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To make the understatement of the fucking millennia, Pete hadn’t exactly known what to do with himself in his 20s.
To be sort of fair to himself at that age, he hadn’t known what to do with himself any of the years leading up to them, either – maybe he’d thought he had, or thought he knew what he wanted to do, or what he could do, but those weren’t the same thing – and he very clearly hadn’t known what to do with himself in the years that followed. But the sentiment held, and mid-20s had been orders of magnitude more complicated than any of those other years.
Or, maybe some of the ones after were more complicated. Still. It hadn’t been a cake walk stretch of time. He and the others getting in way over their heads, and only starting to realize what that meant.
Anyways. The point was, Pete hadn’t known what to do with himself when he was younger. The reason that was even partway relevant was, as it turned out, 44 year old him didn’t have any more of a clue what to do with himself in his 20s than he had back then.
Which is why it was kind of a problem that a 20-something year old him was ambling around the place – a place that he really should not be for a good few decades – poking at whatever was in his line of sight, and definitely not in 2000-whatever year it was he was supposed to be in. If Pete’s thoughts slowed down for half a second, he could probably pin down the year, what age he actually was, what had already happened, and what was yet to come.
Slow thoughts didn’t come very naturally to him, though, and the whole batshit scenario playing out in front of him was not helping much.
The best explanation he’d gotten so far was something about a bus breakdown part way through tour, an antique shop being the closest place to hang out while they waited for a ride, and an object that looked so comically, stereotypically like a cursed heirloom whatever that Joe started joking around about what ritual sacrifices it would demand to grant a wish.
Pete’s young self had apparently riffed on what to wish for – the suggestions having included, he graciously supplied, success for their album, hot girls, a working bus, and, of course, a bigger dick.
Surprisingly or not, it had been Andy who pointed out how terribly wishes like those backfired in stories about that kind of shit, and had thrown out the obviously-fail-proof idea of seeing into their future for a day. Because there was no way that could have been existentially twisted by some vengeful wish-granting demon. Of course. Knowledge is power, and all that.
“I don’t think he thought, like,” The younger version of himself argued. “It was safer, or anything. It was more- ‘if we can’t avoid it being fucked up, let’s at least make it ambitious.’”
That did make a certain amount of sense. Not the reasoning – that was still shit. But it made sense that that’s what Andy had come up with. People often mistook his quiet demeanor for being more responsible than the rest of them, but he tended to just be calmer about making the dumbest fucking decisions you could imagine. Maybe less frequently, but when he made them, he made them count.
There was a reason he’d been such close friends with Pete.
“Still not a great choice.” Pete said, like he had any ground to stand on. He had, after all, already made every bad choice this kid had – haunted time travel artifacts excluded – and many, many more since.
“In our defense,” The other him said, pulling a book off one of the shelves and looking curiously at the title. “None of us actually thought it would do anything. We’d have been more careful with what we wished if we had.”
Pete vaguely wondered if allowing a kid from pre-2008 to see the memoir of a guy who wasn’t president yet would be the thing to tear the fabric of space-time apart, or whatever apocalyptic nightmare end messing with time-travel might cause, but figured it must be fine when he put it back, bemused, and the world hadn’t imploded.
He anxiously cracked his knuckles, watching himself look at the photos on the walls, and various things he and Meagan had accumulated over the years that now made up and decorated their home. Pieces of art he’d bought, some of which she liked and some of which she did not get at all, but laughed and let him set out anyways. A blanket her mother had gifted them last Christmas, and a pair of shoes one of the kids had left under the coffee table.
It felt weird to be anxious about what this younger him might think about his life now. A whole new level of self-conscious that his therapist would have a field day unpacking, if she didn't have him committed the second he mentioned time travel.
“So,” He drew the word out, tapping a rhythm on his legs. “Is the future everything you thought it’d be?”
It was a stupid question to ask, because Pete already knew how he’d thought his life would turn out at that age.
“I guess,” The kid half-shrugged. “I didn’t get Ghost-of-Christmas-Future-ed, so that’s a plus.”
Pete still managed to be underwhelmed. He was talented like that. “That it?”
