Just Once - A Peterick Fic

Epilogue

The song we'd been working on that day in the studio came to be known as Symphony of the Overdosed between Andy, Joe, and I as we worked on it. We wrote without Pete - something I hadn't done in a long time - but he gave us his notebooks and responded to our questions via text and we spent a lot of time in the studio putting songs together we planned to release as a farewell to our fans.

The three of us knew we couldn't stay Fall Out Boy without Pete. We didn't want to officially call it quits, though. We all still held out hope that Pete and I would someday be okay together again. That someday seemed like a near impossibility, though none of us voiced that concern. That would make it real.

Pete did, however, agree to finish out our tour with Blink-182 later this year along with any other shows we already had scheduled and we booked a Madison Square Garden show as our last gig before we, well, before we quit.

Nearly a month after that show, we released a greatest hits album with Symphony of the Overdosed (known to the fans as From Now On We Are Enemies) as our farewell song, our proper goodbye. We decided we had to change the name because Symphony was too personal of a title, held too many secrets of the four of our's to share. Instead, it became a lyric.

Officially, the reason we stopped being Fall Out Boy was the lack of success on Folie. Touring for that album was admittedly brutal, but it alone wasn't enough to make us break up. The real credit goes to Pete and I's fight.

Gabe felt unbelievably guilty. He felt like he was the reason the band ended, but of course he didn't tell me that because he and I had pretty much stopped speaking to each other. The only one of the four of us he still occasionally talked to was Joe.

And, for that matter, the four of us didn't even talk that much. Andy, Joe, and I still occasionally call each other up or go out for dinner, and they still spoke to Pete, but Pete and I haven't spoken at all since that last show. The only two that remained as close as they had been while touring was Andy and Joe and that's because they were a couple.

Joe and I were out at a Japanese restaurant when he told me he was planning on proposing to Andy. I congratulated him and he, in turn, thanked me for getting the two of them together. He told me that without Pete and I going at it that night on the bus, he never would've made advances toward Andy. He also asked me to be his best man.

I guess they were the one good product of Pete and I's relationship.

A/N: So I'm getting emotional trying to write this a/n. I can't say thank you enough to anyone and everyone who read, voted, and commented on this. It is my first full-length fic and I never expected it to be received this well. Like, seriously?! 41K reads and 2K votes. That's amazing, guys. Ily all. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's been nearly a year (okay, 10 months but close enough) since I posted the first chapter of this and I remember back when it had like 10 reads and it was my little baby. Even though I genuinely hate the first several chapter of this thing, I feel like it got much better the more I wrote and it's grown in my angsty little preteen. I never could've done any of this without you guys and your support. I've said this already, but thank you. I feel like I can't say it enough. Also, this is a completely different last chapter than what I originally wrote out.

Okay, self promo time. I've got several other one shots posted on here and on archive of our own right now and I'd love it if you read those too. I'm also currently working on a couple more little things. Like I said before, not full chapter fics, but longer than the one shots I currently have posted on here. I'd love it if you guys continued to support me because the support on this has been overwhelming. Again, thank you all so, so much.

- SonofaDun (Maddy)