The (After) Life of the Party [10/?]

Title: The (After) Life of the Party [10/?]
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.]
Warnings: Crack. Slash. Language. Violence. Drug use.
Author's Note: whatchamacall1t is amazing, there is no doubt. Apologies for the lack of updating, I've been busybusybusy lately!

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"You fucked him, didn’t you?"

Patrick stared at Joe as though he’d sprouted wings. Wings that hit Patrick in the face and pissed him off severely. "No, I didn’t fuck him, where on earth would you get that idea?"

"Aha!" Joe exclaimed. "You had to! If you hadn’t done anything, you would have asked who I was talking about!"

"Okay," Patrick said calmly, taking his coat off. "Let’s completely forget the promise I made to you just yesterday saying I wouldn’t. What makes you think that I did?"

Joe stared at Patrick for a moment, scrutinizing his face. Patrick could feel it. "You look relaxed, for a change."

Patrick laughed. "Right, and that couldn’t possibly be a result of me sleeping or anything."

"You fucked him," Joe said, as though it was final. "You just laughed, you look relaxed—something’s not right, here, and you have a smile on your face that’s screaming ‘sex’."

It took Patrick a moment to realize that he was, in fact, smiling rather largely. "I did not have sex with him. I promised, right?"

Joe thumped his hands down on Patrick’s desk. "If you didn’t, then tell me what’s so goddamn worth smiling about, this morning."

A lie formed in his brain quick enough that it could have worked--if Patrick was able to wipe the sabotaging smile off of his face, if Joe believed it, and if Patrick would be able to figure out a way to keep Pete from harm while—no, if--the case blew over. One ‘if’ was beyond enough for Patrick.

"You remember that thing you did, that time with that one suspect?" Patrick asked, voice hushed.

Joe squinted at him. "I have done many ‘things’ with many ‘one suspect’s."

"Interrogation room three."

"What about—oh. But what about—"

"Just do it, okay? I’ll tell you when you’re finished. I’ll explain everything, promise. Maybe I’ll even—no, maybe not, but—just trust me, Joe, it’s not what it looks like."

"I’m not sure what it looks like," Joe said, shaking his head. "But it smells like a rat. Meet me there in ten."

---

When Patrick shut the door to Interrogation room three eleven minutes later (an extra, just to be safe), Joe stared at him like he was a teenager coming home late from a date. The ‘concerned parent’ look didn’t really work for Joe, but he was doing his best.

"Where did you even get that thing? I mean, isn’t it kind of—"

"Illegal? Yeah. I made it, actually. Just a little bug, clip it on the wire that’s exposed over there, and it loops the vid but keeps the timestamp going. Comes in handy, sometimes." He stared at Patrick expectantly.

"Wow, I didn’t know you fucked around with—"

"Patrick."

Patrick sighed, taking the seat across from Joe, the one usually reserved for throwing around in case a suspect needed to be intimidated. "Okay. Okay, but look—how much weird shit can you take in one sitting?"

"As much as is necessary."

Patrick had never seen Joe look so stern. He shrugged. "Fine. Ask away."

"Did you fuck him, or didn’t you?"

"No, I didn’t, and before you ask, he didn’t fuck me either, so don’t even start. We kissed. Okay a lot, maybe, but that’s after he—"

Joe winced. "I told you, Patrick, I fucking told you not to do this. Do you understand—"

"This isn’t lecture time, Trohman, okay? I realize that there’s something royally fucked up going on, but before you start on me for making out with a suspect—and, might I remind you, you’ve done far worse yourself and you’ve been telling me to for the past eight million years—you need to hear the whole story. And we’re working backwards," Patrick said.

"So work forwards," Joe said, frowning.

"I got home from work yesterday, and Pete was there, but he left like, five minutes after I got there, if that. His phone rang—"

"But wasn’t his phone—"

"Yeah, I don’t know. I guess it’s working now, I never got the chance to ask him. But he said he had to run to work. He came back about ten minutes later with groceries."

"He had time to—"

"You’re asking the same questions I did. Apparently so. I told him we needed to talk."

"What did he say?" Joe asked, leaning forward over the table.

"Well, I asked if there was anything weird about Ross that he noticed. He evaded for a while, but then he said that the answer would depend on what exactly I was talking about," Patrick said, slowly. "So I got about half a sentence asking if he knew about Ross’—" Patrick glanced up at the camera. "You’re sure that thing works?"

Joe shrugged. "Haven’t been caught yet. You’d think someone would catch on."

