That night, Patrick's put on his jacket and shoes, and is about to leave, but then I stop him. I don't want him to go. Not yet.

"Stay," I whisper into his ear, his hair tickling my face. He looks at me with those piercing hazel eyes and says, "Do you want to...?"

I shake my head. "No. Just stay with me. Please."

"Of course." He closes the door again. "What do you want to do?"

I think for a moment. "Well, it's like ten pm, so we can't really go out."

"Not that I'd want to, anyway," he adds. I nod.

"How about we..." I lean forwards, wrap my arms around him and kiss him.

"Sounds good to me," he murmurs, and then his lips meet mine again and the next half an hour is a blur of lips and hands and, later on, more intimate places. After it's done, I go into the bedroom, find the bottle of vodka under my bed and go back into the next room. Patrick's where I left him, sitting with his back against the wall, breathing heavily. He looks up when I come into the room.

"That was fun," he gasps. I sit beside him. He smiles at me, takes off his fedora and smooths back his sweaty hair, and then tries to buckle his belt without me noticing. Needless to say, I do, but I pretend that I haven't , and hand him the bottle. He looks at me, and then says, "Are you trying to get me drunk?"

"Maybe."

"Huh. You know, you don't need me to be drunk for me to like you. I like you anyway."

"I know."

"So we shouldn't get drunk." He puts his arms around me and kisses me. "You're beautiful."

"No I'm not!"

"Yes, you are. You have no idea how lucky I feel to have you."

I stroke his cheek. "You have no idea how lucky I am to have you," I whisper. He opens his mouth to say something, but I hush him. "I know this sounds crazy, and we've been dating for barely any time at all, but you get me. You understand me. You know what it's like."

"To be an outsider," we both say in unison, staring into each other's eyes. I rest my head against his and promptly fall asleep, lulled into unconsciousness by his presence.

Patrick's POV:

Over the next three weeks, I spend nearly all my time with Lydia. When she's at work, I sit for long hours in the studio, strumming my acoustic, waiting for her to come back. Some days, she'll get an extended lunch break and so comes to see me then, but most of the time, she can't get her manager to agree to that, so I spend all of the time from half eight to half four alone or with the band.

I can tell that Joe and Andy know. We haven't exactly been discreet, but they don't mind. Pete's barely been around, which is both a good and bad thing. Good, because he won't notice my being with Lydia so much, but bad, because we need to practice, and more importantly, we really need to release all the singles in American Beauty/ American Psycho. More often than not, the three of us just sit there in my apartment, getting drunk (or occasionally, high) and trying to write but not getting anywhere.

I still haven't told Lydia about Fall Out Boy. Okay, maybe I should, but in my defense... Well, I don't actually have a defense, but you get me. What if she doesn't like us? What if she laughs at us? I've never told anyone but the guys that I can sing, let alone show them. I'm not even that great. I mean, who wants to listen to some guy and his friends wail about whatever? Not most people, that's for sure.

I'm forcibly jerked from my pointless daydreaming by Joe shaking me. "Patrick! Are you listening to anything we're saying?"

"Wha... Oh, um..." I trail off, looking from Joe to Andy. "Huh?"

Andy grits his teeth. "Seriously, sometimes I wonder what's going on inside your head."

"I wish I knew," I mutter, but they pay no attention to me.

"We were trying to ask you whether you think you could fix the strings on the guitar by tomorrow. Joe the idiot"- here, Andy takes a pretend swipe at Joe's head - "Broke them when he was trying to impress Miya." Miya is Joe's girlfriend of four years, so I'm not sure why he feels the need to impress her, but oh well.

"Why can't you just do it?" I ask. Joe's good with guitars and he's had that one for years now. It shouldn't be a problem.

"I... I think you'd do a better job." Oh great. Now Joe's acting shifty with me. I throw Andy a glance, and he translates for me.

"What Joe's trying to say is that his guitar is on its last legs and he doesn't want to be the one to break it. So if he gives it to you to fix and you, not knowing the delicate condition that it's in, accidentally break it, he can blame you, because it will technically be your fault." Andy rolls his eyes at Joe. "Which, by the way, is kind of stupid."

