Finder's Keepers 1/3 (Joe/Pete, NC-17)
Title: Finder's Keepers
Pairings: Pete/Joe (Jon/Tom, mentions of Pete/Ashlee, Jon/Cassie)
Rating/Warnings: NC-17
Word Count: ~31,000
Summary: A prequel to Beyond the Sea. In which student!Joe meets professor!Pete, and inappropriate things happen. Also, penguins.
Author's Notes: Big thanks to jacqui_hw for listening to me whine about this and helping me get through it, and to ficjournal for the beta.
Pete didn’t drink much anymore, but when he did, he was willing to make the drive to his favorite dive bar in Schiller Park. No one from DePaul ever ventured out that far, which meant, unlike back in the city, there was no chance of running into any students or fellow faculty members. And that was just fine with Pete.
He unwound the scarf from his neck as he took a seat at the bar, motioning for a scotch. It wasn’t his favorite, but it would warm him up from the cold Chicago winter that had just started to make its presence known.
He was halfway through the drink before Jon showed up, cheeks red from the cold and shaking out of his coat as he hopped down beside Pete. “One day,” he muttered, eyeing Pete darkly, “we are going to switch things up and go somewhere closer.”
Pete laughed quietly. “I like it here. It’s the bar where no one knows my name. The anti-Cheers.”
Jon nodded, looking entirely unconvinced. “But if you keep coming back, they will eventually figure it out.”
“I’ll lie.”
Jon shook his head, but he was smiling as he clinked his beer bottle to Pete’s half-empty glass. They didn’t get to see each other nearly as much as Pete would have liked. With a real job now, no matter how hard he fought it, it seemed like Pete’s partying days were slowly dwindling, being replaced by long nights of grading really boring essays, or trying to make his way through even more boring faculty dinners. Drinks with Jon felt like the light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel.
“So,” Jon said, breaking Pete’s thoughts, “you coming over for poker night on Friday? Tom will be there.”
“You’d think Cassie would love you enough to make you stop losing your money.” Under the counter, Jon’s foot nudged his. “But I’ll take easy cash.”
Behind them, a band started up. It was the other reason Pete liked this place - occasionally, they had live music. It was never very good, but sometimes the thrum of a real bass line was so much better than a radio blaring overhead. He and Jon turned to watch, wincing at the way the singer began butchering everything he sang, from Springsteen to Green Day, and the way the drummer couldn’t even keep a steady beat.
“Jesus,” Jon whispered. “Even we were better than that.”
Pete let out a surprised laugh, tipping his head forward. “Oh god. We did suck.”
“Not as much as them.”
“The guitarist isn’t bad,” Pete said, tracking his movements on stage. His fingers moved steadily over the guitar with well-practiced ease, and of the four boys, he had the most stage presence. “He’s kind of good.”
“How can you tell?” Jon asked, turning back around and motioning for another round of beers. “All I hear is noise. Make it stop.”
Pete laughed and downed the last of his scotch. It burned going down, but it was a dull, pleasant ache. “He’s kind of cute, too,” he murmured, grinning into his glass as Jon groaned.
Jon pressed a cold bottle into Pete’s palm, shaking his head. “He looks younger than your students.”
“So? That means he’s not one.”
“You are such a pervert,” Jon laughed. “How’s work?”
This time, it was Pete’s turn to groan. “The world of academia is definitely not what I expected.”
“I could have told you that,” Jon countered, and politely declined to mention that he had told Pete, many times. “Shouldn’t you be out saving beached dolphins or something? What about that research thing next fall you were telling me about?”
“I don’t know if the university will let me go,” Pete admitted, shrugging. “Do I really want to go to Antarctica, anyway? It’ll be fucking cold.”
“It’s cold here.”
“Somehow,” Pete said slowly, “I don’t think it’s the same.”
Then Jon launched into a story about his latest gallery show, and Pete was content to listen and nod encouragingly every once in awhile, nursing his new beer. They only got through one more before Jon gave him a friendly hug and said, “I gotta get back, or Cassie really won’t let me play poker on Friday.”
“Go, go,” Pete said, waving him off. “I’m going to stick around for a little bit.”
Jon rolled his eyes. “Don’t do anything stupid?”
“Me?” Pete asked, flashing him a wide smile. “Never!”
Jon just laughed as he left, and Pete’s attention was re-directed back toward the band on stage. It looked like they were winding down, most of their energy gone, except for that guitarist. He did a high-kick off one of the speakers, and Pete was actually impressed.
Despite whatever Jon thought, he had no real intention of stalking the guy, but when he came up to the bar after they’d loaded up their equipment, it was too hard not to say anything.
“You’re the only one who can actually play,” he said, and startlingly blue eyes turned to stare at him. He looked nervous as he rubbed the back of his neck and laughed, though it sounded forced.
“Yeah, well.”
Pete wasn’t giving up quite so easily. “You should get a different band,” he said, and when he caught the bartender’s attention, motioned for another round. “A good band.”
The kid still looked a bit confused, and he definitely wasn’t reaching for the beer in front of him. Maybe Pete had read him all wrong.
“That’s easier said than done,” he said, lightly, and this time Pete laughed, flashing him his least-creepy smile.
“Don’t I know it. But sit down. It’s on me.”
He still didn’t figure the kid was 21, and if the way the bartender was eyeing him warily was any indication, Pete was right.
“I’m Pete,” he said after taking a sip. “But more importantly, who are you?”
“Joe,” the guy said, quickly holding out a hand for Pete to shake, and the formality of the action was endearing, in some misguided way. Did Joe even realize Pete was trying to flirt? He stepped up his game.
“You’re kind of cute,” he said, and maybe that wasn’t quite what he’d meant to say, but Joe’s cheeked reddened in a way that Pete could appreciate, a slow blush rising to his neck and making Pete want to see just how far that blush spread.
Joe pulled his hand back, seeming flustered. “That’s um, okay.” He took a hasty sip of his beer, before adding, “A lot of people would disagree.”
Joe still didn’t seem to quite get it, so this time, Pete leaned in close, letting his breath brush against Joe’s ear. “A lot of people aren’t me.”
“Well, no,” Joe was saying, tilting his head to the side, away from Pete. “If a lot of people were you, you’d either have like, a problem with your identity being stolen or you’d be a clone.”
Pete pulled back to look at him properly, trying not to smile. “And neither of those sound very good,” Joe continued, obviously lost in thought. “Maybe the clone thing. Then you could build up an army and defeat the galactic empire.”
That had certainly not been what Pete was expecting. And now Joe was looking embarrassed, downing the rest of his beer as if it were oxygen, but Pete didn’t even try to hide his smile this time.
“I don’t know if I’d make a good galactic army. If it was just me.”
Joe ducked his head and murmured, “There’s force in numbers.”
All of the confidence he’d had on the stage that Pete had found so attractive didn’t seem present in the boy sitting next to him, but Pete motioned for two more beers anyway and considered that maybe he liked this guy more. It felt more real, in a way a conversation with a stranger hadn’t in awhile.
“So which is your favorite movie?” Pete asked, leaning closer.
“Oh,” Joe said, his eyes getting wide. This at least seemed to be a conversation he could get behind. “Empire Strikes Back, but they’re all good. The originals, anyway.”
Pete laughed quietly, and found himself wanting to reach out and touch Joe’s hand, but he held back for now. “Yeah? I couldn’t agree more.”
When Joe smiled properly at him for the first time, finally focusing all of his attention on him, Pete felt his stomach doing flip-flops. That, he thought curiously, was new.
---
It hadn’t taken much to get Joe drunk, not that Pete really thought he had to work that hard to get him to come home with him. It was just, the more Joe drank, the more relaxed he seemed to get - and if the way he shoved his tongue down Pete’s throat on the taxi ride over was any indication, Joe was very relaxed now.
He sort of regretted letting him have that last beer, though, especially when Joe tumbled into his apartment, barely able to keep his balance. Pete laughed and grabbed for him, backing him up against his wall instead, which seemed like a much better idea.
“Hey,” Joe murmured when Pete pressed against him, and he couldn’t help smiling and mouthing the word back before kissing him, his fingers already making quick work of the buttons on his own dress shirt. He really wished he’d thought to change before the bar.
Joe’s shirt was easier, once he got Joe to raise his arms and stop trying to reach out to touch Pete’s chest. He intertwined their fingers to stop their movement, raising them up over Joe’s head. “Stay,” he said, tightening his grip, and for once Joe did. Once the shirt was off, though, he was back trying to touch Pete everywhere he could reach, his breathing growing ragged against Pete’s cheek.
“So sexy,” Pete whispered against his ear, and tugged at it with his teeth before dropping to his knees and running a hand up his thigh. Above him, Joe made a soft noise and balled his hands into fists as Pete began to drag the zipper of his jeans down. He slid them down, over smooth thighs, and was almost impressed when Joe managed to step out of them without prompting from Pete.
“Better,” he said, and wrapped his fingers around the base of Joe’s already half-hard cock.
He heard more than saw as Joe’s hands scratched at his wall, searching for something to hold on to, but white plaster walls didn’t offer much.
It was looking like this was going to be over embarrassingly quick, but they had all night. Pete tightened his grip as he leaned forward, dragging his tongue down the length of his cock and was rewarded with a low moan and Joe’s hand reaching to run through Pete’s hair. Usually he hated when guys tried to guide his movements, but something about this felt more off than usual - and a moment later, that same hand was pushing him away, roughly.
Pete toppled back onto his ass, staring after Joe’s retreating form as he raced toward the kitchen. “What the fuck?” Pete yelled after him, but a moment later he got an eyeful of more than just Joe’s ass he threw up the night’s alcohol in Pete’s sink.
“Fuck,” Pete sighed, and dragged himself to his feet.
“Nnngh,” Joe groaned, leaning heavily against the sink. Pete moved to stand behind him - bracing him and keeping him from sliding to the floor. “I’m sorry, I’ll… I’ll clean it up, I’ll…”
“Shut up, will you? I’m not mad,” Pete said, pressing a hand to his forehead. They really should have skipped that last drink, but he didn’t think he was too far past his limit. “You think you’re going to be sick again?”
Joe paled and nodded, and this time when he threw up, it was on Pete’s brand new Vans.
“Fuck,” he said again.
---
Jon was near hysterics, leaning against Tom for support. “I told you! No way that kid was 21! Hell, was he even 18? You deserved what you got.”
“You did not tell me he was going to throw up on me,” Pete countered, and found some joy in Tom elbowing Jon off him so he could fold. “And keep on laughing, I’m taking all your money.” He pulled the chips from the hand closer, adding them to his ever-growing pile.
“So what did you even do with him?” Sean asked, looking up from shuffling the cards. “I hope you didn’t kick him out on the street for ruining your shoes.”
Pete rolled his eyes. “Even I’m not that much of an asshole. I put him to bed and left him gas money in the morning.”
“A real saint,” Jon laughed, leaning his head onto Tom’s shoulder. This time, Tom didn’t push him away.
“Damn straight,” Pete agreed. “Now let’s play some poker. I still have two more months before school starts. I have to pay my rent somehow.”
“I think you’re confused about who’s taking whose money,” a voice called from behind them, followed by the sound of the door closing, and a chorus of laughter rose up as Ashlee wandered into the living room, shrugging off her coat. “Sorry I’m late.”
“You can show up whenever, so long as you show up,” Sean said, pushing out a chair with his foot for her.
Pete nodded, flashing her a smile. “You’re just in time to watch me finish kicking their asses.”
Ashlee nodded, but didn’t look suitably impressed. She rarely was with him, though. Pete had spent months braving the English department’s stuffy halls and libraries just to get her to go on a date with him, another month of some of the best sex of his life though apparently not hers, and that had finally tapered off into a friendship where she could invade their poker nights and call him an idiot when the shoe fit. Which was more often than Pete cared to admit.
“Well,” she said slowly, tapping her fingers against the wooden dining table they used to play on. “What did I miss?”
“Pete tried to sleep with a high schooler,” Tom offered.
“Who threw up on him.” Jon still looked positively giddy at that news, and Pete sort of wanted to slap his friend. He took his cards instead.
“An eventful week,” Ashlee said, and her smile widened. “Such a hard life you marine biologists lead.”
“Hey!” Jon argued, frowning. “Two of us are photographers.”
Pete stuck his tongue out at her, and she laughed quietly, giving him a slight push, and was just kind enough to change the topic.
---
“When you wake up, do you get dressed in the dark?” Ashlee’s heels echoed in the empty corridor, and he struggled to keep up, carefully balancing two cups of Starbucks - one of which was burning his right hand, and the other was freezing his left.
