Listen (Patrick Stump / Fall Out Boy Fanfic)

Chapter 7 - I'm Your Prince

                  

"I'm happy for you, Patrick, I really am." I looked over at Andy, where he sat across from me at the island counter in Pete's kitchen. He was smiling at me sincerely, despite the jokes that Pete and Joe kept cracking about my girlfriend. They weren't being mean to her, but they were trying to deal with the fact that neither of them knew how to communicate with her. For them, the best way to do that was to joke about it and make fun of me, rather than her.

            "Thanks, Andy," I said, smiling at him as I raised my glass of water to my lips. We were all meeting at Pete's today to share whatever it was each of us had been working on. I gave them the now finished lyrics to "Where Did the Party Go?" and even played it for them. They all seemed to love it, and I was very happy about the way it had turned out. I had Aria to thank for that. I wrote more every time I saw her, and she knew it. She always liked watching me work, whether it was writing, or watching me play music. She just loved being with me, and I loved being with her.

            "Hey," Joe said, looking at me with a more genuine grin now, "I'm happy for you too, Patrick. We all are. It's just a little...."

            "Bizarre," Pete finished for him.

            "Yeah," Joe continued, "It's just...how do you have a relationship with someone who doesn't even know what you do for a living?"

            "She's deaf, Joe," I said, a slight edge to my voice, "She's not stupid. She knows what I do, and she appreciates it in her own way."

            "I know she does," Joe insisted, "I didn't mean it like that, it's just...what is she going to do when we tour?"

            I hesitated a second. I had thought about that before and it scared me a little. I could never call her, or make her tour with us. All we would have is Skype or some other video calling, and that was only where I could find decent Wi-Fi, which was damn near impossible on the road sometimes. I shook my head though, and glared at Joe. "We'll figure it out. We don't even know if we're touring yet."

            "Well, we're writing an album, Patrick," Joe teased, as if it were that simple.

            "We have one song. We need a lot more than one song."

            "I know that, but...I just mean, you guys should probably start talking about that. Make sure she's ready for it." Joe looked at me sympathetically, and it bothered me a little the way he talked about her like she was anything but a regular woman. We never had conversations like this when he'd met Marie, and we weren't having this conversation with Pete about Meagan. We were only having this conversation with me, because my girlfriend was deaf, and that apparently made her helpless.

            I didn't say anything to him, and even though they were all staring at me expectantly, I got up and simply walked out to the living room. I paced for a moment, trying to clear my head. The last thing we needed was a big fight over a girl before our band even made the comeback. The thing that bothered me most was the fact that they had all met her a week before, the day after I had asked her to be my girlfriend. I'd taken her around to each of their houses, because she wanted to meet the rest of my friends and I wanted to show her off, and she also wanted to see Pete again. Upon meeting her, they all seemed to love her. Joe had raved that day about how I'd found a beautiful girl, and Marie had congratulated us. Andy had found out that they both loved comics, and that was a friendship waiting to be made. And Pete joked with her just like he joked with the rest of us. Around them, she was their equal, and I loved that. But as soon as she was absent, it was like they couldn't stop talking about her disability. I even hated calling it that. It didn't hinder her life in any way; She always found ways to work around it, and she was more than happy with life, from what I could see. To me, her deafness was just as much a part of her as anything else, and I loved her for it.