Joe sighs. "Ok, you got me. But please?"

"No," I say.

"Pleeease?"

"No!"

"You're good with guitars! If you break one, you act like you've just killed a baby, so you're careful with them!"

"Fine! Pass it over." Andy hands me the guitar, and I go and put it in the recording studio. When I go back into the living room, they're laughing about something, but when they see me, they instantly stop.

"Way to make me feel awkward in my own apartment, guys," I mutter darkly.

"Sorry, it's just..." Joe trails off, looking at Andy, who suppresses a smile. "The girl upstairs!" he manages to get out before he starts laughing again.

"Okay, what the hell?" I ask Andy. He shakes his head.

"You're so obvious."

"What?"

"That girl, the one who lives in the apartment above."

"Lydia?"

"Yeah, her. You're"- Joe lets out a giggle- "Dating her, aren't you?"

"So what if I am?"

"Nothing," says Andy. "That's kind of cute, actually."

"Why does everyone around here think I'm cute?" I ask, exasperated.

"What, does she say that as well?" Now Joe's curious about my love life, which until a month ago, kind of didn't exist.

"Yeah."

"It's the fedora, I keep telling you. It sends the girls wild," comments Andy.

"Whatever. So, are we going to write, then, or what?"

No sooner have these words escaped my mouth, there's a really, really loud knock at the door. Joe's just about to get it, when it opens of its own accord, and in the doorway is Pete. He grins when he sees us looking so surprised, and says, "Hello there, strangers. You wanna practice?"

"Pete!" yells Joe, jumping up. "How come you're here?"

"I felt bad. Plus I wanted to say sorry." He looks at me. I swallow and stand up. He puts his hand out and I shake it, a smile spreading on my face for the first time in weeks. We hug, and then he  says, "Do you want to practice, then?"

I nod. "Yeah."

We set up in the studio, making sure that all the doors are closed so no one can hear us, I take my black and white guitar off the wall, plug in the amp and then adjust the mike. I swear to god, Joe always comes in and puts it on the highest setting, so when I get it out, I look like a kid playing at being in a band. He's a jerk like that. The others are setting up too, and I feel that weird rush of excitement I always get before we play.

"Wait a minute," says Andy, who's sitting at his drum kit. "What are we actually going to play today?" Everyone looks at Pete, who shrugs.

"Let 'Trick decide." I give him an are you serious? look, and he laughs. "It's the least I can do. I've been an asshole to you for like a month."

"Okay," I agree, and rapidly try to think of a song we can play. "How about Dance?"

"You wanna play Dance, Dance?" asks Joe, picking up the spare electric. I nod. "Sure thing. Just gimme a minute to remember it." We all glare at him. "What?"

"You seriously do not remember your part of Dance, Dance?" asks  Andy.

"I do! It was just ages ago, okay?"

"This is coming from the guy who said, not two months ago, if I remember correctly, that he has never forgotten a single song he has ever done." Pete laughs. "You are so dumb."

"I am not! And that was three months ago!"

"Okay, whatever. Let's just play, huh?" I say. They nod, and then we start.

Andy beats out the first couple of bars on the drums and I breathe in and out, slowly. Then the guitar starts and I lose myself in the song.

"She says she's no good with words, but I'm worse, barely stuttered out a joke of a romantic stuck to my tongue/ Weighed down with words too over-dramatic, tonight it's "it can't get much worse" vs. "no one should ever feel like..." /I'm two quarters and a heart down, and I don't want to forget how your voice sounds, these words are all I have so I'll write them, so you need them just to get by."  And it goes on.

When we've finished, I feel almost ridiculously elated. We all know that was the best practice we've had in a long, long time. I put down my guitar and turn to face the guys.

"That was amazing," says Pete, clapping me on the back.

"You did good, 'Trick," says Andy grinning at me.

"Yeah," I say. "I think I did."

Author's Note: If I got some of the words to Dance, Dance wrong, then I'm really sorry, it's just that when you try to listen to FOB, it's hard to tell sometimes what they're saying. I checked like ten different websites and they all said different things!