Chapter Text
It was usually pretty easy to tell when someone was a ghost - there was something weirdly luminescent about them, or translucent, or both - just enough that you would realize "this isn't quite right". Patrick had seen them since he was a child - he thought they were imaginary friends at first, and it only took a few poor reactions from friends and relatives to realize he needed to keep them to himself. Once he got older, he went through a phase where he was sure he was crazy, but the particularly annoying spirit of a teacher at his old middle school convinced him to start looking up obituaries and Patrick eventually resigned himself to the fact that there was no way he could make up so much about someone on his own that would turn out to be true. He wasn't hallucinating and psychic, either, which kind of limited his options to like... actually seeing actual ghosts.
It was sometimes incredibly unsettling. It wasn't like Sixth Sense - ghosts didn't look like their body after death, which he was grateful for. He'd watched enough Forensics Files to know that bodies weren't exactly pretty. Still, walking down a hotel hallway past quiet spirits or driving past lonely figures standing at the edge of the road, pretending he couldn't see them, was never fun.
And he did his best to pretend that he couldn't see them. Patrick wanted a life, beyond helping spirits with whatever weird unfinished business they thought they had - it wasn't as satisfying as it sounded and it was definitely twice as depressing as movies about it would make it seem. Real life just didn’t work like clichés. If ghosts knew he could see them, hear them, and talk to them, it would be really difficult for him to do much of anything except those things.
Besides, he was still living at home, still navigating the waters of high school, his parents' expectations, and his crappy part-time job at a record store. Adding anything else to that mix sounded like a recipe for disaster.
He didn't go out of his way not to help, but he didn't exactly list a personals ad in the ghost newspaper, either. (There wasn't actually a ghost newspaper. Although the idea of one kind of amused him.)
He was drifting in and out of sleep and mulling over that idea when he felt the sudden chill and prickle of his skin that would usually accompany a sighting - and sure enough, when Patrick rolled over and sat up in bed, there was the soft glow of a translucent form across his bedroom, reaching for his desk lamp. Just as Patrick was about to ask what the hell it was doing, the spirit's hand closed around the lamp and sent it flying across the room - it sailed through the air and hit the wall above Patrick’s bed, shattering. Patrick shouted, half in surprise, throwing his covers aside and jumping out of bed. He was so flabbergasted that he momentarily forgot he was only wearing boxers.
"Hey!" he cried. "Whoa!"
The ghost was undeterred, grasping his electronic tuner and chucking it towards him. Patrick barely side-stepped it, waving his arms to get the thing to stop. "Hey!" he yelled again. "That's my stuff!"
The ghost stopped, glancing at him over her shoulder. "Oh good," she said. "You're awake."
She was a younger girl, maybe his age or a year or two older. She sighed, putting hands on her hips. Patrick had never seen her before, and he just gaped, open-mouthed, surprised at the situation he was in.
He wasn't dreaming, right?
"Why are you waking me up? What possibly cannot wait until morning? Don't you have forever?"
It was rude (and later he'd feel like a total ass for it) but given she'd just woken him up, the ghost seemed to forgive him.
"Well, sorry, Mr. Psychic," she said, tilting her head. She was pretty good at this whole "giving attitude" thing. "I thought you might like to know that there’s someone on the roof. You know, about to jump off? Considering I'm the only one who saw him go up there and you're the only one who can see me, I didn't exactly have another option here."
"I'm not a—" But then Patrick’s gape become a little more panicked, and he suddenly rushed to pull on his t-shirt and jeans abandoned on his bedroom floor from earlier that night. Not even bothering with his shoes, Patrick slid out of the bedroom, thought for a moment that the ghost could be pranking him, and then decided it didn't matter - he at least had to try.
Sprinting up the stairs was not as easy as he'd hoped, but sure enough, when Patrick got to the top floor the roof access gate that had normally been chained shut was propped open and the chain had been discarded in pieces at the floor. Patrick jumped over it, didn't realize that the door had a step down onto the roof itself from the threshold, and between that and his rushed leap over the chain, he sharply twisted his ankle, tumbled, and landed on the roof with a shout and a loud thump.
