fic: Patricksitting (Call It A Love Song) 1/3
Title Patricksitting (Call It A Love Song)
Pairing Pete/Patrick
Rating NC-17 in the hizzzzzzy
Word Count 22,385 (seriously)
Warnings If you think sixteen-year-olds shouldn't have sex, you probably shouldn't read this. If you think sixteen-year-olds should have sex, but only with other persons legally considered minors, then this is probably not your cup of tea. If you think sixteen-year-olds should fuck whoever they want, so long as they want to, then you're good to go!
Summary When Pete shows up Sunday, mid-afternoon, for ten days of house sitting and "Keeping a general eye on things, Patrick, we know you're too old for a babysitter, but we worry," he looks exactly the same, except for a stupid haircut that makes him look like someone cut it when he was too drunk to look in a mirror, or something. "Hey, kid," he says, first thing, lugging a huge, shiny brown duffle behind him. It's slippery, nylon or something, and it keeps rubbing against Pete's jeans, making some sort of whispery zipper sound that sets Patrick's teeth on edge. "I'm here for Patricksitting. I assume you're the Patrick?"
Disclaimer None of this is real, as you can tell by the lack of reality in it.
Author's Note This was written for a tiny little Secret Santa for violentfires, who is made of win and glitter. I finished it, like, two freaking months ago, so if you beta'd it and I forget your name, just drop me an email. Without my betas, I'd be lost, so ♥ x 1,000,000 to maleyka, likealocket, o4fuxache, foxxcub, shleemeri, untappedbeauty, and airgiodslv, and... fuck, I think I'm forgetting someone? LET ME KNOW, PLEASE. I FAIL. Thanks also to the usual suspects, and especially to ficklish, who read every word and was totally patient with every "WHAT ABOUT THE COLOR BLUE. HOW DOES VIOLENTFIRES FEEL ABOUT THE COLOR BLUE? TOTAL TURN-OFF, Y/N?" email with patience and the appropriate amount of head-smacking. Anyway, this took me a whole month, and it was a labor of fucking love, so... I hope you all like it.
Sunday
What Patrick remembers most vividly of Pete Wentz - his mother's coworker's son, now aged twenty-one, tattooed, with too much too-dark hair, and a toothy, too-wide smile - is five years ago, when Patrick was eleven, and Pete was sixteen: Pete hiding beside a dumpster in the alley behind their moms' office, puffing smoke into the cold Chicago air, and his distracted, "Don't tell my mom, kid."
When Pete shows up Sunday, mid-afternoon, for ten days of house sitting and "Keeping a general eye on things, Patrick, we know you're too old for a babysitter, but we worry," he looks exactly the same, except for a stupid haircut that makes him look like someone cut it in the dark or something.
"Hey, kid," he says, first thing, lugging a huge, shiny brown duffel behind him. It's slippery, maybe nylon, and it keeps rubbing against Pete's jeans, making some sort of whispery zipper sound that sets Patrick's teeth on edge. "I'm here for Patricksitting. I assume you're the Patrick?"
Patrick's teeth grit right over the edge. He briefly considers trying to catch his parents before they get on the plane, begging them to get old Mrs. Cooper from down the street to come watch him, with her pickle-smell and sticky fingers.
"Sorry about your grandmother, kid," Pete says. It would be more convincing if he weren't pinching the fringe of his bangs into points, his eyes trained on the narrow edges of the hall mirror, ducking his stupid, smiling reflection around the flower arrangement that obscures most of it. Also, if he had it right.
"It's my great-grandmother," Patrick corrects stiffly. He finally shuts the front door, sealing off the Chicago winter, but not without glancing longingly toward Mrs. Cooper's barely kept yard, her collection of flower pots with gnomes nestled inside. "Anyway. She could still make it. Your condolences are premature."
"Yeah, sure. So, where's the guest room?"
The guest room is upstairs, three doors down from Patrick's room, and if he takes some small pleasure in Pete's face when he sees it, well.
"My Aunt Amelia stays here a lot," Patrick offers. He watches Pete blink: at the wallpaper border of gamboling kittens, the thick stripes beneath, the bleached floral above. "I'm sure you'll be very comfortable. There are extra quilts in the chest at the foot of the bed, in case you get cold." Patrick smiles beatifically. "It gets chilly in this corner of the house, sometimes." The acres of lace curtains probably don't keep much heat in either.
"Great." Pete hurls his bag onto the bed, which creaks loudly, and sinks around the weight of the nylon. Patrick smiles wider. "Next item," Pete says, spinning so fast that Patrick almost trips over his shoes in an effort to step back, get out of his way. "Fridge. Where's the fridge."
Oh, for fuck's sake. "In… the kitchen."
***
Pete declares the fridge to be, "Shockingly empty of anything that makes me feel like my mom is standing here bitching about my diet."
He orders pizza, and when it comes, he doesn't even feint toward the kitchen. "Iron Chef is on," he says, around the piece of pizza jammed in his mouth, waving the box at Patrick. "Maybe it's something gross, c'mon."
Pete is maybe, just maybe, a better choice than Mrs. Cooper. Maybe. He makes Patrick laugh, not like his friends do, or like a good TV show might, but like a dog chasing its tail, or a squirrel trying to carry a toaster. Something like that.
He demands that they pick sides, and wagers the last piece of pizza on the battle. "You realize," Patrick says dryly, "that there are seven pieces of pizza left."
"There's always a last piece." Pete waves the one in his hand negligently; it drips cheese, which Pete loops up with his fingers and shoves - along with the bottom three inches of his slice - into his mouth, talking around it. "S'the best one."
Patrick picks Kyoko Kagata, and Pete mocks him relentlessly. "I'm just saying," Pete laughs. "She's a chick. In Japan. On Iron Chef. It's not called Iron Chefess."
"That… is so not even a word, oh my God."
"Yeah, but she's up against Chen, dude. She's not--like, there's just no way it's going to happen."
She wins.
"I totally saw that coming," Pete says, reluctantly toeing the pizza box (empty but for the last piece) at Patrick. "I just, you know, wanted to teach you a lesson about underestimating women in the workplace. Chicks can do everything we can do, man. Except piss standing up."
There really is something about the last slice of pizza. It's cool enough that the cheese is congealed, firm against Patrick's teeth; the sauce is still warm, it squishes up, and the puddle of grease in the cupped pepperoni oozes down onto his tongue and yeah, okay. Delicious.
Patrick chews pointedly, and grins once he's swallowed. "That's sexism. Girls can absolutely piss standing up. I've seen it on the internet."
"You can see anything on the Internet, it doesn't mean it's real."
"So, you're suggesting someone CGI'd a girl pissing while standing up?"
"Dude. Anything's possible."
"Except for girls being able to pee without sitting."
"Exactly. Hey, are you going to finish that?" Pete snatches Patrick's crust, and the last three bites of actual pizza from his hand, and crams it whole into his mouth. "Phrmks."
Yeah, definitely just like a dog chasing its tail. Maybe with a stupid hat on. "Uh huh. You're welcome."
Monday
He misses his parents for the first time when he comes downstairs in the morning, and instead of finding his mom in her ridiculous snowflake pajamas, he finds Pete curled into a chair in a hoodie and boxers, sulky, dark-eyed, clinging to a cup of coffee like it's a lifeline.
"This is inhumane," Pete complains. "Making you kids get up at this hour. I don't remember school starting this early. God, I swear. How do you even learn anything?"
"Usually, I find a hot breakfast wakes me up. Gets me all ready for the day." A hot breakfast that will probably not be made by Pete, since his feet are still tucked under his ass, and his shoulders haven't moved from their pathetic slump.
Oh, and because he says, "Ooh. If you make eggs, I like mine just a little runny."
What Patrick makes are Pop Tarts, strawberry for himself, and s'mores flavor for Pete, since he seems the type to need approximately eight metric tons of sugar just to get on with his day. He even puts them on paper towels, just so they won't have to do dishes. They sit together in companionable silence for a while, the quiet broken only by chewing and the sound of Pete's chair squeaking under his constant shifting, and just when Patrick is starting to get really homesick for his mom's tuneless humming and his dad's newspaper-related outbursts, Pete says: "Do you have a lunchbox or something? Because I can't make sandwiches or anything, but I can definitely slip a Twinkie and five bucks into it."
"Dude, no, I--" Patrick stops, reconsiders, and says, "Brown paper sack, actually. I think we're out of Twinkies though, so you should give me seven bucks instead, and I'll just buy my own."
Pete laughs, and it's ridiculous, too big, but he musses Patrick's hair on the way to the door, and when he comes back downstairs his hoodie is unzipped. Patrick spends a long moment (or ten, if he's going to be honest) staring at Pete's chest before he figures out that some of the glinting metal there is nipple ring, not just zipper. Which is. Um. It's nothing. Patrick doesn't care, and it makes total sense. Ink, piercings, skinny jeans and lurid shirts, it's, yeah, it makes sense. For Pete.
"Here," Pete says. He bumps Patrick's shoulder with his hip and grins, dorky, but with glinting eyes, like people just stare at his nipples all the time.
Which, hey, they probably do. Exhibit A: pierced nipples.
He presses a handful of moist, crumpled bills into Patrick's hand and tugs Patrick's ear. "I only had six. You can either cope, or call DCF on me. Just know that if they put you in foster care, your new mommy won't cook you breakfast like I do."
***
Coming home to Pete's heavily bumper-stickered Saturn is kind of weird; Patrick's used to his mom's Volvo in the drive, used to the lights being on, and something that smells like dinner in the air. What he gets instead is a dim hallway, loud hardcore music coming from the living room, and something that sounds suspiciously like an orangutan in labor, but that seems to somehow go along with the music, so. So Patrick's assuming this is Pete's interpretation of singing along.
He drops his backpack in the corner, trips over a clunky black boot in the middle of the hall carpet, and stumbles into a hopefully casual lean in the doorway of the living room. Pete's on the couch - standing on the couch - with his hair flying, playing enthusiastically shitty air guitar, with his mouth open and the monkey-delivering-triplets shrieks pouring out.
Patrick's course of action is clear. He fumbles his phone out of his pocket and takes a picture, another, and when Pete turns and poses, fist above his head, Patrick gives him a thumbs-up and snaps another shot.
"I'm sick of playing my own guitar," Pete shouts over the music. "I'm made to front, man, get your lazy ass onstage."
It's not his taste, the music, but Patrick clambers over the back of the sofa anyway, ducks through the strap of his invisible guitar, and leans into Pete, talking too-loud into the sudden silence between songs.
"Like this," he says, adjusting Pete's grip. "You'll get better sound."
Air rocking-out turns into air crooning; Pete throws one of Patrick's dad's Sinatra albums in and butchers the lyrics ("Hard on my pillow, just thinking of you") until Patrick's curled into the couch, laughing so hard his ribs ache. He's actually crying - the water catches on the bottom bevel of his glasses and fogs them up - and he has to eventually kick Pete's feet out from under him just to make him stop. It's still long minutes before he can breathe, and when he looks up, Pete's sprawled on the sofa with a hand pressed to his stomach, panting.
"Pizza?"
"Dude," Patrick laughs. "We just had pizza last night, come on."
Pete huffs and bites his lip. "Yeah, okay. Chinese?"
It takes an hour and a half to settle on an order that doesn't cover half the menu, too many minutes of which are spent convincing Pete that paying fifteen dollars for a dozen egg rolls is possibly the stupidest idea ever, and then what feels like eleven years of waiting for the delivery, the whole of which they spend camped out on the sofa.
"Do you have any homework?" Pete asks. He keeps turning the mute button on and off, turning the commercial breaks into little staccato bursts of sound. Annoying little staccato bursts of sound.
"No," Patrick answers. "But if you keep doing that, I'm sure I can dig up some extra credit, or something."
