom through hell. He wouldn’t be able to handle raising a kid like he used to be. A little girl is already a step removed from that fear. It helps that there’s less of a chance of all his evil youth poisoning the kid with the other guys involved. It kind of really helps that there’s four of them. 

But the news of their incoming daughter did not change the debate at all. And it was one of those rare occasions where there being four of them did not help.

Patrick relents on his Bowie tirade, “Fine. But can we agree on no celebrities?” Pete raises a hand and opens his mouth but is cut off by Patrick, “That includes poets and authors that have been dead for centuries.”

And then it’s Pete’s turn to pout, “You’re so boring. I should get final say, I’m growing her!” he complains. 

“And when you’re done growing her in there she’s gonna come out here and we’re all gonna have to make sure she keeps growing correctly. For like, way longer than you’re cooking her.” Joe says, pointing a finger at Pete. 

Patrick makes a face, “Don’t say cooking, say baking, cooking sounds like you’re sauteing her or some shit.”

Andy corroborates this, “Bun in the oven,” he says simply. 

“Cooking, baking, whatever- this is not a one man job.”

“Fine!” Pete groans, “Let’s just start throwing out names- Jamie!”

They all make noncommittal noises at that. Pete sighs. 

“Jaden?” Patrick offers.

“Too basic,” Andy answers and they nod. 

“Harper!” Joe throws out. 

“Sounds like a bird.”

“You’re thinking of a harpy.”

“Is that a bird?”

“A mythological creature.” 

“Not a bird?”

“Eh, part bird?”

“Okay, so not Harper!” Joe concludes from the interaction. 

Pete puts his head on the table,” We suck at this.”

“We really do,” Andy sighs.

“”In our defense, it’s hard!” Joe says, “This is gonna be a whole ass person someday! We can’t give her a shitty name, she’ll have to live with it her whole life!”

“She can always change it,” Andy offers.

“Yeah, to Bowie,” Patrick mutters under his breath. 

“Boo!” Pete jeers at him. Andy balls up a list of abandoned baby names and throws it at him. 

The debate continues. More names, more arguing, and nothing ever really seems to stick.

Adapting

“How early is too early to teach a baby sign language?” Pete asks idly, as he places his hands along every spot where the baby keeps punching him. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes she lands a particularly good hit, but most of the time it’s fascinating. He remembers when she was basically nothing. An idea. Unbelievably tiny. And now she’s punching him. And soon she’ll be here. 

And thinking of tiny, punching hands makes him think of tiny fingers and the language he knows Andy prefers though he refuses to admit it. 

“I think generally the baby has to be born first,” Joe says, looking down at where Pete is using his lap as a pillow.

“I’ve looked into it,” Patrick offers (because of course he has), “Six months seems to be the starting point.” 

“How do you even teach a baby sign language?” Joe asks.

“Same way you teach them any language,” Pete says, “You just.. Speak it, I think. Show them signs and stuff.” Patrick looks mildly frustrated at this so Pete amends, “And whatever research Patrick has done will also help.”

“We appreciate you, Patrick!” Joe agrees, somewhat sing-songy. 

Patrick rolls his eyes fondly and that’s the end of it. At least Pete thought. 

“We’re teaching the baby sign language?” Andy asks.

Pete’s fairly certain all three of them look at him like it’s the most obvious thing ever because, well it is. “Yeah, totally.” Pete says. 

Andy looks lost, “Did I miss a conversation or something?”

“No?” Joe asks, “It was just obvious. Why wouldn’t we teach her sign?”

“I don’t know,” Andy mumbles, “Didn’t seem all that relevant. You guys have been thinking about this?”

“Dude, of course we have, you haven’t?”

“I mean she doesn’t need to know sign language, shouldn’t English be top priority?”

“Actually,” Patrick starts, “Sign language helps develop communication skills before babies are even supposed to talk. Like she can communicate that she’s hungry or something simple like that before she even has the words to say as much. If anything, it’ll help. And also, obviously we’re gonna teach her sign, no one was expecting you to wear hearing aids for her entire life.” 

With that, Patrick returns to whatever he was doing on his laptop and Joe returns to his phone. Pete keeps looking at a somewhat stunned Andy, however. He knows that they haven’t always been so understanding of Andy’s hearing loss, it had actually slipped their minds a handful of times, but this was important. This was his kid. And more than that, Andy was their guy. Of course this is important. He’s confident that Andy knows this but he wonders why he can never accept it. Wonders why it never sticks. So he looks at Andy and watches as it starts to hit him. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” he says as Andy’s eyes get watery. He tries to sit up, thankful when Joe involuntarily helps push him upwards, and repeats, “You’re okay.”

It makes Joe and Patrick stop what they’re doing. Andy is silently crying and that’s the most important thing right now. 

“I know,” Andy says, “I know.”

“Hey,” Patrick says, reaching over and grabbing his leg, “Then what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Andy says, “I just.. Wasn’t expecting it, is all.” 

He’s not crying because he’s sad, Pete realizes. These are happy tears of some kind. Some kind of relief at knowing that he’s been thought of. Pete will never understand it. He’ll never know what it’s like to have something so crucial taken from you and then to have kindness applied to it by those you love. At least never to this degree. But just because he doesn’t really get it doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t mean he won’t try. 

Inevitably, Andy crying makes him cry because his hormones are totally wack right now but it’s okay. 

Sometimes he forgets that after everything, they’re still learning how to be okay. 

It comes up again one night, when he and Patrick are the only ones still awake and Patrick  asks, “How am I supposed to hold her?” 

“What?” Pete asks.

“The baby. How am I supposed to hold her?”

“Like a baby?” Pete offers, “You hold her like a baby.”

“No, I know that,” Patrick says, “But what about my hand?”

Pete was admittedly on the verge of sleep when Patrick first spoke so his next words, “What about it?” is not one of his greatest moments.

“I don’t know if I can hold her,” And when he says it his voice sounds wrong. Part haunted, part thick with emotion. And maybe it’s the words he’s actually saying or maybe it’s the cadence but it scares Pete. He does his best to turn over and face Patrick, who’s staring straight up at the ceiling with wide, terrified eyes. Suddenly he realizes the gravity of the situation. Still, Patrick says, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” Pete asks, “What are you saying? You’re freaking me out.”

Patrick has been better about this whole thing than Pete had been anticipating, especially after the initial incident of him running away. He’s made good on his word and has stuck by Pete’s side through the whole thing. Every appointment, every scary moment, he’s been there. He’s done the research, he’s communicated, he’s done everything he should. But this is different. And the way Patrick looks in the moonlight tells him that maybe some of that was a facade.

“Pete,” he whispers, “I’ve done terrible things. To them. To you. How can I hold a baby after that? How can I hold your baby after what I’ve done?”

“Trick, that was so long ago,” he stresses even when it’s only been a handful of years. “Where is this coming from? You were doing okay.”

“I lied,” Patrick says, “I lied to you. I said I was okay when I wasn’t. I can’t hold her.”

“Hey,” Pete tries, “Take a breath, okay, you’re getting yourself worked up over nothing, I promise. What triggered this?”

Patrick does what he says, takes a breath, and keeps going. “The prosthetic irritated it today. And I was trying to figure out how you’d hold a baby with a prosthetic on. She’d know it wasn’t real, it’d be.. Cold. It’d hurt her. But the alternative isn’t anything either. It’s not even a hand. She’d know that was wrong too. And then I remembered why I was so fucked up over this whole thing and now.. Pete, I-”

“Patrick, none of that matters. I promise you, none of that matters. She won’t know anything, she’ll just know you. If you do or don’t have a hand doesn’t matter she’ll just know that it’s you. And she’ll know that you love her and you love us and that’s all that’s gonna matter.”

