Paradoxymoron [1/2]

Title: Paradoxymoron [1/2]
Band/Pairing: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Author: xxdance
Rating: R. Language.
Summary: In which Patrick is not a college student and Pete is not a journalist.
Disclaimer: Never happened.
Dedications: For fianna_fialena because she wanted a drabble based around "Coffee Shop Soundtrack" by All Time Low. Unfortunately, I don't understand the concept of drabble and thus, this happened. But it's kind of sort of perhaps a little cute, so I decided she could have it.



"Tall soy vanilla mocha," he said, squinting up at the menu. "Extra whip, thanks."

The kid at the counter, all floppy dark hair and typical hipster glare, scoffed. "We're not fucking Starbucks," he said, with something like a sneer. "It's called a twelve ounce."

"You're not fucking Starbucks because your coffee tastes like warmed-over shit stew," he growled back. "I'll take a bagel, actually, and hold the snark."

Three bucks later (he'd tipped the guy because hey, you had to respect someone with the guts to be an ass to the guy buying your shit), seated at a heavily scarred table, Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz (the third, actually, but Jesus fuck it made him sound like the prince of something) remembered exactly why he'd dropped out of college.

He hated people like himself.

Every fucking person in the coffee shop, every last one of them from their dark, angled haircuts to their deep-rooted self-loathing, was practically his clone. And he could tell, from the way that he kept checking his shoes to make sure he hadn't stepped in dog shit, that they loathed him. Well, the feeling was (mostly kind of sort of) mutual.

Pete Wentz had delusions of grandeur. He was not a talent scout, he didn't own a record label, he was not in a band (he had been, but that was another story), he didn't care for scene points or hipster cred and he wasn't wearing any Diesel. But here he was, scanning the crowd, acting like he was searching for the Next Big Thing, the next singer/songwriter to be the next chart-topping teenage heartthrob.

Needless to say, he was somewhat disappointed when the guy who stepped up to the mic was wearing a poofy burnt-orange vest over a plaid, button-up shirt, with khaki shorts and black, untied Converse. And that was just the first glance. When he looked again, he noticed the thick-rimmed black glasses and the black hat tugged firmly down over his head, as though it was clinging on for dear life.

Not really teen heartthrob material.

The kid (Pete was justified--he couldn't have been older than nineteen, and at twenty-two Pete was at least legally an adult) looked terrified--his knuckles were white where he clutched the acoustic guitar in his hands, and his face was pale except for his lips, red from the way he kept gnawing anxiously at them.

The guitar was what really caught Pete's eye--it was beautiful. Pale bodied, with a dark, cherry-finished pick guard and a strap that had to be handmade, nobody sold guitar straps that intricate--Pete shivered, a bit, imagining the sounds that could come out of something so beautiful. He was more of a bass man, himself, but there was nothing like a good acoustic guitar to get him all worked up.

This kid, however, looked like he wanted to throw up. He took a seat on the stool (oh Jesus college kids, why not just go for the whole cliché?), strummed once, and promptly bumped his nose on the microphone.

Pete winced slightly, but the kid covered it up with a quick introduction. "I'm, uh. I'm Patrick Stumph--" here there were a couple of cheers from a table in the corner, "--haha, shut up. So, um. I'm just going to play now."

There were a few half-hearted claps, and he cleared his throat. He dropped his pick and blushed profusely, pulling another out of his pocket and diving right into his song before anything else had the opportunity to go wrong.

Patrick Stumph was not Leonard Cohen. He was not Jeff Buckley, or Rufus Wainwright or Bob Dylan or Willie Nelson, but when he played the first few notes of "Hallelujah," Pete didn't wince. He didn't scoff, or get up and walk out of the coffee shop. He listened, because the moment that voice came trembling out from between his lips, something happened.

Pete wasn't a journalist, or a writer (not for profit, anyway), but the moment he heard what Patrick Stumph was hiding beneath layers of bad fashion and nervousness was something beautiful. A few heads were turning left and right ("This is a joke, right?" "That kid isn't really singing something this pretty, is he?"), but Pete's was fixed firmly forward, on the kid's face.