"Boring." Pete's finger slows on the mute button though, and Patrick gets whole sentences before the voices are silenced again. Not that, like, he really wants to listen to the amazing benefits of Tide laundry detergent, but still.
He shoves at Pete's leg with his foot. "Annoying."
"I'm bored."
"You're not going to be bored when I'm kicking your ass, which is what's going to happen if you don't lay the fuck off the remote."
Pete laughs, and it's so sincere as to be genuinely irritating. "Yeah, right."
The lady on the TV says, "Ask your healthcare provider about--" and then she's silent, though her lips are still moving, her hands gesturing excitedly.
Patrick shoves at Pete's leg again, harder. "Dude."
"Dude," Pete mimics, slapping Patrick's socked foot away from his thigh.
"Side effects may include-" says the lady on the TV, right before the next descent into silence.
Patrick scrambles onto his knees and tries to snatch the remote from Pete's hand, but Pete is fast and dodges, turns mute off for two words and then back on again. Patrick is going to kill him, just as soon as he can fling the remote across the room.
He makes another grab for it, and ends up falling face-first into Pete's thigh when the remote is snatched off to the side.
"Frisky," Pete crows, and only just wiggles away in time to evade the sloppily placed bite that Patrick aims at his leg. "Dude," he says, laughing. "Biting?"
Pete sounds amused. He looks amused, too, lying across the arm of the couch with the remote stretched over his head, out of Patrick's reach. Basically, being a giant asshole.
"You're an asshole," Patrick informs him. "And I'm getting that remote."
"Awesome." Pete grins; he waggles the remote above his head, and is generally infuriatingly amused by Patrick's annoyance.
Patrick isn't careful with his knee placement when he crawls forward, and he isn't particularly concerned with Pete's continued ability to breathe; it results in a lot of Pete wiggling under him, muttering sharp warnings to "Watch the knees, Christ" and "Fuck, Patrick, a little air here" while he switches the remote from hand to hand, pulls it between their bodies, and then back out in the air when Patrick shifts his weight to pursue it.
Eventually, Patrick settles for squashing Pete as flat into the sofa as he can get, and he has a forearm braced against Pete's shoulders, and Pete's hands are possibly pinned, and he's reaching for the remote when Pete bucks and flips them both off of the couch. Patrick lands on his back, with all too-much of laughing Pete on top of him and oh, now it's on.
Honestly, he doesn't know when they lose the remote, but he thinks it's somewhere between Pete on Patrick's back, smushing his face into the carpet, and when Patrick manages to get Pete in a headlock, but it's definitely long before Patrick winds up flat on his back with Pete straddling him, Pete's hands pressing Patrick's wrists into the rug, and an infuriatingly smug smile spread across his face.
At least Patrick can hear every word of this commercial for McDonald's. That's something, right?
"You are such an asshole."
Pete grinds Patrick's wrists down a little harder, grins a little wider. "But I'm not a bored asshole."
"Still an asshole."
"A victorious asshole."
Well, yeah. Pete's actually freakishly fucking strong, and none of Patrick's dirty tricks worked at all, not even his attempt to elbow Pete in the throat. He can't think of a way free. He bucks a little, but Pete just clamps his knees around Patrick's thighs tighter and holds on; tries to push up on his wrists, but Pete's grip is firm, almost-but-not-quite bruisingly tight; tries to roll to the side, but Pete just presses down and clucks his tongue.
"Early fortune cookie," Pete says. "Accept defeat gracefully."
"You're not a cookie." Patrick is only pouting a little.
Pete is grinning, more than a little. "Better. More delicious."
"Oh, well in that case." Patrick bites him; right on the forearm that's braced next to his head, just above the stretched tendons. It's stupid, but Patrick kind of expects Pete's skin to taste like something. Cinnamon, maybe, because of the color. It doesn't though; it just tastes like skin, a little sweaty. He presses his teeth into Pete's arm, not hard enough to break skin, just hard enough to rub across the surface.
Above him, Pete goes very still, and then gets very heavy. Patrick can feel breath on his neck, hot and wet against his jaw, and he braces himself for retaliatory biting, tightens his own teeth, but stubbornly refuses to stop. Pete's arm twists a little; Patrick's mouth slides off, down to Pete's wrist, and Pete's breath stops gusting against Patrick's neck, even though he hasn't moved further away or anything.
"Asshole," Patrick mumbles again, into Pete's wrist, for emphasis.
The doorbell rings before Pete can answer, spurring him into a quick backward scramble. He turns immediately, presents his back to Patrick, and Patrick watches while he wedges his fingers into his pocket for his wallet, digs through it and says, tightly, "Hungry asshole."
Tuesday
Patrick wakes up to a dry mouth and a clock that says 3:18, complete with the mocking red dot that indicates AM. He closes his eyes and tries, for at least three hours, to go back to sleep. When he opens them again, the numbers glow 3:20. He tries to argue that this is impossible, but the clock is resolute. His mouth, even drier.
Stumbling out of bed is familiar. The silent trip down the hallway is as well. Skipping the squeaky eighth, third, and bottom steps is second nature by now, and Patrick even steps over where his dad's briefcase is usually leaning against the wall, even though there's nothing there tonight.
All of that, moving toward the kitchen without making a sound, trying not to wake his parents, is normal. Commonplace. Routine, even.
What's not routine is the gay porn stretched in wide-screen across the TV. Patrick freezes just outside the arch that leads into the living room and rubs his eyes, hard enough to see spots, but when he pries them open, there are still three guys fucking each other. In high definition.
No, wait, Patrick's wrong. Two guys fucking each other. The third appears to be doing something with his tongue in the vicinity of someone else's ass. Which is--well, it's something Patrick isn't really going to think about, not right now. They seem to be enjoying it, but he can't really tell, because the TV is muted. Three men, mouths open, rutting silently.
It's another long minute before he notices Pete on the couch.
Pete, on the couch, with his eyes shut, making little muffled noises, not even as loud as the slick sound of skin on skin, his wrist moving steadily, pumping hard and fast.
With his eyes shut, though. Patrick doesn't understand; why have 52 inches of gay porn, mute it, and then shut your eyes? He blinks, shifts his gaze to the TV again, and when he looks back at Pete, he notices for the first time that Pete's pressed his mouth against his forearm. It's an awkward angle, the way he has his elbow twisted up, arm held out to the side, but he's mouthing the patch of skin just above his tendons, his wrist bent far back so they stand out, raised up like a highway.
It's not until Pete licks his own skin and jerks his hand a little faster, erratic, moans "fuck," that Patrick realizes where Pete's mouth is. It's--unless he's mistaken, it's the same spot where Patrick bit him, like, hours ago. Pete moans again, stretches his mouth wide over his skin. His eyes are still scrunched shut.
Patrick's ears are hot, and his stomach is upside down, burning; he can't quite breathe, but he edges to the side, chances five silent steps until he can fully see Pete, with his jeans open and shoved down a little, fisting his dick. He pumps, twists, thumbs the head, and arches into it, moans again. Patrick can only hear the undertones of it, the lower, scratchy parts, but he sees the way Pete's lips pull away from his teeth when he does it and. God. Pete just looks desperate, like he's trying to taste Patrick's mouth through his skin, through hours-old contact.
Out of the corner of his eye, Patrick can see pornstars coming on the screen - face shots and jerking off onto stomachs and into hair - but he can't take his eyes off the way Pete's chest is straining up, the frenzied stroke of his hand, the stream of single syllable words that all seem to end in "-ck," and then he freezes, hips off the cushion, and comes on his hand, pumping through it. From where he is, all Patrick sees is shiny. Shiny on Pete's knuckles and shiny dotting Pete's stomach where his shirt is pushed up, and shiny on the head of his cock when his hand slides down to the base.
It finally occurs to him that Pete's done, could have his eyes open, could be watching Patrick watch him, but when he jerks his eyes back to Pete's face it's still smooth, slack, closed eyes and open mouth, his head angled back. Patrick tries to remember every time he's ever jerked off, how long he left his eyes shut after. Or, fuck, just how long he's been standing here since Pete came.
The only answers he can come up with are "not long enough" and "too long," in that order. He takes a shallow breath and edges back to the stairs, creeps up, wincing at every scuff of his heel against the carpet, and goes directly to his room without another thought of water.
He spends ten minutes on his back, staring at the ceiling, thinking about anything that isn't Pete Wentz (puppies, rain clouds, root canals, hats, his grandma), before he breaks and shoves his hand into his pajama pants, schooling his mind to picture the girl who sits in front of him in Chemistry. She's blonde, with green eyes and a great rack, but he can't get dark hair and eyes out of his head, so he doesn't think it's working. He eyes a crack in the stucco and tells himself the jerk of his wrist and the flashes of white teeth against tan skin are unrelated, and then he's coming, everything going fuzzy and white around the edges, and he can't think anything but oh God.
***
Three hours later: daylight spreads reluctantly across the sky, the house smells strongly like coffee - a little scorched - and Patrick wakes to the sight of an empty nightstand.
At some point in time during the last three snooze cycles, he seems to have crammed his alarm clock under his mattress. It's not quite as bad as the time he managed to unplug it, shove it to the bottom of his laundry basket, and go back to sleep for twenty-six minutes, but it's close. The mattress bulges into his side, buzzing angrily, and Patrick's hand is still sticky. He has to leave for school in thirty-one minutes, if he wants to make it just in time to slide into his seat for first period.
Very reluctantly, he rolls out of bed and stumbles blearily into the kitchen.
Pete's already there, humming something harsh and toneless under his breath, in boxers and a button-up shirt. The coffee in his hand is so hot that Patrick can see steam rising from it; the mug is so full that Pete has to lean over the sink to drink it. It runs down the curved ceramic side in weak, grim rivulets, drips onto the metal sink with dull little pings.
"Nnnnrgh," Patrick says. He makes grabby hands at nothing in particular, but Pete hands over his mug anyway. It's hot against Patrick's palms, still too hot, and the first sip burns his tongue, but blowing on the surface gives him something to do other than stare at Pete's hands, at the scars on his knees.
"I have to work today." Pete pours himself another gallon of coffee, into Patrick's mom's giant, kitten-head mug. He levels his gaze at Patrick, clear eyes and calm features. Patrick's left eyelid twitches. "I'll be back around seven o'clock, and we can get food then, or if you want me to pick something up on the way, just call me."
This should be weirder. Of course, Pete doesn't know that Patrick saw him, and he doesn't know that Patrick came so hard from thinking of him that he fell asleep with his hand still curled around his come, that he had to spit on his hand and scrub his palm against his t-shirt at some hour that started with a four and ended with a blur. If Pete knew, he might not be rubbing at his yawning mouth with the heel of his hand. He might be wearing pants, instead of threadbare boxers, so old that the slit in the front folds inward a little. He might not be smirking at Patrick, then ruffling his hair and saying, "I think I'll have to tuck you in earlier tonight, Patrick."
Patrick presses his fingers to his twitching eye and smiles weakly. "I'll just nap," he mumbles, scratchy from not enough sleep. "Should be easy, without your 'singing' wrecking my ears." He does air quotes with his pinkies, but Pete laughs at him and swallows an obscene quantity of hot, overcooked coffee without so much as a grimace.
"I'll call you," he says, his fingers on Patrick's wrist. "Sing to your voicemail. In case you need a lullaby."
***
There's no Pete when Patrick gets home, of course. He has the house for three hours, footloose and Pete-free, and he has a fuckton of homework.
He takes a nap. He doesn't mean to, even spreads his Biology book in front of him on the bed, lies on his stomach, and bites the cap off of his highlighter. Still, he only has two sentences encased in long, obnoxious yellow blocks when he passes out with his nose pressed into the seam of his book.
When he wakes up, his bedroom door is open. He's pretty sure he left it closed, but. There's music coming from downstairs, along with the smell of something that strongly suggests dinner. It's dark in his room, even with the curtains open, and the numbers on the clock are round and red: 8:08.