It might’ve been a little cruel. He sometimes had a hard time wrapping his head around his own life as it existed, and he’d had a long, slow time getting here. He’d had time to get used to it. He would be wary and disoriented, too, if he were thrown into it all of sudden, at a time when he was still counting down the days til a 27 club membership was offered to him.
The kid – and it felt weird to call himself that, but that’s what he was, comparatively at least – shrugged again, hands shoved into the pockets of an extremely 2000’s hoodie. Everything about him was a little tense, and a lot defensive. It was a weird, sideways kind of deja vu to watch him, and know exactly what he was feeling, even when Pete wasn’t feeling it himself.
His therapist would probably also have a field day with the fact that this younger him considered him enough of a stranger to be caught between aloof and performative – deflecting questions like none of this was out of the ordinary, and throwing flashy, unphased smiles in turns.
Maybe he’d explain it to her, but say it was a dream he’d had. It wouldn’t be the weirdest one he’d told her about, and she could try and walk through this tangled mess of self-analysis without thinking he’d had some psychotic break. Hell, maybe this was a dream. Maybe it was a psychotic break. If it were, it was a little surprising that it was happening now, and not when he was falling apart at the peak of the pandemic.
But, hey, this shit didn’t always make sense.
“How much are you allowed to tell me?” Younger him asked.
Pete raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know. I wasn’t given a rule book when you showed up.”
He brushed at the hair falling across his forehead. “Is it more Terminator or Back to The Future, you think?”
He mulled the question over. The entire thing seemed, in terms of unexpected time travel, pretty mundane. “Back to The Future, probably.”
“Cool,” Younger Pete said, sprawling into an armchair. “No apocalypses, then.”
Pete grimaced, thinking about the last 3 years of the world. “Now that you mention it.”
Other him just laughed. Pete guessed he assumed it was a joke. That was probably for the best. “Okay, either way we’ve seen them, so we can probably figure out what to do.”
“I’ve seen them way more times than you,” Pete said. “And this still doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, clearly you don’t remember anything like this happening.” He reasoned. “So either I forget everything when I get back- which would be really stupid and pointless, but like, I guess it could happen- or, I do remember, and change things, and either it’s an alternate timeline whatever, or it rewrites all of this.”
Pete grimaced at the thought. Being rewritten by a version of himself that hadn’t figured out- well, anything, really… didn’t sound that great. “Why do you assume things would change?”
Younger him turned from where he’d been examining the game consoles sitting beneath the TV, looking like Pete had either surprised him, or said something profoundly stupid. “Why wouldn’t they? I mean, if a teenage me had shown up at my door, I’d have a list of things we could do better.”
“Yeah.” Pete agreed, because at that age, he would have. “Doesn’t mean that I do, though.”
“Alright.” He didn’t look like he believed him, but turned away again. If Pete were to guess, it was more to hide any thoughts that might be written across his face than any real interest in the house plant he was examining like it held all the answers. “Well, then you tell me what we should do, since you know more.”
Pete huffed a laugh. “Sorry. Not to put pressure on you, but I think you’re the one who has to figure that out. You’re the one who has to live our life when you get back. I already did all that, and once was enough.”
“You’re a dick.” Pete snorted.
“Yeah,” said Pete, fighting the smile playing at his lips. “We are.”
A long few minutes passed in silence while Pete shifted in place, and watched himself peer into the kitchen, and up the stairs, but not actually venture out of the room.
“Looks like we’ve done alright.” The younger version of him stated, overly casual.
“You could say that.” Pete allowed, feeling his patience for being careful about information start to run out. If they were already here, how bad could it get? Wouldn’t things already be affected if they were going to be?
“Still doing music?” He asked. Pete watched him try to hold back fidgeting hands, and decided he was also getting kind of sick of watching himself be nervous around him.
“No.” He said. “Ended up going back to school for law. We’re partner at a firm.”
The kid spun around, cool indifference nowhere to be found. “Fuck you, no we’re not.”
It took everything Pete had to keep a straight face under his incredulous scrutiny.
Turned out, Pete was out of practice lying to himself. The thought almost felt like progress.
“Fuck you,” Other him repeated, this time more statement of fact than protest. “No, we’re not.”
Pete couldn’t help it, and cracked a smile. “No, but it would’ve been funny.”
