The (After) Life of the Party [1/?]
Title: The (After) Life of the Party [1/?]
Author:
xxdance
Fandom(s): Fall Out Boy/Panic! At the Disco
Pairing: Pete/Ryan, Pete/Patrick.
Summary: Ryan's just another dead starlet. Patrick's just another overworked detective. Pete's just another shady character. Sort of.
Rating: R. [Violence, drug use, language, and that's just the first chapter.]
Warnings: Complete crack. Beyond crack. Detectives is all I'm saying, I'll save the other cracky warnings for later. Slash, language, and drug use as well.
Author's Note: Please, everyone, let's have a huge round of applause forwhatchamacall1t because she is both amazing and wise, and she is the reason why this fic is any good at all because she both betaed it and came up with the best plot ideas ever. Ever. Like, she deserves a big shiny trophy for it because she lured me out of a plot sinkhole with things that don't come up with this chapter, but do later, and because she's the one that made me write it. Quite obviously, the fic is inspired by the song of the same name, but with a side of insanity.
"Pete?"
The voice on the other end sounded wide-awake--odd, as it was four in the morning. "Yeah, Ryan?"
"Yeah, Pete? Yeah, look, I'm bleeding."
"You're. Um, why?"
"I took too much. I think. I think I took too much, Pete."
"Too much what?"
Ryan wiped at his nose, another streak of blood smearing across his hand. "Look, Pete, look, I gotta tell you something, Pete, you know how I sometimes am really weird? I've heard you say it before, Pete, you know, 'Ryan, why are you so weird?'" He snorted, then choked as he inhaled blood.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm not human, Pete," Ryan babbled, "I came down in a spaceship, Pete, with flashing lights and laser beams and a briefcase full of crash, and if you want to come over I'll give you the last of it but I think it's all gone now, I took it all. I'm not green, though. I think maybe you might have known, though, 'cause you and I don't look exactly the same and you didn't seem to care, even when we were fucking."
"Ryan, what are you talking about?"
He wiped at his nose again, trying to clean the blood off on his already stained t-shirt. "Oh, Pete, it won't stop. It just keeps going and going and going and I can't stop it. This isn't supposed to happen, Pete, it's never happened like this before. I don't bleed, Pete."
"Ryan, I need to go to bed. Lay down for a while and I'm sure you'll feel fine.
Ryan kept repeating Pete's name--he knew this wasn't right, and through a fog of crash it didn't make any sense, but Pete, he knew, Pete was there. But that's how he liked it--nonsense, all colors and shapes and blurs. "Pete," he said, "Pete, this isn't right."
"Just lay down, okay? I'll be over in the morning."
"Yeah, okay, okay Pete. Can you come over now? I think I took too much."
"Bye, Ryan."
Ryan continued talking to Pete, long after the line went dead. Blood made his lips sticky, his words thick. Hands shaking, he reached for the packet of crash. It was empty, of course, but it took Ryan a couple of seconds to understand why, exactly. And when he called Pete again for help he gave the voicemail his dying words.
---
"If what you've got behind your back is anything but a croissant, I'm not having any of it."
"And a good morning to you too, Detective Stump," Andy said with a thoroughly obnoxious (for mid-morning, and in fact through most of the day) grin. He thumped a file down on the table. "Another starlet overdosed. Hope you've made yourself presentable--we're going to have a hell of a time fighting through the press, and God knows they'll be snapping pictures."
"Hurley," Patrick (Detective Patrick, actually, but the two words never sounded exactly right together) growled, "Please tell me you're kidding or I'm walking out, right now."
"Should I give it to Joe, then?"
Patrick frowned and grabbed the file, flipping it open with a sigh. "Ross, huh?" he asked, squinting at the photo of the outrageously well-dressed victim. "I've heard of him."
"I'm proud of you," Andy said, flipping over the page. "Nineteen, found dead in his apartment this morning, apparently overdosed. Could have been the blood loss, though."
"Was he stabbed?"
"No, but it looks like he had about a two-hour nosebleed. There's blood from one end of the apartment to the other and all down his front."
"What the hell did he overdose on that would cause that much bleeding?" Patrick asked, taking another look at the picture. He looked happy enough, but then again, so did Marilyn Monroe and Elvis.
Andy shrugged. "No clue. We found traces of something, but nobody's been able to identify it."