Patrick doesn't realize how sour his mouth is until he gets to the kitchen and opens it to say, "Hey."
"Hey." Pete is already changed; he's wearing pajama pants with dogs on them and a t-shirt for some band Patrick's never heard of, with signatures radiating out from the cheesy, overdrawn graphic. "My mom quizzed me on how well I'm feeding you. I don't think she approved, but now we have lasagna."
Patrick yawns. "Awesome."
Pete tsks, but grins. Bright smile, dark skin. Patrick keeps seeing it, every time he closes his eyes. "You're not going to be able to sleep tonight. Which is good for me, because there's a Monty Python marathon on until, like, two. And if I tell my mom I'm not letting you sleep, maybe she'll get you out of school for a day or something, and then we can go mini-golfing. Or egg people's houses."
"I can try listening to you talk about literature again," Patrick suggests. "I'll be asleep in no time." He scrubs the sleep from his eyes and smiles widely at Pete, insincere. "Tell me again of the genius of e.e. cummings. For hours."
"I can't believe I stopped and got you garlic bread," Pete says, shaking his head sadly. "So unappreciative."
The kitchen actually smells really good, like spices and cheese and heat. Pete's set out a bag of lettuce on the counter - near but not actually in a bowl - along with a handful of cherry tomatoes and a bottle or two of salad dressing. Pete's idea of vegetables, Patrick assumes.
"Fine," he says, poking Pete in the ribs on the way past. "I'll make the salad. And later, dessert. But if you so much as mention writing, you're going to be wearing whatever I have in my hands at the moment."
Patrick tells himself he imagines Pete's momentary hesitation and the slight hitch in his breath when he nods and says, "Deal."
Their salad is kind of pathetic. Pete left the lettuce on the counter too long, so it's limp and a little warm; his technique of dumping extra dressing on doesn't really help. The tomatoes are good though, and if Patrick shakes the dressing off of his lettuce for fifteen or so seconds, it's almost edible. The lasagna is much better. It's hot and perfect, and it oozes sauce all over Patrick's plate, leaving his garlic bread soggy and red. "I love your mom," he says happily, licking garlic butter from his fingers. "Seriously. Can I trade you for her?"
"No," Pete says. When Patrick looks up, Pete's watching his mouth. Pete's laden fork is in the air, dripping sauce. Patrick lifts an eyebrow; Pete coughs and spears more lasagna, grinning. "She'd try to put you in the bathtub. With little boats or something. You don't want that."
"Well," Patrick muses, drawing it out. He bites his fingertip, pretending to consider, and flicks his tongue against the pad, grinning at Pete. "I might want that." The "with your mom" goes unspoken.
Pete's eyes get a lot darker. Patrick assumes this has something to do with the way his pupils widen, but he could be wrong. "You don't need my mom for that," he says. He's not smiling. "I have bath toys. Just say the word."
Patrick is pretty sure they're not having the same conversation. "You're ruining my Your Mom joke," he complains. Well, pretends to complain. "Seriously. Uncool."
"Sorry." The flash of white teeth is back; Patrick's jaw relaxes a little, his fingers loosen on his fork. He really, really wishes he had some idea of what was going on here. "I'm terribly offended by your obvious desire to nail my mom," Pete deadpans. "Morally outraged. Righteous indignation in massive, immeasurable quantities. Are you going to finish that?" He has the last half of the last piece of garlic bread in his mouth before Patrick can answer emphatically in the affirmative, grinning around it. "Phrmks."
Eye-rolling turns into loading the dishwasher, which turns into both of them staring longingly at ice cream they don't have the appetite for, which turns into agreeing to make stomach-room with intense television watching, which turns into Life Of Brian on cable at one in the morning. Patrick is half asleep, with his head on Pete's thigh, and Pete's hand in his hair, just barely sifting the strands over his knuckles. Patrick's fingers are on Pete's knee, they've settled in and curled over Pete's leg entirely of their own accord; his skin feels so hot, he's pretty sure his palm is sweating, and he's damn certain he must be burning a handprint through Pete's pajama pants, but Pete isn't complaining, so he just leaves it there.
Pete's hand stills. Patrick feels him shifting, feels the nubby fabric of Pete's pajamas scrape under his cheek, and then Pete's breath is close, fanning across Patrick's lashes.
"Patrick?" Pete whispers.
Patrick doesn't answer, just tries to keep his breathing steady. It's hard.
It's downright fucking impossible when Pete presses his fingers to Patrick's lips. Light, yeah, just a ghost of a touch, but his mouth opens on its own, and then Pete runs his fingertip over the new skin. Fuck breathing steadily. Patrick can't breathe at all, and Pete is pretty much frozen above him, motionless but for the slow back and forth skim of his finger.
He doesn't--Patrick doesn't know what to do. He knows what he wants to do, and that's lick Pete's finger, tighten his grip on Pete's leg, but he doesn't really know why, and that's the uncomfortable part. He shifts instead, draws his knees up toward his chest, and exhales in a huff. Pete jerks his fingers away and settles his hand on Patrick's shoulder, shaking gently.
"Patrick," he says again, not a question this time. "Wake up. Bedtime."
Pretending to wake up isn't all that hard; the slightly confused blinking comes naturally.
Wednesday
Too much of not enough sleep is not helping Patrick be any more pleasant in the morning, and it certainly doesn't help that Pete's turned the world upside down by being fully awake, fully dressed, and waiting for Patrick in the kitchen, with cereal and milk set out on the counter. He's folded a napkin, placed a carefully centered spoon on it, and Patrick is about half a second from asking where his bud vase is when Pete cups his hands around Patrick's hips and pulls him forward.
Patrick needs that half second now, not for sarcasm, but to figure out what the hell is going on, and then Pete tips his chin up and kisses him. Pete's mouth tastes like coffee - like Pete's first cup of coffee, black, no hint of the hazelnut creamer he adds to his second and third - and toothpaste. His hands flex on Patrick's hips, fingertips pressing just this side of too hard, and Patrick can actually feel the tension in his wrists. Pete's arms are kind of shaking, like he's trying to pull something heavy toward himself, but his palms are cupped outward, heels of his hands braced against Patrick's hipbones, arms locked so even if Patrick tried to move forward, he wouldn't be able to.
It's maybe surprise that makes Patrick open his mouth. Maybe. But that's definitely not what makes him kiss Pete back, what makes him put hesitant hands on Pete's arms, mapping out the ridges on the roof of Pete's mouth with the tip of his tongue.
And then it's over. Too fast; Pete's still staring at his mouth when they break apart, his cheeks a little flushed, his breathing more than a little uneven.
"Okay," he says, and he looks lost, like he had something he wanted to say, but forgot it somewhere along the way. He clears his throat, slides away from Patrick, and runs a shaky hand through his hair. "I'm going to. I'm going to go now. If that was totally out of line, or if you feel like I'm unsafe or something, then you call your mom, or you call my mom, or you tell someone at school, or, God, please don't, but you could call the cops."
Patrick blinks. "What?"
"If you don't want to. If I'm taking advantage of you, or if you feel pressured, you're supposed to tell someone. I don't know how you'd tell someone if I kissed you after school. You'd be stuck here with me all night. You might feel, like, endangered." Pete shoves his hands in his front pockets and rocks back on his heels, smiling weakly. "I don't want you to feel endangered. I want to kiss you, but I want you to want to kiss me. So I'm going to go now, that way you can report me to whatever authorities you want, if you want to, and I won't feel like opportunistic scum."
"Um." Patrick's pretty sure he hasn't moved since Pete licked his lips apart. His feet are still rooted to the ground, heavy, like he could actually sway on them and stay upright. He's light-years from being able to make his brain work. "You're not scum?"
Pete laughs, high and tight and nervous, and he takes a couple of quick, jogging steps forward and presses his lips to Patrick's again. Just a brush, light like his fingers were last night. "I'm going to go. But I'll be here. When you get home, I'll be here. Unless you have me arrested, I'll be here."
Patrick stares at the empty doorway long after he hears Pete's car start, back out of the drive, and fade off down the street.
***
He doesn't tell anyone. He wants to. He wants to tell everyone, because Pete Wentz kissed him in his kitchen this morning, and Patrick spent the subsequent half hour arguing with himself about whether or not it was possible to get away without brushing his teeth all day, just to keep the taste of Pete in his mouth. But he doesn't tell anyone. He talks to his mom during lunch, tells her everything is fine, and he waves at the guidance counselor in the hallway, and on the way home he passes three police cars, but he doesn't stop.
Instead, he pulls into his driveway and sits in his parked car for five minutes, staring up at his house like it might bite him. He twists his keys in his hand until they're slick with sweat and his palms are red from the serrated edges, then takes a deep breath and pushes the door open.
Pete is in the living room, sitting on the couch, with his feet pressed flat to the floor and his hands cupped over his knees. Patrick lines up their toes, clenching his fingers around his keys.
"You didn't call the cops," Pete says.
"I didn't."
"Or my mom."
"Or your mom."
Pete's hand twitches; he lifts it and strokes his fingers over the back of Patrick's wrist and says, softly, "I'm not scum?"
"You're not scum."
He's getting stupidly used to Pete's smile, and ridiculously used to returning it. "I can kiss you again?" Pete asks, folding his hand around Patrick's wrist, tugging gently. "Please?"
There's just enough time to send a fervent thank you to his nerves for making him chicken out and detour to Jamba Juice on his way home, and then Pete is licking into Patrick's mango-flavored mouth and humming. He presses Patrick down into the sofa and crawls up, settles down against him and then shifts forward, fidgets, fits them together to his satisfaction and smiles. Pete's lips curve up, his teeth press against Patrick's lips, and his eyes are all crinkly and close, and oh man.
"Patrick," Pete says, but not like he wants a response, more like he's turning the word over, tasting it. He puts his hands on Patrick's cheeks, his neck, his shoulders, his sides, and smiles again. "Patrick Patrick Patrick."
Patrick's heart twirls in a slow, happy little circle. He licks Pete's bottom lip, presses a kiss to Pete's chin, and tries to figure out what to do with his hands while Pete kisses him again. He kisses like graffiti, tracing possession against the back of Patrick's teeth, the top of his mouth, with every slick twist of his tongue. Patrick hasn't really done this before. Not for hours, anyway, not with his head propped up on his mom's favorite throw pillow and someone's (Pete's) weight settled on him like a blanket, and someone's (Pete's) mouth always there like air, only warmer, better, so that Patrick forgets to breathe, resents the need to.
They kiss until Patrick can't taste even the traces of his smoothie anymore, until the room is dark and the back of his neck is sweaty and the creases from his bunched-up shirt pressing into his skin are so deep he can feel them sting every time he shifts. His mouth is hot and dry, and he finds himself actually trying to lick saliva out of Pete's mouth and into his own. Pete makes a happy sound, content, and presses a kiss to the corner of Patrick's mouth, to his jaw, to the skin just beneath his ear.
"M'hot," Patrick mumbles.
Pete laughs, right into Patrick's skin, presses the hum of it against his neck, and it's nice, yeah, but his breath is at least a hundred degrees and it's. Not exactly comfortable.
Pete says, "I know."
"No," Patrick says. He swipes his fingers under his jaw, expecting sweat, and grimaces at how right he is. "Like, it's a hundred- three hundred degrees. I'm hot."
"Aw." Pete peels off of him, and while the air that rushes into his absence can't exactly be described as cold, it's so much cooler than Pete's weight that Patrick almost makes an undignified noise. Almost. Instead he tilts his head to his shoulder and winces when his spine cracks in half, liquefies, and leaks from his ear.
Ow. Ow, ow, ow. "Ow." Patrick is pretty sure he's some kind of idiot. He has Pete on him, sitting back on his haunches with his knees on either side of Patrick's hips, grinning down at him with a swollen mouth and flushed face, and he's complaining about a crick in his neck. Idiot.