“So nice to see you care.”
“No, really,” Ashlee sighed, reaching over to touch the purple hoodie, covering his dress shirt and bowtie underneath. “You can’t think this looks good.”
Pete rolled his eyes. “Not my fault the university has a dress code.”
“I don’t remember it saying ‘ugly’ in the requirements.”
He clicked his tongue at her and stopped walking, holding her coffee over a trash can in warning. “Careful,” he said, but when she narrowed her eyes at him, it was all he could do to laugh and run after her again.
“I kind of missed school,” he said, looking around the empty halls. The Dean’s lunch had been long and boring, as usual, and the food had been so bad they’d decided to make a coffee run and sit outside to drink it, even though there was still a layer of snow on the ground. Pete squinted as they stepped through the large double doors, but Ashlee found a bench facing away from the sun, and he handed over her coffee.
“It’s so quiet,” she murmured, closing her eyes. Pete sat beside her and took in the empty surroundings - the spring semester didn’t start for another two days, and the intersession kids had finally finished up their finals. The usual buzzing of students and life had been sucked from the area, replaced only by the occasional car horn somewhere off in the distance and the sound of Ashlee sipping her coffee or their feet crunching in the snow each time they shifted.
“I missed school,” Pete repeated, and kicked at a pile of snow under his foot.
---
The first day of classes was always Pete’s least favorite. He only had three semesters of experience - of teaching his own class, of having students address him as Professor Wentz, of pretending he was making a difference. It wasn’t enough time that he felt he really had the experience down, and even though his mentor had said first day jitters never went away, the uncertainty of that first day still made his heart race the way it had back in grade school.
But Biology of Fishes had gone better than he’d really expected. It was upper-division, and his first time teaching the subject, but the students were polite and interested, and no one had asked him anything beyond his capable knowledge. His next, and final class - Marine Conservation Ecology, comprised mostly of sophomores - was bound to be a walk in the park by comparison.
Pete took in a deep breath outside the closed door to compose himself, then stepped inside, glancing once toward the class and tossing his briefcase onto his desk chair. “Welcome,” he said, and he still wasn’t used to the way his voice resonated in class rooms, like a flashback to the few months he’d been on a stage with Jon, in crappy bars, the stage lights blinding him. Pete didn’t give it a second thought, though, as he began to spell out the name of the class on the board.
“This is Marine Conservation Ecology, and I’m Professor Wentz. If none of that sounds familiar, you’re probably stoned or high, in which case, you better share or get out.”
Pete cringed at his own handwriting before turning around, already moving toward his desk to pull out the syllabus for the semester. Across the room, a pen clattered loudly to the floor, and Pete looked toward who had made the noise, and stopped.
In the third row, staring at him with those same blue eyes he remembered, was the kid who’d thrown up on him.
Here, in his class. This wasn’t happening.
“Um,” he said, looking down quickly to gather the rest of the syllabuses. “Let me just, ah.” Pete closed his eyes briefly, but when he opened them again, he felt calmer. There was nothing to be done now, no matter how hard his heart was beating in his chest, or how his brain was speeding up just to try to process what any of this meant.
“This is your syllabus,” he said, handing it to a girl in the front to begin passing out. “Let’s go over it.”
Pete killed time and saved himself from stumbling over his words by having the students read it aloud, and carefully avoided looking anywhere near Joe. The only time he acknowledged him was at the end of class, when he pressed a hastily scribbled post-it note reading ‘See me in my office’ in Joe’s palm.
This was so not good.
---
Pete tapped his fingers anxiously on his desk, glancing at the clock for the third time. Class had only ended ten minutes earlier, and it was entirely possible Joe had another class, or that he’d fallen into a ditch on the way to Pete’s office.
Yes, entirely possible.
He almost fell out of his chair when there was a soft knock and it swung open, revealing Joe, now wearing a scarf and heavier overcoat Pete didn’t remember from class. “Hi?” he asked, glancing around the office. It was fairly plain - books lined his bookshelf, along with a stuffed whale Jon had bought him when he got the teaching position. Nothing that should have held Joe’s attention so raptly.
“Shut the door,” Pete said, and winced at the way his voice cracked at the end.
Joe slid into the leather seat across from Pete once the door was closed, staring at him. To his credit, he looked almost as nervous as Pete felt.
“What are you doing in my class?” Pete asked slowly, narrowing his eyes. “Are you stalking me? Because we didn’t do anything, I can’t be fired. You can’t prove anything.”
“It seems like quite an effort to take three prerequisites just to get in your class, if I was stalking you.” He didn’t smile, but Pete thought he could see the corners of his lips twitching. “Sir.”
Pete narrowed his eyes. “Then what are you doing in my class?”
Joe blinked at him before looking around the office again. “Um. Trying to get my degree?”
“You really expect me to believe you’re studying in marine biology? No one studies marine biology in Chicago.”
Joe raised a finger and pointed it at something over Pete’s head. “Didn’t you?” he asked, motioning vaguely to Pete’s own degree from DePaul, framed thoughtfully by his mother and hung on the back wall.
Pete really didn’t like this kid.
“So you want to be a marine biologist?”
Something shifted in Joe’s expression, and there was a brief moment of hesitation. “Well, not exactly.”
“Aha!”
Joe was staring at him like he had three heads, which was usually a look only worn by Ashlee. Pete slowly lowered his arms from their victory stance. “I want to study penguins.”
Pete furrowed his brows in confusion, because he’d thought he had Joe this time. “Shouldn’t you be an ornithologist, then? Penguins are birds, not fish. Did you actually pass that biology class?”
“I know they’re birds,” Joe mumbled, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck. He looked almost embarrassed, and Pete could suddenly see the kid from the bar that night sitting across from him, laughing drunkenly about how purple was an awesome color because the word was fun to say. “But like, there’s not a lot of… ornithology degrees out there, are there? And even if there were, that’d mostly be about normal birds, that can fly, and that don’t live in the ocean. So marine biology seemed a bit more… natural.”
Pete was still eyeing him carefully, but with less hostility and suspicion. “So you don’t want to wreck my career?”
Joe looked around the small, barely-decorated office again before settling his gaze back on Pete. “What career?”
When Pete started to laugh, it felt like he was releasing built up tension and frustration from weeks. “I like you,” he said, flashing Joe a smile for the first time since that night, and was greeted with a shy one in return. “Nothing funny this time, but we’ll be fine.”
“Does that mean I don’t have to drop out? I really need this class.”
Pete nodded. “You can stay. I’m not giving you an A though.”
Joe actually looked offended. “What if I earn an A?”
“We’ll see,” Pete said, and Joe seemed satisfied enough with the answer that he shook Pete’s hand awkwardly and left. If Pete watched the way his ass looked on the way out the door, it was more to do with reflex.
---
Nada Tea and Coffee House wasn’t as packed as the last time Ashlee had dragged him there, but Pete didn’t like it any better. Too many of their drinks were green, and while he wasn’t quite certain what Yok Mok was, he didn’t think it belonged on a cookie.
“I hate the first week,” Ashlee sighed once they’d settled on a table, dropping their messenger bags onto the empty seats. It felt like when he was a student again, the soft hint of caffeine lingering in the air if he ignored the other aromas. Across from him, Ashlee sipped her tea and waved her hand, looking tired. “I mean, I drive 45 minutes to get here, I hand out a syllabus, and class is over in five minutes. Does that seem fair to you?”
“You could keep them longer,” Pete commented, poking at his sandwich. “Y’know, make them do actual work.”
“I’m not a sadist,” she argued, tilting her head as she watched him. “Unlike some people.”
Pete cracked a smile, but it was small. “I see nothing wrong with assigning a paper the first week.”
“You would have when you were their age.”
She had a point, but he took a large bite out of his chicken sandwich, pointedly ignoring her.
She went back to her own lunch, glancing down occasionally at her well-worn copy of The Sun Also Rises. Pete remembered giving her the book, back when he’d been pretending he wanted to just be friends.
“How are your classes?” she asked, not tearing her eyes from the page.
Briefly, he considered telling her about Joe - but the less of a thing he made over the issue, the more chance Pete hoped he had of letting the semester slide past without incident. Instead, he shrugged. “You know.”
Her eyes flicked up briefly, taking him in. “No,” she said slowly. “I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.”
“Oh.” He laughed, though it was nervous even to his own ears. “The kids in Biology of Fishes seem more interested this year.”
Ashlee nodded thoughtfully. “And your other class?”
“Fine,” he answered, but even he knew it was too quick. Pete winced and Ashlee was definitely no longer looking at her book.
“You want to talk about it?” she asked slowly.
Pete rolled his eyes. “Nothing’s going on, I promise. Just, a weird class. I don’t know, I’ve only had them twice, right?”
For a moment, he thought she was going to press the issue further. But instead, she gave a small shrug and turned back to the book, letting him finish his lunch.
---
Pete had always been afraid that teaching would feel like his least favorite parts of being a student in a university. That once he stepped foot in that classroom, those same old feelings of boredom, of being trapped, of a brick wall, would all come crashing back. So he’d been pleasantly surprised to find that being on the other side of a classroom felt like none of those things. There were occasional days where he wanted to shake his students just to wake them up, but mostly, he found getting to impart what little knowledge he had about the world exhilarating.
It was probably a bit narcissistic, he thought.
But the one thing he hated, that reminded him of tireless nights spent holed up in the library or his own room with piles of books, was lesson planning.
And although Pete would never admit it, that was precisely why he assigned a paper the first week. Once students got to know him and his expectations, they rarely stopped in. Giving a project at the start of the term ensured at least occasionally in that first month, someone might knock on his door and give him a reprieve from staring over the material for the class and trying to come up with some new, inventive way to teach that people smarter than himself hadn’t come up with on in their own in the last few hundred years.
Sometimes, Pete’s plans took odd turns.
“Nate,” Pete sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, because he had given up on calling him Mr. Navarro a half hour ago. “Please stop pretending to cry.”
Across from him, Nate let out another fake sob. It was almost insulting. Pete had pulled this trick before in undergrad, but at least he’d been able to muster up real tears. And, on occasion when the story called for it, pretty convincing fake blood and broken limbs.
“B-but, my laptop really did get stolen! I need this extra time, Professor!”
“It’s a five-page paper,” Pete sighed, and it took every ounce of self-control he had not to bang his head against the wall. “You have three more days, you can do it.”
“It’s the weekend,” Nate fake-sobbed, and in that moment, Pete was so over being a teacher.
There was a hesitant knock on the door, and Joe poked his head in, but paused as soon as he saw Nate. “Sorry,” Joe said, offering them both a quick, nervous smile. “I’ll just come back later.”
“No!” Pete scrambled to his feet, pulling the door the rest of the way open. “Please, Nate was just leaving, weren’t you?”
“Do I get my extension?” Nate asked, sounding more hopeful than crestfallen this time, and Pete began to wonder how today’s youth was being raised if they didn’t even know how to lie to their professors.
He opened the door wider, motioning to the hallway. “You’ll figure something out, Mr. Navarro. Now goodbye.”
Nate’s shoulders sunk, but once he had walked out, Pete slammed the door closed and leaned against it, closing his eyes.
“I really can come back later,” Joe said, fidgeting by the desk. “It’s not a big deal. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Pete laughed quietly. “No, trust me, you’re saving me.” He opened his eyes and took in Joe’s nervous stance - the way he couldn’t seem to settle on his own two feet. He was watching Pete, expectantly, and finally Pete cleared his throat and slid back into his office chair. “What can I do for you, Mr., ah…” Pete stumbled over his words, wondering if it was still polite to call someone by their last name after he’d seen them naked. Even if that someone was his student.
Joe didn’t seem bothered. He slid off his backpack and began digging through it, pulling out wadded papers and looking embarrassed and flustered for it. “I just, I mean, I just needed some clarification? Like, you said to write five pages about the current efforts being made to protect a species.”
“Yes,” Pete said, leaning back. On some of the papers Joe was pulling out, he saw scraps of drawings or sheet music. His fingers itched to reach out and touch them, to get a better look, but he kept his hands neatly folded in his lap. “Whatever species you want. Though I assumed you’d be choosing penguins.”
Joe looked up sharply, his cheeks flushing red. He laughed nervously and nodded, finally pulling out the only non-crumpled papers Pete had seen him remove from his backpack. “Yeah. Is that okay?”
“They’re still birds,” Pete said, but he shrugged. “But I don’t see why not. We study them later.”
The smile he got in return could have lit up a room.