“When I get back,” He said, eyes narrowed. “I’m making sure I don’t turn into an asshole.”
“No, you won’t.” Pete said. He didn’t know if there was a version of the world where he didn’t become at least a little bit of an asshole. Or start out as one, for that matter.
The other Pete crossed his arms, but dropped the faux-indignance. “Yeah, probably not.”
It struck Pete how incredibly young he looked, like that. He didn’t usually think of himself as being particularly young during the years he obviously came from, but when it was more than looking at old photos of himself, with ridiculous hair, and bad clothes, and worse choices – when it was there, right in front of him, with all the years between them – he realized that he was, in spite of it all, really fucking young.
You weren’t a kid anymore in your 20s. Pete knew that. He knew that when he’d been that age, he’d felt independent, and like he needed to be fully in control of his life. He knew most of the world considered you an adult, and held you responsible for the shit you thought and said and did. Rightfully so, a lot of the time.
He also knew that paparazzi and leaked albums and leaked photos and the wrong drugs at the right time and the right drugs at the wrong time had worn away at that feeling, relentless, until he’d ended up back in his parents’ house while the band went on with their tour. He knew this other him was an adult. And yet-
And yet, as it stood, Pete had lived almost twice as many years as him. He’d had time, and help, and distance from everything that happened back then, and it still fucked him up a lot of the time. Of course it had been too much.
If it had been any other kid that age – one of the ones who came to their shows, who pushed to the front and tossed them hand-made bracelets with his words on them, who waited to meet them to tell them how much their music meant, how it had saved them – Pete would be horrified at the thought of them going through anything close to that. He’d watched plenty of other younger celebrities go through a similar gauntlet, and every time it killed him to watch.
It had never come naturally, but somehow it was a little easier to extend that same grace to himself, when he was stood in front of him, apart; a kid still in the middle of a shitstorm of fame and instability, and not the fading memory of himself and what he had done wrong when he was there.
He’d found himself, earlier, when the insanity of this was still sinking in, idly wishing that the other three had shown up with his younger self. He thought he’d get a kick from seeing them all like that. Joe with his lanky frame and whirlwind energy, Andy with long hair and a quiet steadiness even then, and Patrick, all sideburns and spite.
Now, he was painfully glad they weren’t there. He’s not sure he could handle looking at Joe and Patrick, only a handful of years older than Bronx, standing on the threshold of the only life they’d ever know, and one that would almost tear them all apart.
It had only been looking back, after the hiatus, that Pete realized just how uncertain they’d been of their roles, how desperate to prove themselves. At least he and Andy had gotten a chance to try life outside of music.
“You never answered me,” Younger Pete said, pulling Pete out of his thoughts and crashing back into the moment.
“Sorry,” Pete shook his head to clear it. “What was that, again?”
“We’re still doing music?” He asked, cautious. “In industry? A band?”
Pete hesitated, still torn over how much to say, but-
But the other him was sitting down again, leaning forward, and intent. Pete thought about being that age, about being uncertain about the next gig, the next album, the next show, the next day. Never being sure if any of it would come, if they’d survive one success intact enough to reach another.
He’s pretty sure he would’ve given anything to know, back then; to be reassured that he got to keep it, that got to keep them.
There was something a little indescribable about being the one who could give that to himself.
“We’re still in our band.” He said, something in his chest sparking to watch his own eyes widen at the realization.
“Really?”
In for a penny, in for a pound. “We’ve taken time for other stuff here and there. But yeah. Still.”
He watched the weird, younger reflection of his face flicker through surprise, joy, curiosity, before settling into furrowed brows. “Everyone?”
Ah. Right. Bands changed out members all the time. People quit, life happened. It had almost happened to them a few times. Except- “It wouldn’t be our band otherwise.”
It might have been something, but it would be something else. This… It was the four of them, because it had to be.
“Can I listen?” He asked, then pulled a face. “No, wait. That feels like cheating.”
Pete could understand that. Information was one thing, but their songs… “Yeah, probably best if you don’t.”
“Okay.” He tapped his feet on the floor. “So what can I know?”
“I don’t know.” Pete could pretty much see a question simmering behind his expression. “Whatever it is you want to know, you can ask. It’s not like you can surprise me.”
