en masse (pxp + groundhog day)
Title: en masse
Author:
clippedwings
Summary: Patrick just can't seem to get Pete to remember him. That might be because, technically, they've never met.
Rating: R
Author's Note: Groundhog Day-like Patrick/Peter AU. Totally didn't plan on it being Groundhog Day-inspired on Groundhog Day itself. There are two endings. Feel free to read them both or just one. The first one is the so-called happy ending. The second is the not-so-happy one.
x-posted to
we_are_cities, slutrick, and slashypunkboys
When you bump into him, at first you don’t think anything of it. He’s just a part of the mass, a face in the crowd. He means nothing to you.
But then you get on the train, coffee in hand (two sugars, no milk, just the way you like it), and you have a déjà vu moment. It takes you four minutes and twenty three seconds to put two and two together and realize the face in the crowd is reading the morning paper just ten feet away from you.
He looks up from the newspaper to see you staring wide eyed (and bushy tailed), and smiles at you. You’re sure that this can’t mean anything. He’s just a stranger to you. Some idiot that works in the big fucking city, probably at Wall Street, making three million bucks while you make a lousy ten thousand (on a good week). And really, should you be complaining? Probably not. After all, there’s got to be some other idiot making more and some other poor soul that can’t even afford rent.
As you’re getting off the train to the desk job you got two years ago, you catch his eye one last time and he winks. You don’t even know how to react after that, and as you’re hopping off the train and onto the platform at Penn Station, you spill your coffee all over your flawless starch-free dress shirt. Cursing the world and the boy, you control your urge to toss the half-empty coffee cup across the platform, and instead throw it out in the nearby receptacle.
“You alright?” the boy (man? young adult?) asks as you try to save the shirt with a stackful of tissues. “You know, every time you do that I always wonder if you’re ever gonna learn.”
Those words intrigue you, because you really can’t remember the last time you even spilled coffee on yourself, let alone seen this boy-man-young adult in front of you. “What do you mean every time?”
“Right. Every single day I watch you bump into me, get on this train, look at me like you swear you’ve seen me somewhere before. Then I wink at you, hoping that for once you will remember, and you spill your damn coffee over yourself. Never, ever, not once have you managed to remember.” He sighs and grabs your hand. “Let me take you to the washroom. I’ve got an extra shirt this time.”
You look at him with bewilderment and study him closely. Is he nuts? Does he seriously expect you to believe that this is even possible?
“Trust me, dude, this’ll be for the best.”
You give in, if only because you want to know how this guy could know to bring another dress shirt if this thing was apparently impossible.
“Where do you work?” you ask, shrugging off the coffee stained shirt to put on his brand spanking new one (and it fits? now things are getting even stranger.)
“30th and Park,” he answers, watching you button his shirt up carefully, avoiding the mistake of misaligning the buttons like you tend to do in a hurry. “Don’t you want to know how this is possible? How I can know exactly what’s going to happen?”
“Well, yeah I do,” you mumble, and you tuck the shirt into your tan pants, looking at yourself in the mirror. Your hair managed to become disheveled in the process, and so you try and use water from the faucet to get it back into order.
“I’m suffering from a time loop,” he states, and you practically spray him with water as you spin around and study him with bemusement. “Well, do you want to try explaining it? How I can relive this same thing over and over again and you don’t know it? Because if you can, then by all means…”
“I can’t,” you admit, and before you know it, he’s leading you into a café. “I don’t even know your name…and I have to go to work. But maybe afterwards, if you’d like…”
“I’m Patrick. And you’re Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III, District Associate. And quite a good one, I think. At least that’s what you’ve told me every time.” Patrick smiles as he tugs you farther, farther and farther away from your office. One little day off to get to the bottom of this couldn’t hurt.
You sit down across from the young man and smile slightly at him, tapping your fingers across the table. You wonder what it is about this guy that’s got you doing things you don’t normally do, like skip work to have a hot chocolate and bagel with someone you’ve barely met. But when someone knows your name and can tell you stuff about you that you’ve almost forgotten, you have to trust them.
“I need to tell you something,” Patrick says, his voice so quiet you have to crane forward in order to catch the words he said.
“Then go on, tell me,” you reply, nodding eagerly, finding yourself suddenly so interested in what he has to say.
“After all these days…months of reliving this day,” he begins, closing his eyes to create an altogether too dramatic effect. “I think I’ve started falling in love with you.”