After a moment's grogginess, he slowly started to pick himself up, first by skinned palms, raising his head and torso.
There was indeed a figure standing about twenty feet away. He'd turned, and he was staring at Patrick with a look of concerned bemusement. Patrick almost managed a smile - he wasn't too late after all. Good.
"Uhhh," he said - it came out sounding an awful lot like a groan. It probably was, partially. "Do you— come up here often?"
Sounded more like a pick-up line than anything helpful. Patrick felt incredibly awkward. Luckily, it didn't seem like the figure heard him - he hesitated, looked over his shoulder like he was considering just leaving Patrick where he was and taking the plunge, and finally seemed to give in, taking a few steps closer. He halted suddenly, almost as if he was afraid of Patrick.
Patrick doubted very much that he looked threatening in any way.
"Are you okay?" he asked. He was close enough that Patrick could see his expression - a cocked eyebrow, a thin, slightly frowning mouth. He had his lip and eyebrow pierced, and he was wearing a hoodie and pants that were maybe a little too tight. "What are you— look, just fuck off, okay? This is my rooftop tonight."
"That's actually—" Patrick cleared his throat, pushed himself up a little more, to where he was sitting now. "What I came up here to talk to you about."
The man let out a puff of air from barely-parted lips, a sound that seemed like disbelief. "You're telling me that you saw me come up here?"
"No... not exactly," Patrick stumbled over his words, realizing this was going incredibly poorly. "Uh. I mean— I'm just— you're thinking of jumping, aren’t you?"
There was silence, then, heavy, and Patrick shifted, trying to come to a stand. His ankle screamed in pain at the barest hint of weight on it, and Patrick nearly toppled over again. The stranger made absolutely no move to help him or close the gap at all.
"Oh. Cute. You're here to talk me down, is that it?” He looked around. "Is there some kind of security camera?" And then, realizing, "Aren't you a little young to be doing security?"
"I'm not security," Patrick said, quickly. He'd mostly found his balance at this point. "I just live here. I mean, I'm not— I'm not getting paid. I just actually care."
"Huh." The man shoved his hands in his pockets, watching Patrick carefully. "I have the right to die, you know."
"I'm not saying you don't," he said, quickly. "I'm not— I'm not going to talk to you about friends and family who would miss you, or say you're being selfish or talk about God or hell or— anything like that." He put up his hands, as if to demonstrate. "Promise."
The stranger let out a short laugh. "None of those would work on me. I already know I'm selfish, I don't have any family or friends, and I know that God and Hell don’t exist."
Patrick swallowed a little. The conviction with which he said those words kind of stung. Patrick wasn't sure if there was a God or not. He obviously knew that ghosts were real, which had to mean that a soul, in some capacity, was real - but the Bible didn't make it sound like ghosts were possible, so... it left what Patrick believed in in a kind of limbo.
He fumbled a little - he needed to find something to say to this guy, or he was going to get a really terrible view.
"So like—" Patrick swallowed a little. "Uh, okay. Maybe there's something out there that you're really good at, and you don't know because you've never tried it. Wouldn't it be great to discover that? Maybe someday you'll be on a road trip, from uh— from Chicago all the way to Los Angeles, and somewhere in the desert you'll look out the car window and see all the stars and realize, holy shit, you feel so alive, and you've never felt this way before. And maybe—"
The guy started laughing, and Patrick felt heat rise in his face in embarrassment. He frowned.
"What?" he asked, almost a demand.
"You are really bad at this," the stranger said. "I mean, that's not your fault. You just have no idea."
"Well—" Patrick crossed his arms over his chest, looking the part of a pouty child. "I made you laugh, didn’t I? Isn’t that better than before?"
The man stopped suddenly, almost as if he'd choked on it. He looked at Patrick, that same curious and confused expression on his face from before. "That's... true," he admitted. "I mean, I'm laughing at you, but that's true. ...And kind of at myself, I guess."
"I don't mind if you laugh at me," Patrick said, sincerely. "Uh— so, okay, let's try again. You don't have to make a decision about all of this right now. Let's give it a deadline. Like— let's say if you don’t feel any better in two months, we'll meet back here and have this conversation again. Then you can decide. I mean, it's a pretty big decision—"
"You're assuming I haven't already thought this through," the man pointed out. "Two months isn't exactly a lot of time to get everything in order."