"Ow?" Pete asks. He scoots back, settles his weight over Patrick's thighs, and tugs Patrick's wrist. "I've only had my Patrick for one day and I'm already breaking him?"
It is completely not possible to stay normal-colored when Pete Wentz is claiming you. Patrick is pretty sure of this, so he forgives himself the blushing and sits up, cooperating when Pete nudges his head onto his shoulder.
"M'fine," he says, mumbled into Pete's sweat-damp shirt.
Pete presses his fingers to either side of the bony bulge at the base of Patrick's neck and squeezes, rubbing his fingers in small, hard circles. It feels, like, really fucking good. "I'll take better care of you," Pete whispers, words pressed like kisses to Patrick's temple. "I'll even feed you real food. I have ingredients."
"Ingredients are good," Patrick agrees. He drops his chin to his chest, makes his neck longer, stretches the muscles tight so Pete can press the tension out of them. "But do you have a recipe?"
He does. The recipe is for chicken and broccoli stir-fry, with a sauce made of bouillon and corn starch that takes them six tries to get right. When they do, though, it's actually really good.
"This is actually really good," Patrick says. He wipes a spilled drop of sauce off of the coffee table with his fingers, licks his thumb, and uses the spit to rub the sheen out of the wood.
"Of course it's good," Pete says. He's maybe going for indignant, but his mouth is full, and he has to yank his knuckles to his lips to catch the grains of rice that he'd been eating. "I'm a whiz in the kitchen."
"You do know whiz isn't actually another word for disaster, right?"
Pete's middle finger is pretty long. It's also a little bit crooked, and the knuckle is knobby like he's spent too much time punching things that don't punch back. Like, say, walls. Patrick knows these things because he can see Pete's middle finger pretty clearly; it's right in front of his face, Pete grinning behind it.
"Fuck you," Pete says cheerfully. "I've yet to see those eggs you promised me, and I'd hardly call Pop Tarts fine dining."
After dishes - with more stolen kisses than suds - and another hour of TV - with more stolen kisses than commercials - Patrick finds himself pressed against his bedroom door; Pete's hand is low on his back, fingers splayed, possessive, and the other is braced against the door by Patrick's head. The hand on his skin is so hot he feels branded, and he spends several idle, breathless seconds wondering if the other is as hot, if Pete's handprint will be burned into his door, so he can line his own fingers up to it long after Pete's gone and remember.
He goes to bed alone, grinning, with his hands clenched into fists to keep from pumping them above his head.
Thursday
Morning is an empty kitchen, quiet but for the auto-drip of coffee. It's been days since Patrick missed his mom, but it hits him now, sharp and furious. He throws away the wilted, drooping flowers she left on the counter, wets a sponge and wipes off the table, just because his mom has always just cleaned it when he comes down for breakfast, and then stares at the contents of the fridge and tries to visualize breakfast.
He doesn't hear Pete come downstairs, is maybe too buried in the hum of the fridge and the faint, staticky flicker of the light, and is almost surprised when Pete's hand presses to his stomach and he feels lips brushing the back of his neck.
"Overslept," Pete explains, yawning the word into Patrick's shoulder. "Sorry. G'morning."
Having Pete there makes it a little easier, but he still misses his mom. "S'okay," he says, and leans back into Pete's weight, into the hand tucked around him, into the arm draped over his shoulder. The fridge door is still open, spilling cold air out onto them, Patrick's fingers tapping on the edge of it, against the cool, pebbled metal. "The eggs are raw."
"They are." Warm lips behind his ear, cold air on his knees, Pete, solid and pressed close behind him. Patrick closes his eyes and sighs a little, shortly, heavily.
"Hey," Pete says, turning his dangling hand inward and covering Patrick's heart with it. "You want to go to breakfast? I'll buy you some unraw eggs."
The unraw eggs won't be on Patrick's mom's favorite plates, though, and he's not sure he can bring himself to ask a restaurant for orange juice with grenadine in it, and above all that, he wants to keep Pete to himself for as long as he can. He knows that may not be long at all, which is even more reason to glue his feet to the floor and stay here, where he can turn and kiss Pete.
"I owe you eggs," he says, mumbling it into Pete's lips. "A little runny, right?"
"I like eggs."
Patrick's back hits the hard edge of the counter. He shifts forward, but hits it again when Pete bumps into him, and that time is probably going to bruise, but he has his hands in Pete's hair and he doesn't care much. This is probably a dream anyway. You don't bruise in dreams.
The eggs are half runny and half burnt by the time they get cooked, but Patrick's orange juice has just the right amount of cherry flavoring in it, and the longest Pete goes without touching him is nine seconds. He counts.
Pete eats with his left hand so he can curl his right around Patrick's, and he narrates the comics between - and sometimes during - bites, complete with character voices.
"That," Patrick says, tucking his ankle under Pete's beneath the table, "is not how I imagine Cathy sounds."
"You imagined wrong. I met her once."
"Yeah? In person? How was it?"
"Good." Pete grins, too many teeth, too much happy for this early in the morning. "She's shorter in real life, though. Smokes like a chimney."
***
Patrick's afternoons used to involve homework and video games. He distinctly remembers last Thursday: Trig, the French Revolution, jerking off, two hours of Halo. Today, however, he's under Pete (who is possibly the hottest guy - fuck it, hottest person - in the history of existence), about two seconds from coming in his pants, with Pete's breath in his ear, whispering "C'mon, Patrick. C'mon."
He comes so hard he's pretty sure he'll still be feeling it tomorrow, shuddering, the hands he's fisted in Pete's shirt shaking, clenched so tight he can't really feel his knuckles anymore. "God."
Patrick is not ashamed- not of the sticky, slowly cooling mess in his pants, not of the noises he was just making, and not of the bruises that are sure to pop up on Pete's arms by this time tomorrow. There is, he feels, only so much Pete Wentz a person can be subjected to before they just do it, just come all over themselves, and at least Patrick didn't do it spontaneously, in everyday conversation, after Pete commented on the weather or something equally innocuous.
Pete grins and kisses him, sloppily, somewhere between the corner of his mouth and his chin, and that's nice, but he's also slowing, rocking his hips down less insistently. Patrick can still feel Pete, pressed hard against his hip, so he doesn't understand why Pete's stopping. Unless, oh, maybe he can't. Get off this way, that is, because he's older and obviously not a virgin and he needs more. Patrick wiggles backward a few inches, shoves his hands between them, and manages to pop the button on Pete's jeans with what he thinks is an impressive amount of finesse, thanks.
"Can I?" he asks, fumbling to pry the zipper tab up with his fingernail. "I want to."
He can feel how hard Pete is, heat against his knuckles, sticky-wet and throbbing.
"Oh God, yes," Pete says. Patrick fumbles the zipper down, and Pete says, "But no."
"No?" No doesn't process. Patrick is already reaching for the waist of Pete's jeans, so his hand is right there when Pete shoves his hips forward. "No?"
Pete's forehead falls to Patrick's shoulder; it's actually kind of hard, more than kind of hurts, and he almost misses it when Pete mumbles, "I'm going to hell."
It's probably unkind to roll his eyes at the ceiling, but Pete can't see him, so. Victimless crime. Patrick pushes Pete's jeans down, carefully peels the wet fabric of Pete's boxers away from his cock, and fists it with more confidence then he feels. "Is this okay?"
He takes the vaguely choked noise as agreement, and strokes once, twice, a third and fourth time; he rests his free hand on Pete's side and kisses his ear and says, "I've never done this before."
"Jail," Pete moans. "I'm going to jail."
Patrick would roll his eyes again, but he's trying to duck his chin down far enough that he can see, because all he has right now is the feel of it; Pete's skin, hot and slick from precome, wetter every time Patrick twists his hand up to the head and slicks it down again, fast. Pete's flushed, overheated, biting nonsense words into Patrick's shoulder.
"Is this?" Patrick asks, shifting, trying to get his leg out of the way. "Is it okay?"
"Oh, God." Pete's hips push against Patrick's hand. His dick slides through Patrick's curled-up fingers, faster than Patrick can manage on his own, from this angle, and Pete makes a noise like maybe he's dying. "Tighter," he says urgently. "Please. I need-"
Friction. Yeah. Patrick squeezes his hand tighter and twists it slowly while Pete pushes his weight back up through his arms and shoves his hips forward. He kisses Patrick, hard, too fast for tongue, and pulls back, but it's okay. Patrick wants to watch it, wants to see Pete break apart. And anyway, with Pete up like this, he can look down their bodies and watch Pete fuck his hand, watch his fingers get slippery with precome, watch Pete's cock slide through, dark against Patrick's too-pale skin.
He looks up in time to see Pete watching him watch, his lip bitten, gaze narrow. They lock eyes, and Pete gasps, "Patrick," and then jerks his hips forward again, again, erratic, desperate, and then he comes over Patrick's hand, his t-shirt, with shaking elbows and loudly whispered profanity.
It's a good five minutes before Pete lifts his head again, presses a kiss to the curve of Patrick's neck, and says, "Seriously. Jail."
Patrick pats Pete on the back with as much sympathy as he can muster up. Loving, friendly, Mother Teresa-like sympathy. "I'm sure you'll be very popular."
***
He gets another goodnight kiss at his door; it's not like his dad is just inside with his finger on the porch light and his eyes on the second hand or anything, but Pete seems to have some thing about Patrick's boundaries. It's just. Pete's Patrick Boundaries aren't anywhere near Patrick's actual boundaries, and it drives him a little insane to crawl into his empty bed and get used to all of his skin being the same temperature, no hot, hand-sized brand anywhere on him.
Basically, it sucks.
Patrick kicks at his blankets petulantly, but all that earns him is a twisted-up sheet and a rush of cold air under his covers. Also, the sneaking suspicion that this is exactly why Pete leaves him at his door at night: he's sixteen. And kind of an idiot.
There are three bulges of spackle on the ceiling that look like bunnies, one that looks like a T-Rex, and one that looks like either a teapot or an octopus; Patrick can't decide which, but he names it Fergutrand and stares at it for a while anyway. For how long, he's not sure, but he's still staring when Pete knocks on his door.
"Um." Maybe Pete didn't knock on his door. Maybe he's asleep. Patrick blinks up at Fergutrand and goes to pinch himself awake, but decides to fuck off that part and just says, "Come in."
Pete's paler in the moonlight, the whites of his eyes lit up by the faint light, the small, careful slice of his smile. "I'm an idiot," he says, shutting the door behind him with a quiet click. "I can't sleep, because I'm a huge idiot."
Patrick nods. He's not sure if Pete can see him, but it feels like an occasion for nodding. "I say that all the time," he agrees. "Not the thing about sleeping, but the part about you being an idiot."
"I can see why I like you so much." Pete's still talking quietly, like there are people to wake up, like it's not just the two of them rattling around in an empty house. "You kiss like a god, you can't cook for shit, and you're oh-so-good for my ego."
His knees hit the edge of the bed and jitter, shaking the mattress. Patrick wants to put a quarter in him, see if he'll really get the thing moving, but he gets the feeling Pete has a whole bunch of promises ready that add up to "no" on that one.
He tangles his hand up in Pete's instead, yawns into the back of his wrist, and says, "What's up, Pete?
"I want to sleep with you. Just sleep, I promise, but. I miss you like you're more than two rooms away."
Patrick's getting a little sick of Pete promising away the things he wants, but he can have this much, apparently, so he wiggles closer to the wall and shoves the covers down. "Yeah. Or wait, guest room? The bed's bigger."
"Here," Pete says. He's hot like an electric blanket, wrapping his warmth around Patrick, his toes tucked under Patrick's calves, his hands curving over Patrick's shoulder, his elbow, his ribs. "The bed's smaller."