You feel some sense of déjà vu again, a tingling at the back of your neck, like Patrick told you this before. And that’s when it hits you. He did tell you before. But there was always something keeping you from remembering. Maybe you forced yourself to forget, maybe you simply didn’t find it worth remembering. But for some reason, this time around, you found yourself wanting to remember.
“You…couldn’t have…this isn’t like Groundhog’s Day where Bill Murray at least knew Andie McDowell beforehand. You’re just a stranger…” you insist, even though all you want to say is take me home. Because you need to make sure that there’s at least some sense of disbelief, or you’d be too easy of a catch.
“So? Who cares? This isn’t a movie, this is real and I want to learn more about you, Peter. I want to know more than just what’s on the surface.”
And that’s when you realize that what Patrick is asking isn’t just a casual date. He wants intimacy, he wants everything, and you want to say yes. But how can you say yes when you’ve never said yes your entire life?
“Please…just come with me. I need to show you something.”
When he starts tugging you again, you try to resist, but those hazel eyes of his are locked against yours, and you’re powerless. He drags you (only partly unwilling) back to his apartment in the Upper West Side.
“What is this you’re going to show me?” you ask as he slides his Metrocard in twice for good measure. “I would like to know just in case you’re planning on raping my ass and taking advantage of my gullibility.”
“Come on, do you really think I could even rape you? Look at me.” Patrick’s giving you a raised eyebrow and you concede, following him a lot more willingly now.
“Touché,” you mumble, and you wonder whether any of this is even possible, whether maybe you’re still dreaming. But when you reach his apartment, that part of you dies away, because this nightmare just seems too real.
“I took it upon myself to start jotting down everything,” he explains as he leads you up the elevator to the fifth floor and eventually into his apartment. “Everything you told me about yourself and everything I observed. Just. Everything.”
“Everything?” you ask, skeptically when he retrieves the notebook and hands it to you. “How long has this been going on?” Your fingers graze across the cover of the notebook before opening it up. Its pages are filled with detailed notes, drawings, anecdotes. Everything you notice is accurate (and sometimes not so accurate, but you can tell it was intentional on your skeptical part).
“Well?” Patrick asks, quietly. “Do you believe me?”
“How can I not remember someone…who knows so much about me and obviously has met me before? How is this possible?” you ask, eyes widened as far as you can manage.
“I don’t know…I don’t care, just please. Tell me that this tells you something…anything from when we met,” Patrick urges, and you can sense the hesitance in his voice, and the hope that there was a chance this notebook would spark something.
You shake your head sadly and look at the ground. But despite the fact that you can’t remember ever meeting him in one of the twisted remarks in that book, you find yourself walking the short distance across the room so that you were face to face with him. The notebook falls from your fingertips as Patrick looks up at you, worry etched across his face at what you’re about to do. But he certainly doesn’t show any hint of complaint as he grab either side of his face and pull him into a kiss.
What you get isn’t exactly what you hoped for, and no recognition is ignited from the heated passion generated from his lips. He’s still as foreign as before, only you’re ignoring the voice in your head telling you to back off. Instead, you’re pushing it further, further until the only thing that’s left is to collapse onto the bed in a mess of limbs and hearts beating in unison and in syncopation.
You melt together into one, one mass of limbs, the beast with two backs. Soon enough you’re sweating, moaning, pushing, crying, and twitching. Soon enough you’re screaming his name like it’s been the only thing on your mind for the past three months. Soon enough you’re falling asleep beside him, body completely drenched in sweat and chest rising and falling steadily, slowing down second by passing second.
“I love you,” he whispers into your ear, his eyes heavy with sleep taunting him.
…..
(Option A)
“I love you, too,” you whisper back and smile as you move as close as the laws of physics would allow before you meld into one being.
You can’t explain why you said the words back. You can’t explain why they felt so perfect for each other and why the words hit right at home. But no matter what, you know you meant every single one of those words as your eyes slide shut and you fall asleep.
And when you wake up in the morning and you can still feel Patrick’s arms around you, you suddenly realize that everything (except maybe your job) will be okay.
…..
(Option B)
You can’t bring yourself to return the words, and so you simply turn over and fall asleep. There was something keeping you from saying those words. It just didn’t feel right.
So when Patrick wakes up and there is no one next to him, he realizes that Peter (that you) has returned to his apartment and the never-ending cycle of coffee-spilling torture would start again.
“One of these days,” he swears to himself. “You will wake up by my side.”