"Yeah..." Patrick shrugged. "But anything longer than that and you might not stick to it. You know?"
"Huh." The stranger seemed to be surveying Patrick for a moment, clearly deep in thought. "Two months isn't a very long time to me. Let's try a year instead. Think you can remember that?"
Patrick's face broke out into a smile. "Yeah!" he said, a little too enthusiastic. "Yeah. Definitely. So, uh...I guess I should introduce myself before making year-long promises. I'm Patrick, Patrick Stumph." He extended his hand, and the stranger stared at him for a moment, then waved his hand sort of dismissively. Patrick slowly lowered his, his smile faltering a little.
"Pete," he said.
"Pete," Patrick repeated. For some reason, Pete felt his skin prickle at the moment Patrick said his name - it was a weird sensation, one he wasn't sure he’d felt in... a long time. "Well, uh— can I walk you back to your apartment?"
Pete frowned. "I don't live here," he said, seriously.
The sky was beginning to brighten, here and there - on the edges of the city horizon, Patrick could see that the clouds were rapidly lightening, and he almost groaned at the realization that it was apparently a lot later than he thought it was. His mom would be awake pretty soon to get ready for work, and if she didn’t see Patrick in bed (if she checked on him - it was hit and miss these days) she was going to freak. Pete turned to see what Patrick was looking at and almost hissed, suddenly yanking his hood up on his head. "You have a place, right?" he asked. "We can talk there or whatever." He didn’t actually want to talk at all, but he couldn’t stay out. How much time had he lost, standing on the edge of the roof, contemplating? He felt incredibly bitter at the fact that he hadn’t even managed to kill himself before someone had found him - and no wonder, considering how long he'd been gone - but a slow death by sunburn wasn't something he was at all interested in.
"Uh," Patrick said. He didn't want to turn this guy out on the streets, but he couldn’t exactly bring a stranger back home at what was probably 5AM. "Yeah, let's— we’re going to have to sneak past my mom," he admitted, quickly. Pete's eyes got a little bigger in surprise.
"You really are a kid," he said, and Patrick flushed again.
"I'm not," he insisted. "Just— come on—"
He tried to turn, stepped painfully on his bad ankle, and started to tumble again, and Patrick was sure he was hitting the pavement for a second time that night (morning) when he was suddenly caught. He blinked, surprised, and realized that Pete was holding him up, one arm around him, supporting his weight. (Although the look on Pete's face was a mixture of horror and fear, and Patrick felt the sudden desire to shove Pete away that he couldn't afford to act on. Not if he wanted to spare his ankle any further misery.) Pete seemed to forcefully turn his head away, then said, almost a little too loudly, "Let's get you to the elevator, clumsy."
When they managed to get down to Patrick's floor and across the hallway, Patrick cracked the front door open, listened, and breathed a sigh of relief. It sounded like his mom was sleeping in that morning. He eased the door open quietly, limped in, and motioned for Pete to do the same, but Pete stood stubbornly outside, looking a little frustrated.
"What are you doing?" Patrick hissed.
"Enjoying the weather," Pete said, crossing his arms. Patrick just stared at him. This guy was officially fucking weird.
"Get in here," he said, and Pete finally crossed the threshold. Patrick stepped as lightly as he could down the hall towards his bedroom door, opened it, and let Pete slide in past him before he stepped in, easing the door shut with a soft click.
With that done, he clicked the lock in place and breathed a sigh of relief.
Patrick's room was a mess. Dirty laundry was everywhere and he had a guitar in his desk chair, another against his closet door, his keyboard in the middle of the floor surrounded by scattered papers with notations (not music, exactly - Patrick didn’t know how to read it, and he'd made up his own bizarre way to write down the melodies he came up with that anyone else would be hard-pressed to comprehend), and his bass was propped between the desk and the window. Every single guitar stand was empty. Pete looked surprised, then immediately gravitated to the bass.