CONTINUED HERE
Pairing Pete/Patrick
Rating NC-17 in the hizzzzzzy
Word Count 22,385 (seriously)
Warnings If you think sixteen-year-olds shouldn't have sex, you probably shouldn't read this. If you think sixteen-year-olds should have sex, but only with other persons legally considered minors, then this is probably not your cup of tea. If you think sixteen-year-olds should fuck whoever they want, so long as they want to, then you're good to go!
Summary When Pete shows up Sunday, mid-afternoon, for ten days of house sitting and "Keeping a general eye on things, Patrick, we know you're too old for a babysitter, but we worry," he looks exactly the same, except for a stupid haircut that makes him look like someone cut it when he was too drunk to look in a mirror, or something. "Hey, kid," he says, first thing, lugging a huge, shiny brown duffle behind him. It's slippery, nylon or something, and it keeps rubbing against Pete's jeans, making some sort of whispery zipper sound that sets Patrick's teeth on edge. "I'm here for Patricksitting. I assume you're the Patrick?"
Disclaimer None of this is real, as you can tell by the lack of reality in it.
Author's Note This was written for a tiny little Secret Santa for violentfires, who is made of win and glitter. I finished it, like, two freaking months ago, so if you beta'd it and I forget your name, just drop me an email. Without my betas, I'd be lost, so ♥ x 1,000,000 to maleyka, likealocket, o4fuxache, foxxcub, shleemeri, untappedbeauty, and airgiodslv, and... fuck, I think I'm forgetting someone? LET ME KNOW, PLEASE. I FAIL. Thanks also to the usual suspects, and especially to ficklish, who read every word and was totally patient with every "WHAT ABOUT THE COLOR BLUE. HOW DOES VIOLENTFIRES FEEL ABOUT THE COLOR BLUE? TOTAL TURN-OFF, Y/N?" email with patience and the appropriate amount of head-smacking. Anyway, this took me a whole month, and it was a labor of fucking love, so... I hope you all like it.
Sunday
What Patrick remembers most vividly of Pete Wentz - his mother's coworker's son, now aged twenty-one, tattooed, with too much too-dark hair, and a toothy, too-wide smile - is five years ago, when Patrick was eleven, and Pete was sixteen: Pete hiding beside a dumpster in the alley behind their moms' office, puffing smoke into the cold Chicago air, and his distracted, "Don't tell my mom, kid."
When Pete shows up Sunday, mid-afternoon, for ten days of house sitting and "Keeping a general eye on things, Patrick, we know you're too old for a babysitter, but we worry," he looks exactly the same, except for a stupid haircut that makes him look like someone cut it in the dark or something.
"Hey, kid," he says, first thing, lugging a huge, shiny brown duffel behind him. It's slippery, maybe nylon, and it keeps rubbing against Pete's jeans, making some sort of whispery zipper sound that sets Patrick's teeth on edge. "I'm here for Patricksitting. I assume you're the Patrick?"
Patrick's teeth grit right over the edge. He briefly considers trying to catch his parents before they get on the plane, begging them to get old Mrs. Cooper from down the street to come watch him, with her pickle-smell and sticky fingers.
"Sorry about your grandmother, kid," Pete says. It would be more convincing if he weren't pinching the fringe of his bangs into points, his eyes trained on the narrow edges of the hall mirror, ducking his stupid, smiling reflection around the flower arrangement that obscures most of it. Also, if he had it right.
"It's my great-grandmother," Patrick corrects stiffly. He finally shuts the front door, sealing off the Chicago winter, but not without glancing longingly toward Mrs. Cooper's barely kept yard, her collection of flower pots with gnomes nestled inside. "Anyway. She could still make it. Your condolences are premature."
"Yeah, sure. So, where's the guest room?"
The guest room is upstairs, three doors down from Patrick's room, and if he takes some small pleasure in Pete's face when he sees it, well.
"My Aunt Amelia stays here a lot," Patrick offers. He watches Pete blink: at the wallpaper border of gamboling kittens, the thick stripes beneath, the bleached floral above. "I'm sure you'll be very comfortable. There are extra quilts in the chest at the foot of the bed, in case you get cold." Patrick smiles beatifically. "It gets chilly in this corner of the house, sometimes." The acres of lace curtains probably don't keep much heat in either.
"Great." Pete hurls his bag onto the bed, which creaks loudly, and sinks around the weight of the nylon. Patrick smiles wider. "Next item," Pete says, spinning so fast that Patrick almost trips over his shoes in an effort to step back, get out of his way. "Fridge. Where's the fridge."
Oh, for fuck's sake. "In… the kitchen."
***
Pete declares the fridge to be, "Shockingly empty of anything that makes me feel like my mom is standing here bitching about my diet."
He orders pizza, and when it comes, he doesn't even feint toward the kitchen. "Iron Chef is on," he says, around the piece of pizza jammed in his mouth, waving the box at Patrick. "Maybe it's something gross, c'mon."
Pete is maybe, just maybe, a better choice than Mrs. Cooper. Maybe. He makes Patrick laugh, not like his friends do, or like a good TV show might, but like a dog chasing its tail, or a squirrel trying to carry a toaster. Something like that.
He demands that they pick sides, and wagers the last piece of pizza on the battle. "You realize," Patrick says dryly, "that there are seven pieces of pizza left."
"There's always a last piece." Pete waves the one in his hand negligently; it drips cheese, which Pete loops up with his fingers and shoves - along with the bottom three inches of his slice - into his mouth, talking around it. "S'the best one."
Patrick picks Kyoko Kagata, and Pete mocks him relentlessly. "I'm just saying," Pete laughs. "She's a chick. In Japan. On Iron Chef. It's not called Iron Chefess."
"That… is so not even a word, oh my God."
"Yeah, but she's up against Chen, dude. She's not--like, there's just no way it's going to happen."
She wins.
"I totally saw that coming," Pete says, reluctantly toeing the pizza box (empty but for the last piece) at Patrick. "I just, you know, wanted to teach you a lesson about underestimating women in the workplace. Chicks can do everything we can do, man. Except piss standing up."
There really is something about the last slice of pizza. It's cool enough that the cheese is congealed, firm against Patrick's teeth; the sauce is still warm, it squishes up, and the puddle of grease in the cupped pepperoni oozes down onto his tongue and yeah, okay. Delicious.
Patrick chews pointedly, and grins once he's swallowed. "That's sexism. Girls can absolutely piss standing up. I've seen it on the internet."
"You can see anything on the Internet, it doesn't mean it's real."
"So, you're suggesting someone CGI'd a girl pissing while standing up?"
"Dude. Anything's possible."
"Except for girls being able to pee without sitting."
"Exactly. Hey, are you going to finish that?" Pete snatches Patrick's crust, and the last three bites of actual pizza from his hand, and crams it whole into his mouth. "Phrmks."
Yeah, definitely just like a dog chasing its tail. Maybe with a stupid hat on. "Uh huh. You're welcome."
Monday
He misses his parents for the first time when he comes downstairs in the morning, and instead of finding his mom in her ridiculous snowflake pajamas, he finds Pete curled into a chair in a hoodie and boxers, sulky, dark-eyed, clinging to a cup of coffee like it's a lifeline.
"This is inhumane," Pete complains. "Making you kids get up at this hour. I don't remember school starting this early. God, I swear. How do you even learn anything?"
"Usually, I find a hot breakfast wakes me up. Gets me all ready for the day." A hot breakfast that will probably not be made by Pete, since his feet are still tucked under his ass, and his shoulders haven't moved from their pathetic slump.
Oh, and because he says, "Ooh. If you make eggs, I like mine just a little runny."
What Patrick makes are Pop Tarts, strawberry for himself, and s'mores flavor for Pete, since he seems the type to need approximately eight metric tons of sugar just to get on with his day. He even puts them on paper towels, just so they won't have to do dishes. They sit together in companionable silence for a while, the quiet broken only by chewing and the sound of Pete's chair squeaking under his constant shifting, and just when Patrick is starting to get really homesick for his mom's tuneless humming and his dad's newspaper-related outbursts, Pete says: "Do you have a lunchbox or something? Because I can't make sandwiches or anything, but I can definitely slip a Twinkie and five bucks into it."
"Dude, no, I--" Patrick stops, reconsiders, and says, "Brown paper sack, actually. I think we're out of Twinkies though, so you should give me seven bucks instead, and I'll just buy my own."
Pete laughs, and it's ridiculous, too big, but he musses Patrick's hair on the way to the door, and when he comes back downstairs his hoodie is unzipped. Patrick spends a long moment (or ten, if he's going to be honest) staring at Pete's chest before he figures out that some of the glinting metal there is nipple ring, not just zipper. Which is. Um. It's nothing. Patrick doesn't care, and it makes total sense. Ink, piercings, skinny jeans and lurid shirts, it's, yeah, it makes sense. For Pete.
"Here," Pete says. He bumps Patrick's shoulder with his hip and grins, dorky, but with glinting eyes, like people just stare at his nipples all the time.
Which, hey, they probably do. Exhibit A: pierced nipples.
He presses a handful of moist, crumpled bills into Patrick's hand and tugs Patrick's ear. "I only had six. You can either cope, or call DCF on me. Just know that if they put you in foster care, your new mommy won't cook you breakfast like I do."
***
Coming home to Pete's heavily bumper-stickered Saturn is kind of weird; Patrick's used to his mom's Volvo in the drive, used to the lights being on, and something that smells like dinner in the air. What he gets instead is a dim hallway, loud hardcore music coming from the living room, and something that sounds suspiciously like an orangutan in labor, but that seems to somehow go along with the music, so. So Patrick's assuming this is Pete's interpretation of singing along.
He drops his backpack in the corner, trips over a clunky black boot in the middle of the hall carpet, and stumbles into a hopefully casual lean in the doorway of the living room. Pete's on the couch - standing on the couch - with his hair flying, playing enthusiastically shitty air guitar, with his mouth open and the monkey-delivering-triplets shrieks pouring out.
Patrick's course of action is clear. He fumbles his phone out of his pocket and takes a picture, another, and when Pete turns and poses, fist above his head, Patrick gives him a thumbs-up and snaps another shot.
"I'm sick of playing my own guitar," Pete shouts over the music. "I'm made to front, man, get your lazy ass onstage."
It's not his taste, the music, but Patrick clambers over the back of the sofa anyway, ducks through the strap of his invisible guitar, and leans into Pete, talking too-loud into the sudden silence between songs.
"Like this," he says, adjusting Pete's grip. "You'll get better sound."
Air rocking-out turns into air crooning; Pete throws one of Patrick's dad's Sinatra albums in and butchers the lyrics ("Hard on my pillow, just thinking of you") until Patrick's curled into the couch, laughing so hard his ribs ache. He's actually crying - the water catches on the bottom bevel of his glasses and fogs them up - and he has to eventually kick Pete's feet out from under him just to make him stop. It's still long minutes before he can breathe, and when he looks up, Pete's sprawled on the sofa with a hand pressed to his stomach, panting.
"Pizza?"
"Dude," Patrick laughs. "We just had pizza last night, come on."
Pete huffs and bites his lip. "Yeah, okay. Chinese?"
It takes an hour and a half to settle on an order that doesn't cover half the menu, too many minutes of which are spent convincing Pete that paying fifteen dollars for a dozen egg rolls is possibly the stupidest idea ever, and then what feels like eleven years of waiting for the delivery, the whole of which they spend camped out on the sofa.
"Do you have any homework?" Pete asks. He keeps turning the mute button on and off, turning the commercial breaks into little staccato bursts of sound. Annoying little staccato bursts of sound.
"No," Patrick answers. "But if you keep doing that, I'm sure I can dig up some extra credit, or something."