Pete, in his delusions of grandeur, imagined him getting this kid signed. He imagined being this kid's agent, being the one who got him to where he was, you know, finally knowing when he was on his private jet with a girl on each arm that he'd made it. He wasn't quite satisfied with it, but he hadn't really thought about the whole thing long enough. He'd work it out.

For now, he was going to get closer.

Patrick Stumph (they weren't on first-name basis yet) finished his song to a shower of applause, which seemed to startle rather than flatter him. He smiled, nodded, mumbled something like 'thanks' and shuffled off towards the table in the corner where he was greeted with slaps on the back and enthusiastic hugs.

Pete grabbed a notebook from his bag, tucked a pen behind his ear, and took a seat in the table's empty chair.

"Hi," he said, extending a hand, "I'm Pete Wentz, from the Chicago Tribune, and I'm doing a feature on up-and-coming artists for the area. I'd really appreciate it if you'd answer a few questions for me."

"Patrick," he said, shaking the offered hand. "Sure, I guess, but I don't think I really have anything to say."

It was at this point that Pete realized he didn't have any questions, either. So, he stalled. "So, Patrick--how do you spell that?"

"P-a-t-r-i-c-k," he said, "just how it sounds. But my last name has got an 'h' on the end."

"If you're going to be all famous and shit," said one of his friends, a wiry kid (now that wasn't strictly fair, he looked about as old as Pete) with a huge grin, "you'd better make it pronounceable. You don't want to be Patrick Stumf, do you?"

"You're not really going to put this in the newspaper, are you?" Patrick asked, ignoring him.

Pete shrugged. "It all comes down to my editors, but probably. People love to hear about local celebrities."

"I'm not a celebrity," Patrick protested, shaking his head. "And shut up, Joe, I'm not that either," he said in response to something his other friend said under his breath.

Pete smiled in a businesslike way, pulling the pen from behind his ear. "So, Patrick, what got you in to music?"

Patrick launched into a long-winded description involving his father, folk singing, and various failed hardcore bands. Hardcore? Pete thought, Honestly? Hardcore? Maybe this kid is cooler than I thought.

"And they basically made me do it," he said, pointing at his friends. "The other day Andy came into work saying, 'Guess what you're doing Friday?' and suddenly I was singing here. Not my idea."

"For someone who apparently doesn't have anything to say," Pete said, "you sure spend a lot of time talking."

"Pretty sure journalism doesn't give you an asshole license," Andy said, with a threatening smile.

"Hey, wait," Pete said, holding up a hand. "It's not like that. I was kidding."

"You're not a journalist, are you?" Patrick asked.

"Of course I am," Pete scoffed. "Why?"

"Because you haven't taken any notes."

Okay, Pete thought, he had two choices. Lie, and actually have to take notes and continue on with an interview, or tell the truth and possibly run the risk of losing this kid's (who he'd actually grown to like quite a lot) trust.

"Yeah, okay, I'm not a journalist," he said, marveling at his own moral integrity. Honestly, he wasn't sure he had it in him.

"So why are you asking Patrick questions, then?" Joe asked, quirking an eyebrow. "Is this some kind of misguided attempt at flirting?"

Pete's mouth dropped open. How could they even--of course not, Pete didn't go for that sort--he was Pete, for Chrissakes, and Patrick had neither diamond cut hipbones nor an affinity for sulking in corners. "No, I was--" he cut himself off. He was what? Hoping that somehow he'd get hired by a record company with two months of college education by proving his worth with this excellent specimen of musical prodigy? He wasn't that much of an ass, was he?

He might be.

"--sort of, I guess."

Joe snorted. "Shitty way to go about flirting, if you ask me."

"Well excuse me, your royal highness. I wasn’t aware I was talking to the king of fucking suave, here," Pete snapped.

Joe shrugged.

"That was flirting?" Patrick asked, bemused.

"Yes," Pete said, simply because he was caught in it now and there was no backing out.

Patrick laughed. "Well you’re not very good at it, are you?"

Pete muttered something, and shut up.

"So if you’re not a journalist, what are you?" Patrick asked, still smiling.

"Embarrassed," Pete replied.

"No, seriously."

"Starving writer? Asshole? Shit at flirting?" Pete continued, as it was apparently getting a laugh.

"You know," Andy said, "for some reason I just don’t believe that."

