#pete has a very loud rattly lanyard setup. like hand sanitizer and shit clipped on there

[wearenemies]

what do peterick each teach in this university lecturer au …. ?

this is a great and lovely question and i love you so much 👍 i would say patrick would be a constantly slightly wired music theory professor. i imagine that he’d come off as a little intimidating and strict, like he’d want to appear relatively professional and be as clearly good at his job as he can be, so i feel like he might be considered a little scary just by virtue of the fact that he’s mr professor guy, but if you catch him outside of class hours or email him for an extension and he’s totally the sweetest in lieu of pete’s ‘patrick looks like a teddy bear but really gets the fucking job done’. he’s mostly a lecturer but also does stuff with the school’s music societies (think conducting the college band and helping with the acapella group) i feel like he’s actively working on the most tedious sounding paper in the world but he’s SO excited about it and will take any opportunity to bring it up in conversation. i think he’d very rarely talk about his life outside of work because he’d like to ‘maintain a healthy work-life separation’ (plus he likes the drama of it) and thus he’s considered kind of an enigma. also pete bought him one of those ‘i have a phd (pretty huge dick)’ t shirts. he thinks he’s funny

pete would teach i think creative writing and he’d mostly do shorter workshops both for enrolled students and the wider local community (middle schools etc) focused more on getting people to enjoy the craft of writing something over doing it for a grade, but would still run regular traditional lectures and whatnot. he’d have a less traditionally professional professorial vibe than patrick, like he’d be wearing his big mohair cardigans and he’d be very forthcoming about his misguided youth in the hardcore scene and would frequently bring up and gush over his nameless partner. i imagine him being endearingly cringe in the how-do-you-do-fellow-kids manner and appearing a little frazzled and soft-spoken outside of his classes, because patrick has a significant leg up on him in the one-on-one conversation department. he’d always to an almost obnoxious degree be attempting to shill his bizarre novel but get bashful when it’s brought up to him <3

the way i imagine it being laid out as a piece of writing is focused on either a student who majors in some kind of music field and is taking one of pete’s shorter workshop classes as a supplemental credit because it looked fun, OR a relatively new co-worker of theirs. it’d take place over the course of around 3-4 months and primarily focus on this person’s ever so slightly unhealthy curiosity towards both the wider question of what patrick’s whole deal is outside of work and more specifically who on the faculty patrick is dating because he once made the mistake of letting slip that his partner worked at the same place as him <3 the conceit lies in the fact it’d be functionally completely unknown that they’re together amongst the student population and this would be maintained primarily through the fact that a) they seem very different in terms of their interests and behaviours b) they are rarely seen to interact because they teach mostly on different areas of campus c) patrick is crucially very private about his life and times d) pete despite otherwise being a total blabbermouth would refuse outright to speak on the subject because he loves and respects his special little man and e) 9/10 times it’s funnier to lie to people than it is to tell them the truth. so they’re functionally the pre-2019 dan and phil of chicago university lecturers

other facets of this universe include the fact that patrick has a bear pride flag sticker on his owala and his students struggle to discern whether or not he understands that it is in fact a pride flag sticker, and that pete keeps telling increasingly ambitious lies to his students about his life for the sake of his own sick entertainment. significantly, patrick won’t really be a singer: my vision for the backstory is that patrick did join pete and joe’s pop punk project but was too shy to do vocals and it fell apart after a few months but they all remained very close friends. i imagine that he does sing and does still have a beautiful voice, he’s just not really interested in doing anything with it 🫶