“I killed you,” Patrick says.

“She doesn’t know that,” Pete says. 

Patrick goes quiet before saying, “I still don’t know why you still want me.”

And that’s easy. “Because I love you. And I have always loved you. And nothing has or ever will change that. I love you and now I know you love me because otherwise you wouldn’t be freaking out about this. I want you to love my baby too.” 

“Of course I love you. I love her too.”

“And I am telling you, Trick. That that is all that will ever matter. Fuck everything else.”

“Fuck everything else,” Patrick repeats quietly. He doesn’t say anything more and neither does Pete and eventually Pete subcombs to exhaustion. When he wakes up he half expects Patrick to not be there. But he is. He hasn’t left. 

He never leaves again.

Preparation

“You know we could hire someone to do that, right?” Joe says from the doorway, looking into the room soon to belong to baby. 

“You know I can throw this at you, right?” Andy snarks back, threatening him with the screwdriver. 

Patrick looks up from his studying of the instruction book, “Either help or walk away, Trohman.” 

Andy and Patrick are sitting in a pile of scattered crib pieces, a torn apart toolbox somewhere off to the side, and with faces of such utter concentration and near anger that Joe can only laugh.

The nursery had been very contentious for them. Mostly because Joe and Pete wanted to hire an interior designer to make the whole thing painless and Andy and Patrick were stubbornly insistent that they do it all with their own hands. Which, apparently, included all the furniture building. Something that all four of them were famously terrible at. Which led to the mess in front of him. 

It doesn’t help that Patrick is literally missing one of his furniture building hands. That certainly hadn’t stopped him though. 

“Sorry,” Joe says, “Can’t be on all fours. It’s bad for my back.”

“We’re not asking you to haul lumber!”

It’s then that Pete appears beside him, “What’s this about Joe on all fours?”

“Of course that’s what summons you,” Andy says under his breath.

“Hey, I am not ashamed of that,” Pete says, pointing a finger at Andy who only rolls his eyes. 

“Of course you’re not,” Patrick says, “You’re like, way hornier than usual because of baby.”

“Hey!” Joe says, pulling Pete into his side, “That’s not even a level two on the Pete Wentz horny scale.”

“Thank you!” Pete says before slinking an arm back and grabbing Joe’s ass. 

Joe jumps a little but is otherwise unphased, “That’s like a three.”

Andy, who’s been ignoring the interaction, throws a screw at the ground and makes an annoyed noise, “Why did you have to buy the most complicated crib ever?”

“It’s the safest!”

“And the stupidest!”

“I’d like to remind you both that nobody asked you to do this-”

Patrick cuts him off, “Shut up! We’re gonna build this damn crib if it kills us.”

“You’re ridiculous!”

“I’m so glad I got to do the fun part of picking stuff out,” Pete mentions, “You guys are miserable.”

Andy and Patrick flip them off in unison and they ultimately decide to take their leave. 

They do eventually finish the crib, hours after the fact, and it is a nice crib. If nothing else they’re both really proud of themselves which is all Joe needs to see to be fine with it. It’s a nice white crib, and the room is painted a calming blue color, and they install an adorable little mobile made of stars and moons and comets with cartoony smiles on them above the crib and it’s really starting to come together. 

“Maybe when she’s older we can get her some of those glow in the dark stars to put on the ceiling,” Patrick suggests, watching Pete run his hands through the dangling stardust.

Joe hums an agreement, “I am digging the space theme we have going on.”

Pete looks thoughtful at this comment, “Yeah.. me too.” 

They keep the colors of the room on the cooler side, fit for a baby that’s gonna need to sleep. And they stock it with plenty of gifts, ooh and aw over itty bitty baby clothes as they fold and put them away. At some point a baby book gets started, with blank pages pasted into it when the requisite “mommy” and “daddy” sections can’t begin to cover their family. Family. 

It dawns on him that they’re a family. Even as they fight the carseat and the stroller and stack baby books on baby books and bitch about what this kid’s middle name is gonna be, they’re a family. They’ve always been a family. But now there’s gonna be a baby. That’s like, a family family. He’s really excited about it.

But he’s also really terrified.

At the moment, he and Andy are on a midnight expedition to find an extremely niche flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream that Joe’s beginning to think was discontinued in 2010 (per Pete’s request) and as they stare down rows and rows of ice cream Joe finds the courage to ask the question that’s been weighing on him since the moment he found out about the baby. 

“So what do you think the odds are that we royally fuck up this kid?”

Andy pauses and gives him a scrutinizing look that Joe just shrugs helplessly at. Then he goes back to looking at ice cream. Joe thinks he’s being ignored until Andy hums thoughtfully and goes, “Fifty Fifty.”

“What makes you say that?” 

This time Andy shrugs, “I don’t know.”

“... Should I not have asked?”

Andy sighs, “No, it’s just.. I don’t particularly want to have this discussion in a grocery store.” 

“How about a car?”

Andy hums again, “Yeah alright. I think this place is a bust anyway.”

Once they get back in the car Joe finally admits out loud, “I'm scared.”

“Me too,” Andy says. “So’s Patrick. And Pete. It’s scary.”

“Okay, specifics..” Joe says, “I’m scared that we’re gonna suck at parenting. Maybe not the baby part, you know, like I have not read as many books as I have to not know the proper ways to keep a baby alive, but what about when she starts to be a person? I don’t know right from wrong half the time, what am I supposed to tell her?”

“I get that,” Andy says, “I wish I could tell you the right answer but I’m not in a much better position,” he huffs. 

Joe smiles at that, “Probably not smart to ask one of the equally scared soon-to-be parents how to raise a kid, huh?”

“No,” Andy says kindly, “Probably not.”

“I know, I just.. It feels unfair to bring it up to Patrick and Pete, especially Pete. They’re both always on the verge of losing their shit, I don’t want to make it worse by telling them that I’m also about to lose my shit.”

Andy lets out a long suffering sigh, “Yeah, I get that too.” They sit in silence for a second, staring out at the empty parking lot before Andy turns to him and says, “I don’t think we’ll be bad parents.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Cause we’re sitting here worried about being bad parents. Shitty parents don’t care that they're shitty. They don't care at all. We probably won’t ever have all the answers, we probably won’t be able to protect her in every situation, but we’re always gonna try, right? Don’t you think that’s what matters?” 

“Yeah. No, I know. I know you’re right it’s just..”

“It’s hard right now.” Andy finishes for him. 

“Yeah. And it’s not gonna get any easier.”

“No,” Andy agrees, “No, it is not. But I don’t think we beat death for fun either.”

“You saying we have a purpose?”

“Maybe,” Andy says, “Gotta live for something.”

And then they’re quiet again. Quiet until Joe says, “I’m sorry for dropping this on you.”

“Don’t be. I’d rather talk about it than not. I don’t think any of us should be alone with our thoughts anymore. It’s not worth it. And this is probably important communication to have when it comes to parenting but what do I know?” 

“We don’t know shit,” Joe says.

“We don’t know shit,” Andy repeats. 

Joe is content to leave it at that. There was nothing Andy could have said that would make it better and there’s nothing better that Andy could have said because he’s just as scared as Joe. But maybe it was important to say something. To bring it up in some capacity. To feel a little less alone. He’ll be scared until the baby comes and he’ll be scared until the day he dies. But maybe it’ll get a little easier as time goes on. 

