Everyone Deserves The Flame (Adopted By Patrick Stump)

From Now On We're Enemies (Patrick's P.O.V.)

We finished our lunch, and Pete had to leave. We spent the rest of the afternoon outside. Nothing exciting really happened. We had left overs from lunch for supper. I was still shocked that Iris called me Dad. It was a huge trust thing. Considering what her other father did to her. Which I still don't know all the details to. This was huge. She trusted me enough to call me Dad. I wasn't expecting her to do that anytime soon. Iris was full of surprises.

"Can I ask you some questions?" I asked Iris as she sat done on the couch next to me. I had just got Declan down for bed, and Iris looked ready for bed. She was wearing plaid pants, and a baggy American Beauty/ American Psycho Fall Out Boy shirt. I smiled at the shirt. She blushed, and played with her hair.

"Sure, but nothing to personal. I think we've had enough of that for one day." She agreed. I nodded trying to think of a question.

"How long have you listened to Fall Out Boy?" I asked pointing to her shirt.

"I really started listening to you guys in November. But it's not that I don't like your old stuff. I really enjoy a lot of your older stuff, and whenever I heard you on the radio, I would always sing along. I used to wait up all night for Thnks Fr Th Mmrs to play on the radio. It was like a lullaby to me. But I really didn't know what kind of music I liked until a while ago. I would always have some different music shoved down my throat. And then I found you guys while I went through a really rough patch, and I instantly knew that I wanted to be a fan. It was actually Xo that got me hooked." She explained. I couldn't help, but beam at her. She was always full of surprises.

"What kind of music do you listen to in general?" I asked.

"Anything, but country. Country lyrics are just so meaningless. It's all about day drinking, and tanned legs. There's no meaning. No heartbreaking lyrics. No words that make you feel something. As long as a song had some meaning behind it, I'll listen to it." She answered the question without hesitation.

"You know school starts on Monday for you, right?" I asked nudging her side. Her face went pale, and she looked me dead in the eye.

"Yeah, but what will I tell kids there? What if they want to know why I'm here? What will I tell them? I want to use your last name, and forget my old one, but what if that raises questions? What if people hate me because of it? What -"

"Woah. Calm down. It's okay. We'll figure it all out tomorrow. We should also probably get you some stuff, you only had one bag, and it was so tiny." I exclaimed making my voice go high when I said tiny. She giggled, and I smiled at her again. She looked at the clock above the T.V. and noticed the time. I did too. 9:57.

"I'm tired, today was super draining. I think I'm going to go to bed. If that's okay with you?" She yawned. I laughed.

"Of course it's okay. This is your house too, you know." She smiled at me.

"Good night Dad." She hugged me. There was that word again. It sounded so sweet when she said it. She wasn't saying it because she had to, instead she wanted to. She released me and slowly dragged herself up the stairs into her room. In the moment nothing could be more perfect.

*+*

"Iris Grace Gutoski Stump! I swear you are worse than a teenage girl." I joked at her. We had eaten breakfast, and I told her to go get dressed. I had a whole day planned for us. We would eat breakfast. Done. Get ready to go. Currently in process. Go to mall. Talk about her questions in the car. Go shopping for Iris. Have a nice lunch. Get some other stuff for Iris. Go to Joe's for supper. Get her to met Andy, and Joe. Then get back to the house before ten. Today was going to be busy.

"One, I am a teenage girl. Two, drop the Gutoski. Three, I have nothing to wear." She opened her door, and I stepped into her room. She had two pairs of skinny jeans, one black with ripped knees, one blue not ripped at all. Two pairs of sweat pants. One pair of yoga pants. One black dress. Three t-shirts. Two of them were Fall Out Boy, the other was just white with black stripes at the bottom. One baseball tee, that had a grey shirt, and black sleeves. And two tank tops. One was white that said 'I'm a bad influence.' And the other said Love in three different languages.