The younger him didn’t look so sure about that, and took another minute to make odd faces, before giving in. He gestured at the pictures he’d been looking at earlier. “So, like, you’re married or whatever-”
“We’re not-” Pete cut in. “We’re together, but not married.”
“Oh.” He said. “Why?”
“Hasn’t felt right.” Pete shrugged. “Was married before. Didn’t turn out great.”
“Okay,” He drew the word out. “You’re together. And you have kids.”
“Yeah.” Pete answered, not sure where this was going.
“That’s… good?” He sounded genuinely unsure.
“It’s great.” Pete assured.
“Okay.” He said again. “And the band’s still going, but…”
“But?”
He was clearly struggling to find the right words. “Patrick.”
Pete waited, but nothing more came. He just looked at him, desperate for Pete to understand what he was trying to say.
The worst part was that he did.
He took a moment to look over his younger self again, reassessing what part of their lives he was from. He could just ask, but it felt a little late at this point.
Whenever it was, it was late enough for Patrick and Joe to no longer be the scrawny, nerdy high-schoolers that Pete absolutely adored, but still saw as the kids whose parents he’d had to cajole into allowing them to tour, and play shows on school nights. This Pete was far enough along that Patrick in particular was no longer just his golden ticket out of the Midwest, but the person Pete would describe in interviews and on journal posts as his best friend, as the most talented person he knew, as everything.
“Oh.” Was all he managed to say.
“We’re still friends, at least?” He asked.
Pete wanted to wince. He wondered how often he sounded that small.
It wasn’t hard to hear the I didn’t ruin everything? running underneath.
That, at the very least, had a clear answer.
“If there’s a version of the world where we don’t have him in our lives,” Pete said, the possibility itself tasting bitter on his tongue. “I haven’t found it, and I don’t want to.”
That, at least, seemed to get him to relax for the first time since showing up that morning.
When the silence broke, it was the younger version of him again, glancing up through dark fringe. “Is it actually-?”
It was an odd feeling, to sympathize with yourself. But he remembered that uncertainty well. Being caught up in the swirl of his and Patrick’s dynamic, not sure if what he was feeling was friendship, or admiration, or relief at being understood, or, frighteningly, love.
It had felt a lot like the latter, but how could he know, for sure? And what if he tried to act on it, thinking it was love, but it was actually something else, and he just had it all mixed up in his head, like everything else was?
“Yeah.” He said, gentle. “I didn’t know for sure, until later. But we weren’t sure what feeling it was, because, turns out, it can be all of them at once.”
“Do we ever tell him?”
“Yes.” Pete said. A simple answer.
“But we’re not-?”
“No.” Pete said. A simple answer.
“So, he-” He started, and Pete dreaded the question he knew was coming. “He didn’t feel the same?”
A much, much more complicated answer.
It had been in the middle of the hiatus, a few months into finding their footing again, being pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to fall back into fitting together, and how difficult it was to decide how to feel about that.
In the interests of being honest for once, and, if admitting to it was going to send it all crashing down, doing it before any of them got in too deep, Pete had said: “If we’re trying the band again, I need to tell you something.”
Patrick had blinked at him, eyes wide and taken aback, maybe a little wary, and said: “Okay.”
Pete had braced himself to ruin his own life again, and said: “I think I was in love with you, for a while. I might still be.”
Patrick blinked again, slower, and said: “I bought Elisa a ring.”
“Oh.” Pete had said. “Congrats.”
He had, despite it all, really, truly meant it.
In the absence of knowing what else to say, they’d turned back to their instruments, and did what they always did when everything else was shit: they made music.
The songs they wrote that day had been shit, as well. For some reason, none of the words meshed with the melody the way they should have. Songs about requited love, and unrequited, about being on top of the world, or trapped beneath the weight of it, about regret over past mistakes, and hope for what was ahead of them – all of them came out just a little bit off.
They hadn’t been good songs. But they had needed to exist. It was a little easier to go home at the end of the day, and not feel like it was the end of everything.
The rest of the conversations – and yes, it had taken multiple awful, awkward, stumbling conversations spread over months and years following – had gone better, and Pete couldn’t really blame Patrick. He had completely blind-sided him when Patrick had thought they were going to write a bass line Pete could manage after not really playing for too fucking long.