"Boring." Pete's finger slows on the mute button though, and Patrick gets whole sentences before the voices are silenced again. Not that, like, he really wants to listen to the amazing benefits of Tide laundry detergent, but still.
He shoves at Pete's leg with his foot. "Annoying."
"I'm bored."
"You're not going to be bored when I'm kicking your ass, which is what's going to happen if you don't lay the fuck off the remote."
Pete laughs, and it's so sincere as to be genuinely irritating. "Yeah, right."
The lady on the TV says, "Ask your healthcare provider about--" and then she's silent, though her lips are still moving, her hands gesturing excitedly.
Patrick shoves at Pete's leg again, harder. "Dude."
"Dude," Pete mimics, slapping Patrick's socked foot away from his thigh.
"Side effects may include-" says the lady on the TV, right before the next descent into silence.
Patrick scrambles onto his knees and tries to snatch the remote from Pete's hand, but Pete is fast and dodges, turns mute off for two words and then back on again. Patrick is going to kill him, just as soon as he can fling the remote across the room.
He makes another grab for it, and ends up falling face-first into Pete's thigh when the remote is snatched off to the side.
"Frisky," Pete crows, and only just wiggles away in time to evade the sloppily placed bite that Patrick aims at his leg. "Dude," he says, laughing. "Biting?"
Pete sounds amused. He looks amused, too, lying across the arm of the couch with the remote stretched over his head, out of Patrick's reach. Basically, being a giant asshole.
"You're an asshole," Patrick informs him. "And I'm getting that remote."
"Awesome." Pete grins; he waggles the remote above his head, and is generally infuriatingly amused by Patrick's annoyance.
Patrick isn't careful with his knee placement when he crawls forward, and he isn't particularly concerned with Pete's continued ability to breathe; it results in a lot of Pete wiggling under him, muttering sharp warnings to "Watch the knees, Christ" and "Fuck, Patrick, a little air here" while he switches the remote from hand to hand, pulls it between their bodies, and then back out in the air when Patrick shifts his weight to pursue it.
Eventually, Patrick settles for squashing Pete as flat into the sofa as he can get, and he has a forearm braced against Pete's shoulders, and Pete's hands are possibly pinned, and he's reaching for the remote when Pete bucks and flips them both off of the couch. Patrick lands on his back, with all too-much of laughing Pete on top of him and oh, now it's on.
Honestly, he doesn't know when they lose the remote, but he thinks it's somewhere between Pete on Patrick's back, smushing his face into the carpet, and when Patrick manages to get Pete in a headlock, but it's definitely long before Patrick winds up flat on his back with Pete straddling him, Pete's hands pressing Patrick's wrists into the rug, and an infuriatingly smug smile spread across his face.
At least Patrick can hear every word of this commercial for McDonald's. That's something, right?
"You are such an asshole."
Pete grinds Patrick's wrists down a little harder, grins a little wider. "But I'm not a bored asshole."
"Still an asshole."
"A victorious asshole."
Well, yeah. Pete's actually freakishly fucking strong, and none of Patrick's dirty tricks worked at all, not even his attempt to elbow Pete in the throat. He can't think of a way free. He bucks a little, but Pete just clamps his knees around Patrick's thighs tighter and holds on; tries to push up on his wrists, but Pete's grip is firm, almost-but-not-quite bruisingly tight; tries to roll to the side, but Pete just presses down and clucks his tongue.
"Early fortune cookie," Pete says. "Accept defeat gracefully."
"You're not a cookie." Patrick is only pouting a little.
Pete is grinning, more than a little. "Better. More delicious."
"Oh, well in that case." Patrick bites him; right on the forearm that's braced next to his head, just above the stretched tendons. It's stupid, but Patrick kind of expects Pete's skin to taste like something. Cinnamon, maybe, because of the color. It doesn't though; it just tastes like skin, a little sweaty. He presses his teeth into Pete's arm, not hard enough to break skin, just hard enough to rub across the surface.
Above him, Pete goes very still, and then gets very heavy. Patrick can feel breath on his neck, hot and wet against his jaw, and he braces himself for retaliatory biting, tightens his own teeth, but stubbornly refuses to stop. Pete's arm twists a little; Patrick's mouth slides off, down to Pete's wrist, and Pete's breath stops gusting against Patrick's neck, even though he hasn't moved further away or anything.
"Asshole," Patrick mumbles again, into Pete's wrist, for emphasis.
The doorbell rings before Pete can answer, spurring him into a quick backward scramble. He turns immediately, presents his back to Patrick, and Patrick watches while he wedges his fingers into his pocket for his wallet, digs through it and says, tightly, "Hungry asshole."
Tuesday
Patrick wakes up to a dry mouth and a clock that says 3:18, complete with the mocking red dot that indicates AM. He closes his eyes and tries, for at least three hours, to go back to sleep. When he opens them again, the numbers glow 3:20. He tries to argue that this is impossible, but the clock is resolute. His mouth, even drier.
Stumbling out of bed is familiar. The silent trip down the hallway is as well. Skipping the squeaky eighth, third, and bottom steps is second nature by now, and Patrick even steps over where his dad's briefcase is usually leaning against the wall, even though there's nothing there tonight.
All of that, moving toward the kitchen without making a sound, trying not to wake his parents, is normal. Commonplace. Routine, even.
What's not routine is the gay porn stretched in wide-screen across the TV. Patrick freezes just outside the arch that leads into the living room and rubs his eyes, hard enough to see spots, but when he pries them open, there are still three guys fucking each other. In high definition.
No, wait, Patrick's wrong. Two guys fucking each other. The third appears to be doing something with his tongue in the vicinity of someone else's ass. Which is--well, it's something Patrick isn't really going to think about, not right now. They seem to be enjoying it, but he can't really tell, because the TV is muted. Three men, mouths open, rutting silently.
It's another long minute before he notices Pete on the couch.
Pete, on the couch, with his eyes shut, making little muffled noises, not even as loud as the slick sound of skin on skin, his wrist moving steadily, pumping hard and fast.
With his eyes shut, though. Patrick doesn't understand; why have 52 inches of gay porn, mute it, and then shut your eyes? He blinks, shifts his gaze to the TV again, and when he looks back at Pete, he notices for the first time that Pete's pressed his mouth against his forearm. It's an awkward angle, the way he has his elbow twisted up, arm held out to the side, but he's mouthing the patch of skin just above his tendons, his wrist bent far back so they stand out, raised up like a highway.
It's not until Pete licks his own skin and jerks his hand a little faster, erratic, moans "fuck," that Patrick realizes where Pete's mouth is. It's--unless he's mistaken, it's the same spot where Patrick bit him, like, hours ago. Pete moans again, stretches his mouth wide over his skin. His eyes are still scrunched shut.
Patrick's ears are hot, and his stomach is upside down, burning; he can't quite breathe, but he edges to the side, chances five silent steps until he can fully see Pete, with his jeans open and shoved down a little, fisting his dick. He pumps, twists, thumbs the head, and arches into it, moans again. Patrick can only hear the undertones of it, the lower, scratchy parts, but he sees the way Pete's lips pull away from his teeth when he does it and. God. Pete just looks desperate, like he's trying to taste Patrick's mouth through his skin, through hours-old contact.
Out of the corner of his eye, Patrick can see pornstars coming on the screen - face shots and jerking off onto stomachs and into hair - but he can't take his eyes off the way Pete's chest is straining up, the frenzied stroke of his hand, the stream of single syllable words that all seem to end in "-ck," and then he freezes, hips off the cushion, and comes on his hand, pumping through it. From where he is, all Patrick sees is shiny. Shiny on Pete's knuckles and shiny dotting Pete's stomach where his shirt is pushed up, and shiny on the head of his cock when his hand slides down to the base.
It finally occurs to him that Pete's done, could have his eyes open, could be watching Patrick watch him, but when he jerks his eyes back to Pete's face it's still smooth, slack, closed eyes and open mouth, his head angled back. Patrick tries to remember every time he's ever jerked off, how long he left his eyes shut after. Or, fuck, just how long he's been standing here since Pete came.
The only answers he can come up with are "not long enough" and "too long," in that order. He takes a shallow breath and edges back to the stairs, creeps up, wincing at every scuff of his heel against the carpet, and goes directly to his room without another thought of water.
He spends ten minutes on his back, staring at the ceiling, thinking about anything that isn't Pete Wentz (puppies, rain clouds, root canals, hats, his grandma), before he breaks and shoves his hand into his pajama pants, schooling his mind to picture the girl who sits in front of him in Chemistry. She's blonde, with green eyes and a great rack, but he can't get dark hair and eyes out of his head, so he doesn't think it's working. He eyes a crack in the stucco and tells himself the jerk of his wrist and the flashes of white teeth against tan skin are unrelated, and then he's coming, everything going fuzzy and white around the edges, and he can't think anything but oh God.
***
Three hours later: daylight spreads reluctantly across the sky, the house smells strongly like coffee - a little scorched - and Patrick wakes to the sight of an empty nightstand.
At some point in time during the last three snooze cycles, he seems to have crammed his alarm clock under his mattress. It's not quite as bad as the time he managed to unplug it, shove it to the bottom of his laundry basket, and go back to sleep for twenty-six minutes, but it's close. The mattress bulges into his side, buzzing angrily, and Patrick's hand is still sticky. He has to leave for school in thirty-one minutes, if he wants to make it just in time to slide into his seat for first period.
Very reluctantly, he rolls out of bed and stumbles blearily into the kitchen.
Pete's already there, humming something harsh and toneless under his breath, in boxers and a button-up shirt. The coffee in his hand is so hot that Patrick can see steam rising from it; the mug is so full that Pete has to lean over the sink to drink it. It runs down the curved ceramic side in weak, grim rivulets, drips onto the metal sink with dull little pings.
"Nnnnrgh," Patrick says. He makes grabby hands at nothing in particular, but Pete hands over his mug anyway. It's hot against Patrick's palms, still too hot, and the first sip burns his tongue, but blowing on the surface gives him something to do other than stare at Pete's hands, at the scars on his knees.
"I have to work today." Pete pours himself another gallon of coffee, into Patrick's mom's giant, kitten-head mug. He levels his gaze at Patrick, clear eyes and calm features. Patrick's left eyelid twitches. "I'll be back around seven o'clock, and we can get food then, or if you want me to pick something up on the way, just call me."
This should be weirder. Of course, Pete doesn't know that Patrick saw him, and he doesn't know that Patrick came so hard from thinking of him that he fell asleep with his hand still curled around his come, that he had to spit on his hand and scrub his palm against his t-shirt at some hour that started with a four and ended with a blur. If Pete knew, he might not be rubbing at his yawning mouth with the heel of his hand. He might be wearing pants, instead of threadbare boxers, so old that the slit in the front folds inward a little. He might not be smirking at Patrick, then ruffling his hair and saying, "I think I'll have to tuck you in earlier tonight, Patrick."
Patrick presses his fingers to his twitching eye and smiles weakly. "I'll just nap," he mumbles, scratchy from not enough sleep. "Should be easy, without your 'singing' wrecking my ears." He does air quotes with his pinkies, but Pete laughs at him and swallows an obscene quantity of hot, overcooked coffee without so much as a grimace.
"I'll call you," he says, his fingers on Patrick's wrist. "Sing to your voicemail. In case you need a lullaby."
***
There's no Pete when Patrick gets home, of course. He has the house for three hours, footloose and Pete-free, and he has a fuckton of homework.
He takes a nap. He doesn't mean to, even spreads his Biology book in front of him on the bed, lies on his stomach, and bites the cap off of his highlighter. Still, he only has two sentences encased in long, obnoxious yellow blocks when he passes out with his nose pressed into the seam of his book.
When he wakes up, his bedroom door is open. He's pretty sure he left it closed, but. There's music coming from downstairs, along with the smell of something that strongly suggests dinner. It's dark in his room, even with the curtains open, and the numbers on the clock are round and red: 8:08.