"No, really, I haven’t eaten anything but peanut butter and jelly in a week. I found a couple bucks on the street and decided I was going to blow it on a bagel."

Andy snorted. "You don't look like someone who'd be shit at flirting to me."

Pete smiled in a thoroughly snake-oil way. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"It wasn't meant to be one," Andy said, still smiling.

"Obviously, you don't know me very well."

"Okay, look," Patrick said, interrupting them. "I honestly don't care whether he's shit at flirting or not, and aside from the whole pretending-to-be-a-journalist thing, Andy, there's no reason to be an ass so why don't you just cool the fuck down?"

Pete gaped, flabbergasted. Apparently, Patrick Stump(h) was one of those rare college kids with something more to them than a badass persona or a hermit complex. And, also, Andy was an excellent sulker.

"So, what college do you go to?" Pete asked, twirling the pen between his fingers.

"I don't," Patrick replied. "I go to Glenbrook South."

"The high school?" Pete choked.

Patrick, apparently confused by Pete's reaction, frowned. "Yeah, why?"

"Nothing, I just--" Pete cut himself off, folding and unfolding a page of his notebook. "Nothing. Nevermind."

Even if he had been flirting (which he wasn't), there was absolutely nothing wrong with flirting with a high school student. He'd done it before. He'd do it again. He wasn't even going to deny that--nor was he going to deny the multiple (as in more than one hand, but less than two) relationships (if that was the word for it) he'd had with the same high school students.

But Patrick was another story. Patrick wasn't some razor-hipped scenester with an affinity for tattoos and overly verbose, badly-punctuated lovenotes (as far as he could tell). He wasn't hanging on Pete's every word like he was the Second fucking Coming. He wasn't tracing the designs on his arms, saying how great it was to find a guy who could understand, who didn't treat him like such a kid all the time. No, Patrick with his baby face and awkward, unfashionable way of dressing, was not one of those people. Adorable, yes, and funny, and unpredictable what with those unseen personality facets, and maybe had at one point been in a hardcore band--okay, yes, maybe he was flirting.

"You can't just ask something and then not give me a reason," Patrick said, with a slight pouty lip. Jesus. And it was probably subconscious, too.

"I can too," Pete said.

Patrick frowned thoughtfully, but apparently lost interest. "What college do you go to?"

"I don't," Pete replied, smiling. "I don't go anywhere."

"I should probably step in to stop this," Joe told Andy under his breath, "but it's like watching a train wreck or something. I just can't stop. It's disgusting and I'll probably have nightmares later, but all I can do is keep watching it happen." Andy bit his lip and said nothing.

"What do you mean you don't go anywhere?" Patrick asked. "You're here, obviously. And if you're not a college student or a journalist, what are you even doing here?"

"I'm not doing anything here," Pete continued vaguely.

Patrick stared, as though doing so would make Pete crack. Pete, however, was not one to spill his secrets, not even to a pair of pretty brown eyes.

He cleared his throat.

"So, I know what you don't do," Patrick said, trying his hardest to continue the conversation. "What do you do?"

"Write obnoxiously," Pete said, ticking them off on his fingers. "Lurk coffee shops, not be a journalist, go to a lot of shows, spend my parents' money."

Patrick quirked an eyebrow. "How old are you, anyway?"

"Twenty-two," Pete grinned.

Patrick looked as though he wanted to say something, but changed his mind. "Seriously? Twenty-two?"

"No," Pete said, straight-faced. "I'm five."

"Okay, I didn't ask for sarcasm--"

"I wasn't being sarcastic. I was being accurate. And if you asked for sarcasm, it would kind of devalue the whole idea of it."

Patrick paused again, staring at Pete through narrowed eyes. There were simply no words for someone like Pete--he had the sort of smug grin and easy charisma that meant arrogance, but also the self-deprecating jokes and unwillingness to talk about himself that meant he was self-conscious (maybe, Patrick thought, he should become a psychologist). A paradox, really. An oxymoron. An insecure egotist. An arrogant wallflower.

"You're really just some kind of mystery, aren't you?" Patrick asked, agape.

"No, not really," he said, pulling on his jacket. "I'll see you around, maybe."

And the next thing Patrick saw was the door closing behind Pete's back.