As it turned out, not getting a flat rejection was almost worse. And it was worse for a long time.
It was never no, it was I don’t know, I can’t know. It wasn’t I don’t feel that way about you, it was I’m in love with her. It was the fact that it would be unfair of Patrick to examine his memories and feelings to figure out if he had ever, or could ever, love Pete back in that way, or want to try, when he knew for sure he did feel that way about someone else, and had promised to always. It was that it was unfair of Pete to ask him to, just so he could have an answer.
So they’d left it there. They’d left it at it’s too late for it to matter whether I could be in love with you or not, is just loving you enough? and Pete answering it with a yes, because the alternative was unimaginable.
It had always been enough, and would always be.
Maybe it wasn’t everything. But it was enough.
He tried to figure out a simple way to say any of that, much less all of it, before settling on: “We had bad timing.”
It was a terrible, unhelpful response, but it was, strictly speaking, true.
“That’s not an answer.” The other Pete echoed his thoughts.
“It’s the one I have.” He shrugged back, trying not to let his thoughts spiral around that tantalizing, bottomless thoughts of: maybe, in another life. “By the time we’d grown up enough to maybe be good together, it wasn’t an option. Maybe, if either of us had known, or said something earlier, it would’ve been different. But we didn’t get a chance to find out. Bad timing.”
He looked frustrated. Pete could understand that. “And you’re just okay with that?”
He tilted his head, weighing the phrase. “‘Okay’ isn’t the right word.”
Young him huffed. “What is?”
“It’s like…” He waved a hand through the air, thoughts bouncing around unhelpfully. “There are way more kids out there who grow up dreaming of being rockstars, than ones who actually get to be.”
Younger him furrowed his brows, trying to figure out where Pete was going.
“And so, maybe they grow up, and get a different job, and every once in a while think ‘man, it would’ve been really cool to be a rockstar.’ But instead, they became an accountant, or a doctor or something. And maybe they love it, maybe they don’t, and maybe they still think it would’ve been cooler to be a rockstar, but, like, they don’t lie awake at night agonizing over the fact they didn’t make it.”
“What are you trying to say?” He asked, impatient. Or maybe just caught up in how stupidly difficult it was to understand yourself, sometimes.
“I’m saying-” Pete licked his lips, turning the thought around in his head. “Patrick and I- that’s our version of the rockstar dream. It’s like this- this perfect, fairytale kind of thing, that we never really expected to work, so when it doesn’t… I don’t know. It’s just like, okay, that’s how it is. Like, that was probably how it was going to turn out anyways. It’s that pipe dream that would be nice to live, but you know you probably won’t, so you just keep living. And when you do, it’s still really fucking good. It’s just not… that.”
The other him had his arms crossed again. “That whole thing would probably work better if we didn’t, like, already do the rockstar dream thing.”
“I’ll workshop it.” Pete said, wry.
“And it was more than one word.”
“Brevity’s not our strong suit.”
“Fair.” Younger Pete admitted.
Pete wasn’t entirely sure what might be swirling around in the kid’s head after all of that, but he took a guess.
“Whatever life’s in your head right now,” Pete said. “Isn’t going to be the one you end up with. Maybe some of it, but not all, and not the way you think it will.”
His face, but softer, less lined, stared back at him, uncharacteristically still. He opened his mouth to say something, and closed it again. Pete could practically see the swarm of thoughts building up in his head, but, surprisingly, couldn’t really begin to guess what they might be. That might be progress, too.
The other him stared for a while longer, before cutting the silence between them with: “You sound so fucking old, right now.”
“Probably.” Pete laughed, caught off guard. “Anything else?”
Young Pete shifted, trying to work out just the right words to ask whatever was on his mind. “You said earlier- but not really- so, I guess- Would you change things? Anything?”
And wasn’t that a loaded question. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t imagined how things might have gone, or what could have been — he was sure most people did that shit all the time, and Pete was sentimental down to his bones. He’d spent half his life imagining himself in and out of various worlds; trying to find the best version, one that held everything he loved, and where it loved him back.
He’d spent the other half of his life imagining some version of himself that might have been good enough to actually make it to that world.