“Awesome,” Joe said, and this time when he laughed, it sounded more genuine. “My question was more, did you just mean man-made problems they need to be protected from? Like, oil spills and overfishing? Or did you mean natural ones as well, like weather and global warming? Because when I included both, it was more like, ten pages.” He slid the papers across the table to Pete and then he was back to fidgeting. “And I know it’s too many, but I couldn’t shut myself up. Could you look it over?”
Pete grabbed a red pen, picking up the paper. “You sound like me,” he said, and the look Joe gave him was almost as unreadable as whatever Pete was feeling.
---
Jon held up one of his few remaining red chips, squinting at it. “Is this $5 or $10 again?”
Tom groaned while Pete snickered and began to drag Jon’s beer bottle across the table, out of reach, and watched the trail of condensation it left. Jon caught the motion, though barely, and frowned. “Hey!”
“You’re cut off,” Ashlee sighed, throwing her cards on the table. “I need to find boys who know how to play poker.”
Pete nodded in agreement and drank the remains of Jon’s beer before folding his own hand. “Even I suck tonight.”
“You suck every night,” Tom mumbled, and Jon let out a loud laugh, no longer concerned about the missing beer.
“I do not.” Pete crossed his arms, shaking his head at them. “I haven’t even gotten laid in forever.”
Across the table, Jon’s eyes lit up with a spark of recognition. “Because they throw up on you!” he said, and then dissolved into a bout of giggles, leaning heavily against Tom.
“You’re blushing.”
The table stopped dead at Ashlee’s words, and even Jon stopped his drunken laughter to stare at Pete. “You are,” Tom confirmed, slowly. “You never blush.”
Pete hadn’t even realized. “I’m not,” he muttered, gathering up the cards on the table. “Now, whose turn is it to deal?”
---
A club was precisely what Pete needed. He’d collected the first round of papers from both his classes, but rather than taking them home to cover them in shiny red ink, he’d thrown his bag into a corner and changed into the tightest pair of jeans he owned.
It was still a chilly Chicago winter, and his arms felt stiff and frozen in the air as he walked from the train to the club a few blocks down, but once he stepped inside and felt the rush of bodies pressing together, he felt instantly warmed.
Pete danced for awhile, eyes closed and hips swaying to the rhythm of bad dance music blaring overhead, but he hadn’t found what he was looking for. When someone pressed a suggestive hand to his hip or, once, his ass - he just smiled and slid away, further into the crowd.
His eyes kept moving over the flurry of bodies around him, still searching for something, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what. His stomach had been in knots all week, a feeling of dread he couldn’t quite pinpoint. “You need to get laid,” Jon had said when they’d met for lunch one afternoon, and tonight, Pete agreed. He needed that sensation of being in control, of pressing willing hips onto his black sheets and spreading them, knowing the act was just for him.
Finally, he spotted what he’d been searching for. There was a skinny boy with his back turned to Pete, moving in tune to the music. He couldn’t see his face, but his hair was short, just curling at the tips. Pete had to slide through people to get up behind him, but when he did, something clicked in a way none of the other people there had.
He settled his hands on the boy’s waist, pleased when he didn’t move away but instead pressed back, not too eager but pliant. They moved like that for a moment, Pete’s cock rubbing against his ass in an agonizingly tempting way. The kid knew what he was doing, especially when he tilted his head back onto Pete’s shoulder and -
Pete shot back, as much as he could in the dense crowd, and in front of him, Joe spun around to face him. They both stood there, suddenly out of sync with both the music and their thoughts, staring each other down.
“You’re stalking me,” Pete called, over the music, and Joe’s lips twitched into a bemused smile. Pete’s cock also twitched in approval of that smile.
“You keep saying that,” he yelled back, shaking his head. “You approached me.”
Pete hated when other people made sense.
Joe wasn’t looking at him like he did in class, though. Or even like that first night. There was something wide and overblown about his eyes, like he was on something - or like Pete imagined he’d been looking at Joe moments before. He tilted his head, still taking Pete in, and this time, not bothering to hide the way his eyes lingered over the bulge in Pete’s jeans.
It was a horrible idea, but Pete’s body felt on autopilot as he pressed closer, closing the distance he’d created between them. Joe’s fingers were slick with sweat as they slid under the bottom of his shirt, tracing across skin, while Pete trailed his own fingers across Joe’s back and then down, to grasp his ass and force him closer. It gave him a sick thrill at the way Joe’s breath hitched against his ear before he leaned his head back, giving Pete easy access.
This was such a bad idea. But when Pete ground their hips together, roughly, and Joe moaned low and ragged, the fingers at his side clawing a little, Pete didn’t care.
“Let’s get out of here,” Pete whispered against his ear, and there was the briefest of hesitations from Joe before he nodded. Then their hands grasped for each other as they fought their way out of the mass of sweaty bodies pressing together. Together, they escaped into the cold, and Joe’s black Converse made the only noise other than their breathing as they hurried along to the train station. It occurred once to Pete that Joe probably even knew what train they were headed to, that he might remember exactly where Pete lived, but that wasn’t a line of thought he cared to follow. He much preferred the one Joe seemed to have when they made it to the train station and Pete found himself pulled into a dark corner as they waited, lips pressing against his and needy hips grinding against him. The room seemed to vibrate as the train whisked past them, a clatter against the rails, but Pete waited until the last few seconds to pull back, gripping Joe by the buckle on his jeans and jerking him onto the awaiting car.
The train was annoyingly full and buzzing with life, with tired, drunken college students singing off key and homeless men sleeping through the rickety ride. But Pete grabbed two open seats toward the back and Joe slid down beside him. No one paid them much attention, even as Pete ran his hand along Joe’s thigh, digging his fingers in and marking yet unseen flesh. Joe hissed once and shifted, but otherwise kept his face placid through the ride. No one would ever guess his own hands were playing at the hem of Pete’s shirt and tracing the hint of skin found there.
His stop felt like it took hours to get to, and by the time he jerked Joe to his feet and they tumbled off, Pete was hard and anxious. He kept the same forceful hand clasped on Joe’s belt as he tugged him into the cold night air, and Joe followed him eagerly through the streets without complaint. Which was exactly the way Pete liked it.
“Here,” Pete murmured, stealing one quick kiss in the dark and tasting a hint of vodka there, before he got the door to his apartment building open. One step, four steps, ten, and the angle was awkward to keep a grasp on Joe, but he felt warm fingers reaching out to grip his arm for support, and soon enough they were pouring into Pete’s apartment. His shoes were gone before the door was even closed, and when he shoved Joe up against it, his mind reeled back to months before, this same scenario.
But Joe wasn’t nearly as drunk this time, and the energy had shifted. When Pete pressed his hips hard against Joe’s and leaned in for another searing kiss, rough and territorial, Joe arched toward him like his life depended on it. This was definitely new. He got Joe’s shirt up and over his head before dragging his fingers down his chest, scratching at the exposed skin hard enough to leave marks in the morning.
“I can take it,” Joe whispered, and his eyes were bright in the mostly dark room.
But Pete was never one to back down from a challenge. Especially one as tempting as this.
“Come,” he said, and without waiting to see if Joe would follow, Pete led them to his bedroom. The cleaning lady had come that afternoon, and Pete found childlike enjoyment at the idea of messing up freshly washed sheets which hadn’t even been slept on. He lifted his own shirt up and over his head, tossing it into a corner.
“Get on your knees.”
There was the first moment of hesitation from Joe, but he complied, fingers already reaching for the zipper of Pete’s jeans and making quick work of them.
Pete had been wondering (somewhere, in the very back of his mind) for weeks what this very moment would feel like - what Joe would look like on his knees like this, if he’d be skilled or inexperienced but eager to please, or hesitant. He was pleasantly surprised when Joe didn’t waste any time getting rid of his clothes, and Pete had barely stepped out of his boxers before Joe’s fingers were wrapping around the base of his cock, his lips sliding down the length.
Pete’s head hit the wall, but it didn’t matter. His fingers found Joe’s hair and guided his movements, an unnecessary move, given the way Joe used the mouth-and-hand combination like he was almost ready to go pro. Joe was so good, in fact, that when Pete caught Joe staring up at him, he almost came undone completely
Joe seemed to sense this, as he pulled back slowly. “Pete,” he whispered, and Pete hated how comfortable that sounded spilling from Joe’s tongue. He nipped lightly at the inside of his thigh. “Come on.”
That propelled him back into action. He wrangled Joe out of his own jeans and onto the bed, pushing him down onto his knees. Pete fumbled with the lube from his bedside drawer with one hand while he ran the other down Joe’s chest, closer to where he knew Joe wanted his hand.
“You like that?” he asked, leaning down to press a kiss against Joe’s back before wrapping his hand around his cock, feeling the way he pressed down into the touch. From the angle, Pete couldn’t see his face and he regretted that, but it did give him a better angle when he reached down with his other hand to press one slicked finger into him. He looked so tempting like this, spread out for Pete.
Experimentally, he moved his other hand from Joe’s cock to his hips and dug his nails in, and was pleased when he could hear Joe’s breath hitch, could feel the way his hips jerked forward. “I can take it,” Joe repeated, firmer.
When Joe’s hips gave another involuntary jerk and he moaned under Pete, he pulled both hands back entirely and began searching for a condom.
Joe whined while he fumbled with opening it and slicking it on, arching back toward Pete. A few moments, later, though, he let out a different sort of whine as Pete gripped his hips again and began to slide into him, slowly. “You still good?” he grit out.
“Good,” Joe said, and arched back again.
They set up a quick rhythm, Pete jerking Joe’s hips back toward him with every thrust. To his credit, Joe took it, leaning his head down to rest his forehead against the mattress and moaning with each push.
It was tight, tighter than Pete had really expected given Joe’s previous enthusiasm, but he kept his thoughts to himself. He wouldn’t have been able to articulate them, anyway, not with the sounds Joe was making under him and the way his fingers dug in a little deeper to flesh, so that he could see where light bruises were beginning to form. Where they’d still be, the next day, a reminder.
It didn’t take much for Pete to get off, and then he was groaning into Joe’s back, giving a final round of sharp, rough thrusts before spilling into the condom. He finally reached down to wrap his hand around Joe’s cock, and Joe let out a grateful moan. With a few quick tugs, Joe came too, and collapsed under him onto the bed.
Pete pulled back carefully, peeling the condom off and throwing it away.
“Do I have to sleep in the wet spot?” Joe mumbled into the pillow, and Pete snorted.
“You did make it.”
Joe yawned, and Pete considered briefly telling him to get out. But in the end, he just climbed in with him, pulling the covers up higher.
“Asshole,” Joe muttered, and it almost sounded affectionate. Pete was too busy pondering that to come up with a good excuse, and by the time he had one, Joe was already snoring into his favorite pillow.
This had not been exactly how Pete had pictured the night going.
---
Grading papers was almost therapeutic. Especially on nights when Pete couldn’t sleep, it was like reading dozens of bedtime stories. About whales and oil spills, but bedtime stories nonetheless.
What was less therapeutic, however, was one of his students wandering into his living room at four in the morning, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, and smiling sleepily at him. “Is there coffee?” he asked, hopeful.
“It’s too early for coffee.”
Joe made a displeased noise and settled onto the other end of the sofa as though he belonged there. “It’s never too early for coffee.”
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“Shouldn’t you?”
Pete frowned at him from over the top of Ann Miller’s ramblings about the plight of the sea otter. “It’s my apartment. I can sleep when I want.”
Joe seemed unphased. “So can I,” he said, and then picked up the stack of graded papers and began sifting through it. Pete reached out for them, but Joe held them out of his reach.
“You’re not supposed to see other students’ grades. I could get fired for that.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” Joe laughed, startled. And alright, maybe he had a point. Pete grumbled, mostly to himself, and looked back at Ann Miller’s paper.
“I got an A-. Hey thanks.”
“You’re sort of arrogant.”
Joe looked up at him, startled again, but for very different reasons. “I’m really not,” he admitted, softer. “I just didn’t figure you’d respond well to quiet and subtle.”
Pete set the paper down entirely. “So you planned this out?”
“No! Of course not. You approached me in the club, remember?”
“Maybe you’ve been like, stalking out my favorite clubs and restaurants and just waiting for me to make the first move.” He paused at the look Joe gave him. “Or not.”
“I just, I figured I should use the opportunity that arose.” He smiled hopefully. “Are we going to do it again?”
“No,” Pete said, rising to his feet. “I will make you that coffee after all. And then you’re going to go home.”