His eyes wander, and across the street he spots the bright sign of a Dairy Queen. “What are the odds Pete will settle for a dipped cone?”

“Slim,” Andy says. “But I think you just want a dipped cone.”

Joe ignores that comment, “I’m asking.” And Andy huffs a laugh at him in response. 

And the world keeps spinning.

Fall Out Baby Gets A Name

The name debate finally comes to an end late, late, one night.

“Parker!” Pete all but shouts at Andy, after shaking him awake and handing him his hearing aids. He woke up Joe and Patrick too. 

“Huh?” He asks, disoriented.

“The baby should be named Parker!” Pete insists. 

“Where is this coming from?” Joe asks, half asleep. 

“It’s a good name!”

Pete is wide awake because he can’t sleep. Sleep has always been hard for him but it’s especially hard now that he’s always in pain or has to pee. Baby is a night owl.

“What time even is it?” Patrick asks, reaching blindly for the nearest phone- Pete’s, which is face down on the bed- and turns it over only for the light to illuminate their half dark room. On the screen?

“Parker Lewis Can’t Lose?” Patrick asks in near disbelief, turning the phone around to show Joe and Andy and- yep. On the screen is a playlist of illegally uploaded episodes of the ancient sitcom Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, the first couple with a red bar showing he’d already watched them. “Are you seriously trying to name our child after a shitty 90s sitcom?” Patrick asks tiredly. 

“Hey, Parker Lewis holds up!”

Joe rubs at his eyes, “There’s zero way that’s true.”

Pete relents easily, “Okay, it really doesn’t but that’s not why I want to name her that. It triggered the thought, sure, but it’s not why.”

“Why were you even thinking about this show?” Andy asks, taking the phone from Patrick, “And why have you watched most of these?”

Pete gestures obviously at his baby bump, “She doesn’t sleep so neither do I. Naturally, I go down rabbit holes. And it didn’t even start with the show, it started with the song!”

“Song?” Joe asks. 

Before Pete can speak, Patrick cuts him off and explains with his encyclopedic knowledge of their discography, “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose But I’m Gonna Give It My Best Shot, It’s one of the tracks off of the nightmare bastard child of an album that is Evening Out.”

Pete rolls his eyes, “It’s not that bad, I was listening to it and it had potential!”

“It’s terrible,” Patrick maintains, “And whatever potential it had we took with it when he abandoned it.”

“Why were you listening to Evening Out?” Joe asks, “We have good music too, you know?”

“If you made our child listen to it I’m gonna punch you,” Patrick adds, “It sounds like shit, why put her or yourself through that?”

“It is not that bad!”

“Converse with my Converse!” Patrick says, “We wrote down Converse with my Converse and put it in a song!”

“Is that a real lyric?” Andy asks because he’s maybe listened to the album twice in his entire life. 

“Yes!” Patrick says desperately, “And you’re saying you want to name our child after not just the terrible 90s sitcom Parker Lewis Can’t Lose but after the terrible 2000s song Parker Lewis Can’t Lose But I’m Gonna Give It My Best Shot from an album we made a thousand years ago without one of the baby’s fathers!?”

Pete looks at him seriously, “Yup.”

Patrick sighs exhaustedly. 

“It’s actually kind of cute,” Andy says, “My mind goes to Peter Parker, actually, which is kind of adorable. Gender neutral, too.”

Joe nods, “I actually don’t hate it, even if it came from one of your sleepless spirals.”

Pete grins and they look expectantly at Patrick. 

“I could live with Peter Parker,” he murmurs, “Which is definitely what I’m telling people we named her after, by the way.”

“Can we name her Parker?” Pete asks excitedly.

Patrick stares at them all before finally, finally, relenting, “Fine. But-! We have to rerecord, at the very least, the fucking song. The lyrics suck but we can probably salvage the music. If we’re naming our child after our song it’s gonna be our song.”

“Better than Tiffany,” Joe comments.

“A hundred percent deal!” Pete says, “Fall Out Baby has a name! We did it!” 

Andy can tell that Patrick doesn’t actually care because he’s looking fondly at Pete and Andy is looking fondly at both of them and it’s nice. Their baby has a name. A cute one at that.

“Too bad it isn’t really nicknamable,” Joe frowns. 

“We can give her a nicknamable middle name,” Andy suggests and then they’re all immediately hit with the realization of oh fuck, middle names before anyone can say anything else.

The End

Patrick is astounded by how well Pete has handled being pregnant. Not a day has gone by where he hasn’t been amazed. To him, pregnancy has always sounded like a well and true nightmare. And from what he’s now witnessed first hand, it really really is. But for Pete?

Quite the opposite. 

Pete has fucking loved being pregnant. Even now, a few weeks out from his due date, he’s more than happy. A little sad that it’s ending, sure, but happier than most parent’s at this stage. 

Again, Patrick is astounded. 

“I’m gonna miss this,” Pete says.  

“Seriously?” Joe asks for Patrick. 

“Yeah,” Pete says. “I like it. I like feeling so connected to her.” 

Patrick exchanges looks with the guys. He has a feeling that postpartum is gonna be a nightmare for this exact reason. Pete’s always been obsessive about the things and the people that he loves. He always wants to absorb them into his skin. Patrick should know, he’s been on the receiving end countless times. But how much closer can he get than this right now? So he’s a little concerned that taking that connection away is gonna fuck with Pete more than the hormones already have. And you can only be so prepared for that crash. 

Pete continues, “But I’m ready to meet her. That’s the only thing that could be cooler.” 

Patrick quietly sighs a breath of relief, “Agreed.”

Pete’s C-Section has been planned out for a few months now, a necessary precaution. Pete’s only a little bummed that it’s gonna cut straight through his bartskull tattoo but it’s not the first time a scar has interrupted a tattoo between the lot of them. And in the same way that Pete’s obsessive about people he’s obsessive about scars. If baby leaves a mark on him it’s probably for the best. He’s just kind of like that. 

They’re about as ready as they can be. Go bag packed, nursery ready to rock, car seat in. Patrick’s done all he can. He’s researched all he can. You can only learn so much without experiencing it. 

He’s terrified. Rightfully so. But he’s ready to face those fears. At least, as ready as he’ll ever be. The point of no return is miles behind them and he wouldn’t want to anyway. It’ll be hard. He knows it’ll be hard. 

But he’s confident that it’ll be worth it. 

And so is everyone else.

Pete doesn’t make it to the C-Section date. Despite all their preparation he wakes up one night in pain, a complication that makes them rush to the hospital and gets him prepped for surgery the same night. Of course it doesn’t go to plan. It wouldn’t be them if it did. 

It’s just as scary as anticipated, especially the part where Pete’s in pain, especially the part where he’s cut open. Especially the part where they’re stuck is a hospital. Especially the sight of metal tools. But they persist. Lean on each other and support Pete. And then..

A baby is born. 

Chapter Text

Arrival of Fall Out Baby

Parker Andromeda Delphi Wentz is born in July of 2016. She has all ten fingers and all ten toes and is screaming her itty bitty lungs out the second she enters the world. 

And she is the greatest thing any of them have ever seen.

All four of them are weeping messes by the time she’s finally officially given to them, cleaned and swaddled. It’s hard not to be. Not only is she the most perfect living creature to ever grace this Earth, she is theirs. She is a culmination of everything they’ve been through, the reward at the end of the quest, she is living proof that they survived what they did for a reason. Pete doesn’t think any other reason could ever be as good as this one. 