But Pete wasn’t that version of himself. All this version had done was spend a lot of time figuring out how to exist in the world he was in, not some fantasized future, or past he’d fucked up. How to come to terms with that past, and believe in any future.
So yeah, maybe Pete imagined, every once in a while, the way things might have gone. Maybe, every once in a while, he ached for that possibility of a chance of a hope of a dream, and every good and awful and furious and ecstatic thing it could have been. Maybe he did. Fucking sue him.
That didn’t mean he let it take over his life — not anymore. Pete imagined things. That’s just what he did.
He imagined words strung together in certain orders to make just the right amount of nonsense that it made a sort of sense in the right light. He imagined stories and visuals for their videos, he imagined sets and outfits, and bass lines, and ways to show off Patrick’s talent to the world.
But he also imagined, on any given day, whatever was needed to be a good dad to his kids, a good partner to Meagan, a good friend, a good band mate. He imagined all that and tried to just do it. He might not always do it right but he fucking tried, okay?
So that was it. Would he change things?
He could imagine doing it. He knew which things he would do differently. He could even maybe picture how they might turn out. But-
But, he had a whole ass real life, right there, right now, that didn’t need to be dreamt up. And it was pretty fucking great, if he said so himself.
Kintsugi and all that. Once you’d pieced yourself back together with gold, it was hard to want to be unbroken. Yeah, the breaking sucked, but it had happened, and they were whole again, with so much good having filled the cracks between them. Pete had his gold now. They all did. They had so much fucking gold.
Like, maybe he could wish that they’d never broken in the first place, and been spared all the shittiness that came with it. He could wish for some world where they all got that chance. But he couldn’t bring himself to wish for this life, the one he was living, to undo that. Like, fuck, okay, he didn’t actually know what he was trying to say. But they’d earned all of this, hadn’t they? They’d earned this, right?
Meagan and Elisa were wonderful, and fit them so well, made them better; Pete and Patrick had kids that were the lights of their life. They had a new album, and kids all over that hung onto their words and melodies like lifeboats in the ever-growing sea of messed up shit the world had to offer. They had their band, they had each other.
No matter how shiny and magnetic some other world where things had worked out just that little bit more smoothly between some kids in the back of a van, where they’d never hurt each other badly enough to send them running in opposite directions to lick their wounds, Pete couldn’t imagine, even at his lowest, wanting to unmake any of the shit they’d painstakingly built back up over the years.
Okay. He’d gotten a little lost in his head, and wouldn’t know how to put that into words well until he had a pen and paper and could abstract the fuck out of it. He wasn’t sure he knew how to make it make sense to anyone else, even when that ‘someone else’ was still himself. It was a him that didn’t know any of that, and so might as well be a stranger that Pete knew really really well.
For now, he just shrugged and said: “No, not really.”
“Seriously?” His younger self looked skeptical. “You did everything perfectly?”
Pete blinked. “What-? No.”
“You fucked a lot of things up, but wouldn’t not fuck them up again if given the chance?”
Pete ran his tongue over his teeth, considering. “Yeah, actually. Kind of exactly that.”
The other Pete just stared back, like he was waiting for Pete to flinch, to give in and admit he was messing with him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Pete had to laugh a little.
“You don’t make sense to yourself most of the time, kid.” He said, instead. “What makes you think I would?”
“So what? I should just do the same stuff you did?”
That gave him pause.
Because that’s the other thing, right? Because this wasn’t confusing enough. Pete had just gone through his whole internal soliloquizing about pottery and breaking and whatnot, but-
Hadn’t he just thought himself that, just maybe, having something never happen was different from undoing it?
Like, sure, the hiatus and divorce were his rock fucking bottom, but he would never get rid of them if it meant not having Bronx, or even the good parts of his marriage with Ashlee. He hadn’t exactly had fun watching their band fracture apart under the strain of moving 100 miles an hour for years and years, but the time and space they’d gotten during the break, all of the things they got to do, to try, throughout it – they’d needed it, in some ways.
Patrick and Joe needed to stretch themselves creatively. Pete had needed to figure out he was still a person outside of them. Andy had, frankly, just needed a break from watching them all collide in increasingly volatile, unproductive ways.