Patrick doesn't realize how sour his mouth is until he gets to the kitchen and opens it to say, "Hey."
"Hey." Pete is already changed; he's wearing pajama pants with dogs on them and a t-shirt for some band Patrick's never heard of, with signatures radiating out from the cheesy, overdrawn graphic. "My mom quizzed me on how well I'm feeding you. I don't think she approved, but now we have lasagna."
Patrick yawns. "Awesome."
Pete tsks, but grins. Bright smile, dark skin. Patrick keeps seeing it, every time he closes his eyes. "You're not going to be able to sleep tonight. Which is good for me, because there's a Monty Python marathon on until, like, two. And if I tell my mom I'm not letting you sleep, maybe she'll get you out of school for a day or something, and then we can go mini-golfing. Or egg people's houses."
"I can try listening to you talk about literature again," Patrick suggests. "I'll be asleep in no time." He scrubs the sleep from his eyes and smiles widely at Pete, insincere. "Tell me again of the genius of e.e. cummings. For hours."
"I can't believe I stopped and got you garlic bread," Pete says, shaking his head sadly. "So unappreciative."
The kitchen actually smells really good, like spices and cheese and heat. Pete's set out a bag of lettuce on the counter - near but not actually in a bowl - along with a handful of cherry tomatoes and a bottle or two of salad dressing. Pete's idea of vegetables, Patrick assumes.
"Fine," he says, poking Pete in the ribs on the way past. "I'll make the salad. And later, dessert. But if you so much as mention writing, you're going to be wearing whatever I have in my hands at the moment."
Patrick tells himself he imagines Pete's momentary hesitation and the slight hitch in his breath when he nods and says, "Deal."
Their salad is kind of pathetic. Pete left the lettuce on the counter too long, so it's limp and a little warm; his technique of dumping extra dressing on doesn't really help. The tomatoes are good though, and if Patrick shakes the dressing off of his lettuce for fifteen or so seconds, it's almost edible. The lasagna is much better. It's hot and perfect, and it oozes sauce all over Patrick's plate, leaving his garlic bread soggy and red. "I love your mom," he says happily, licking garlic butter from his fingers. "Seriously. Can I trade you for her?"
"No," Pete says. When Patrick looks up, Pete's watching his mouth. Pete's laden fork is in the air, dripping sauce. Patrick lifts an eyebrow; Pete coughs and spears more lasagna, grinning. "She'd try to put you in the bathtub. With little boats or something. You don't want that."
"Well," Patrick muses, drawing it out. He bites his fingertip, pretending to consider, and flicks his tongue against the pad, grinning at Pete. "I might want that." The "with your mom" goes unspoken.
Pete's eyes get a lot darker. Patrick assumes this has something to do with the way his pupils widen, but he could be wrong. "You don't need my mom for that," he says. He's not smiling. "I have bath toys. Just say the word."
Patrick is pretty sure they're not having the same conversation. "You're ruining my Your Mom joke," he complains. Well, pretends to complain. "Seriously. Uncool."
"Sorry." The flash of white teeth is back; Patrick's jaw relaxes a little, his fingers loosen on his fork. He really, really wishes he had some idea of what was going on here. "I'm terribly offended by your obvious desire to nail my mom," Pete deadpans. "Morally outraged. Righteous indignation in massive, immeasurable quantities. Are you going to finish that?" He has the last half of the last piece of garlic bread in his mouth before Patrick can answer emphatically in the affirmative, grinning around it. "Phrmks."
Eye-rolling turns into loading the dishwasher, which turns into both of them staring longingly at ice cream they don't have the appetite for, which turns into agreeing to make stomach-room with intense television watching, which turns into Life Of Brian on cable at one in the morning. Patrick is half asleep, with his head on Pete's thigh, and Pete's hand in his hair, just barely sifting the strands over his knuckles. Patrick's fingers are on Pete's knee, they've settled in and curled over Pete's leg entirely of their own accord; his skin feels so hot, he's pretty sure his palm is sweating, and he's damn certain he must be burning a handprint through Pete's pajama pants, but Pete isn't complaining, so he just leaves it there.
Pete's hand stills. Patrick feels him shifting, feels the nubby fabric of Pete's pajamas scrape under his cheek, and then Pete's breath is close, fanning across Patrick's lashes.
"Patrick?" Pete whispers.
Patrick doesn't answer, just tries to keep his breathing steady. It's hard.
It's downright fucking impossible when Pete presses his fingers to Patrick's lips. Light, yeah, just a ghost of a touch, but his mouth opens on its own, and then Pete runs his fingertip over the new skin. Fuck breathing steadily. Patrick can't breathe at all, and Pete is pretty much frozen above him, motionless but for the slow back and forth skim of his finger.
He doesn't--Patrick doesn't know what to do. He knows what he wants to do, and that's lick Pete's finger, tighten his grip on Pete's leg, but he doesn't really know why, and that's the uncomfortable part. He shifts instead, draws his knees up toward his chest, and exhales in a huff. Pete jerks his fingers away and settles his hand on Patrick's shoulder, shaking gently.
"Patrick," he says again, not a question this time. "Wake up. Bedtime."
Pretending to wake up isn't all that hard; the slightly confused blinking comes naturally.
Wednesday
Too much of not enough sleep is not helping Patrick be any more pleasant in the morning, and it certainly doesn't help that Pete's turned the world upside down by being fully awake, fully dressed, and waiting for Patrick in the kitchen, with cereal and milk set out on the counter. He's folded a napkin, placed a carefully centered spoon on it, and Patrick is about half a second from asking where his bud vase is when Pete cups his hands around Patrick's hips and pulls him forward.
Patrick needs that half second now, not for sarcasm, but to figure out what the hell is going on, and then Pete tips his chin up and kisses him. Pete's mouth tastes like coffee - like Pete's first cup of coffee, black, no hint of the hazelnut creamer he adds to his second and third - and toothpaste. His hands flex on Patrick's hips, fingertips pressing just this side of too hard, and Patrick can actually feel the tension in his wrists. Pete's arms are kind of shaking, like he's trying to pull something heavy toward himself, but his palms are cupped outward, heels of his hands braced against Patrick's hipbones, arms locked so even if Patrick tried to move forward, he wouldn't be able to.
It's maybe surprise that makes Patrick open his mouth. Maybe. But that's definitely not what makes him kiss Pete back, what makes him put hesitant hands on Pete's arms, mapping out the ridges on the roof of Pete's mouth with the tip of his tongue.
And then it's over. Too fast; Pete's still staring at his mouth when they break apart, his cheeks a little flushed, his breathing more than a little uneven.
"Okay," he says, and he looks lost, like he had something he wanted to say, but forgot it somewhere along the way. He clears his throat, slides away from Patrick, and runs a shaky hand through his hair. "I'm going to. I'm going to go now. If that was totally out of line, or if you feel like I'm unsafe or something, then you call your mom, or you call my mom, or you tell someone at school, or, God, please don't, but you could call the cops."
Patrick blinks. "What?"
"If you don't want to. If I'm taking advantage of you, or if you feel pressured, you're supposed to tell someone. I don't know how you'd tell someone if I kissed you after school. You'd be stuck here with me all night. You might feel, like, endangered." Pete shoves his hands in his front pockets and rocks back on his heels, smiling weakly. "I don't want you to feel endangered. I want to kiss you, but I want you to want to kiss me. So I'm going to go now, that way you can report me to whatever authorities you want, if you want to, and I won't feel like opportunistic scum."
"Um." Patrick's pretty sure he hasn't moved since Pete licked his lips apart. His feet are still rooted to the ground, heavy, like he could actually sway on them and stay upright. He's light-years from being able to make his brain work. "You're not scum?"
Pete laughs, high and tight and nervous, and he takes a couple of quick, jogging steps forward and presses his lips to Patrick's again. Just a brush, light like his fingers were last night. "I'm going to go. But I'll be here. When you get home, I'll be here. Unless you have me arrested, I'll be here."
Patrick stares at the empty doorway long after he hears Pete's car start, back out of the drive, and fade off down the street.
***
He doesn't tell anyone. He wants to. He wants to tell everyone, because Pete Wentz kissed him in his kitchen this morning, and Patrick spent the subsequent half hour arguing with himself about whether or not it was possible to get away without brushing his teeth all day, just to keep the taste of Pete in his mouth. But he doesn't tell anyone. He talks to his mom during lunch, tells her everything is fine, and he waves at the guidance counselor in the hallway, and on the way home he passes three police cars, but he doesn't stop.
Instead, he pulls into his driveway and sits in his parked car for five minutes, staring up at his house like it might bite him. He twists his keys in his hand until they're slick with sweat and his palms are red from the serrated edges, then takes a deep breath and pushes the door open.
Pete is in the living room, sitting on the couch, with his feet pressed flat to the floor and his hands cupped over his knees. Patrick lines up their toes, clenching his fingers around his keys.
"You didn't call the cops," Pete says.
"I didn't."
"Or my mom."
"Or your mom."
Pete's hand twitches; he lifts it and strokes his fingers over the back of Patrick's wrist and says, softly, "I'm not scum?"
"You're not scum."
He's getting stupidly used to Pete's smile, and ridiculously used to returning it. "I can kiss you again?" Pete asks, folding his hand around Patrick's wrist, tugging gently. "Please?"
There's just enough time to send a fervent thank you to his nerves for making him chicken out and detour to Jamba Juice on his way home, and then Pete is licking into Patrick's mango-flavored mouth and humming. He presses Patrick down into the sofa and crawls up, settles down against him and then shifts forward, fidgets, fits them together to his satisfaction and smiles. Pete's lips curve up, his teeth press against Patrick's lips, and his eyes are all crinkly and close, and oh man.
"Patrick," Pete says, but not like he wants a response, more like he's turning the word over, tasting it. He puts his hands on Patrick's cheeks, his neck, his shoulders, his sides, and smiles again. "Patrick Patrick Patrick."
Patrick's heart twirls in a slow, happy little circle. He licks Pete's bottom lip, presses a kiss to Pete's chin, and tries to figure out what to do with his hands while Pete kisses him again. He kisses like graffiti, tracing possession against the back of Patrick's teeth, the top of his mouth, with every slick twist of his tongue. Patrick hasn't really done this before. Not for hours, anyway, not with his head propped up on his mom's favorite throw pillow and someone's (Pete's) weight settled on him like a blanket, and someone's (Pete's) mouth always there like air, only warmer, better, so that Patrick forgets to breathe, resents the need to.
They kiss until Patrick can't taste even the traces of his smoothie anymore, until the room is dark and the back of his neck is sweaty and the creases from his bunched-up shirt pressing into his skin are so deep he can feel them sting every time he shifts. His mouth is hot and dry, and he finds himself actually trying to lick saliva out of Pete's mouth and into his own. Pete makes a happy sound, content, and presses a kiss to the corner of Patrick's mouth, to his jaw, to the skin just beneath his ear.
"M'hot," Patrick mumbles.
Pete laughs, right into Patrick's skin, presses the hum of it against his neck, and it's nice, yeah, but his breath is at least a hundred degrees and it's. Not exactly comfortable.
Pete says, "I know."
"No," Patrick says. He swipes his fingers under his jaw, expecting sweat, and grimaces at how right he is. "Like, it's a hundred- three hundred degrees. I'm hot."
"Aw." Pete peels off of him, and while the air that rushes into his absence can't exactly be described as cold, it's so much cooler than Pete's weight that Patrick almost makes an undignified noise. Almost. Instead he tilts his head to his shoulder and winces when his spine cracks in half, liquefies, and leaks from his ear.
Ow. Ow, ow, ow. "Ow." Patrick is pretty sure he's some kind of idiot. He has Pete on him, sitting back on his haunches with his knees on either side of Patrick's hips, grinning down at him with a swollen mouth and flushed face, and he's complaining about a crick in his neck. Idiot.