Patrick swallowed. "Right. So I got out half a sentence asking if he knew Ross was a—an alien."

"And?"

"And he freaked out. Said he was hoping I wouldn’t figure it out, said we were in deep shit."

"He knew? Shit, what kind of weird-ass fucking—"

"No, don’t even start yet. I haven’t even gotten to the weird part. He was supposed to kill him."

Joe breathed in sharply. "You mean, he—"

Patrick shook his head. "Look, this is going to sound really, really stupid, but did you ever see that movie ‘Men In Black?’"

Staring, Joe said, "I don’t follow."

"Did you?"

"Yeah, but—"

"Yeah, well, Pete? Not so much. P, maybe."

"You’re trying to tell me that Pete—" Joe cut himself off, laughing. "You’re kidding. Patrick, if that wasn’t the funniest damn thing I’ve ever heard, I’d be punching you right now for making up stupid shit."

"I’d be punching myself right now if I didn’t believe it," Patrick said, and even then, doubt flickered through his mind. It wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be—but no, it had to be. It had to because he wanted it to, sure, but because in some sort of skewed way, in some bizarre, nonsensical, absolutely fucking batshit way, it made sense. "Look, just listen. He was supposed to kill Ross. That was his ‘assignment,’ I guess. Ross was like, leader of some anti-Earth movement—"

Joe stared at him like Patrick was—no, Patrick understood exactly why Joe was staring at him like that. But he didn’t—oh, Christ, was he ever in it neck-deep—know Pete the way Patrick did. "Patrick, just—"

"No, listen. I know it sounds ridiculous, but—"

"But what?" Joe said. "You’re not even finished yet, and there’s no fucking way any court is going to believe this. I don’t even believe it."

Patrick forged ahead anyway. "Ross was supposed to pave the way for his…I don’t know, his friends or whatever, to kill us. Like, all of us. Humanity. But when he got here, he discovered that most of what he’d heard was a lot of bullshit, and that it wasn’t so bad, so when Pete met him he was already beyond that. And he and Pete started fucking around, and Pete was supposed to get Ross out, like, I guess he had a plane—shit, I don’t know, shuttle, whatever—booked and everything, but he woke up the next morning and Ross was dead."

"Patrick," Joe said, slowly. "If it wasn’t for how absolutely serious you look right now—and maybe that’s something more to worry about, I don’t know—I would have you committed. You have to realize how completely batshit this sounds, even with knowing what we know about Ross. Please, please tell me why you believe this load of Wentz shit so wholeheartedly."

Patrick gnawed at his lower lip in thought. "I just do, Joe. I know it’s ridiculous, and I know it’s not like me in the slightest—or maybe it is, and I’m backwards—but there’s just something that tells me it’s true. You know how back in training they used to talk about intuition? Like, depending on the instructor you’d either get told to ignore it and be rational or go with it and risk getting in trouble? I’ve known cops to put an innocent man in cuffs, rough him up more than a little, and ship him off to prison because they’re too rational. I’m a rational guy, Joe—you know that—but right now, I can’t ignore my intuition. If his story’s bullshit, he’ll go to jail, right? If it’s true, they’ll kill him. He said so, and I know he’s being followed. At this point, I’d rather go with my intuition and possibly save his life."

Joe stared at his hands, silent. Patrick stared at Joe, letting him think. Joe had the potential to make or break this. If he decided Pete (and Patrick) was full of shit, Pete was, to put it bluntly, fucked. Patrick didn’t know much about running from the law—shit, he was the law, at least partially—and Pete didn’t seem as though he was capable of doing much himself without getting distracted by the first piece of attractive ass to wander by.

After a moment, Joe sighed heavily, opening his hands so they faced palm up. "It’s only because you walked in this morning smiling that I’m saying this—how on earth are we supposed to outwit the government? They have much bigger guns than we do."

Patrick grinned. "You wanted an interesting case, right? This is about as interesting as it gets."

---

"When?"

"He’s leverage. We keep him, we get Pete to do whatever we ask of him."

"No. It isn’t enough. Wentz needs to know that we mean business. The detective—he knows something. It’s the organization or one civilian. Take your pick."

"Jesus, you’ve got personality too."

"I’m serious."

"Fine. Do it. But keep it clean, will you? We don’t need any more police involvement. Heart attack, if you can."

"But—"

"Save the guns for Pete."

"I’m trying desperately not to be disrespectful, but is it possible that—"

"No. He was here first. Goodbye."