None of it matters when he looks at her. Nothing matters, nothing has ever mattered, he’s never felt so confident about something before. He’s never felt so confident that this was worth it. He holds her to his chest and he tries not to get teardrops on her as she coos. And when finally tears his gaze away from her he finds that he is surrounded by the guys, crying just as hard and grinning ear to ear. 

They give him his time. They let him hold her for as long as he needs to, already mourning the loss of her constant presence. And finally, when he’s ready, he hands her to the nearest person- Joe.

Joe seems startled by this, like he wasn’t expecting it. He hesitates for a split second as Pete offers her to him but he reaches for her almost on instinct. And then he holds her close and staring at Joe stare at their baby in pure awe is worth handing her over for. “Oh holy shit,” he whispers, “Look at her. She’s so… perfect.” And none of them say anything but only because they don’t have to to know they all agree.

And after a while, Joe hands her to Andy, who takes her with no hesitation. There’s an air of awkwardness as Andy finds the best way to situate her but once he does he melts into it easily. She is everything. And as she makes a noise, a little coo, Andy’s eyes go wide, hearing her. He was sure to bring his hearing aids, determined to hear this baby and if the look on his face is anything to go by, it’s everything he wanted and then some.

Finally, it’s Patrick’s turn. Patrick is the only one who actually visibly hesitates. He looks at Pete for the okay, silent tears streaming down his face. Pete nods. There’s nothing more he could say or do. Patrick turns back to where Andy is offering her to him and he very carefully tries to take her. He opted against using his prosthetic, scared it would fail him in such a crucial moment though it never has before, and so it takes some maneuvering to get her high enough in his arm to be properly supported. But once she is, and Patrick is just holding her, Pete waits with bated breaths for a reaction. 

There were a lot of things that could have happened. A lot of worse case scenarios, a lot of bad reactions, a lot of nightmares running around Patrick’s head. But nothing like that happens. No, instead, Patrick looks down at Parker and very quietly says, “I love you.”

The whole thing is unbearably tender. Pete doesn’t know if he’s ever been so happy. This is it, he thinks. This is what it’s all been for. This is what the rest of his life is gonna be. 

He’s made a lot of mistakes in his life but this, undoubtedly, isn’t one of them. 

The First Few Months

They spend the first couple months of Parker’s life secluded at home, refusing to do anything but be with her. 

Falling into parenthood isn’t easy, in the sense of suddenly you have all these things you need to worry about, but it is easy in the sense that they fall into it without hesitation. They spend a lot of time with her. Holding her and talking to her and watching her. Newborns don’t do much. But as she gets a little older she becomes more expressive and a little wigglier. They spend a lot of time showing her off to friends and family who stop by and spend even more time frantically googling if she’s okay. She always is, and it’s not that they’re unprepared but rather that they just want to be sure. Babies are scary, especially this young, and they’re afraid to break her. 

But she’s always fine. Did he mention that they spend a lot of time watching her?

Parker is not a quiet baby, by any means. She spends a lot of time screaming and crying actually. Or rather, apparently, because Andy is not often the one woken by the sound of the baby monitor- for obvious reasons. 

So he does spend a lot of nights sleeping on the edge of the bed by the monitor so that oftentimes, when someone gets up to take care of her, they wake him up in the process. He doesn’t stop no matter how many times they tell him he doesn’t always have to get up and help, that they should split this responsibility. He doesn’t expect them to get it. To them, having to be awoken by a crying baby is annoying. To him, it’s everything. And it’s something he’ll never get to have, not really. He can’t hear her like he’s supposed to. He wants nothing more than to be able to but he can’t. And that hurts. He hadn’t anticipated just how badly it would.

Still, he is determined to not let his hearing loss affect his relationship with Parker. He wants that time with her so he will happily wake up at 3AM to take care of her, no hesitation. She means so much more to him than sleep ever could. She’s all that matters. So he relies on his hearing aids a lot in the day time, always wanting to be able to listen for her. But it doesn’t always work. And sometimes he gets overwhelmed. Sometimes he feels lacking. And so sometimes he doesn’t wear them, needing a break from it all. 

He makes the mistake of holding Parker without having his hearing aids in exactly once and never again.

He doesn’t think about it. He’s taking a hearing break in the living room, his head tilted back on the couch as he stares at the ceiling. Pete and Patrick are on the couch across from where he’s sitting, on their phone and laptop respectively. And then Joe comes in, Parker in his arms, and he hands her off to Andy, saying something about a phone call that Andy doesn’t quite catch because Joe doesn’t realize he doesn’t have his hearing aids in and probably couldn’t properly sign what he was trying to say with a baby in his hands anyway. So Parker gets handed to him. 

He sits her up on his knee and bounces her because he knows she loves that and she smiles at him. And then.. 

She laughs. 

And the only reason he knows she laughs is because he can feel it, reverberating through her chest and into the hand he has placed solidly on her back. 

The world stops spinning. 

He looks up, meeting the wide eyes of Pete and Patrick, Joe behind them with his phone in hand but jaw dropped. It confirms his suspicions. Still, he asks in what he’s pretty sure is a whisper, “Did she just laugh?”

Parker is still looking up at him. She does it again, unprompted. She laughs to herself. 

She’s laughing. His daughter is laughing for the first time ever, because of him no less, and he can’t fucking hear it. He can’t hear her laugh. It feels like getting shot in the heart. It feels like dying all over again. It digs up a thousand old feelings and plenty of buried hatred. For the people who stole this from him. For his situation. It’s not fair. His daughter is laughing and it’s not fair. 

He only realizes he’s got tears in his eyes when a hand on his arm makes him look up and he can hardly make out Pete through the tears, staring at him with wide, concerned eyes. Glancing over, there are similar looks on Joe and Patrick’s faces too and all he can say is, “I can’t hear her.” It probably comes out choked and pathetic. But it’s how he feels. 

He goes back to staring at Parker who is now looking up at him with as much of a confused look as a baby can muster. Her big eyes blink up at him and her lips move, no doubt making a noise of some sort, and it hurts even more. He doesn’t pay attention to anyone else until he realizes someone is putting his hearing aids in for him and even then he doesn’t look up. There’s a tinny noise as they click on and the world comes crashing back into his ears. It almost hurts. Part of why he’d taken them out originally. But he adjusts to them like he always does and then Joe says, “Try bouncing her again.”

He wipes at his eyes as quickly as he can, hoping to get Parker back into focus, and then does just that. 

Parker giggles, high pitched and happy. Gurgles on her spit a bit and flaps a hand in excitement. 

It is the greatest sound on planet Earth. 

He laughs back at her, breathless and relieved. He keeps bouncing her and she keeps laughing. He never wants it to stop, never wants to hear her make any sound other than this laugh. She is the greatest thing. This sound is the greatest thing. 

From that day forward, he always puts his hearing aids in before doing anything with Parker.

He refuses to ever miss out again. 

Ours, Not Theirs

In the week after Parker was born exactly one public statement was made about her existence and that was the singular Instagram post Pete uploaded, containing a picture of a pink teddy bear his mom brought to the hospital for Parker. The caption is something along the lines of “My baby was born, here is her name, I love her.” The specifics have since escaped him because he uploaded it from a hospital bed so forgive him if he was a little out of it.

He doesn’t read the comments and he doesn’t go online. They go for a full social media cleanse because anything else is too overwhelming when Parker exists and is real. He doesn’t post a picture of her because, as much as he loves her to death, he doesn’t want them to have her. She’s his. Theirs. The world doesn’t deserve her. And besides, the last thing he needs is any weird comment about the way his fucking baby looks. 