Author:
clippedwingsSummary: Patrick just can't seem to get Pete to remember him. That might be because, technically, they've never met.
Rating: R
Author's Note: Groundhog Day-like Patrick/Peter AU. Totally didn't plan on it being Groundhog Day-inspired on Groundhog Day itself. There are two endings. Feel free to read them both or just one. The first one is the so-called happy ending. The second is the not-so-happy one.
x-posted to
we_are_cities, slutrick, and slashypunkboysWhen you bump into him, at first you don’t think anything of it. He’s just a part of the mass, a face in the crowd. He means nothing to you.
But then you get on the train, coffee in hand (two sugars, no milk, just the way you like it), and you have a déjà vu moment. It takes you four minutes and twenty three seconds to put two and two together and realize the face in the crowd is reading the morning paper just ten feet away from you.
He looks up from the newspaper to see you staring wide eyed (and bushy tailed), and smiles at you. You’re sure that this can’t mean anything. He’s just a stranger to you. Some idiot that works in the big fucking city, probably at Wall Street, making three million bucks while you make a lousy ten thousand (on a good week). And really, should you be complaining? Probably not. After all, there’s got to be some other idiot making more and some other poor soul that can’t even afford rent.
As you’re getting off the train to the desk job you got two years ago, you catch his eye one last time and he winks. You don’t even know how to react after that, and as you’re hopping off the train and onto the platform at Penn Station, you spill your coffee all over your flawless starch-free dress shirt. Cursing the world and the boy, you control your urge to toss the half-empty coffee cup across the platform, and instead throw it out in the nearby receptacle.
“You alright?” the boy (man? young adult?) asks as you try to save the shirt with a stackful of tissues. “You know, every time you do that I always wonder if you’re ever gonna learn.”
Those words intrigue you, because you really can’t remember the last time you even spilled coffee on yourself, let alone seen this boy-man-young adult in front of you. “What do you mean every time?”
“Right. Every single day I watch you bump into me, get on this train, look at me like you swear you’ve seen me somewhere before. Then I wink at you, hoping that for once you will remember, and you spill your damn coffee over yourself. Never, ever, not once have you managed to remember.” He sighs and grabs your hand. “Let me take you to the washroom. I’ve got an extra shirt this time.”
You look at him with bewilderment and study him closely. Is he nuts? Does he seriously expect you to believe that this is even possible?
“Trust me, dude, this’ll be for the best.”
You give in, if only because you want to know how this guy could know to bring another dress shirt if this thing was apparently impossible.
“Where do you work?” you ask, shrugging off the coffee stained shirt to put on his brand spanking new one (and it fits? now things are getting even stranger.)
“30th and Park,” he answers, watching you button his shirt up carefully, avoiding the mistake of misaligning the buttons like you tend to do in a hurry. “Don’t you want to know how this is possible? How I can know exactly what’s going to happen?”
“Well, yeah I do,” you mumble, and you tuck the shirt into your tan pants, looking at yourself in the mirror. Your hair managed to become disheveled in the process, and so you try and use water from the faucet to get it back into order.
“I’m suffering from a time loop,” he states, and you practically spray him with water as you spin around and study him with bemusement. “Well, do you want to try explaining it? How I can relive this same thing over and over again and you don’t know it? Because if you can, then by all means…”
“I can’t,” you admit, and before you know it, he’s leading you into a café. “I don’t even know your name…and I have to go to work. But maybe afterwards, if you’d like…”
“I’m Patrick. And you’re Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III, District Associate. And quite a good one, I think. At least that’s what you’ve told me every time.” Patrick smiles as he tugs you farther, farther and farther away from your office. One little day off to get to the bottom of this couldn’t hurt.
You sit down across from the young man and smile slightly at him, tapping your fingers across the table. You wonder what it is about this guy that’s got you doing things you don’t normally do, like skip work to have a hot chocolate and bagel with someone you’ve barely met. But when someone knows your name and can tell you stuff about you that you’ve almost forgotten, you have to trust them.
“I need to tell you something,” Patrick says, his voice so quiet you have to crane forward in order to catch the words he said.
“Then go on, tell me,” you reply, nodding eagerly, finding yourself suddenly so interested in what he has to say.
“After all these days…months of reliving this day,” he begins, closing his eyes to create an altogether too dramatic effect. “I think I’ve started falling in love with you.”