He wouldn’t change it. They’d gotten here in the end, and he wouldn’t trade here and the pieces that made it up for anything.
But none of that had happened to this kid, yet.
Was there a difference? Between going back to undo something, and just deciding not to do it in the first place? Maybe if Pete had started as a philosophy major before dropping out, he’d have an actual answer. All he could say was that they felt different.
If he told him about Ashlee, and everything that came with, or Patrick and the hiatus and all of that baggage, would that be rewriting, or… would that just be a different story altogether? Not changing what had happened, but someone else’s life, happening differently.
“I don’t know.” He said, finally. It was the truth. He owed himself that much.
Younger him thought that over for a long time. “What do you think I should do?”
“I don’t think it’s about ‘should.’” Pete said slowly.
“What is it, then?”
“I think that…” He chose his words carefully. “If you don’t change anything, some things are going to suck, and some things aren’t, and you’re going to end up here. If you do change things, some things will probably still suck, and some things won’t, and you’re going to end up somewhere else. Wherever that is, you’re still going to be okay, and you’ll find some version of happy there, too.”
Pete met the gaze of his younger self, and they held it for a very, very long time.
“Okay.” The other him finally said. “Will you tell me more?”
“Why?” Pete asked.
“So I can choose.” He said.
So he did.
The rest of the day went by in a jumbled, incomplete retelling of the years ahead of him. Not everything, not detailed. But enough. Enough to know.
It turned out, the smartest thing any of them had done was young Andy including the ‘day’ time limit in their wish. Apparently, magical wish-granting heirlooms interpreted that as sunrise until sunset, so partway through the evening, as the sky went dark, Pete had turned around to find he was, once again, the only person in the room.
It was something of a relief. If Pete had had to gather up the band and their counterparts, and go on a soul- and middle-of-nowhere-antique-shop-searching trip to find some object that might be able to send them back, he’d have placed bets on how many of them would lose their minds and their tempers by the end, and who would’ve been first.
It sounded like the plot to some wacky kids movie. Honestly, maybe he’d write something like that and pitch it somewhere. Still, better as a story than a reality.
That said, something about it was a little anticlimactic. All of a sudden, a younger version of himself appeared, wanting to know if he was happy, and how to achieve that, and then, just as suddenly, he was gone.
If Pete were in a slightly worse point in his life, he’d probably be mid-spiral, convincing himself he’d made the entire thing up.
One minute, there were two of him, the next minute, it was just him.
Five minutes later, his phone buzzed, and a message popped up on the screen.
Can you call?
Followed shortly by:
Not bad, just something weird happened and want to talk to you.
Pete couldn’t help the smile. It had been a while since the conversation about how seriously, just a text saying ‘call me’ is the worst fucking thing in the world, Patrick, but ever since, he’d diligently clarified every text with some variation of everything’s fine.
Pete really did love him. That was as true in this world as it would be in any other, and there was probably no world where a Pete Wentz existed and didn’t love Patrick. Even only like this. Maybe it wasn’t everything, but how could that ever not be enough?
He tapped the screen and waited. Patrick didn’t even wait for the second ring to pick up.
“Pete.”
It was almost funny how, twenty years on, Patrick’s voice was still one of his favorite sounds. Even just talking, even just saying his name. Something tight in his chest that had been building since that morning loosened, like a muscle unclenching.
“Hey,” he said, running a hand through his hair, and wondering if he should even try to explain what had happened today, or how, or if he’d be believed. “What’s up?”
There was a long, tense silence, and Pete’s head started to race.
“Okay.” Patrick said. Not in response to anything, just in the way he did when working his way up to saying something. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah,” He answered quickly, reassuring. “Yeah, no, everything’s okay. Just-“
Pete waited, leg bouncing anxiously, trying to figure out if this was what he thought it was.
“You can’t-“ Patrick struggled again. “I’m not crazy, okay? And I’m about to sound crazy. Or like I’m joking. But I’m not, and I need you to believe me.”
“Uh.” Some pieces of a puzzle Pete couldn’t see the whole picture of yet started to fall into place. “Yeah, of course, man.”
Patrick dithered a little bit longer. Pete could practically see him pacing around. “I don’t even know how to explain it.”