He does say her name though, partially because he figures they should keep wikipedia accurate and partially because he thinks they fucking nailed it. It’s a little long, sure, but he thinks it’s gorgeous. Andromeda was his doing. Her middle name being space themed was an idea that came to him pretty quick after decorating the nursery. Delphi was Patrick’s doing. The city was apparently meant to be the center of the world. Parker was the center of their world, certainly. It all flowed together so well there was no point in picking one over the other. 

But that’s all of Parker that the internet gets. He takes a shit ton of pictures. Like a ridiculous amount of pictures. But he keeps them for himself and he stays off of social media and they spend a good chunk of time just existing as new parents. And it’s awesome.

It doesn’t last forever.

Before Parker is even a year old, she gets sick. Scarily sick. She’s burning up, she’s having trouble breathing, she won’t eat. It’s terrifying. It’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to them. It’s scarier than cults and brainwashing and demons and heaven and hell. It’s scarier than dying. It’s fucking scary. 

When all the motrins in the world fail them they take her to a 24 hour Urgent Care and despite it being damn near two in the morning, there’s a wait, which doesn’t make them feel much better. And the waiting room is fairly packed at that. It’s a horrible concoction.

Their focus is on Parker. She’s all they care about, she is their top priority. But it’s apparent that there are eyes on them. More than that, the people in the waiting room are less than subtle about the way they film them. Still, Pete tries to focus all his attention on Parker who is abnormally quiet in his arms and half asleep. He’s trying desperately to hide her from it all, trying to tuck her as close to himself as he comfortably can. Joe is trying to play human shield, sitting awkwardly to block her from other’s lines of sight. Patrick is doing something similar but he’s shooting daggers at everyone who looks at them and Andy is whispering reassurances in his ear, though the shakiness of his voice fails to provide much comfort. All that matters is Parker. 

That’s all he cares about. 

They’re finally called back, away from everyone. Parker is diagnosed with a particularly nasty cold and is prescribed something a little stronger than any over the counter baby medication they already tried and they’re sent on their way. Leaving the Urgent Care feels like doing the walk of shame. 

The medicine seems to help and by the morning Parker is already on the up and up. She’s still more than snotty but she’s smiling again and has managed to keep down food. It’s a huge relief. He’d like to say that that’s when the nightmare ends but no. Truthfully, the nightmare was just beginning. 

They wake up the next morning to a lot of people giving their opinion when nobody asked them for it. The videos and the pictures of them at the Urgent Care with Parker are everywhere and everyone has decided that the fact that they were even there made them terrible parents. There’s plenty of tabloid-y titles and bitchy tweets about how they were unfit to be parents. Either because of their relationship or because of their past. And once Pete starts scrolling through them all he can’t stop. The more he looks the uglier it gets. People will say anything behind a computer screen. He thought he knew that by now. Maybe he just wasn’t expecting people to be this nasty about the best thing that’s ever happened to him. People start saying that they shouldn’t be allowed to have a baby, that someone should take her from them for her own good. People genuinely saying that if they came across them in public they’d steal their fucking baby. 

It is the hardest any of them have ever spiraled before. It’s worse than the immediate aftermath of the cult, of dying and being revived. It’s worse than every other time some shitty thing happened to them. They can’t brush it off as the internet being the internet because this is their daughter. She’s supposed to be theirs. Not anybody else's. 

He posts something on his story about how Parker was just sick and they were worried and that she’s fine now. And then something about how fucked everyone’s reaction was. And then a snarky comment about how they can expect to not hear anything from them for a while. Because fuck this. And then he deletes the app. 

They become borderline recluses. Call it irrational but after having seen first hand how evil people can be they’re not taking any chances. They sleep on the floor of Parker’s room for almost a month, that is when they can sleep because they all have nightmares about losing her. And it’s horrifying. And it’s no way to live. But they can’t help it. 

He just wants to be okay. All he’s ever really wanted is to be okay and for about five minutes there he was. And then it all came crashing down again. He’s sick of feeling this way, sick of living in fear every day of his life. He thought he was over this. He hates that it’s come back. 

Despite it all, Parker is a light in the darkness. She doesn’t know what goes on in their minds or what goes on in the world outside these walls. She doesn’t even know what Twitter is. Pete’s almost jealous. But being inside, being with her 24/7, as hard as it’s been, means they’re there for everything. 

Parker gets bigger. She starts babbling at them. She learns how to crawl and once she does, she tears around the house like a racecar. She signs food and more and finished and they spend all day playing with her. They’re there when she first stands, pulling herself up all on her own, and when she takes her first steps. She proves her resilience to them when she first falls and giggles about it. Once she really gets her legs she’s a wild child. Sometimes they’ll just sit in a circle and take turns pointing her at each other and watch her take off. She starts to talk too. Calls them all dada. Asks them to play. Pieces together sentences. It feels like she grows up in the blink of an eye. 

And they get to be there for all of it. 

It’s healing, in a way. To know that despite all the bad things, despite everything they’ve been told, everything they’ve done and been through.. They’re still capable of doing good. Parker is a testament to that. She is their everything. 

Despite what everybody else wanted, they raise their fucking kid.

Good Things

Parker really likes music. 

They introduced her to it really young. She’s been wiggling to whatever played since before she could walk. She asks for music a lot. Sometimes she’ll even waddle up to one of them and demand, “Dada play!” while signing for music (which is how they differentiate playing with toys and playing music) and then whoever it is must put on a little performance for her with their respective instrument. It keeps them from getting rusty, at least. 

Patrick is overjoyed that Parker loves music so much. She’s taken with the piano (mostly ‘cause she likes to slam on the keys) but she’s also pretty good at sitting there and listening to him play with these big eyes full of wonder that are unmistakably Pete’s. And she likes his voice. He’s been singing her lullabies since the day she was born. He’s never thought himself a singer, though that is his job description, but it’s a good tool. It helps him a lot. Because sometimes it is overwhelming. And sometimes he’s scared of hurting her or messing her up and sometimes all he can do is sing. And she likes it. She’s been trying to sing with him recently. Once he realized that that’s what she was doing they’ve been practicing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star together. She’s pretty good. 

Parker’s affinity for music reignites his love for it. He’s neglected that drive to create for a while now and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t miss it. 

When they release Mania it’s not because they think they’re at all ready to deal with parenting and being in the public eye at the same time but because they were put on this planet to play music and make things they love. Parker just happens to also be one of those things. 

Parker is with them through most of the process. She’s absolutely fascinated by the studio and she wants nothing more than to play with every button and knob she sees (an oversight on their part really) but once one of them starts recording their part she becomes completely entranced with it. To be quite frank, it’s fucking adorable. And there she goes with those eyes again. 

Patrick sees a lot of Pete in Parker which is probably because Pete carried her so obviously he’s gonna make that association. But it just feels obvious to him. She looks like him. She has his eyes and his face. By the time she’s two she has a full head of curly hair which could be Pete’s but also could be Joe. It’s pretty light and he wonders if it’ll get darker with time or maybe she got that from one of them. He doesn’t know. Mostly, he recognizes Parker as herself. Every day she becomes more and more of her own person. She loves Spider-Man to death and her favorite color is orange and she has an array of action figures and dolls and she is quickly becoming Patrick’s favorite person. So seeing her run around the studio, excited by it all, makes him even more confident in their choice to return to music. If it works for her it works for him. 

