Pete's first thought, when he woke up with his mouth full of feathers, was that Patrick had slashed his pillow in the night.

"I didn't mean it!" he yelled from under the comforter. "You can get rid of the line, I swear, I don't need it in there!"

There was a space of about half a minute of silence before his breath got uncomfortably hot and damp under the blanket and he tossed it off. His room was drenched in sunlight.

"Patrick?" he asked, uselessly. He was in L.A. Patrick was in Chicago. Tour was over. Patrick probably wouldn't have traveled thousands of miles to cut open his pillow and leave.

There was still a down feather in his mouth. He spat it out.

The sunlight mocked him, silently.

"Today's going well," he said to the ceiling, and decided to get up.

He fell back down.

On the bed, but nevertheless. He had learned to walk several years ago. But now. Now there were things on his back. Giant, scary black things.

Giant, scary black things that were shedding feathers.

They flapped strongly of their own accord, sending a couple loose feathers scattering and knocking from the nightstand the framed picture of him and Patrick, back at the beginning.

"Huh," said Pete, and went back to bed.



The wings were still there at noon when he awoke again, but they seemed to be finished moulting.

He wondered if he had accidentally gotten high. He wondered if Gabe was around.

Fairly sure there was a PB&J waiting to be made, he wandered into the kitchen. His wings were too big to make it through the doorframe and he was knocked on his ass.

"So, do you think you guys could, you know…" They folded, neatly, onto his back. "Yeah, like that. Cool."

Upon reaching the kitchen, he was faced with a dilemma: raspberry or strawberry jam? He debated for a while, then reached for the strawberry.

His wings flapped unhappily.

"Fine, whatever," he snapped, and picked up the raspberry.

Munching contentedly on his sandwich, he picked up the phone, dialled idly, and tucked it between his chin and shoulder, opening the fridge and gulping some milk right from the jug.

"Hello?" asked Patrick's voice.

"Hey," said Pete, and screamed into the phone.



After a few minutes, Pete stopped screaming and panted, hiccupping, into the receiver. He could hear muffled noises in the background, like Patrick was moving around in his kitchen and had left the phone on the counter.

"I'm done!" he yelled.

There was the crackle of static and some fumbling and then Patrick's voice again. It was thick with chewing god-knows-what, but still – Patrick's voice. Pete wanted to curl up inside of it and go to sleep.

And wake up. Without fucking wings.

"What's the problem?" asked Patrick.

Pete paused.

"Do you think you could make it down here for a bit?"

The chewing stopped, and there was a careful swallow on the other end. "Should I bring Joe and Andy?"

Pete shrugged, or his wings did. "If you want. I need a little help."

"Pete…"

Pete squeezed his eyes shut. "Trick, it's important. I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't."

"Yes, you would," Patrick said cheerfully. "How's tomorrow sound?"



Pete had managed to get his wings to fold up again by arguing with them for five minutes when the doorbell rang. He opened it and stuck his head around the door, scouting quickly from side to side for reporters or twelve-year-olds with cell phones.

"Quick!" he hissed. "Get in!"

Patrick was alone, and looking confused. His hat was a ridiculous turquoise madras.

Pete shut the door firmly and quickly behind Patrick. His wings chose that moment to make their (exceedingly dramatic, and seriously, Pete was already a drama queen, okay, so he didn't really need the help) appearance.

Patrick raised an eyebrow.

Pete decided, right then, that he was going to marry Patrick.



They mostly lounged around, making peanut-butter-and-raspberry-jam sandwiches, watching Fuse and making fun of soap operas. Pete fell asleep on Patrick's chest as he dozed, late at night, and would wake up morning-warm and sleep-heavy, to sunlight on hardwood floor and the soft murmur of the television.

They fought over the comics and the dishes and the coffee maker, and it was really just like it always was, except now Pete had to concentrate really hard before walking through any doorways.

And that? That eventually got old.

He couldn't really control his wings – it didn't feel like he had any muscles back there – and they had a mind of their own, a separate intelligence. It felt weird, carrying a sentient thing (or things; Pete couldn't tell whether the wings were connected, mind-linked or something, or separate entities) around on his back, but there you go. And here he was. And tour was three weeks away.

He woke up one day and stumbled to the bathroom, forgetting momentarily about the wings.

They hit the doorjamb. He hit the floor.

He was unconscious for fifteen minutes.

Patrick was sitting beside him on the couch, holding an icepack to the back of his head, when finally, he tentatively said, "Pete? Maybe we should… call someone."

Patrick's idea of "someone" was Gerard Way.



Gerard came out to L.A. himself, because there was "no way in hell I'm going to miss this, seriously guys. Wings! On a person!"

Considering the number of lives that Gerard tried to save on a regular basis, the small corner of Pete's mind that was not humiliated found it surprising that Gerard hadn't seen this before. Speaking of which, why wasn't Gerard the ones with wings? Pete wasn't exactly an angel.

Except, apparently, he half was.

Gerard was wearing sunglasses when he rang the doorbell. "I'm trying to be incognito," he explained. This, of course, was after he'd asked "Can you fly?" before the door was even all the way open.

"I don't know," said Pete. "I haven't tried. They're hard to control."

Gerard slapped him on the back – neatly between the wings, as if wing-avoidance was something he practiced all the time.

"Dude," he said. "You can't get rid of wings without trying to fly first."

And so, at midnight, the three of them stood in Pete's backyard, shivering a little in the cold – Pete especially, since he had a hard time getting shirts over the giant, protruding, black-feathered things on his back.

He stood, a little apart from the other two, and waited. "What do I do?" he called over the darkened distance between them, deep green grass fading to black at their feet.

His wings snapped open.

The stars shimmered, swirled, and circled closer.

Gerard and Patrick were suddenly below, far below, and the world was a blur beneath him, and this was everything he wanted and didn't know that he did. The lights of the city, cars and buses and houses where people fought and loved and lived. Neat squares of golden light, smears of blue and red and yellow. The darkness of trees, of ocean, of mountains, pulled and spinning beneath him, and this was every song he'd ever written, and the ones he hadn't been able to.



Patrick held him up on the way to the house, and didn't mention that there were maybe tear-tracks on his face. Pete was exhausted, and cold, and perfectly lucid.

"Patrick," he whispered to the closing bedroom door, and it hesitated, a triangle of light edging it and fading across the floor. Pete closed his eyes. "Stay."

He woke as he had before, tangled up with Patrick, and Patrick's hands were solid on his smooth and empty back.