He didn’t know if he was surprised or disappointed when Joe didn’t argue.
---
What he did, instead, was maybe worse.
Pete was surprisingly calm before the next class period. No dean or law team came to knock on his office door, and when he and Ashlee went out to lunch, he steered the conversation topic toward late night TV without it seeming like a ploy to keep her from digging into his extracurricular activities. It almost wasn’t a ploy at all, in the end, as really he hadn’t thought about Joe at all. Not even once.
Well, not much, anyway.
But when Pete stepped into that classroom, feeling ten feet taller than usual and launching into his semi-improvisational lecture about the application of spatial analysis to threatened marine ecosystems, there was Joe, regarding him with the same disinterest as any other student. The same look of unimportance as Pete had scribed to the entire scenario was etched across his bored expression as he sat there, doodling in the margins of his paper.
“Am I boring you, Mr. Trohman?”
Pete hadn’t even realized the words were out until suddenly there were several very alert pairs of eyes turning to stare at him. He was never the type of teacher to call anyone out unless they were blatantly disregarding him, and even then, it was often more fun to watch them squirm in his office later when their grades suffered because they’d spent their time texting rather than listening.
Joe’s expression remained mostly unchanged, even though he was staring Pete down. “No, Sir.”
“Are you sure?” He shouldn’t be pushing this, he knew that. It was idiotic to draw attention to Joe now, after the entire week had gone so smoothly. But he wanted a reaction that those bored-looking eyes just weren’t giving him. “Because maybe you’d prefer to be somewhere else right now? You don’t look like you want to be here. Am I keeping you from something more important?”
Pete could see the blush rising up his neck under the harsh classroom lights, but more than that, he could tell Joe was biting back some witty yet cutting response. Instead, though, he just shook his head and set his pen down.
They continued their staring match, until one of the other students cleared her throat uncomfortably, and Pete had to look somewhere, anywhere else. “Um, anyway, as I was just talking about the, uh, the…”
“The Laptev Sea,” Joe’s voice cut in, barely audible under Pete’s own, but he caught it all the same. When he turned to look at him again, Joe was watching him, expectant, and maybe with a hint of annoyance.
Pete cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said, and carried on as though nothing had happened.
When he passed out papers at the end of the class period, Joe didn’t look at him or the paper at all before pushing through the herd of students gathered around them, fighting to get to the exit.
---
“You’re an asshole this week,” Ashlee commented, leaning back in her office chair. Sometimes he hated how much bigger her office was than his, but mostly, he then remembered that he hated being in his office at all.
He stabbed a crouton from her salad with his fork and took it before she could make too many protesting noises. It just proved her point, she should have been happy. “Just this week?”
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Pete snorted and took a large bite of his own lunch, a turkey sandwich. “There are no ladies in this office.”
“Touché.”
They shared a quiet smile, and Pete had hoped the conversation was over, but Ashlee seemed to have other ideas. “What’s going on with you, really?” she asked, leaning closer. “You said your classes were going well. But you’re being a dick about something.”
“Antarctica,” he said quickly, and she didn’t seem to buy it at first, so Pete shrugged. “I mean, I just, I want to get out of here for a bit. I didn’t expect to spend my life teaching.”
Finally, Ashlee nodded thoughtfully. “They’d let you do it. The program could use a little more credibility. Because,” she added quickly when Pete opened his mouth to argue, “you haven’t been out to do research in years, Pete.”
“That’s why I want to go.”
She nodded, and offered a real smile. “I think it’s a good idea.”
---
There was one e-mail in his inbox that Pete had been staring at, all morning. It wasn’t making his office hours go by any faster, but it was making his head spin.
From: jtrohman@depaul.edu
To: petewentz@depaul.edu
Subject: (No Subject)
If you want me to leave your class, you’re going to have to try a lot harder.
He hesitated, for the hundredth time that hour, but this time he clicked the icon to delete the message, forever.
---
Jon looked decidedly bored, and he told Pete this, for the fifth time in an hour.
“We’re almost done,” Pete swore, and began wandering down the camping aisles for one last perusal, just in case he’d missed anything.
Jon sighed, but continued his mostly silent protest march behind Pete. “You said that thirty minutes ago. I mean, I’m glad you’re finally smiling. But seriously. How much stuff do you honestly need for a one weekend camping trip with some college students?”
Pete huffed. “What if some of them don’t bring their own tents?”
“The mosquitoes get them. Or they get frostbite. Wait, aren’t you staying in heated cabins?”
“What if my first seven lanterns all break down at once and we have no light to read by?”
Jon looked at him oddly. “You build a fire.”
“What if I don’t know how to build a fire?”
“Well, you don’t, actually. But you still survived. And you’re staying in a cabin, I know you told me that!”
Pete grinned, and shrugged. “Yeah, alright. Let’s go.”
“Thank you!” Jon jerked the cart out from Pete’s grasp and began pushing it quickly toward the check out, ignoring Pete’s desperate attempts to quickly throw in some last minute hand warmers.
“How’s the gallery?” Pete asked once they were standing in line, and attempted to sneak in a pack of gum to the cart. Jon noticed, but he let it slide and gave an easy shrug instead.
“Busy. Tom and I are working a lot of late nights trying to put up new installations, and last week, Tom decided the whole place would look better if we redid the paint, but, well, it’s Tom.”
Pete nodded thoughtfully. “So you ended up painting it yourself.”
He at least looked a little embarrassed, but not sorry. “Maybe.”
“Bet Cassie doesn’t like the long hours.”
It was something Pete had been wanting to bring up for weeks, but even now, he didn’t know how far to push. Boundaries had never been Pete’s best thing at gauging. Something pained flashed across Jon’s face, but it settled into something like resign. “No,” he admitted, rolling his shoulders back out of nervous habit. “But it’s just for now, until we really get up and running, right?”
Pete smiled at him, because that was the right thing to do for a friend. He could hear his mother’s voice telling him so in his head. “Exactly,” he said.
“Anyway,” Jon said, not so subtly trying to change the subject once Pete had swiped his card for the pile of camping supplies currently filling their shopping cart, “are you excited for this weekend?”
“Sure,” he said, and changed the subject just as quickly.
---
His motley group of students were all gathered around the bus (except Nate, for whom Pete had said a silent prayer in gratitude when he’d announced he wouldn’t be able to get off work). They all looked rather displeased at spending their Friday evening anywhere other than a bar, but Pete hoisted his own backpack further up his shoulders and decided he didn’t care. “We’ve got almost a four hour drive,” he said, and it didn’t escape his attention that most of the students were eyeing the old, rickety bus with uncertainty now. “So I really hope you’re all here.”
It was then that Mark Hoppus, the department head, came jogging over, smiling lopsidedly. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”
“Professor Hoppus is coming?” someone asked, sounding instantly more excited, and Pete just laughed.
“We needed another chaperone.”
“Party time!” Mark said, giving them all a thumbs up and another smile. “In the safe, ecologically friendly party way.”
Pete was about to let them board, when he remembered the few printed sheets he was holding in his hands. “I’m also working on getting together a research team for the fall, to study changing behavior patterns of different mammals from the melting polar ice caps. In Antarctica.” In the back, he saw Hayley Williams yawn. “It’s a unique opportunity. We’re looking for all levels for the research team. If you’re interested, come get a sheet.”
His announcement was meant with silence, until Mark clapped his hands together and motioned them all forward.
Pete didn’t bother reading off the names on the roll to make sure they were actually all present - he was better with faces anyway - and led them up the small steps to the inside of the bus. Mark took the front seat and Pete slid in across from him, even though he was itching for the very back. But it allowed him to watch the others as they boarded, mostly whispering about the things they could have been doing instead. Unsurprisingly, no one seemed to pay him or his informational sheets any mind, and he hadn’t really expected much less. The handful of grad students had been more enthusiastic, but he was going to have to look at other universities to fill out the rest of the team.
It took Pete a moment to notice, however, that one student had stopped in front of him and was staring at him, expectant, as he held out his hand. “Professor?” Joe asked slowly, and when Pete blinked at him, he motioned toward the paper.
Pete frowned. “You’re interested?”
“I might be.”
“It would mostly be whales and polar bears, not just penguins.”
Joe winced, but his hand remained outstretched. “Can I just have the paper?”
“He’s so excited about this trip he can’t speak,” Mark spoke up across from them, and leaned over to peel the freshest copy off Pete’s stack and hand it to Joe. On his way back, he fixed Pete with an unreadable look, but then he was taking that back seat that Pete had been so hoping for and ducked his head.
“Thanks,” Pete murmured, but Mark just shrugged.
---
Fox Ridge Lake Park was Pete’s favorite. It was huge, but almost impossible to get lost in because all of its paths were giant loops. It was breathtakingly beautiful, even now, when Pete could see his breath hanging in the cold night air. Overhead, the moon was shining brightly, reflected off the lake and glistening off the few remaining patches of snow in the area.
He couldn’t really make out their faces, but his students still looked mostly annoyed as they pulled their oversized coats on tighter and began dragging their backpacks off the bus. Joe was the last one off, but Pete looked away as soon as he realized he’d been waiting.
“That’s everyone,” he said to Mark.
“Our cabins are over here,” Mark shouted, and then without waiting to see if the rest were following, began to lead the march toward them. “You’ll be pleased to know they’re heated, and have outlets, and warm showers.” He paused, glancing back at Pete. “But tomorrow, your insane professor will be doing a campout for anyone who wants to participate for extra credit. I will be in my nice, warm bunk.”
Pete left Mark to keep the troops entertained while he ran ahead to the main office, where Ray was sitting behind a desk, the keys to the cabins already laid out in front of him. He sat up straighter at Pete’s presence, giving him a wide smile. “Hey! I can leave now.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Pete’s lips, but he was too tired to put forth any real effort into the movement. “Nice to see you too.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Hi.” He slid the keys closer to Pete. “You know the drill. Don’t let them fuck anything up. If you run into any problems, call Bob. He can be here in ten, he’s just at the main post.”
Pete gave a mock salute. “Go home, Toro.”
---
Morning came much too soon. The owls outside the cabin kept Pete up most of the night, and once the sun started to rise, there were no blinds on the window. The small room he was sharing with Mark was suddenly filled with entirely too much light. No matter how Pete turned, it was impossible not to feel like he was being blinded.
Even if he hadn’t, though, his efforts would have been futile when five minutes later, Mark whacked him in the head with a pillow. “Time to get up, Wentz.”
“Fuck you,” Pete muttered into a pillow, but his protest was only met with laughter and another, harder, whack to the head. “Fine,” he sighed, and dragged himself to his feet.
Blissfully, there was coffee already made in the kitchen of the cabin, though most of it was already gone. He claimed the last cup, ignoring the glare from Elliott who’d wandered in shortly after him from the main bunks room.
Once the coffee had kicked in, it didn’t take that long to get dressed and bundle up. Mark took it upon himself to rouse the students and bark orders at them to get up, get dressed, get outside. Secretly, Pete thought it was the most fun Mark had had in weeks. But it must have worked, as somehow when Pete emerged outside, everyone seemed to be fully clothed (though perhaps not fully awake) and standing beside a rather pleased looking Mark.
“Morning,” Pete called, and there was a low chorus of voices in return, though Pete sincerely doubted they shared his enthusiasm. Hayley still had a toothbrush in her mouth, Elliott was staring up at the sky blankly, and Joe was swaying on his feet from exhaustion. Pete knew how they felt, but it still gave him a small thrill to jump the last two steps from the cabin to the ground where they were gathered, and point toward the forest.
“As you should all know by now, this is Marine Conservation Biology. Which means, we’re concerned with the environment as well.” There were a few sleepy nods. “So, we’re going to take a hike around the park, and go see my good friend Gerard who runs the ecology center at the other end of the lake.”
Hayley raised her hand, and Pete considered ignoring her, but she raised her hand higher in the air and gave him a pointed look. Finally, he nodded to her. “Yes?”
“Why are we here in the winter?”
Pete grinned wider. “I like to torture you.”
Beside him, Mark snorted. Hayley looked perplexed as she slowly lowered her hand, so Pete took pity on her.
“There’s a lot of tourists, later on. It’s hard to really see the place as it’s meant to be seen unless you come when there’s no one else here. And, as you should know, Illinois actually stocks a lot of the lakes with bass and other fish, but takes them out once it starts getting warm, because they can’t withstand the heat.” He motioned around them. “Any more questions?”
This time, DeMar Hamilton, who usually kept to himself, raised his hand toward the back.
“You!” Mark called, pointing back to him.