Patrick nodded, mind already working. "Any suspects?"
"His boyfriend's the one who found him."
Patrick quirked an eyebrow. "Boyfriend?"
Andy shrugged. "He hid it well enough, with all the girls that followed him around. But it's pretty common knowledge that he batted for both teams."
"Have you given Joe a copy already?" Patrick rested his head on one fist, stirring his coffee with the other. He didn't even like coffee--it was just a staple of the department, so he drank it anyway, wincing all the way.
"No, but--"
"I've heard my name twice now," Joe said, taking his usual seat on top of Patrick's desk. "So fess up, what's going on?"
"Starlet dead of a suspicious overdose," Andy explained, shoving the file at him.
Joe blew out a breath between his lips. "Bo-ring. Can't they ever do anything interesting?"
"It's Ryan Ross."
Joe's eyes grew bigger. "Well, okay then. Whodunnit?"
Patrick shrugged. "Apparently his boyfriend found him, its as good a place to start as any. What's his name?"
"Wentz. Peter. Ran it through the database and didn't find a thing. Not even a parking ticket," Andy said, sounding disappointed.
"Ryan Ross, huh? God. And you're giving this to Patrick why?" Joe asked.
"Because Patrick has to be the one person in this entire world who doesn't give a shit," Andy said. Patrick wasn't sure if he should be flattered or offended, and settled for being grumpy. "But you get to help."
Joe clapped his hands together with glee and gave Patrick a pointed glance. "Look excited. At least it's not another stolen car."
Patrick ignored him. "Why the investigation? He overdosed--should be open and shut."
"No ID," Andy explained. "No license, no papers, not in the systems. He's a ghost. There's something more to the story."
"And Joe's too incompetent to figure it out on his own?"
Joe punched him in the arm. "No, you're just too boring to get excited about it, so I'm coming along to keep you from making everybody cry, asshole."
Patrick sighed, running a hand through thinning hair. At least he'd be able to put his hat on.
---
"Detective, why so secretive?"
"Tell us, is it true Mr. Ross was found hanging upside-down from the ceiling?"
"Detective, Detective, what exactly did Mr. Ross overdose on?"
"It's not a god damned press conference," Patrick growled, pushing through the crowd of flashbulbs and electronic notepads, resolving to punch Andy at the first opportunity. Hard. Multiple times.
Once safely behind the door, Patrick let out another sigh and hazarded a glance at his watch. 10:27 AM. Only five and a half hours to go.
"At least nobody's leaking information," Joe said, hanging his coat on an ostentatious coat rack (Patrick, bemused, wondered where exactly one bought extravagant coat racks). "Christ, can you imagine? Upside-down from the ceiling?"
Patrick didn't answer, taking a step towards the sheet next to the bed. Sure enough, bloodstains everywhere. Splatters on the walls (not a shooting, an overdose--so why?), the sheets, the floor, the screen of a black cell phone resting on his pillow. He'd called someone. Pulling on a pair of gloves, he checked the recent calls.
"'Peterpanda?'" he asked, aloud.
"Nickname," said an unfamiliar voice, making Patrick drop the phone, startled. "My eyeliner would run, you know, black eyes. Plus I never grew up. Ryan liked playing with words."
"Wentz?"
He nodded. "Pete."
In Patrick's complete and professional analysis, Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III (potentially the most pretentious name he'd ever heard) was about Patrick's height (short), less than two hundred pounds (much, much less), brown-eyed (puffy, not crying, but upset), black-haired (painstakingly styled), with tattoos peeking out from beneath his shirtsleeves and the kind of easy grace that made Patrick unknowingly tense up. Confident, obviously. Insecure, judging from the posture (slouching, a bit, arms crossed--either self-conscious or with something to hide, maybe both). It could be him.
His own, personal and physical assessment, he pushed from his mind.
Back to the hair, then. "Nice hair. Do it yourself?"
Pete nodded. "I've got some friends that do hair, but I style it myself. Do I get a name, or do I have to call you 'Detective?'"
"Stump," Patrick said. "And Trohman."
He snorted. "No first names, huh?"
Joe opened his mouth, but Patrick cut him off. "So you had enough time to do your hair this morning, I take it?"