"Ow?" Pete asks. He scoots back, settles his weight over Patrick's thighs, and tugs Patrick's wrist. "I've only had my Patrick for one day and I'm already breaking him?"
It is completely not possible to stay normal-colored when Pete Wentz is claiming you. Patrick is pretty sure of this, so he forgives himself the blushing and sits up, cooperating when Pete nudges his head onto his shoulder.
"M'fine," he says, mumbled into Pete's sweat-damp shirt.
Pete presses his fingers to either side of the bony bulge at the base of Patrick's neck and squeezes, rubbing his fingers in small, hard circles. It feels, like, really fucking good. "I'll take better care of you," Pete whispers, words pressed like kisses to Patrick's temple. "I'll even feed you real food. I have ingredients."
"Ingredients are good," Patrick agrees. He drops his chin to his chest, makes his neck longer, stretches the muscles tight so Pete can press the tension out of them. "But do you have a recipe?"
He does. The recipe is for chicken and broccoli stir-fry, with a sauce made of bouillon and corn starch that takes them six tries to get right. When they do, though, it's actually really good.
"This is actually really good," Patrick says. He wipes a spilled drop of sauce off of the coffee table with his fingers, licks his thumb, and uses the spit to rub the sheen out of the wood.
"Of course it's good," Pete says. He's maybe going for indignant, but his mouth is full, and he has to yank his knuckles to his lips to catch the grains of rice that he'd been eating. "I'm a whiz in the kitchen."
"You do know whiz isn't actually another word for disaster, right?"
Pete's middle finger is pretty long. It's also a little bit crooked, and the knuckle is knobby like he's spent too much time punching things that don't punch back. Like, say, walls. Patrick knows these things because he can see Pete's middle finger pretty clearly; it's right in front of his face, Pete grinning behind it.
"Fuck you," Pete says cheerfully. "I've yet to see those eggs you promised me, and I'd hardly call Pop Tarts fine dining."
After dishes - with more stolen kisses than suds - and another hour of TV - with more stolen kisses than commercials - Patrick finds himself pressed against his bedroom door; Pete's hand is low on his back, fingers splayed, possessive, and the other is braced against the door by Patrick's head. The hand on his skin is so hot he feels branded, and he spends several idle, breathless seconds wondering if the other is as hot, if Pete's handprint will be burned into his door, so he can line his own fingers up to it long after Pete's gone and remember.
He goes to bed alone, grinning, with his hands clenched into fists to keep from pumping them above his head.
Thursday
Morning is an empty kitchen, quiet but for the auto-drip of coffee. It's been days since Patrick missed his mom, but it hits him now, sharp and furious. He throws away the wilted, drooping flowers she left on the counter, wets a sponge and wipes off the table, just because his mom has always just cleaned it when he comes down for breakfast, and then stares at the contents of the fridge and tries to visualize breakfast.
He doesn't hear Pete come downstairs, is maybe too buried in the hum of the fridge and the faint, staticky flicker of the light, and is almost surprised when Pete's hand presses to his stomach and he feels lips brushing the back of his neck.
"Overslept," Pete explains, yawning the word into Patrick's shoulder. "Sorry. G'morning."
Having Pete there makes it a little easier, but he still misses his mom. "S'okay," he says, and leans back into Pete's weight, into the hand tucked around him, into the arm draped over his shoulder. The fridge door is still open, spilling cold air out onto them, Patrick's fingers tapping on the edge of it, against the cool, pebbled metal. "The eggs are raw."
"They are." Warm lips behind his ear, cold air on his knees, Pete, solid and pressed close behind him. Patrick closes his eyes and sighs a little, shortly, heavily.
"Hey," Pete says, turning his dangling hand inward and covering Patrick's heart with it. "You want to go to breakfast? I'll buy you some unraw eggs."
The unraw eggs won't be on Patrick's mom's favorite plates, though, and he's not sure he can bring himself to ask a restaurant for orange juice with grenadine in it, and above all that, he wants to keep Pete to himself for as long as he can. He knows that may not be long at all, which is even more reason to glue his feet to the floor and stay here, where he can turn and kiss Pete.
"I owe you eggs," he says, mumbling it into Pete's lips. "A little runny, right?"
"I like eggs."
Patrick's back hits the hard edge of the counter. He shifts forward, but hits it again when Pete bumps into him, and that time is probably going to bruise, but he has his hands in Pete's hair and he doesn't care much. This is probably a dream anyway. You don't bruise in dreams.
The eggs are half runny and half burnt by the time they get cooked, but Patrick's orange juice has just the right amount of cherry flavoring in it, and the longest Pete goes without touching him is nine seconds. He counts.
Pete eats with his left hand so he can curl his right around Patrick's, and he narrates the comics between - and sometimes during - bites, complete with character voices.
"That," Patrick says, tucking his ankle under Pete's beneath the table, "is not how I imagine Cathy sounds."
"You imagined wrong. I met her once."
"Yeah? In person? How was it?"
"Good." Pete grins, too many teeth, too much happy for this early in the morning. "She's shorter in real life, though. Smokes like a chimney."
***
Patrick's afternoons used to involve homework and video games. He distinctly remembers last Thursday: Trig, the French Revolution, jerking off, two hours of Halo. Today, however, he's under Pete (who is possibly the hottest guy - fuck it, hottest person - in the history of existence), about two seconds from coming in his pants, with Pete's breath in his ear, whispering "C'mon, Patrick. C'mon."
He comes so hard he's pretty sure he'll still be feeling it tomorrow, shuddering, the hands he's fisted in Pete's shirt shaking, clenched so tight he can't really feel his knuckles anymore. "God."
Patrick is not ashamed- not of the sticky, slowly cooling mess in his pants, not of the noises he was just making, and not of the bruises that are sure to pop up on Pete's arms by this time tomorrow. There is, he feels, only so much Pete Wentz a person can be subjected to before they just do it, just come all over themselves, and at least Patrick didn't do it spontaneously, in everyday conversation, after Pete commented on the weather or something equally innocuous.
Pete grins and kisses him, sloppily, somewhere between the corner of his mouth and his chin, and that's nice, but he's also slowing, rocking his hips down less insistently. Patrick can still feel Pete, pressed hard against his hip, so he doesn't understand why Pete's stopping. Unless, oh, maybe he can't. Get off this way, that is, because he's older and obviously not a virgin and he needs more. Patrick wiggles backward a few inches, shoves his hands between them, and manages to pop the button on Pete's jeans with what he thinks is an impressive amount of finesse, thanks.
"Can I?" he asks, fumbling to pry the zipper tab up with his fingernail. "I want to."
He can feel how hard Pete is, heat against his knuckles, sticky-wet and throbbing.
"Oh God, yes," Pete says. Patrick fumbles the zipper down, and Pete says, "But no."
"No?" No doesn't process. Patrick is already reaching for the waist of Pete's jeans, so his hand is right there when Pete shoves his hips forward. "No?"
Pete's forehead falls to Patrick's shoulder; it's actually kind of hard, more than kind of hurts, and he almost misses it when Pete mumbles, "I'm going to hell."
It's probably unkind to roll his eyes at the ceiling, but Pete can't see him, so. Victimless crime. Patrick pushes Pete's jeans down, carefully peels the wet fabric of Pete's boxers away from his cock, and fists it with more confidence then he feels. "Is this okay?"
He takes the vaguely choked noise as agreement, and strokes once, twice, a third and fourth time; he rests his free hand on Pete's side and kisses his ear and says, "I've never done this before."
"Jail," Pete moans. "I'm going to jail."
Patrick would roll his eyes again, but he's trying to duck his chin down far enough that he can see, because all he has right now is the feel of it; Pete's skin, hot and slick from precome, wetter every time Patrick twists his hand up to the head and slicks it down again, fast. Pete's flushed, overheated, biting nonsense words into Patrick's shoulder.
"Is this?" Patrick asks, shifting, trying to get his leg out of the way. "Is it okay?"
"Oh, God." Pete's hips push against Patrick's hand. His dick slides through Patrick's curled-up fingers, faster than Patrick can manage on his own, from this angle, and Pete makes a noise like maybe he's dying. "Tighter," he says urgently. "Please. I need-"
Friction. Yeah. Patrick squeezes his hand tighter and twists it slowly while Pete pushes his weight back up through his arms and shoves his hips forward. He kisses Patrick, hard, too fast for tongue, and pulls back, but it's okay. Patrick wants to watch it, wants to see Pete break apart. And anyway, with Pete up like this, he can look down their bodies and watch Pete fuck his hand, watch his fingers get slippery with precome, watch Pete's cock slide through, dark against Patrick's too-pale skin.
He looks up in time to see Pete watching him watch, his lip bitten, gaze narrow. They lock eyes, and Pete gasps, "Patrick," and then jerks his hips forward again, again, erratic, desperate, and then he comes over Patrick's hand, his t-shirt, with shaking elbows and loudly whispered profanity.
It's a good five minutes before Pete lifts his head again, presses a kiss to the curve of Patrick's neck, and says, "Seriously. Jail."
Patrick pats Pete on the back with as much sympathy as he can muster up. Loving, friendly, Mother Teresa-like sympathy. "I'm sure you'll be very popular."
***
He gets another goodnight kiss at his door; it's not like his dad is just inside with his finger on the porch light and his eyes on the second hand or anything, but Pete seems to have some thing about Patrick's boundaries. It's just. Pete's Patrick Boundaries aren't anywhere near Patrick's actual boundaries, and it drives him a little insane to crawl into his empty bed and get used to all of his skin being the same temperature, no hot, hand-sized brand anywhere on him.
Basically, it sucks.
Patrick kicks at his blankets petulantly, but all that earns him is a twisted-up sheet and a rush of cold air under his covers. Also, the sneaking suspicion that this is exactly why Pete leaves him at his door at night: he's sixteen. And kind of an idiot.
There are three bulges of spackle on the ceiling that look like bunnies, one that looks like a T-Rex, and one that looks like either a teapot or an octopus; Patrick can't decide which, but he names it Fergutrand and stares at it for a while anyway. For how long, he's not sure, but he's still staring when Pete knocks on his door.
"Um." Maybe Pete didn't knock on his door. Maybe he's asleep. Patrick blinks up at Fergutrand and goes to pinch himself awake, but decides to fuck off that part and just says, "Come in."
Pete's paler in the moonlight, the whites of his eyes lit up by the faint light, the small, careful slice of his smile. "I'm an idiot," he says, shutting the door behind him with a quiet click. "I can't sleep, because I'm a huge idiot."
Patrick nods. He's not sure if Pete can see him, but it feels like an occasion for nodding. "I say that all the time," he agrees. "Not the thing about sleeping, but the part about you being an idiot."
"I can see why I like you so much." Pete's still talking quietly, like there are people to wake up, like it's not just the two of them rattling around in an empty house. "You kiss like a god, you can't cook for shit, and you're oh-so-good for my ego."
His knees hit the edge of the bed and jitter, shaking the mattress. Patrick wants to put a quarter in him, see if he'll really get the thing moving, but he gets the feeling Pete has a whole bunch of promises ready that add up to "no" on that one.
He tangles his hand up in Pete's instead, yawns into the back of his wrist, and says, "What's up, Pete?
"I want to sleep with you. Just sleep, I promise, but. I miss you like you're more than two rooms away."
Patrick's getting a little sick of Pete promising away the things he wants, but he can have this much, apparently, so he wiggles closer to the wall and shoves the covers down. "Yeah. Or wait, guest room? The bed's bigger."
"Here," Pete says. He's hot like an electric blanket, wrapping his warmth around Patrick, his toes tucked under Patrick's calves, his hands curving over Patrick's shoulder, his elbow, his ribs. "The bed's smaller."
CONTINUED HERE