“Um, when’s lunch?”
---
Part Two
Pairings: Pete/Joe (Jon/Tom, mentions of Pete/Ashlee, Jon/Cassie)
Rating/Warnings: NC-17
Word Count: ~31,000
Summary: A prequel to Beyond the Sea. In which student!Joe meets professor!Pete, and inappropriate things happen. Also, penguins.
Author's Notes: Big thanks to jacqui_hw for listening to me whine about this and helping me get through it, and to ficjournal for the beta.
Pete didn’t drink much anymore, but when he did, he was willing to make the drive to his favorite dive bar in Schiller Park. No one from DePaul ever ventured out that far, which meant, unlike back in the city, there was no chance of running into any students or fellow faculty members. And that was just fine with Pete.
He unwound the scarf from his neck as he took a seat at the bar, motioning for a scotch. It wasn’t his favorite, but it would warm him up from the cold Chicago winter that had just started to make its presence known.
He was halfway through the drink before Jon showed up, cheeks red from the cold and shaking out of his coat as he hopped down beside Pete. “One day,” he muttered, eyeing Pete darkly, “we are going to switch things up and go somewhere closer.”
Pete laughed quietly. “I like it here. It’s the bar where no one knows my name. The anti-Cheers.”
Jon nodded, looking entirely unconvinced. “But if you keep coming back, they will eventually figure it out.”
“I’ll lie.”
Jon shook his head, but he was smiling as he clinked his beer bottle to Pete’s half-empty glass. They didn’t get to see each other nearly as much as Pete would have liked. With a real job now, no matter how hard he fought it, it seemed like Pete’s partying days were slowly dwindling, being replaced by long nights of grading really boring essays, or trying to make his way through even more boring faculty dinners. Drinks with Jon felt like the light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel.
“So,” Jon said, breaking Pete’s thoughts, “you coming over for poker night on Friday? Tom will be there.”
“You’d think Cassie would love you enough to make you stop losing your money.” Under the counter, Jon’s foot nudged his. “But I’ll take easy cash.”
Behind them, a band started up. It was the other reason Pete liked this place - occasionally, they had live music. It was never very good, but sometimes the thrum of a real bass line was so much better than a radio blaring overhead. He and Jon turned to watch, wincing at the way the singer began butchering everything he sang, from Springsteen to Green Day, and the way the drummer couldn’t even keep a steady beat.
“Jesus,” Jon whispered. “Even we were better than that.”
Pete let out a surprised laugh, tipping his head forward. “Oh god. We did suck.”
“Not as much as them.”
“The guitarist isn’t bad,” Pete said, tracking his movements on stage. His fingers moved steadily over the guitar with well-practiced ease, and of the four boys, he had the most stage presence. “He’s kind of good.”
“How can you tell?” Jon asked, turning back around and motioning for another round of beers. “All I hear is noise. Make it stop.”
Pete laughed and downed the last of his scotch. It burned going down, but it was a dull, pleasant ache. “He’s kind of cute, too,” he murmured, grinning into his glass as Jon groaned.
Jon pressed a cold bottle into Pete’s palm, shaking his head. “He looks younger than your students.”
“So? That means he’s not one.”
“You are such a pervert,” Jon laughed. “How’s work?”
This time, it was Pete’s turn to groan. “The world of academia is definitely not what I expected.”
“I could have told you that,” Jon countered, and politely declined to mention that he had told Pete, many times. “Shouldn’t you be out saving beached dolphins or something? What about that research thing next fall you were telling me about?”
“I don’t know if the university will let me go,” Pete admitted, shrugging. “Do I really want to go to Antarctica, anyway? It’ll be fucking cold.”
“It’s cold here.”
“Somehow,” Pete said slowly, “I don’t think it’s the same.”
Then Jon launched into a story about his latest gallery show, and Pete was content to listen and nod encouragingly every once in awhile, nursing his new beer. They only got through one more before Jon gave him a friendly hug and said, “I gotta get back, or Cassie really won’t let me play poker on Friday.”
“Go, go,” Pete said, waving him off. “I’m going to stick around for a little bit.”
Jon rolled his eyes. “Don’t do anything stupid?”
“Me?” Pete asked, flashing him a wide smile. “Never!”
Jon just laughed as he left, and Pete’s attention was re-directed back toward the band on stage. It looked like they were winding down, most of their energy gone, except for that guitarist. He did a high-kick off one of the speakers, and Pete was actually impressed.
Despite whatever Jon thought, he had no real intention of stalking the guy, but when he came up to the bar after they’d loaded up their equipment, it was too hard not to say anything.
“You’re the only one who can actually play,” he said, and startlingly blue eyes turned to stare at him. He looked nervous as he rubbed the back of his neck and laughed, though it sounded forced.
“Yeah, well.”
Pete wasn’t giving up quite so easily. “You should get a different band,” he said, and when he caught the bartender’s attention, motioned for another round. “A good band.”
The kid still looked a bit confused, and he definitely wasn’t reaching for the beer in front of him. Maybe Pete had read him all wrong.
“That’s easier said than done,” he said, lightly, and this time Pete laughed, flashing him his least-creepy smile.
“Don’t I know it. But sit down. It’s on me.”
He still didn’t figure the kid was 21, and if the way the bartender was eyeing him warily was any indication, Pete was right.
“I’m Pete,” he said after taking a sip. “But more importantly, who are you?”
“Joe,” the guy said, quickly holding out a hand for Pete to shake, and the formality of the action was endearing, in some misguided way. Did Joe even realize Pete was trying to flirt? He stepped up his game.
“You’re kind of cute,” he said, and maybe that wasn’t quite what he’d meant to say, but Joe’s cheeked reddened in a way that Pete could appreciate, a slow blush rising to his neck and making Pete want to see just how far that blush spread.
Joe pulled his hand back, seeming flustered. “That’s um, okay.” He took a hasty sip of his beer, before adding, “A lot of people would disagree.”
Joe still didn’t seem to quite get it, so this time, Pete leaned in close, letting his breath brush against Joe’s ear. “A lot of people aren’t me.”
“Well, no,” Joe was saying, tilting his head to the side, away from Pete. “If a lot of people were you, you’d either have like, a problem with your identity being stolen or you’d be a clone.”
Pete pulled back to look at him properly, trying not to smile. “And neither of those sound very good,” Joe continued, obviously lost in thought. “Maybe the clone thing. Then you could build up an army and defeat the galactic empire.”
That had certainly not been what Pete was expecting. And now Joe was looking embarrassed, downing the rest of his beer as if it were oxygen, but Pete didn’t even try to hide his smile this time.
“I don’t know if I’d make a good galactic army. If it was just me.”
Joe ducked his head and murmured, “There’s force in numbers.”
All of the confidence he’d had on the stage that Pete had found so attractive didn’t seem present in the boy sitting next to him, but Pete motioned for two more beers anyway and considered that maybe he liked this guy more. It felt more real, in a way a conversation with a stranger hadn’t in awhile.
“So which is your favorite movie?” Pete asked, leaning closer.
“Oh,” Joe said, his eyes getting wide. This at least seemed to be a conversation he could get behind. “Empire Strikes Back, but they’re all good. The originals, anyway.”
Pete laughed quietly, and found himself wanting to reach out and touch Joe’s hand, but he held back for now. “Yeah? I couldn’t agree more.”
When Joe smiled properly at him for the first time, finally focusing all of his attention on him, Pete felt his stomach doing flip-flops. That, he thought curiously, was new.
---
It hadn’t taken much to get Joe drunk, not that Pete really thought he had to work that hard to get him to come home with him. It was just, the more Joe drank, the more relaxed he seemed to get - and if the way he shoved his tongue down Pete’s throat on the taxi ride over was any indication, Joe was very relaxed now.
He sort of regretted letting him have that last beer, though, especially when Joe tumbled into his apartment, barely able to keep his balance. Pete laughed and grabbed for him, backing him up against his wall instead, which seemed like a much better idea.
“Hey,” Joe murmured when Pete pressed against him, and he couldn’t help smiling and mouthing the word back before kissing him, his fingers already making quick work of the buttons on his own dress shirt. He really wished he’d thought to change before the bar.
Joe’s shirt was easier, once he got Joe to raise his arms and stop trying to reach out to touch Pete’s chest. He intertwined their fingers to stop their movement, raising them up over Joe’s head. “Stay,” he said, tightening his grip, and for once Joe did. Once the shirt was off, though, he was back trying to touch Pete everywhere he could reach, his breathing growing ragged against Pete’s cheek.
“So sexy,” Pete whispered against his ear, and tugged at it with his teeth before dropping to his knees and running a hand up his thigh. Above him, Joe made a soft noise and balled his hands into fists as Pete began to drag the zipper of his jeans down. He slid them down, over smooth thighs, and was almost impressed when Joe managed to step out of them without prompting from Pete.
“Better,” he said, and wrapped his fingers around the base of Joe’s already half-hard cock.
He heard more than saw as Joe’s hands scratched at his wall, searching for something to hold on to, but white plaster walls didn’t offer much.
It was looking like this was going to be over embarrassingly quick, but they had all night. Pete tightened his grip as he leaned forward, dragging his tongue down the length of his cock and was rewarded with a low moan and Joe’s hand reaching to run through Pete’s hair. Usually he hated when guys tried to guide his movements, but something about this felt more off than usual - and a moment later, that same hand was pushing him away, roughly.
Pete toppled back onto his ass, staring after Joe’s retreating form as he raced toward the kitchen. “What the fuck?” Pete yelled after him, but a moment later he got an eyeful of more than just Joe’s ass he threw up the night’s alcohol in Pete’s sink.
“Fuck,” Pete sighed, and dragged himself to his feet.
“Nnngh,” Joe groaned, leaning heavily against the sink. Pete moved to stand behind him - bracing him and keeping him from sliding to the floor. “I’m sorry, I’ll… I’ll clean it up, I’ll…”
“Shut up, will you? I’m not mad,” Pete said, pressing a hand to his forehead. They really should have skipped that last drink, but he didn’t think he was too far past his limit. “You think you’re going to be sick again?”
Joe paled and nodded, and this time when he threw up, it was on Pete’s brand new Vans.
“Fuck,” he said again.
---
Jon was near hysterics, leaning against Tom for support. “I told you! No way that kid was 21! Hell, was he even 18? You deserved what you got.”
“You did not tell me he was going to throw up on me,” Pete countered, and found some joy in Tom elbowing Jon off him so he could fold. “And keep on laughing, I’m taking all your money.” He pulled the chips from the hand closer, adding them to his ever-growing pile.
“So what did you even do with him?” Sean asked, looking up from shuffling the cards. “I hope you didn’t kick him out on the street for ruining your shoes.”
Pete rolled his eyes. “Even I’m not that much of an asshole. I put him to bed and left him gas money in the morning.”
“A real saint,” Jon laughed, leaning his head onto Tom’s shoulder. This time, Tom didn’t push him away.
“Damn straight,” Pete agreed. “Now let’s play some poker. I still have two more months before school starts. I have to pay my rent somehow.”
“I think you’re confused about who’s taking whose money,” a voice called from behind them, followed by the sound of the door closing, and a chorus of laughter rose up as Ashlee wandered into the living room, shrugging off her coat. “Sorry I’m late.”
“You can show up whenever, so long as you show up,” Sean said, pushing out a chair with his foot for her.
Pete nodded, flashing her a smile. “You’re just in time to watch me finish kicking their asses.”
Ashlee nodded, but didn’t look suitably impressed. She rarely was with him, though. Pete had spent months braving the English department’s stuffy halls and libraries just to get her to go on a date with him, another month of some of the best sex of his life though apparently not hers, and that had finally tapered off into a friendship where she could invade their poker nights and call him an idiot when the shoe fit. Which was more often than Pete cared to admit.
“Well,” she said slowly, tapping her fingers against the wooden dining table they used to play on. “What did I miss?”
“Pete tried to sleep with a high schooler,” Tom offered.
“Who threw up on him.” Jon still looked positively giddy at that news, and Pete sort of wanted to slap his friend. He took his cards instead.
“An eventful week,” Ashlee said, and her smile widened. “Such a hard life you marine biologists lead.”
“Hey!” Jon argued, frowning. “Two of us are photographers.”
Pete stuck his tongue out at her, and she laughed quietly, giving him a slight push, and was just kind enough to change the topic.
---
“When you wake up, do you get dressed in the dark?” Ashlee’s heels echoed in the empty corridor, and he struggled to keep up, carefully balancing two cups of Starbucks - one of which was burning his right hand, and the other was freezing his left.