"Ruthless," Pete commented, staring firmly at Patrick. "Yes. Ryan and I usually go out for breakfast on Wednesdays."
"Where to?"
"I-HOP, if you can believe it."
"So you were supposed to go out for breakfast this morning?"
"Yeah. Didn't work out," Pete said, quietly.
"Did Ryan have any enemies?" Patrick asked.
Pete gave him a look that implied that Patrick was incredibly stupid. "No, why would he?"
Patrick shrugged. "You tell me."
"He didn't. Ryan had people that didn't like him, yeah, but nobody wanted to kill him. He was harmless. Fuck, it's like killing a goddamn butterfly or something, I don't know why they did it. He never did anything to hurt anybody, never planned to, never talked about it. Probably the least fucking violent person I've ever met." Pete ran a hand through his hair--an uncomfortable gesture, but it could mean any number of things. Guilt, grief, dishonesty, Patrick had no idea.
"I thought it was an overdose?"
Pete turned his eyes back to Patrick. "Of course it was. But Ryan wasn't like that. He knew his limits, he usually went for the buzz rather than totally wrecking himself."
"What was he into?" Joe asked.
Pete shrugged. "I don't do that shit. Mostly."
"Mostly?"
"A couple times, maybe. I didn't like it, I felt inhuman or something. It was powerful, yeah, but I couldn't feel anything, you know? I don't know why he was into that," Pete told the palms of his hands.
Lying, maybe? For someone who'd been staring so pointedly at Patrick's face, the attention Pete was suddenly paying to his hands was suspicious. Guilt, maybe. Stress was also a possibility. Or an act. Whatever it was, Pete thus far had been a very deliberate speaker. Patrick filed that information away for later.
"What'd it look like?" Patrick asked, looking at the body.
Pete shrugged. "Both times I was too fucked up to know. I have sleeping problems, and Ryan's way of helping was to get me drunk and feed me drugs. Sweet kid."
"You don't sound too upset about the fact that he's dead," Joe observed, quirking an eyebrow.
"I'm a sarcastic, bitter person," Pete replied with a sardonic grin. "There's no telling what I actually think."
"So what do you actually think?" Patrick asked, frowning.
"I'm think I'm hungry," Pete said, looking to the door. "Let's go out."
Author:
xxdanceFandom(s): Fall Out Boy/Panic! At the Disco
Pairing: Pete/Ryan, Pete/Patrick.
Summary: Ryan's just another dead starlet. Patrick's just another overworked detective. Pete's just another shady character. Sort of.
Rating: R. [Violence, drug use, language, and that's just the first chapter.]
Warnings: Complete crack. Beyond crack. Detectives is all I'm saying, I'll save the other cracky warnings for later. Slash, language, and drug use as well.
Author's Note: Please, everyone, let's have a huge round of applause for
whatchamacall1t because she is both amazing and wise, and she is the reason why this fic is any good at all because she both betaed it and came up with the best plot ideas ever. Ever. Like, she deserves a big shiny trophy for it because she lured me out of a plot sinkhole with things that don't come up with this chapter, but do later, and because she's the one that made me write it. Quite obviously, the fic is inspired by the song of the same name, but with a side of insanity. "Pete?"
The voice on the other end sounded wide-awake--odd, as it was four in the morning. "Yeah, Ryan?"
"Yeah, Pete? Yeah, look, I'm bleeding."
"You're. Um, why?"
"I took too much. I think. I think I took too much, Pete."
"Too much what?"
Ryan wiped at his nose, another streak of blood smearing across his hand. "Look, Pete, look, I gotta tell you something, Pete, you know how I sometimes am really weird? I've heard you say it before, Pete, you know, 'Ryan, why are you so weird?'" He snorted, then choked as he inhaled blood.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm not human, Pete," Ryan babbled, "I came down in a spaceship, Pete, with flashing lights and laser beams and a briefcase full of crash, and if you want to come over I'll give you the last of it but I think it's all gone now, I took it all. I'm not green, though. I think maybe you might have known, though, 'cause you and I don't look exactly the same and you didn't seem to care, even when we were fucking."
"Ryan, what are you talking about?"
He wiped at his nose again, trying to clean the blood off on his already stained t-shirt. "Oh, Pete, it won't stop. It just keeps going and going and going and I can't stop it. This isn't supposed to happen, Pete, it's never happened like this before. I don't bleed, Pete."