"You should keep this in the stand," he chided, taking it by the neck and turning - he went to sit in the desk chair, but realized there was a guitar there, sighed, and leaned against the bed instead, balancing the instrument on his knee and strumming. It was in tune, and he nodded with appreciation. "What are you, some kind of one man band?"
"The drum kit's at my dad's," Patrick admitted, grinning a little. "Do you know how to play?"
"Kind of." Pete smiled too, just a little, and Patrick thought about jumping on it, pointing it out, but he decided to not push his luck.
"So, uh..." Patrick shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, hissed, and quickly reversed the movement. "After my mom leaves, we can— I'll make us breakfast if you want, and maybe you can tell me more about yourself. I mean, if you want."
"No breakfast," Pete said suddenly, very firmly. He stared at Patrick very seriously. He was realizing quickly that he was getting into some tough territory here - he was going to have to tell Patrick the truth soon if this kept up. Actually, he was going to have to anyway. How else could he explain that he wasn’t going to be able to leave the house before the sun went down, or that he was going to refuse pretty much all food - oh, unless Patrick happened to have any blood in the fridge, because hey, he was getting pretty hungry - although if he was honest with himself, he'd much rather have the warm blood that was going through Patrick's veins, and—
He clutched a hand to his forehead, tangling in the hair there. He had to stop letting himself fall into these negative thought loops. He had to, or he'd end up back on that roof, hating himself, hating what he was, and he'd be lucky to do it before leaving this kid for dead for his mom to find with a bite mark on his neck that the cops would never be able to match to dental records. Patrick was standing in front of him, looking worried, and Pete felt his stomach turn because this idiot kid was worried about him like Pete hadn't just vividly imagined killing him, and—
"Hey," Patrick said, warily. He reached out, going to touch Pete's shoulder, and Pete recoiled quickly. Patrick snatched his hand back, not having actually made contact. "Sorry, sorry," he said, holding his hands up. "It's okay. Uh— do you, do you have anyone you can call? I know you said you didn’t have any friends or anything, but..."
Pete took a moment to calm down. He wasn't breathing heavy. His heart wasn't pounding in his chest. He couldn't do either of those things - but he felt panicked all the same. After a moment, he swallowed, forcefully, and put the thought of Patrick's neck out of his head. Or did his best to, anyway. "There is someone," he admitted.
"Okay," Patrick said, encouraging. "Good. That's good."
Pete realized Patrick was waiting for Pete to actually call him and he sighed, grabbed for the phone in his pocket, and flipped it open, scrolling down to Andy's number.
He was going to be so pissed off that Pete was calling him at 5:30 in the morning.
Patrick listened to Pete's side of the conversation with interest, although it didn’t sound like was going well. Pete had replied to the phone picking up with "Andy?" so Patrick could assume the guy's name, but the rest of the conversation seemed to mostly be fighting.
"It's kind of a long story," Pete said. He winced at the reply, then nodded. "Yeah, I know— look, I don't want to be calling you, someone is kind of making me. ... Haha, yeah, that's funny. Really funny. ... No, I don't need you to— okay, fine, maybe— In an hour or something though, there’s kind of... will you let me finish a fucking sentence or not?"
Somewhere in all of this talking, Patrick noticed that Pete's teeth were incredibly sharp. Not all of them, just four specific ones. Was that a body mod? Had to be.
Pete sighed, rattled off the building address and Patrick's apartment number, and then seemed to freeze. "Well yeah, I'm with someone. No, they don't— Look, I said it's a long story. No, he doesn't— No, why would I—" He pulled the phone away from his ear, jerked it like he wanted to throw it, then quickly put it back to his ear. "If you want to talk to him just come down here. I'm not going to do anything, okay?" Another pause, longer this time. Pete looked part relieved, part angry at whatever was being said. "Yeah," he said. He sounded defeated at that. "Yeah, that's... please. I need that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Bye, Andy."
He hung up, let out a breath, and slid the phone into his pocket.
Andy was coming. Andy was pissed, which was kind of rare (and he was only going to be more pissed when he found out what was happening), but he was coming, and that was a relief - because he was bringing blood.
When he pulled that out, it was going to be impossible not to tell Patrick.