Right now, Parker is sitting on Andy’s lap at the drum set, banging on it with the drumsticks she’d totally stolen earlier and had been running around with for the better part of fifteen minutes. She seems to be having a good time and it probably helps with her coordination so they let her be and take a break. 

Pete glances at his phone and then sighs before turning it over.

“What?” Joe asks.

“Manager’s pushing for a tour,” Pete answers, sounding somewhat aggravated. 

It instantly puts him in a sour mood. Returning to music was supposed to be for their own betterment, not to actually.. profit off of. If it were up to him they’d release this thing and then disappear back into parenthood for a while until the mood struck again or Parker was old enough for them to comfortably tour. Or be in public for that matter. But at the same time he understands why their manager is pushing for this. They’ve been gone for too long. 

“I don’t wanna think about album rollout, let alone a tour,” Joe comments. It’s true. As much as he wants to release it and be done with it, releasing an album after being MIA for so long would make it near impossible to avoid having to do some kind of press, be it a Buzzfeed interview or a Jimmy Kimmel performance. None of it sounds particularly good to him. He doesn’t want to hear other people’s opinions on his life. He’s been sick of that for a real long time.

“Yeah,” Pete agrees. He pauses before continuing, “I don’t think touring is even an option right now, Parker is too little.”

“Is it even ethical to put a toddler on a tour bus?” Joe asks mildly. 

“She’d probably love it,” Patrick comments. It’s the first thing he thinks of. He can see her being excited about it. She already spends car rides with her face pressed against the glass. She loves to move. 

Pete huffs a laugh, “Yeah, she would.”

It’s then Andy emerges from the booth with Parker on his hip, “What are we talking about?”

“A hypothetical tour,” Patrick answers. 

Andy frowns. Parker catches this and asks, “Wuts that?”

“It’s where we go to a bunch of places and play music,” Andy answers as simply as he can. 

Parker’s eyes go wide again but then she does some little kid version of trying to look serious and makes a show of nodding. Then she very smartly says, “I like music.” 

Joe reaches for her so Andy hands her over and Joe says, “We know you like music. You love music.” He sits her on his lap and holds her close. Thank god she's a cuddly kid.

She nods again. 

“Did you like the drums?” Patrick asks her. 

Parker nods again and then mimes her version of playing the drums which is really just throwing her arms around. Her pigtails bounce around as she does it, making her own version of  “drum  sounds” to further reenact the scene for him. She hasn’t quite grasped the idea of a one way mirror yet. “Fun!” She shouts. 

Andy very proudly agrees with her, “They’re very fun.”

“Very fun,” She mimics him. She looks up at Joe and asks him, “Are there drums?”

“On tour?” he asks, “Yeah, honey, your dada plays drums. He has to play something, right?” 

“Right,” she agrees. Then she gets momentarily distracted by Joe’s tattoos, tracing them with her finger. 

Patrick turns to Andy, “Thoughts on a tour?”

He makes a noncommittal noise then asks, “What about Parker?”

“That is the question,” Pete says. 

At the end of the day none of them are really opposed to going on tour. They all miss playing music, playing shows. He’s watched all of them brighten just by recording in the studio. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t miss it too. But Parker is a little too young for them to want to leave her with her grandparents or leave her at all. And they technically could bring her with them but it’d be hard to manage and tours are long anyway. It’s an idea that dangles over them for the rest of Mania’s development. 

Mania ends up not being the most cohesive album ever, partially on account of the toddler running around the studio and their division amongst themselves, all wanting different things. It’s hard. And it stays in development hell for a good long while. Long enough that by the time of its release Parker is three and getting smarter and smarter and in the end they decide to go on a somewhat teensy tour. 

But that’s mostly so they can bring her with them. 

As predicted, Parker loves touring. And their whole crew loves Parker. They establish that it’s not okay to take pictures of her but if she happens to wander into one blur her before you post it and everyone agrees easily. Friends and family come to different shows to keep her company in the green room and she likes watching them play. She tells them as much. She loves the tour bus and the big empty venues and she has the time of her life. 

It ends up helping them a lot. To be able to do it with her. It eases the pain of the album’s response and it eases the fears that come with not having her within arms reach at any given moment. It’s a really important step for all of them. 

And it’s worth it. 

Growing Up (Redeux)

Parker is very excited to start school. 

The same can not be said for the rest of them. 

They’re watching idly as Parker lords over her little collection of school supplies like she’s a dragon and they’re her treasure. She’s testing every marker, crayon, and pencil, she’s writing her name on everything, and she’s trying to decide the best way to fit everything into her backpack. It’s adorable, really. But it’s also making Joe feel a little sick.

“How is she starting kindergarten?” he asks quietly, “I mean seriously? Not to sound cliche but I swear she was a baby like.. yesterday.”

“Dude, she’s five,” Pete points out. 

“You don’t have to remind me!” Joe complains. 

Parker is extremely excited about going to school. She’s still as energetic and outgoing as ever so she’s ready to take it on like it’s nothing. They’re a little apprehensive, anxious to let her lose on the world without specifically their supervision. But they’ve done their research and it’s a good, safe school. They’ve made it abundantly clear that she’s not to be photographed as well. She’ll be safe there. They know that. And it’s helped, bringing her to shows and such, where she can be out of eyesight but still nearby. Baby steps, getting closer to being okay with the first day of school. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that they’re gonna miss the hell out of her. 

She really doesn’t give a shit though. Which would be funny if he didn’t feel like an emotional wreck right now.

“Is it too late to homeschool her?” Patrick asks, “And just.. Keep her here forever?”

“I wish,” Joe murmurs, “But she needs this.”

“Honestly,” Andy starts, “We probably need it too. We’re being clingy.”

“I wanna cling to her forever,” Pete pouts. “Hey Parker?” He calls to her. 

She looks up from where she’s doodling a butterfly, “Yeah?”

“You’re not allowed to grow up, okay? You have to be this little forever.”

She makes a face at him, “That’s not fair. I wanna grow up.”

Joe makes a show of clutching his chest like he’d just been stabbed in the heart. Patrick mock gasps, “Look what you’ve done to your father! He’s devastated!”

“You’re killing me, Parker!” He cries, collapsing into Andy’s side and doing his best dead person impersonation. For the first time ever, he misses the irony in that.

He watches through half closed eyes as Parker turns her nose up at him, not believing him. She stands, and with a marker in one hand wanders over and pokes him with it. He holds his pose for just the perfect amount of time before jumping up and making some variation of a loud noise as if he was some kind of monster. It scares her, which he knows she likes, because she screams all high pitched before falling into a fit of giggles as he hoists her up onto the couch, placing her between him and Patrick. “Don’t do that!” She complains through her laughter. 

“You love scary monster!” He says, poking her in the arm. “Don’t tell me you’re already too grown up for it.”

“I am grown up,” she insists. 

“Are you now?” Pete asks, “I thought I told you not to grow up?”

“I have to grow up!” She says, “I wanna be in a band! You have to be old to play in a band!”

Patrick pauses at this, raising an eyebrow, “How old do you think you have to be to be in a band?”

“I dunno. Like.. twenty-five?”

Joe thinks his heart actually does stop for a second there because his brain provides him with the idea of a twenty-five year old Parker. 

“You know what?” Patrick says, “Let’s go with yes, you do have to be twenty-five to be in a band. Any younger and it’s not allowed.”

“Really?” Andy asks, “Parker, how old do you think dada was when our band started?”

Parker considers this seriously before answering simply, “Twenty-five?”