"Ryan, I need to go to bed. Lay down for a while and I'm sure you'll feel fine.
Ryan kept repeating Pete's name--he knew this wasn't right, and through a fog of crash it didn't make any sense, but Pete, he knew, Pete was there. But that's how he liked it--nonsense, all colors and shapes and blurs. "Pete," he said, "Pete, this isn't right."
"Just lay down, okay? I'll be over in the morning."
"Yeah, okay, okay Pete. Can you come over now? I think I took too much."
"Bye, Ryan."
Ryan continued talking to Pete, long after the line went dead. Blood made his lips sticky, his words thick. Hands shaking, he reached for the packet of crash. It was empty, of course, but it took Ryan a couple of seconds to understand why, exactly. And when he called Pete again for help he gave the voicemail his dying words.
---
"If what you've got behind your back is anything but a croissant, I'm not having any of it."
"And a good morning to you too, Detective Stump," Andy said with a thoroughly obnoxious (for mid-morning, and in fact through most of the day) grin. He thumped a file down on the table. "Another starlet overdosed. Hope you've made yourself presentable--we're going to have a hell of a time fighting through the press, and God knows they'll be snapping pictures."
"Hurley," Patrick (Detective Patrick, actually, but the two words never sounded exactly right together) growled, "Please tell me you're kidding or I'm walking out, right now."
"Should I give it to Joe, then?"
Patrick frowned and grabbed the file, flipping it open with a sigh. "Ross, huh?" he asked, squinting at the photo of the outrageously well-dressed victim. "I've heard of him."
"I'm proud of you," Andy said, flipping over the page. "Nineteen, found dead in his apartment this morning, apparently overdosed. Could have been the blood loss, though."
"Was he stabbed?"
"No, but it looks like he had about a two-hour nosebleed. There's blood from one end of the apartment to the other and all down his front."
"What the hell did he overdose on that would cause that much bleeding?" Patrick asked, taking another look at the picture. He looked happy enough, but then again, so did Marilyn Monroe and Elvis.
Andy shrugged. "No clue. We found traces of something, but nobody's been able to identify it."
Patrick nodded, mind already working. "Any suspects?"
"His boyfriend's the one who found him."
Patrick quirked an eyebrow. "Boyfriend?"
Andy shrugged. "He hid it well enough, with all the girls that followed him around. But it's pretty common knowledge that he batted for both teams."
"Have you given Joe a copy already?" Patrick rested his head on one fist, stirring his coffee with the other. He didn't even like coffee--it was just a staple of the department, so he drank it anyway, wincing all the way.
"No, but--"
"I've heard my name twice now," Joe said, taking his usual seat on top of Patrick's desk. "So fess up, what's going on?"
"Starlet dead of a suspicious overdose," Andy explained, shoving the file at him.
Joe blew out a breath between his lips. "Bo-ring. Can't they ever do anything interesting?"
"It's Ryan Ross."
Joe's eyes grew bigger. "Well, okay then. Whodunnit?"
Patrick shrugged. "Apparently his boyfriend found him, its as good a place to start as any. What's his name?"
"Wentz. Peter. Ran it through the database and didn't find a thing. Not even a parking ticket," Andy said, sounding disappointed.
"Ryan Ross, huh? God. And you're giving this to Patrick why?" Joe asked.
"Because Patrick has to be the one person in this entire world who doesn't give a shit," Andy said. Patrick wasn't sure if he should be flattered or offended, and settled for being grumpy. "But you get to help."
Joe clapped his hands together with glee and gave Patrick a pointed glance. "Look excited. At least it's not another stolen car."
Patrick ignored him. "Why the investigation? He overdosed--should be open and shut."
"No ID," Andy explained. "No license, no papers, not in the systems. He's a ghost. There's something more to the story."
"And Joe's too incompetent to figure it out on his own?"
Joe punched him in the arm. "No, you're just too boring to get excited about it, so I'm coming along to keep you from making everybody cry, asshole."
Patrick sighed, running a hand through thinning hair. At least he'd be able to put his hat on.
---
"Detective, why so secretive?"
"Tell us, is it true Mr. Ross was found hanging upside-down from the ceiling?"
"Detective, Detective, what exactly did Mr. Ross overdose on?"