Pete weighed his options, and then threw them all off a cliff, along with himself. All or nothing. “So. Was younger you still cute as a button?”
Complete silence over the line.
Pete pushed on. “Because that’s how I remember it. I want to know if I’m still right.”
Patrick’s laugh straddled the border between hysteria and relief. “Sure, let’s call it that. As cute as someone short fused, balding, barely out of their teens can be.”
“Adorable, then.” Pete confirmed. “Kind of disappointed I missed that.”
He laughed again, before settling into what seemed to be a much calmer, more centered quiet. “So, you too?”
“Yeah.” Pete said, running a hand through his hair. “Were we really like that? All the time, back then?”
“Unfortunately, I think so.” Patrick blew out a breath.
Pete hummed, considering. “Almost feel bad for them.”
“We made it through.” Patrick said. “They will, too.”
“Probably.” He agreed. “Wonder how Joe and Andy’s surprise visits went.”
Patrick snorted. “I’m sure we’ll hear from them soon.”
“Yeah.” Pete said. “We can compare notes on how much we think we’ve fucked with the past.”
It felt like half an eternity before Patrick replied. “Is that what we did?”
Pete suddenly felt uncertain about how he’d handled the day. “I don’t know. Maybe?”
“Maybe.” He echoed.
“Did you tell him much?” Pete asked, once the empty air between them turned heavy.
“Not really.” Patrick said. “Some vague stuff at the end. We were both a little anxious about… making a paradox or something.”
Pete huffed a laugh. “Of course you were.”
Silence rang over the line for a small eternity before Patrick spoke again, voice full of resigned realization. “You told yourself everything, didn’t you?”
Pete cringed a little, feeling chastised even though he hadn’t really done anything wrong. “He was a persuasive kid.”
“I’m familiar.” Patrick said, dry.
“Sorry.” Pete said. “I should’ve been more careful, but-”
“Not that.” Patrick said, sounding the way he did whenever he rubbed his eyes when he had too many thoughts at once. “I hope you know you’re- younger you, that is, is going to be insufferable when they all get back, and he knows about our whole lives, while I barely gave myself any information.”
“They’re going to kill each other.” Pete realized, feeling a little nostalgic. “You didn’t tell yourself anything?”
“Not nothing.” Patrick allowed. “There’s always been things I wish I’d known back then.”
Pete’s chest felt tight, and his voice came out quiet. “Like what?”
It was another long silence before he started to speak again. “I wish I’d known enough to be better to Joe, and you. To know you needed help, and how to help.”
He ached at the thought of it. “That’s… yeah, that’s good.”
“I told him,” Patrick continued. “That we’ll always make music that we believe in, but everything else… People, music in general, might not want what we give it at the time. But someone will, someday.”
Pete felt a little like he’d been punched. He tried to imagine a version of Patrick, back during Folie, or Soul Punk, who had even that small reassurance behind him.
“I told him I wished,” Patrick said, barely above a whisper. “That we’d all grown up enough to be there for each other during the hard times. Not just in the aftermath.”
“Oh.” Pete breathed. “You might’ve actually told yourself more than I did.”
Patrick made a questioning noise. “Why? What did you tell yourself, then?”
“A little bit of everything.” Pete said. “He, uh, asked questions. I tried to answer what I could.”
Sometimes, Pete couldn’t decide whether the unexplainable understanding that ran between them was the best thing to ever happen to him, or the worst. He didn’t have to explain things perfectly for Patrick to just get him, but, he also could never really hide.
When Patrick spoke, it came out a little hoarse. “You told him-?”
“No.” Pete said. “He asked, but- I didn’t know, so- couldn’t really tell him anything. Just that… we missed our chance to know, either way.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t know what he’ll do with that.” Pete admitted.
“I do.” Patrick said, dazed. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Pete didn’t know either, but he could hope. “Good luck to those crazy kids.”
“In another life.” Patrick mumbled, clearly lost in his head somewhere.
He understood the impulse, but it was late, and he selfishly wanted Patrick back here, with him.
“Yeah.” Pete said. “But this one isn’t half bad, either.”
“No.” Patrick agreed, a little clearer. “This one’s pretty great.”