You feel some sense of déjà vu again, a tingling at the back of your neck, like Patrick told you this before. And that’s when it hits you. He did tell you before. But there was always something keeping you from remembering. Maybe you forced yourself to forget, maybe you simply didn’t find it worth remembering. But for some reason, this time around, you found yourself wanting to remember.
“You…couldn’t have…this isn’t like Groundhog’s Day where Bill Murray at least knew Andie McDowell beforehand. You’re just a stranger…” you insist, even though all you want to say is take me home. Because you need to make sure that there’s at least some sense of disbelief, or you’d be too easy of a catch.
“So? Who cares? This isn’t a movie, this is real and I want to learn more about you, Peter. I want to know more than just what’s on the surface.”
And that’s when you realize that what Patrick is asking isn’t just a casual date. He wants intimacy, he wants everything, and you want to say yes. But how can you say yes when you’ve never said yes your entire life?
“Please…just come with me. I need to show you something.”
When he starts tugging you again, you try to resist, but those hazel eyes of his are locked against yours, and you’re powerless. He drags you (only partly unwilling) back to his apartment in the Upper West Side.
“What is this you’re going to show me?” you ask as he slides his Metrocard in twice for good measure. “I would like to know just in case you’re planning on raping my ass and taking advantage of my gullibility.”
“Come on, do you really think I could even rape you? Look at me.” Patrick’s giving you a raised eyebrow and you concede, following him a lot more willingly now.
“Touché,” you mumble, and you wonder whether any of this is even possible, whether maybe you’re still dreaming. But when you reach his apartment, that part of you dies away, because this nightmare just seems too real.
“I took it upon myself to start jotting down everything,” he explains as he leads you up the elevator to the fifth floor and eventually into his apartment. “Everything you told me about yourself and everything I observed. Just. Everything.”
“Everything?” you ask, skeptically when he retrieves the notebook and hands it to you. “How long has this been going on?” Your fingers graze across the cover of the notebook before opening it up. Its pages are filled with detailed notes, drawings, anecdotes. Everything you notice is accurate (and sometimes not so accurate, but you can tell it was intentional on your skeptical part).
“Well?” Patrick asks, quietly. “Do you believe me?”
“How can I not remember someone…who knows so much about me and obviously has met me before? How is this possible?” you ask, eyes widened as far as you can manage.
“I don’t know…I don’t care, just please. Tell me that this tells you something…anything from when we met,” Patrick urges, and you can sense the hesitance in his voice, and the hope that there was a chance this notebook would spark something.
You shake your head sadly and look at the ground. But despite the fact that you can’t remember ever meeting him in one of the twisted remarks in that book, you find yourself walking the short distance across the room so that you were face to face with him. The notebook falls from your fingertips as Patrick looks up at you, worry etched across his face at what you’re about to do. But he certainly doesn’t show any hint of complaint as he grab either side of his face and pull him into a kiss.
What you get isn’t exactly what you hoped for, and no recognition is ignited from the heated passion generated from his lips. He’s still as foreign as before, only you’re ignoring the voice in your head telling you to back off. Instead, you’re pushing it further, further until the only thing that’s left is to collapse onto the bed in a mess of limbs and hearts beating in unison and in syncopation.
You melt together into one, one mass of limbs, the beast with two backs. Soon enough you’re sweating, moaning, pushing, crying, and twitching. Soon enough you’re screaming his name like it’s been the only thing on your mind for the past three months. Soon enough you’re falling asleep beside him, body completely drenched in sweat and chest rising and falling steadily, slowing down second by passing second.
“I love you,” he whispers into your ear, his eyes heavy with sleep taunting him.
…..
(Option A)
“I love you, too,” you whisper back and smile as you move as close as the laws of physics would allow before you meld into one being.
You can’t explain why you said the words back. You can’t explain why they felt so perfect for each other and why the words hit right at home. But no matter what, you know you meant every single one of those words as your eyes slide shut and you fall asleep.
And when you wake up in the morning and you can still feel Patrick’s arms around you, you suddenly realize that everything (except maybe your job) will be okay.
…..
(Option B)
You can’t bring yourself to return the words, and so you simply turn over and fall asleep. There was something keeping you from saying those words. It just didn’t feel right.
So when Patrick wakes up and there is no one next to him, he realizes that Peter (that you) has returned to his apartment and the never-ending cycle of coffee-spilling torture would start again.
“One of these days,” he swears to himself. “You will wake up by my side.”