"It's not a god damned press conference," Patrick growled, pushing through the crowd of flashbulbs and electronic notepads, resolving to punch Andy at the first opportunity. Hard. Multiple times.
Once safely behind the door, Patrick let out another sigh and hazarded a glance at his watch. 10:27 AM. Only five and a half hours to go.
"At least nobody's leaking information," Joe said, hanging his coat on an ostentatious coat rack (Patrick, bemused, wondered where exactly one bought extravagant coat racks). "Christ, can you imagine? Upside-down from the ceiling?"
Patrick didn't answer, taking a step towards the sheet next to the bed. Sure enough, bloodstains everywhere. Splatters on the walls (not a shooting, an overdose--so why?), the sheets, the floor, the screen of a black cell phone resting on his pillow. He'd called someone. Pulling on a pair of gloves, he checked the recent calls.
"'Peterpanda?'" he asked, aloud.
"Nickname," said an unfamiliar voice, making Patrick drop the phone, startled. "My eyeliner would run, you know, black eyes. Plus I never grew up. Ryan liked playing with words."
"Wentz?"
He nodded. "Pete."
In Patrick's complete and professional analysis, Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III (potentially the most pretentious name he'd ever heard) was about Patrick's height (short), less than two hundred pounds (much, much less), brown-eyed (puffy, not crying, but upset), black-haired (painstakingly styled), with tattoos peeking out from beneath his shirtsleeves and the kind of easy grace that made Patrick unknowingly tense up. Confident, obviously. Insecure, judging from the posture (slouching, a bit, arms crossed--either self-conscious or with something to hide, maybe both). It could be him.
His own, personal and physical assessment, he pushed from his mind.
Back to the hair, then. "Nice hair. Do it yourself?"
Pete nodded. "I've got some friends that do hair, but I style it myself. Do I get a name, or do I have to call you 'Detective?'"
"Stump," Patrick said. "And Trohman."
He snorted. "No first names, huh?"
Joe opened his mouth, but Patrick cut him off. "So you had enough time to do your hair this morning, I take it?"
"Ruthless," Pete commented, staring firmly at Patrick. "Yes. Ryan and I usually go out for breakfast on Wednesdays."
"Where to?"
"I-HOP, if you can believe it."
"So you were supposed to go out for breakfast this morning?"
"Yeah. Didn't work out," Pete said, quietly.
"Did Ryan have any enemies?" Patrick asked.
Pete gave him a look that implied that Patrick was incredibly stupid. "No, why would he?"
Patrick shrugged. "You tell me."
"He didn't. Ryan had people that didn't like him, yeah, but nobody wanted to kill him. He was harmless. Fuck, it's like killing a goddamn butterfly or something, I don't know why they did it. He never did anything to hurt anybody, never planned to, never talked about it. Probably the least fucking violent person I've ever met." Pete ran a hand through his hair--an uncomfortable gesture, but it could mean any number of things. Guilt, grief, dishonesty, Patrick had no idea.
"I thought it was an overdose?"
Pete turned his eyes back to Patrick. "Of course it was. But Ryan wasn't like that. He knew his limits, he usually went for the buzz rather than totally wrecking himself."
"What was he into?" Joe asked.
Pete shrugged. "I don't do that shit. Mostly."
"Mostly?"
"A couple times, maybe. I didn't like it, I felt inhuman or something. It was powerful, yeah, but I couldn't feel anything, you know? I don't know why he was into that," Pete told the palms of his hands.
Lying, maybe? For someone who'd been staring so pointedly at Patrick's face, the attention Pete was suddenly paying to his hands was suspicious. Guilt, maybe. Stress was also a possibility. Or an act. Whatever it was, Pete thus far had been a very deliberate speaker. Patrick filed that information away for later.
"What'd it look like?" Patrick asked, looking at the body.
Pete shrugged. "Both times I was too fucked up to know. I have sleeping problems, and Ryan's way of helping was to get me drunk and feed me drugs. Sweet kid."
"You don't sound too upset about the fact that he's dead," Joe observed, quirking an eyebrow.
"I'm a sarcastic, bitter person," Pete replied with a sardonic grin. "There's no telling what I actually think."
"So what do you actually think?" Patrick asked, frowning.
"I'm think I'm hungry," Pete said, looking to the door. "Let's go out."