“Oh my god,” Pete says, voice full of pure delight. 

“Shut up,” Patrick says, elbowing him in the side. “I was a little younger-”

“A little?” Andy asks.

“You,” Patrick says, pointing at him, “Also shut up.” He turns back to Parker, “But that wasn’t very smart of me.”

“You’re gonna sit here and say it didn’t work out fantastic for you?” Joe asks. 

“Can you guys stop? I’m trying to tell her she should go to college.”

“Why?” Pete scoffs, “She’s a nepo baby, she’ll be fine.”

“What’s a nepo baby?” Parker asks. 

“Okay..” Joe says, ruffling her hair. She makes another disgruntled face at him. It’s adorable. “Let’s put it like this. You can do whatever you wanna do when you turn eighteen, alright?”

“That’s far away,” She comments.

“It is.”

“Can I join a band?” She asks. 

“...It would be unfair if I told you no,” Joe says. 

She seems content with this. She’s been on a kick with this whole being in a band  thing. Maybe taking her on tour influenced her a bit more than they thought. Oh well. She’s already trying to learn all of their instruments, this was bound to happen. They might as well set her up for success.

“Until then,” Pete says, trying to smooth out the hair Joe previously ruffled, “You’re an honorary member of our band.” 

She nods. “Yeah, I am.”

They laugh at that. He’s not sure he’s ever met such a confident little kid. They gotta be doing something right. 

“Are you excited for school?” Andy asks her. 

She makes a mhm sound. “It’ll be fun.” 

“Yeah, it will be,” he says. Then he asks, “Will you miss us?”

She considers this for a second and then concludes, “Yeah. Like… this much,” she puts her fingers parallel to each other to show the frankly small amount she will miss them.

Pete points this out, “That’s so little!”

“I’ll come home,” She says, like it’s obvious. 

Pete sighs in defeat. “Yeah, alright. Hey, have you picked out what you’re gonna wear tomorrow?” She shakes her head and bounds away the second Pete says, “Let’s go figure it out!”

The next day Parker goes to school happy as can be and comes back still pretty damn happy. She tells them about her new friends and the things that she did and they spend all day trying not to cry because having a child has made them horribly sappy. He didn’t know it was possible to love someone this much. And then school slowly becomes normal. And the world keeps spinning.

Later that year, they receive her very first yearbook photo in the mail. Well, technically they receive a stack of them, but still. Joe’s staring at the contents of the fridge trying to figure out dinner when Pete comes in with them. “Oh hey! Parker’s yearbook picture came in!”

Joe quickly ditches what he’s doing to gather around Pete as he opens the envelope, quickly followed by Patrick, Andy, and Parker herself who had all been in the vicinity. 

The first thing he says upon seeing the picture is “Oh my god.”

“Oh my god.” Pete repeats. 

The picture isn’t bad. She’d successfully kept her shirt stain free that day and her teacher had made sure her hair wasn’t totally all over the place (Parker was very anti hairstyles, preferring to let her hair do whatever it wanted instead). It was a good picture. A truly delightful one actually. Why? Well, Parker had completely and utterly failed to smile like a normal human child and was instead baring all of her teeth like a less than normal dog/human hybrid. But that’s not what Joe is oh my god-ing about. No, he’s actually referring to how-

“Oh, she looks just like Andy,” Patrick states the obvious. 

It’s true. Andy does the same fucking thing. Like he never grew out of the little kid can’t smile on command thing that is more than likely what’s going on here. Unless, however, she actually did just pick this up from him. Which is arguably cuter. 

Andy startles at that, “What do you mean?”

“Let me see!” Parker says, making grabby hands at the picture. Pete hands it to her and pulls out another to keep staring. 

“Dude,” he says, “She’s making the same face as you.”

“What face?” he asks. 

“This face!” Joe says, pointing at the picture. 

Andy scrutinizes the picture, “I don’t see it.”

“Oh my god,” Joe says exhaustedly. 

Parker sits at the barstool by where they’re standing and looks at her picture for a second before asking, “Do you like it?”

“We love it!” Patrick says, “You look so pretty.”

She smiles at that. A normal smile, that is. 

“Hey, honey?” Joe asks, “Can you smile for me?” 

Parker immediately switches to baring literally every tooth in her mouth like she wasn’t smiling perfectly fine five seconds ago. 

Then Joe turns to Andy, who’s standing right next to her, and asks, “Andy can you smile for me?”

Andy does the same fucking thing. 

Pete starts laughing immediately. “Oh that is uncanny,” Patrick says, “They’re doing the same thing!”

“I knew it!” Joe says, “Andy, you're teaching our child how to smile wrong!” 

Andy stops doing the fake smile and smiles for real which makes the whole thing all the more infuriating. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. He turns to Parker, “You’ve got a great smile, sweetheart.”

Parker does the same cheesy fake smile again, “I know!” she says. 

“Oh come on!”

“Are you guys in on it together!?”

Joe genuinely can’t tell if they are or not. But he fully expects to see the same fake smile in next year's photo. It’s when she’s still doing it in the fourth grade that he realizes that it is, in fact, a bit.

Parker Finds Out

When Parker is seven she starts having night terrors. 

The first time it happens is probably the most scared Pete’s ever been in his entire life. They wake up to her screaming bloody murder. It is the worst sound he’s ever heard and he almost breaks his ankles tearing out of bed, quickly followed by the rest of the guys, a thousand worst case scenarios rushing through his mind.

He practically throws Parker’s door open and it hits the wall with the bang which scares her even more and she ends up screaming again. Pete doesn’t even have time to let the guilt settle before he finds the overhead light and starts shouting, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! What’s wrong!?”

Parker is sitting up in bed, her Spider-Man comforter clutched in her hands and the same dingy hospital teddy bear she’s had since the day she was born tucked under her arm, with tears streaming down her face. The first thing she says, wobbly lipped and anguished is, “I’m sorry!”

It makes Pete’s heart sink. He rushes to her side, immediately pulling her into a hug, “No, no, don’t apologize, it’s okay! What happened?”

“I.. had…a... night… mare!” she manages to get out between hiccups. It calms his nerves somewhat, to know that she’s actually not in any immediate danger, but at the same time it makes him more anxious to know she had a nightmare so severe she woke up screaming. That’s supposed to happen to them, the guys with PTSD, not their daughter.

He finally registers the rest of the guys as they appear at Parker’s bedside, all but surrounding her bed. Patrick places a hand on her back and says, “Hey, hey, you need to drink some water, it’ll help you calm down,” her well loved Batman water bottle primed and ready in his hand, plucked from her nightstand. 

“Oh.. kay!” she says, still gasping for air. Pete lets her go so she can take the water bottle. 

Patrick starts rubbing her back, “Focus on drinking the water, focus on breathing, it’s alright, you’re alright.” She keeps hiccuping around the straw and it makes him want to start crying. He’s never seen her so  distraught before. She’s cried, of course, what kid hasn’t? But she seems devastated, she’s basically having a panic attack. She’s not supposed to have panic attacks, she’s fucking seven.

As she drains her water bottle she starts to rub the sign for sorry into her chest over and over again and it somehow breaks his heart even more. 

“Hey,” Andy says, reaching over and taking her hand, “Stop apologizing. You have nothing to be sorry for. It was just a nightmare, we’re not mad.”

She shakes her head and finally stops drinking, breath somewhat back under control. Patrick takes the bottle back. Parker takes a shaky breath and says, “I did something I wasn’t supposed to.” She looks so.. sad when she says it. So guilty. It’s heartbreaking.