"Your mom's leaving soon, right?" Pete asked. Patrick nodded, then tilted his head as if to listen better out in the hallway. There were sounds - Pete could hear them pretty clearly. Soft footsteps in the kitchen, running water. Patrick remembered the shattered lamp and went to pick up the pieces, and Pete turned to watch, the bass still balanced in his lap. It was a comfortable, familiar weight - like a buoy to cling to in a sea storm. Patrick bent, putting glass pieces in his hand.
"You're messy," Pete said, raising an eyebrow (the one with the piercing, Patrick noticed). Patrick sighed.
"I didn't do this," he said, defensively.
"Oh yeah? Who did?" Pete looked around the room. "Having rowdy parties?"
"I wish." Patrick struggled to think of a way to explain away the lamp. Both of his siblings were out of the house already, and he didn’t want Pete to think that his mom was some lamp-throwing rage machine. "Uh, just—" He sighed, and finally decided for the truth. "It was a ghost," he said, finally.
Pete let out a quiet, short laugh. "Okay," he said, finally. "Sure."
"I'm serious," Patrick said. He wasn't sure why, but he needed Pete to believe him. He'd never told anyone, and now he was starting to see why. "How do you think I knew you were on the roof?"
Good question, actually. Pete was starting to realize that his initial assumption of a security camera was pretty impossible. Patrick was just a normal kid. It looked like he’d been sleeping two hours ago. Maybe he was like Andy?
"You're psychic?" he asked, sounding like he didn’t really believe it much himself. Patrick's shoulders slumped and he groaned.
"No," he said, like he'd been asked that question before. "That's totally different. And probably a lot more useful. Apparently there's already a ghost on the roof, and she saw you, and she came down here throwing my stuff to wake me up and make me go stop you."
Pete really wanted to laugh at him, but considering he was about an hour or less away from having to tell Patrick he was a vampire, he didn't really think he had much of a right.
"Huh," was all he said, instead. "Seriously. You can see ghosts. Like 'I see dead people'?"
"Whatever, forget it," Patrick said, quickly. "Just a joke."
Pete really didn’t think it was. He wondered if Andy would be able to tell for sure, though. It just seemed way, way too bizarre.
Patrick picked up the rest of the glass, dumped it into his desk trashcan, and a moment later, they heard the front door open, shut, and lock. Patrick couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief when it did.
"When's your friend coming?" he asked. Pete shrugged. Andy was in the city, so it probably wouldn't be long.
"Maybe an hour," he said. Patrick nodded.
"Well, uh... I mean, kind of awkward, but I really need to do laundry today or mom's going to kill me," he said, a little sheepishly. (Just what he needed - to reaffirm that he was a kid.) "Do you... uh, do you mind?"
Pete's lips quirked a little, but he waved his hand. "Go ahead," he said. "Put your instruments away while you're at it. Seriously."
Putting the laundry together and throwing a load in only took about ten minutes, and when Patrick came back into the room, Pete was strumming away at the bass (he strummed it, close to the neck, which Patrick thought was kind of weird) and Patrick sat down at the keyboard and turned on a simple pre-programmed beat that seemed to fit whatever Pete was doing. Pete looked surprised, but he went with it, and in a couple of minutes, they were having an actual jam session.
The time was going by so fast that by the time the doorbell rang, Patrick was certain that it had only been five minutes and Pete's friend was incredibly fast. Pete suddenly stopped playing, the bass going quiet under his fingers as he suddenly dampened the strings. When Patrick got to his feet and opened the door, the man standing there had long red hair, arms covered in tattoos, and was holding a cooler bag that he shoved in Patrick's arms. Patrick stumbled back (on his ankle, uhg), grasped the bag, and watched as the man brushed past him.
"Andy," he said, suddenly. "You're Patrick. Nice to meet you. Pete's back here, right?" he moved towards Patrick's bedroom, and Patrick watched him go with confusion. Had he and Pete been texting or something? That had to be it. How could he know Patrick's name and where his room was otherwise?
Patrick closed the door, turned, and hobbled back to his bedroom.
He had the very distinct feeling that this was only the start to a very long, very weird day.