“So nice to see you care.”
“No, really,” Ashlee sighed, reaching over to touch the purple hoodie, covering his dress shirt and bowtie underneath. “You can’t think this looks good.”
Pete rolled his eyes. “Not my fault the university has a dress code.”
“I don’t remember it saying ‘ugly’ in the requirements.”
He clicked his tongue at her and stopped walking, holding her coffee over a trash can in warning. “Careful,” he said, but when she narrowed her eyes at him, it was all he could do to laugh and run after her again.
“I kind of missed school,” he said, looking around the empty halls. The Dean’s lunch had been long and boring, as usual, and the food had been so bad they’d decided to make a coffee run and sit outside to drink it, even though there was still a layer of snow on the ground. Pete squinted as they stepped through the large double doors, but Ashlee found a bench facing away from the sun, and he handed over her coffee.
“It’s so quiet,” she murmured, closing her eyes. Pete sat beside her and took in the empty surroundings - the spring semester didn’t start for another two days, and the intersession kids had finally finished up their finals. The usual buzzing of students and life had been sucked from the area, replaced only by the occasional car horn somewhere off in the distance and the sound of Ashlee sipping her coffee or their feet crunching in the snow each time they shifted.
“I missed school,” Pete repeated, and kicked at a pile of snow under his foot.
---
The first day of classes was always Pete’s least favorite. He only had three semesters of experience - of teaching his own class, of having students address him as Professor Wentz, of pretending he was making a difference. It wasn’t enough time that he felt he really had the experience down, and even though his mentor had said first day jitters never went away, the uncertainty of that first day still made his heart race the way it had back in grade school.
But Biology of Fishes had gone better than he’d really expected. It was upper-division, and his first time teaching the subject, but the students were polite and interested, and no one had asked him anything beyond his capable knowledge. His next, and final class - Marine Conservation Ecology, comprised mostly of sophomores - was bound to be a walk in the park by comparison.
Pete took in a deep breath outside the closed door to compose himself, then stepped inside, glancing once toward the class and tossing his briefcase onto his desk chair. “Welcome,” he said, and he still wasn’t used to the way his voice resonated in class rooms, like a flashback to the few months he’d been on a stage with Jon, in crappy bars, the stage lights blinding him. Pete didn’t give it a second thought, though, as he began to spell out the name of the class on the board.
“This is Marine Conservation Ecology, and I’m Professor Wentz. If none of that sounds familiar, you’re probably stoned or high, in which case, you better share or get out.”
Pete cringed at his own handwriting before turning around, already moving toward his desk to pull out the syllabus for the semester. Across the room, a pen clattered loudly to the floor, and Pete looked toward who had made the noise, and stopped.
In the third row, staring at him with those same blue eyes he remembered, was the kid who’d thrown up on him.
Here, in his class. This wasn’t happening.
“Um,” he said, looking down quickly to gather the rest of the syllabuses. “Let me just, ah.” Pete closed his eyes briefly, but when he opened them again, he felt calmer. There was nothing to be done now, no matter how hard his heart was beating in his chest, or how his brain was speeding up just to try to process what any of this meant.
“This is your syllabus,” he said, handing it to a girl in the front to begin passing out. “Let’s go over it.”
Pete killed time and saved himself from stumbling over his words by having the students read it aloud, and carefully avoided looking anywhere near Joe. The only time he acknowledged him was at the end of class, when he pressed a hastily scribbled post-it note reading ‘See me in my office’ in Joe’s palm.
This was so not good.
---
Pete tapped his fingers anxiously on his desk, glancing at the clock for the third time. Class had only ended ten minutes earlier, and it was entirely possible Joe had another class, or that he’d fallen into a ditch on the way to Pete’s office.
Yes, entirely possible.
He almost fell out of his chair when there was a soft knock and it swung open, revealing Joe, now wearing a scarf and heavier overcoat Pete didn’t remember from class. “Hi?” he asked, glancing around the office. It was fairly plain - books lined his bookshelf, along with a stuffed whale Jon had bought him when he got the teaching position. Nothing that should have held Joe’s attention so raptly.
“Shut the door,” Pete said, and winced at the way his voice cracked at the end.
Joe slid into the leather seat across from Pete once the door was closed, staring at him. To his credit, he looked almost as nervous as Pete felt.
“What are you doing in my class?” Pete asked slowly, narrowing his eyes. “Are you stalking me? Because we didn’t do anything, I can’t be fired. You can’t prove anything.”
“It seems like quite an effort to take three prerequisites just to get in your class, if I was stalking you.” He didn’t smile, but Pete thought he could see the corners of his lips twitching. “Sir.”
Pete narrowed his eyes. “Then what are you doing in my class?”
Joe blinked at him before looking around the office again. “Um. Trying to get my degree?”
“You really expect me to believe you’re studying in marine biology? No one studies marine biology in Chicago.”
Joe raised a finger and pointed it at something over Pete’s head. “Didn’t you?” he asked, motioning vaguely to Pete’s own degree from DePaul, framed thoughtfully by his mother and hung on the back wall.
Pete really didn’t like this kid.
“So you want to be a marine biologist?”
Something shifted in Joe’s expression, and there was a brief moment of hesitation. “Well, not exactly.”
“Aha!”
Joe was staring at him like he had three heads, which was usually a look only worn by Ashlee. Pete slowly lowered his arms from their victory stance. “I want to study penguins.”
Pete furrowed his brows in confusion, because he’d thought he had Joe this time. “Shouldn’t you be an ornithologist, then? Penguins are birds, not fish. Did you actually pass that biology class?”
“I know they’re birds,” Joe mumbled, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck. He looked almost embarrassed, and Pete could suddenly see the kid from the bar that night sitting across from him, laughing drunkenly about how purple was an awesome color because the word was fun to say. “But like, there’s not a lot of… ornithology degrees out there, are there? And even if there were, that’d mostly be about normal birds, that can fly, and that don’t live in the ocean. So marine biology seemed a bit more… natural.”
Pete was still eyeing him carefully, but with less hostility and suspicion. “So you don’t want to wreck my career?”
Joe looked around the small, barely-decorated office again before settling his gaze back on Pete. “What career?”
When Pete started to laugh, it felt like he was releasing built up tension and frustration from weeks. “I like you,” he said, flashing Joe a smile for the first time since that night, and was greeted with a shy one in return. “Nothing funny this time, but we’ll be fine.”
“Does that mean I don’t have to drop out? I really need this class.”
Pete nodded. “You can stay. I’m not giving you an A though.”
Joe actually looked offended. “What if I earn an A?”
“We’ll see,” Pete said, and Joe seemed satisfied enough with the answer that he shook Pete’s hand awkwardly and left. If Pete watched the way his ass looked on the way out the door, it was more to do with reflex.
---
Nada Tea and Coffee House wasn’t as packed as the last time Ashlee had dragged him there, but Pete didn’t like it any better. Too many of their drinks were green, and while he wasn’t quite certain what Yok Mok was, he didn’t think it belonged on a cookie.
“I hate the first week,” Ashlee sighed once they’d settled on a table, dropping their messenger bags onto the empty seats. It felt like when he was a student again, the soft hint of caffeine lingering in the air if he ignored the other aromas. Across from him, Ashlee sipped her tea and waved her hand, looking tired. “I mean, I drive 45 minutes to get here, I hand out a syllabus, and class is over in five minutes. Does that seem fair to you?”
“You could keep them longer,” Pete commented, poking at his sandwich. “Y’know, make them do actual work.”
“I’m not a sadist,” she argued, tilting her head as she watched him. “Unlike some people.”
Pete cracked a smile, but it was small. “I see nothing wrong with assigning a paper the first week.”
“You would have when you were their age.”
She had a point, but he took a large bite out of his chicken sandwich, pointedly ignoring her.
She went back to her own lunch, glancing down occasionally at her well-worn copy of The Sun Also Rises. Pete remembered giving her the book, back when he’d been pretending he wanted to just be friends.
“How are your classes?” she asked, not tearing her eyes from the page.
Briefly, he considered telling her about Joe - but the less of a thing he made over the issue, the more chance Pete hoped he had of letting the semester slide past without incident. Instead, he shrugged. “You know.”
Her eyes flicked up briefly, taking him in. “No,” she said slowly. “I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.”
“Oh.” He laughed, though it was nervous even to his own ears. “The kids in Biology of Fishes seem more interested this year.”
Ashlee nodded thoughtfully. “And your other class?”
“Fine,” he answered, but even he knew it was too quick. Pete winced and Ashlee was definitely no longer looking at her book.
“You want to talk about it?” she asked slowly.
Pete rolled his eyes. “Nothing’s going on, I promise. Just, a weird class. I don’t know, I’ve only had them twice, right?”
For a moment, he thought she was going to press the issue further. But instead, she gave a small shrug and turned back to the book, letting him finish his lunch.
---
Pete had always been afraid that teaching would feel like his least favorite parts of being a student in a university. That once he stepped foot in that classroom, those same old feelings of boredom, of being trapped, of a brick wall, would all come crashing back. So he’d been pleasantly surprised to find that being on the other side of a classroom felt like none of those things. There were occasional days where he wanted to shake his students just to wake them up, but mostly, he found getting to impart what little knowledge he had about the world exhilarating.
It was probably a bit narcissistic, he thought.
But the one thing he hated, that reminded him of tireless nights spent holed up in the library or his own room with piles of books, was lesson planning.
And although Pete would never admit it, that was precisely why he assigned a paper the first week. Once students got to know him and his expectations, they rarely stopped in. Giving a project at the start of the term ensured at least occasionally in that first month, someone might knock on his door and give him a reprieve from staring over the material for the class and trying to come up with some new, inventive way to teach that people smarter than himself hadn’t come up with on in their own in the last few hundred years.
Sometimes, Pete’s plans took odd turns.
“Nate,” Pete sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, because he had given up on calling him Mr. Navarro a half hour ago. “Please stop pretending to cry.”
Across from him, Nate let out another fake sob. It was almost insulting. Pete had pulled this trick before in undergrad, but at least he’d been able to muster up real tears. And, on occasion when the story called for it, pretty convincing fake blood and broken limbs.
“B-but, my laptop really did get stolen! I need this extra time, Professor!”
“It’s a five-page paper,” Pete sighed, and it took every ounce of self-control he had not to bang his head against the wall. “You have three more days, you can do it.”
“It’s the weekend,” Nate fake-sobbed, and in that moment, Pete was so over being a teacher.
There was a hesitant knock on the door, and Joe poked his head in, but paused as soon as he saw Nate. “Sorry,” Joe said, offering them both a quick, nervous smile. “I’ll just come back later.”
“No!” Pete scrambled to his feet, pulling the door the rest of the way open. “Please, Nate was just leaving, weren’t you?”
“Do I get my extension?” Nate asked, sounding more hopeful than crestfallen this time, and Pete began to wonder how today’s youth was being raised if they didn’t even know how to lie to their professors.
He opened the door wider, motioning to the hallway. “You’ll figure something out, Mr. Navarro. Now goodbye.”
Nate’s shoulders sunk, but once he had walked out, Pete slammed the door closed and leaned against it, closing his eyes.
“I really can come back later,” Joe said, fidgeting by the desk. “It’s not a big deal. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Pete laughed quietly. “No, trust me, you’re saving me.” He opened his eyes and took in Joe’s nervous stance - the way he couldn’t seem to settle on his own two feet. He was watching Pete, expectantly, and finally Pete cleared his throat and slid back into his office chair. “What can I do for you, Mr., ah…” Pete stumbled over his words, wondering if it was still polite to call someone by their last name after he’d seen them naked. Even if that someone was his student.
Joe didn’t seem bothered. He slid off his backpack and began digging through it, pulling out wadded papers and looking embarrassed and flustered for it. “I just, I mean, I just needed some clarification? Like, you said to write five pages about the current efforts being made to protect a species.”
“Yes,” Pete said, leaning back. On some of the papers Joe was pulling out, he saw scraps of drawings or sheet music. His fingers itched to reach out and touch them, to get a better look, but he kept his hands neatly folded in his lap. “Whatever species you want. Though I assumed you’d be choosing penguins.”
Joe looked up sharply, his cheeks flushing red. He laughed nervously and nodded, finally pulling out the only non-crumpled papers Pete had seen him remove from his backpack. “Yeah. Is that okay?”
“They’re still birds,” Pete said, but he shrugged. “But I don’t see why not. We study them later.”
The smile he got in return could have lit up a room.