“What do you mean, honey?” Joe asks, “Does this have something to do with the nightmare?”

She nods. 

“Do you think we’ll be mad at you?” He asks. 

She nods again. 

“Oh, Parker, sweetheart,” Pete says, “If you did something that made you feel this bad we wouldn’t care about what you did, we’d care about if you’re okay or not. There’s nothing you could say that would make us mad, nothing at all, I promise you.”

Parker nods. Takes a deep breath. And explains. 

Some kids in her class kept talking about them. About her dads. They kept saying things she didn’t understand about their scars. From the sound of it, were just spewing comments their parents had made about them in their presence. And Parker, against her better judgment and their wishes, did the one thing they always tried to protect her from. The one thing they tried to ensure she never did. 

She googled them. 

She doesn’t specify on who’s device she did this with but judging by this whole situation Pete’s pretty fucking sure it wasn’t her safe search only school mandated laptop. 

Parker tells them that she didn’t read much. She looked at the pictures instead. 

Pete knows where this is going. He knows that one of the top results when you google Fall Out Boy is a picture of them taken by bystanders when they finally escaped the cult nearly ten years ago now. It’s a terrible picture. They’re covered in blood. Wounds that Parker has only ever seen as scars, long healed over, were still fresh and on display. Still oozing gore. 

Parker doesn’t know about what happened to them, not really. She knows that a long time ago a group of bad people did some bad things to them and that’s why Patrick has one hand and Andy needs hearing aids and why they have so many scars but that the people who did it couldn’t do it anymore and that they were safe and that that was all that mattered. Because why would she need to know the specifics?

When Parker is done explaining what she saw, she breaks back down into tears, “And I’m sorry!” And she throws herself back into Pete’s arms. 

He looks over her shoulder at the guys who look just as dumbfounded as he feels. What the fuck do you possibly say in this situation. Still, he tries. “Parker,” he starts, “What was your nightmare about?”

“That.. that the people came back! And that they hurt you again! I don’t want them to hurt you, I don’t want them to hurt you!” She cries. 

He rubs circles into her back and tries to keep his composure. It’s hard though, because Patrick has tears in his eyes and Joe has dropped his head into his hands and Andy looks completely devastated. “Honey, those people are gone. We told you that. Nobody is gonna hurt us ever, ever again, do you understand that?” 

“How do you know!?” She cries into his shoulder. 

“Because,” he says, pulling back from her to look her in the eyes. He uses his thumbs to wipe away some of her tears, “I was there. I saw what happened to them. They can’t hurt anybody anymore. I promise you that.”

“What happened to them?” She asks.

“Uh,” he starts. 

Patrick takes over for him, “They were taken away. Uh, arrested, honey. They can’t hurt anybody where they are now. They locked ‘em up and threw away the key. They can’t touch us anymore, never again.” It’s the only way to word oh, they’re dead in an appropriate way without traumatizing her further. Neither of them mention the fact that facets of the cult still exist in some places on the internet. They need to reassure her.

“Are you sure?”

“I swear.”

“And baby,” Joe starts, “We’re not mad at you. You saw something that scared you, we would never be mad at you about that. Is that why we asked you not to look us up? Yeah. But that doesn’t matter now. It happened. There’s no reason for us to be mad about that. We don’t want you to be afraid to come to us about something if you’re scared or worried. Always, always come to us first, okay?”

“Also,” Andy starts, “I know what you saw was scary. We looked kind of scary. But look at us now, okay? We’re okay. We’re not hurt anymore, we’re totally fine. It’s over. It’s.. it’s been over for a long time.”

Parker nods and goes quiet, still shaking somewhat. And then she asks, “Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

So she does, curled up solidly between them. And she sleeps with them the next night. And the night after that. And she keeps having nightmares that scare her deeply but waking up amongst them seems to make it better. She’s scared that they’re dead, he realizes. And it makes his heart ache terribly and his anger at the universe deepen. You want to hurt them? Put them through hell? Kill them? Fine. But now it’s affecting their daughter. She’s supposed to be free of all this pain and suffering, they didn’t go through what they did just for her to keep hurting for them. It makes him so, so angry. But there’s nothing productive to do with the anger. So he has to let it go. And just keep holding onto his kid. 

The nightmares stop eventually. And when she’s older ( much older) they do end up answering all her questions they dodged when she was little. And she picks up a little of their anger at the universe on their behalf. And then he teaches her how to let it go. Just like he did.

(Ten Years)

They tour So Much For Stardust in the summer because Parker begs to come along for the tour and they’re not willing to pull her out of school for it. Much like Mania, she’s there for a lot of the album making, only this time she pays a lot more attention and even helps a bit. It’s mostly getting her opinion on certain things but it’s enough to get her a producer credit. And apparently she’s been dying to tour with them again since she was little little. So it’s only fair. 

Patrick is more than happy to oblige. So Much For Stardust is an album he is immensely proud of. He’s proud of it’s sound, of their collaboration, of the lyrics, of all of it. It feels like a culmination of not just the last ten years but the last twenty. A culmination of their entire lives. It feels like every piece of them lives in this album and it would be stupid to not bring Parker along for it. 

Just like she did way back when, she takes to touring like an absolute champ. She loves every second of it, absorbs it, internalizes it, whatever. And the tour itself, god the tour. It’s only the fourth show and it’s already the most energetic, emotional, meaningful tour of his entire life. The feeling can only be described as nothing short of electric. It feels like they’re really back. Back and better than they’ve ever been. Things finally, finally feel stable. It’s perfect. 

When Patrick says they should do Kintsugi Kid he gets zero resistance. A new song off of the new album, let alone one that they’re all so proud of, is a welcome pick for the setlist. A perfect magic 8 ball. 

He doesn’t think about it all too hard when he picks it. They rehearse it and it goes fine. It’s just another day on tour, slowly getting into the swing of things. 

And then they actually play it. They play it live in front of a sea of people and everything hits Patrick all at once. The people here tonight are here because they want to be. They’ve seen all the crazy shit that’s gone on in the past ten years and they’re still here. They’ve been a band for the last twenty years and people are still showing up. He’s 39 and he’s playing a song off of his new album with his best friends and their daughter is offstage somewhere and it occurs to him that they’re okay. Ten years and they’re still okay. Despite it all. Despite it all, they’re okay. 

He gets choked up. He can’t help it. His voice cracks as he pushes through the end of the song and the sea of people become blurrier as tears begin to well in his eyes. He’s relieved, when it finally ends, turning away to wipe desperately at his tears. But then he notices that he’s not the only one. Andy is doing the same. And when he glances to one side, Pete is grinning big with tear tracks down his face and when he looks to the other Joe is experiencing something similar and he realizes that he’s not the only one the song got to tonight. 

The show comes to a screeching halt. Performance, momentarily abandoned, as they gather for a group hug. The audience is screaming, losing their minds, like they know too. Like they understand how much of a fucking miracle it is that any of them are standing here right now. 

And then, as if the whole thing couldn’t get more disjointed, Parker disobeys everything they’ve ever told her and sprints out onstage to join them. This was inevitable, he figures, the second they let her out of the green room. It doesn’t matter though, because she’s what they need right now. Their miracle. Their perfect creation. Their living proof of survival. She is welcomed into the group hug easily. And for a moment they stand there on stage, one family. And none of it matters. 

When they finally pull away Pete grabs a mic and Andy hoists a hyper Parker into the air a la The Lion King as Pete yells;

 “Parker Wentz, ladies and gentlemen!”