“Awesome,” Joe said, and this time when he laughed, it sounded more genuine. “My question was more, did you just mean man-made problems they need to be protected from? Like, oil spills and overfishing? Or did you mean natural ones as well, like weather and global warming? Because when I included both, it was more like, ten pages.” He slid the papers across the table to Pete and then he was back to fidgeting. “And I know it’s too many, but I couldn’t shut myself up. Could you look it over?”
Pete grabbed a red pen, picking up the paper. “You sound like me,” he said, and the look Joe gave him was almost as unreadable as whatever Pete was feeling.
---
Jon held up one of his few remaining red chips, squinting at it. “Is this $5 or $10 again?”
Tom groaned while Pete snickered and began to drag Jon’s beer bottle across the table, out of reach, and watched the trail of condensation it left. Jon caught the motion, though barely, and frowned. “Hey!”
“You’re cut off,” Ashlee sighed, throwing her cards on the table. “I need to find boys who know how to play poker.”
Pete nodded in agreement and drank the remains of Jon’s beer before folding his own hand. “Even I suck tonight.”
“You suck every night,” Tom mumbled, and Jon let out a loud laugh, no longer concerned about the missing beer.
“I do not.” Pete crossed his arms, shaking his head at them. “I haven’t even gotten laid in forever.”
Across the table, Jon’s eyes lit up with a spark of recognition. “Because they throw up on you!” he said, and then dissolved into a bout of giggles, leaning heavily against Tom.
“You’re blushing.”
The table stopped dead at Ashlee’s words, and even Jon stopped his drunken laughter to stare at Pete. “You are,” Tom confirmed, slowly. “You never blush.”
Pete hadn’t even realized. “I’m not,” he muttered, gathering up the cards on the table. “Now, whose turn is it to deal?”
---
A club was precisely what Pete needed. He’d collected the first round of papers from both his classes, but rather than taking them home to cover them in shiny red ink, he’d thrown his bag into a corner and changed into the tightest pair of jeans he owned.
It was still a chilly Chicago winter, and his arms felt stiff and frozen in the air as he walked from the train to the club a few blocks down, but once he stepped inside and felt the rush of bodies pressing together, he felt instantly warmed.
Pete danced for awhile, eyes closed and hips swaying to the rhythm of bad dance music blaring overhead, but he hadn’t found what he was looking for. When someone pressed a suggestive hand to his hip or, once, his ass - he just smiled and slid away, further into the crowd.
His eyes kept moving over the flurry of bodies around him, still searching for something, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what. His stomach had been in knots all week, a feeling of dread he couldn’t quite pinpoint. “You need to get laid,” Jon had said when they’d met for lunch one afternoon, and tonight, Pete agreed. He needed that sensation of being in control, of pressing willing hips onto his black sheets and spreading them, knowing the act was just for him.
Finally, he spotted what he’d been searching for. There was a skinny boy with his back turned to Pete, moving in tune to the music. He couldn’t see his face, but his hair was short, just curling at the tips. Pete had to slide through people to get up behind him, but when he did, something clicked in a way none of the other people there had.
He settled his hands on the boy’s waist, pleased when he didn’t move away but instead pressed back, not too eager but pliant. They moved like that for a moment, Pete’s cock rubbing against his ass in an agonizingly tempting way. The kid knew what he was doing, especially when he tilted his head back onto Pete’s shoulder and -
Pete shot back, as much as he could in the dense crowd, and in front of him, Joe spun around to face him. They both stood there, suddenly out of sync with both the music and their thoughts, staring each other down.
“You’re stalking me,” Pete called, over the music, and Joe’s lips twitched into a bemused smile. Pete’s cock also twitched in approval of that smile.
“You keep saying that,” he yelled back, shaking his head. “You approached me.”
Pete hated when other people made sense.
Joe wasn’t looking at him like he did in class, though. Or even like that first night. There was something wide and overblown about his eyes, like he was on something - or like Pete imagined he’d been looking at Joe moments before. He tilted his head, still taking Pete in, and this time, not bothering to hide the way his eyes lingered over the bulge in Pete’s jeans.
It was a horrible idea, but Pete’s body felt on autopilot as he pressed closer, closing the distance he’d created between them. Joe’s fingers were slick with sweat as they slid under the bottom of his shirt, tracing across skin, while Pete trailed his own fingers across Joe’s back and then down, to grasp his ass and force him closer. It gave him a sick thrill at the way Joe’s breath hitched against his ear before he leaned his head back, giving Pete easy access.
This was such a bad idea. But when Pete ground their hips together, roughly, and Joe moaned low and ragged, the fingers at his side clawing a little, Pete didn’t care.
“Let’s get out of here,” Pete whispered against his ear, and there was the briefest of hesitations from Joe before he nodded. Then their hands grasped for each other as they fought their way out of the mass of sweaty bodies pressing together. Together, they escaped into the cold, and Joe’s black Converse made the only noise other than their breathing as they hurried along to the train station. It occurred once to Pete that Joe probably even knew what train they were headed to, that he might remember exactly where Pete lived, but that wasn’t a line of thought he cared to follow. He much preferred the one Joe seemed to have when they made it to the train station and Pete found himself pulled into a dark corner as they waited, lips pressing against his and needy hips grinding against him. The room seemed to vibrate as the train whisked past them, a clatter against the rails, but Pete waited until the last few seconds to pull back, gripping Joe by the buckle on his jeans and jerking him onto the awaiting car.
The train was annoyingly full and buzzing with life, with tired, drunken college students singing off key and homeless men sleeping through the rickety ride. But Pete grabbed two open seats toward the back and Joe slid down beside him. No one paid them much attention, even as Pete ran his hand along Joe’s thigh, digging his fingers in and marking yet unseen flesh. Joe hissed once and shifted, but otherwise kept his face placid through the ride. No one would ever guess his own hands were playing at the hem of Pete’s shirt and tracing the hint of skin found there.
His stop felt like it took hours to get to, and by the time he jerked Joe to his feet and they tumbled off, Pete was hard and anxious. He kept the same forceful hand clasped on Joe’s belt as he tugged him into the cold night air, and Joe followed him eagerly through the streets without complaint. Which was exactly the way Pete liked it.
“Here,” Pete murmured, stealing one quick kiss in the dark and tasting a hint of vodka there, before he got the door to his apartment building open. One step, four steps, ten, and the angle was awkward to keep a grasp on Joe, but he felt warm fingers reaching out to grip his arm for support, and soon enough they were pouring into Pete’s apartment. His shoes were gone before the door was even closed, and when he shoved Joe up against it, his mind reeled back to months before, this same scenario.
But Joe wasn’t nearly as drunk this time, and the energy had shifted. When Pete pressed his hips hard against Joe’s and leaned in for another searing kiss, rough and territorial, Joe arched toward him like his life depended on it. This was definitely new. He got Joe’s shirt up and over his head before dragging his fingers down his chest, scratching at the exposed skin hard enough to leave marks in the morning.
“I can take it,” Joe whispered, and his eyes were bright in the mostly dark room.
But Pete was never one to back down from a challenge. Especially one as tempting as this.
“Come,” he said, and without waiting to see if Joe would follow, Pete led them to his bedroom. The cleaning lady had come that afternoon, and Pete found childlike enjoyment at the idea of messing up freshly washed sheets which hadn’t even been slept on. He lifted his own shirt up and over his head, tossing it into a corner.
“Get on your knees.”
There was the first moment of hesitation from Joe, but he complied, fingers already reaching for the zipper of Pete’s jeans and making quick work of them.
Pete had been wondering (somewhere, in the very back of his mind) for weeks what this very moment would feel like - what Joe would look like on his knees like this, if he’d be skilled or inexperienced but eager to please, or hesitant. He was pleasantly surprised when Joe didn’t waste any time getting rid of his clothes, and Pete had barely stepped out of his boxers before Joe’s fingers were wrapping around the base of his cock, his lips sliding down the length.
Pete’s head hit the wall, but it didn’t matter. His fingers found Joe’s hair and guided his movements, an unnecessary move, given the way Joe used the mouth-and-hand combination like he was almost ready to go pro. Joe was so good, in fact, that when Pete caught Joe staring up at him, he almost came undone completely
Joe seemed to sense this, as he pulled back slowly. “Pete,” he whispered, and Pete hated how comfortable that sounded spilling from Joe’s tongue. He nipped lightly at the inside of his thigh. “Come on.”
That propelled him back into action. He wrangled Joe out of his own jeans and onto the bed, pushing him down onto his knees. Pete fumbled with the lube from his bedside drawer with one hand while he ran the other down Joe’s chest, closer to where he knew Joe wanted his hand.
“You like that?” he asked, leaning down to press a kiss against Joe’s back before wrapping his hand around his cock, feeling the way he pressed down into the touch. From the angle, Pete couldn’t see his face and he regretted that, but it did give him a better angle when he reached down with his other hand to press one slicked finger into him. He looked so tempting like this, spread out for Pete.
Experimentally, he moved his other hand from Joe’s cock to his hips and dug his nails in, and was pleased when he could hear Joe’s breath hitch, could feel the way his hips jerked forward. “I can take it,” Joe repeated, firmer.
When Joe’s hips gave another involuntary jerk and he moaned under Pete, he pulled both hands back entirely and began searching for a condom.
Joe whined while he fumbled with opening it and slicking it on, arching back toward Pete. A few moments, later, though, he let out a different sort of whine as Pete gripped his hips again and began to slide into him, slowly. “You still good?” he grit out.
“Good,” Joe said, and arched back again.
They set up a quick rhythm, Pete jerking Joe’s hips back toward him with every thrust. To his credit, Joe took it, leaning his head down to rest his forehead against the mattress and moaning with each push.
It was tight, tighter than Pete had really expected given Joe’s previous enthusiasm, but he kept his thoughts to himself. He wouldn’t have been able to articulate them, anyway, not with the sounds Joe was making under him and the way his fingers dug in a little deeper to flesh, so that he could see where light bruises were beginning to form. Where they’d still be, the next day, a reminder.
It didn’t take much for Pete to get off, and then he was groaning into Joe’s back, giving a final round of sharp, rough thrusts before spilling into the condom. He finally reached down to wrap his hand around Joe’s cock, and Joe let out a grateful moan. With a few quick tugs, Joe came too, and collapsed under him onto the bed.
Pete pulled back carefully, peeling the condom off and throwing it away.
“Do I have to sleep in the wet spot?” Joe mumbled into the pillow, and Pete snorted.
“You did make it.”
Joe yawned, and Pete considered briefly telling him to get out. But in the end, he just climbed in with him, pulling the covers up higher.
“Asshole,” Joe muttered, and it almost sounded affectionate. Pete was too busy pondering that to come up with a good excuse, and by the time he had one, Joe was already snoring into his favorite pillow.
This had not been exactly how Pete had pictured the night going.
---
Grading papers was almost therapeutic. Especially on nights when Pete couldn’t sleep, it was like reading dozens of bedtime stories. About whales and oil spills, but bedtime stories nonetheless.
What was less therapeutic, however, was one of his students wandering into his living room at four in the morning, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, and smiling sleepily at him. “Is there coffee?” he asked, hopeful.
“It’s too early for coffee.”
Joe made a displeased noise and settled onto the other end of the sofa as though he belonged there. “It’s never too early for coffee.”
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“Shouldn’t you?”
Pete frowned at him from over the top of Ann Miller’s ramblings about the plight of the sea otter. “It’s my apartment. I can sleep when I want.”
Joe seemed unphased. “So can I,” he said, and then picked up the stack of graded papers and began sifting through it. Pete reached out for them, but Joe held them out of his reach.
“You’re not supposed to see other students’ grades. I could get fired for that.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” Joe laughed, startled. And alright, maybe he had a point. Pete grumbled, mostly to himself, and looked back at Ann Miller’s paper.
“I got an A-. Hey thanks.”
“You’re sort of arrogant.”
Joe looked up at him, startled again, but for very different reasons. “I’m really not,” he admitted, softer. “I just didn’t figure you’d respond well to quiet and subtle.”
Pete set the paper down entirely. “So you planned this out?”
“No! Of course not. You approached me in the club, remember?”
“Maybe you’ve been like, stalking out my favorite clubs and restaurants and just waiting for me to make the first move.” He paused at the look Joe gave him. “Or not.”
“I just, I figured I should use the opportunity that arose.” He smiled hopefully. “Are we going to do it again?”
“No,” Pete said, rising to his feet. “I will make you that coffee after all. And then you’re going to go home.”
He didn’t know if he was surprised or disappointed when Joe didn’t argue.
---
What he did, instead, was maybe worse.
Pete was surprisingly calm before the next class period. No dean or law team came to knock on his office door, and when he and Ashlee went out to lunch, he steered the conversation topic toward late night TV without it seeming like a ploy to keep her from digging into his extracurricular activities. It almost wasn’t a ploy at all, in the end, as really he hadn’t thought about Joe at all. Not even once.
Well, not much, anyway.
But when Pete stepped into that classroom, feeling ten feet taller than usual and launching into his semi-improvisational lecture about the application of spatial analysis to threatened marine ecosystems, there was Joe, regarding him with the same disinterest as any other student. The same look of unimportance as Pete had scribed to the entire scenario was etched across his bored expression as he sat there, doodling in the margins of his paper.
“Am I boring you, Mr. Trohman?”
Pete hadn’t even realized the words were out until suddenly there were several very alert pairs of eyes turning to stare at him. He was never the type of teacher to call anyone out unless they were blatantly disregarding him, and even then, it was often more fun to watch them squirm in his office later when their grades suffered because they’d spent their time texting rather than listening.
Joe’s expression remained mostly unchanged, even though he was staring Pete down. “No, Sir.”
“Are you sure?” He shouldn’t be pushing this, he knew that. It was idiotic to draw attention to Joe now, after the entire week had gone so smoothly. But he wanted a reaction that those bored-looking eyes just weren’t giving him. “Because maybe you’d prefer to be somewhere else right now? You don’t look like you want to be here. Am I keeping you from something more important?”
Pete could see the blush rising up his neck under the harsh classroom lights, but more than that, he could tell Joe was biting back some witty yet cutting response. Instead, though, he just shook his head and set his pen down.
They continued their staring match, until one of the other students cleared her throat uncomfortably, and Pete had to look somewhere, anywhere else. “Um, anyway, as I was just talking about the, uh, the…”
“The Laptev Sea,” Joe’s voice cut in, barely audible under Pete’s own, but he caught it all the same. When he turned to look at him again, Joe was watching him, expectant, and maybe with a hint of annoyance.
Pete cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said, and carried on as though nothing had happened.
When he passed out papers at the end of the class period, Joe didn’t look at him or the paper at all before pushing through the herd of students gathered around them, fighting to get to the exit.
---
“You’re an asshole this week,” Ashlee commented, leaning back in her office chair. Sometimes he hated how much bigger her office was than his, but mostly, he then remembered that he hated being in his office at all.
He stabbed a crouton from her salad with his fork and took it before she could make too many protesting noises. It just proved her point, she should have been happy. “Just this week?”
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Pete snorted and took a large bite of his own lunch, a turkey sandwich. “There are no ladies in this office.”
“Touché.”
They shared a quiet smile, and Pete had hoped the conversation was over, but Ashlee seemed to have other ideas. “What’s going on with you, really?” she asked, leaning closer. “You said your classes were going well. But you’re being a dick about something.”
“Antarctica,” he said quickly, and she didn’t seem to buy it at first, so Pete shrugged. “I mean, I just, I want to get out of here for a bit. I didn’t expect to spend my life teaching.”
Finally, Ashlee nodded thoughtfully. “They’d let you do it. The program could use a little more credibility. Because,” she added quickly when Pete opened his mouth to argue, “you haven’t been out to do research in years, Pete.”
“That’s why I want to go.”
She nodded, and offered a real smile. “I think it’s a good idea.”
---
There was one e-mail in his inbox that Pete had been staring at, all morning. It wasn’t making his office hours go by any faster, but it was making his head spin.
From: jtrohman@depaul.edu
To: petewentz@depaul.edu
Subject: (No Subject)
If you want me to leave your class, you’re going to have to try a lot harder.
He hesitated, for the hundredth time that hour, but this time he clicked the icon to delete the message, forever.
---
Jon looked decidedly bored, and he told Pete this, for the fifth time in an hour.
“We’re almost done,” Pete swore, and began wandering down the camping aisles for one last perusal, just in case he’d missed anything.
Jon sighed, but continued his mostly silent protest march behind Pete. “You said that thirty minutes ago. I mean, I’m glad you’re finally smiling. But seriously. How much stuff do you honestly need for a one weekend camping trip with some college students?”
Pete huffed. “What if some of them don’t bring their own tents?”
“The mosquitoes get them. Or they get frostbite. Wait, aren’t you staying in heated cabins?”
“What if my first seven lanterns all break down at once and we have no light to read by?”
Jon looked at him oddly. “You build a fire.”
“What if I don’t know how to build a fire?”
“Well, you don’t, actually. But you still survived. And you’re staying in a cabin, I know you told me that!”
Pete grinned, and shrugged. “Yeah, alright. Let’s go.”
“Thank you!” Jon jerked the cart out from Pete’s grasp and began pushing it quickly toward the check out, ignoring Pete’s desperate attempts to quickly throw in some last minute hand warmers.
“How’s the gallery?” Pete asked once they were standing in line, and attempted to sneak in a pack of gum to the cart. Jon noticed, but he let it slide and gave an easy shrug instead.
“Busy. Tom and I are working a lot of late nights trying to put up new installations, and last week, Tom decided the whole place would look better if we redid the paint, but, well, it’s Tom.”
Pete nodded thoughtfully. “So you ended up painting it yourself.”
He at least looked a little embarrassed, but not sorry. “Maybe.”
“Bet Cassie doesn’t like the long hours.”
It was something Pete had been wanting to bring up for weeks, but even now, he didn’t know how far to push. Boundaries had never been Pete’s best thing at gauging. Something pained flashed across Jon’s face, but it settled into something like resign. “No,” he admitted, rolling his shoulders back out of nervous habit. “But it’s just for now, until we really get up and running, right?”
Pete smiled at him, because that was the right thing to do for a friend. He could hear his mother’s voice telling him so in his head. “Exactly,” he said.
“Anyway,” Jon said, not so subtly trying to change the subject once Pete had swiped his card for the pile of camping supplies currently filling their shopping cart, “are you excited for this weekend?”
“Sure,” he said, and changed the subject just as quickly.
---
His motley group of students were all gathered around the bus (except Nate, for whom Pete had said a silent prayer in gratitude when he’d announced he wouldn’t be able to get off work). They all looked rather displeased at spending their Friday evening anywhere other than a bar, but Pete hoisted his own backpack further up his shoulders and decided he didn’t care. “We’ve got almost a four hour drive,” he said, and it didn’t escape his attention that most of the students were eyeing the old, rickety bus with uncertainty now. “So I really hope you’re all here.”
It was then that Mark Hoppus, the department head, came jogging over, smiling lopsidedly. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”
“Professor Hoppus is coming?” someone asked, sounding instantly more excited, and Pete just laughed.
“We needed another chaperone.”
“Party time!” Mark said, giving them all a thumbs up and another smile. “In the safe, ecologically friendly party way.”
Pete was about to let them board, when he remembered the few printed sheets he was holding in his hands. “I’m also working on getting together a research team for the fall, to study changing behavior patterns of different mammals from the melting polar ice caps. In Antarctica.” In the back, he saw Hayley Williams yawn. “It’s a unique opportunity. We’re looking for all levels for the research team. If you’re interested, come get a sheet.”
His announcement was meant with silence, until Mark clapped his hands together and motioned them all forward.
Pete didn’t bother reading off the names on the roll to make sure they were actually all present - he was better with faces anyway - and led them up the small steps to the inside of the bus. Mark took the front seat and Pete slid in across from him, even though he was itching for the very back. But it allowed him to watch the others as they boarded, mostly whispering about the things they could have been doing instead. Unsurprisingly, no one seemed to pay him or his informational sheets any mind, and he hadn’t really expected much less. The handful of grad students had been more enthusiastic, but he was going to have to look at other universities to fill out the rest of the team.
It took Pete a moment to notice, however, that one student had stopped in front of him and was staring at him, expectant, as he held out his hand. “Professor?” Joe asked slowly, and when Pete blinked at him, he motioned toward the paper.
Pete frowned. “You’re interested?”
“I might be.”
“It would mostly be whales and polar bears, not just penguins.”
Joe winced, but his hand remained outstretched. “Can I just have the paper?”
“He’s so excited about this trip he can’t speak,” Mark spoke up across from them, and leaned over to peel the freshest copy off Pete’s stack and hand it to Joe. On his way back, he fixed Pete with an unreadable look, but then he was taking that back seat that Pete had been so hoping for and ducked his head.
“Thanks,” Pete murmured, but Mark just shrugged.
---
Fox Ridge Lake Park was Pete’s favorite. It was huge, but almost impossible to get lost in because all of its paths were giant loops. It was breathtakingly beautiful, even now, when Pete could see his breath hanging in the cold night air. Overhead, the moon was shining brightly, reflected off the lake and glistening off the few remaining patches of snow in the area.
He couldn’t really make out their faces, but his students still looked mostly annoyed as they pulled their oversized coats on tighter and began dragging their backpacks off the bus. Joe was the last one off, but Pete looked away as soon as he realized he’d been waiting.
“That’s everyone,” he said to Mark.
“Our cabins are over here,” Mark shouted, and then without waiting to see if the rest were following, began to lead the march toward them. “You’ll be pleased to know they’re heated, and have outlets, and warm showers.” He paused, glancing back at Pete. “But tomorrow, your insane professor will be doing a campout for anyone who wants to participate for extra credit. I will be in my nice, warm bunk.”
Pete left Mark to keep the troops entertained while he ran ahead to the main office, where Ray was sitting behind a desk, the keys to the cabins already laid out in front of him. He sat up straighter at Pete’s presence, giving him a wide smile. “Hey! I can leave now.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Pete’s lips, but he was too tired to put forth any real effort into the movement. “Nice to see you too.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Hi.” He slid the keys closer to Pete. “You know the drill. Don’t let them fuck anything up. If you run into any problems, call Bob. He can be here in ten, he’s just at the main post.”
Pete gave a mock salute. “Go home, Toro.”
---
Morning came much too soon. The owls outside the cabin kept Pete up most of the night, and once the sun started to rise, there were no blinds on the window. The small room he was sharing with Mark was suddenly filled with entirely too much light. No matter how Pete turned, it was impossible not to feel like he was being blinded.
Even if he hadn’t, though, his efforts would have been futile when five minutes later, Mark whacked him in the head with a pillow. “Time to get up, Wentz.”
“Fuck you,” Pete muttered into a pillow, but his protest was only met with laughter and another, harder, whack to the head. “Fine,” he sighed, and dragged himself to his feet.
Blissfully, there was coffee already made in the kitchen of the cabin, though most of it was already gone. He claimed the last cup, ignoring the glare from Elliott who’d wandered in shortly after him from the main bunks room.
Once the coffee had kicked in, it didn’t take that long to get dressed and bundle up. Mark took it upon himself to rouse the students and bark orders at them to get up, get dressed, get outside. Secretly, Pete thought it was the most fun Mark had had in weeks. But it must have worked, as somehow when Pete emerged outside, everyone seemed to be fully clothed (though perhaps not fully awake) and standing beside a rather pleased looking Mark.
“Morning,” Pete called, and there was a low chorus of voices in return, though Pete sincerely doubted they shared his enthusiasm. Hayley still had a toothbrush in her mouth, Elliott was staring up at the sky blankly, and Joe was swaying on his feet from exhaustion. Pete knew how they felt, but it still gave him a small thrill to jump the last two steps from the cabin to the ground where they were gathered, and point toward the forest.
“As you should all know by now, this is Marine Conservation Biology. Which means, we’re concerned with the environment as well.” There were a few sleepy nods. “So, we’re going to take a hike around the park, and go see my good friend Gerard who runs the ecology center at the other end of the lake.”
Hayley raised her hand, and Pete considered ignoring her, but she raised her hand higher in the air and gave him a pointed look. Finally, he nodded to her. “Yes?”
“Why are we here in the winter?”
Pete grinned wider. “I like to torture you.”
Beside him, Mark snorted. Hayley looked perplexed as she slowly lowered her hand, so Pete took pity on her.
“There’s a lot of tourists, later on. It’s hard to really see the place as it’s meant to be seen unless you come when there’s no one else here. And, as you should know, Illinois actually stocks a lot of the lakes with bass and other fish, but takes them out once it starts getting warm, because they can’t withstand the heat.” He motioned around them. “Any more questions?”
This time, DeMar Hamilton, who usually kept to himself, raised his hand toward the back.
“You!” Mark called, pointing back to him.
“Um, when’s lunch?”
---
Part Two