Fic: This Love is Not Obedient
Title: This Love Is Not Obedient (it has its own agenda) (2/4)
Rating: PG? M?
Fandom: FOB P!atd (Patrick/Pete, Brendon/Ryan, one-sided Ryan/Patrick)
So maybe this is becoming a habit, because when Patrick stumbles into his office that morning, Ryan’s looking at some chick’s Myspace on the older man’s computer, blaring some pop-punk bullshit from the stereo.
“Dude, do you like, have a life?”
Ryan doesn’t say anything, gestures to the headphones he has on, and seriously, why the hell is the music so loud then?
Patrick turns off the stereo, and attempts to loom over Ryan rather ineffectively.
“What the hell are you even doing?”
Ryan glances up, shrugs shoulders and fiddles with the hair on the back of his head. “Browsing.”
“What?”
Ryan just shrugs again, and the battle is a short one, mostly coz they’re both kinda pussies, but Patrick’s got the weight advantage. In seconds Ryan’s sulking on the floor and Patrick’s closing windows of Myspace and Livejournal pages. He pretends not to see the photographs of a topless Ryan.
“Go to school,” Patrick says, and Ryan returns to the real world just long enough to flip him off.
“I graduated last year, asshole.”
“What about college?”
Ryan shrugs. “College is for retards and people with dicks bigger than their brains.”
“Right,” Patrick says, “I must have missed that at Harvard. Sorry. Must have gotten lost amongst the professors and librarians, coz I didn’t really spot the retards or the guys with humongous dicks. Well, actually there was this guy in my economics class and he had quite the bulge if you catch my drift-”
Ryan laughs a little, stands up only to sit back down on top of the four-cornered desktop. “Dude, you went to Harvard?”
“I went to Harvard.”
“What did you like, major in?”
Patrick sighs, squints up at Ryan’s pretty face. “Would you believe me if I said I can’t remember?”
“Unlikely,” Ryan replies, shrugs hard enough that Patrick’s kinda worried that the change in pace will throw him off the desk. It’s what happened to his hamster when he was nine. Then again, there is probably a bigger difference than he is willing to admit between Ryan and Sherbet.
“Uh, believe it or not-“
“Patrick.” When did Maja get here? “Working?”
Maja is staring at them both with wide eyes and a set of eyebrows that try to escape, try to run off the top of her scalp, beneath her hairline.
“Working hard, Maja,” Patrick says, forms a fist and pumps an arm into the air.
“I’m sure you are,” she says. “Patrick, who’s this?” Her smile’s all fake, all plastic teeth and stretched skin.
“My fourth cousin…” he starts, “…twice removed.”
“Oh,” she says, squints a little. “I can see a bit of resemblance, I guess…”
“We both wear hats,” Patrick says, and Ryan nods rather adamantly from his seat on the desk, widens his eyes enough that he looks to be all of about eight-years-old.
“Right.”
*
“So,” Pete says, “so how are you?”
Well, to be quite frank, Patrick is rather confused. This mostly has to do with the fact that he has no idea how he got into this conversation. “Fine, and yourself?”
“Good,” Pete says, and he rubs a hand across his forehead, smears the oil, the grime into his hair. “Really good, Ryan and me, we like, we went to dinner last night, and then I met up with some mates and we went clubbing and shit, y’know?”
“Right,” Patrick says, and Ryan, he never talks about Pete, doesn’t talk about anything important really, just about writing and books and his ex-girlfriend (which Patrick chooses to interpret as ex-boyfriend).
“Yeah,” Pete says, “hangover is a bit of a bitch though.”
“I can imagine,” Patrick replies, nods and heads back to his office.
*
Patrick’s on the edge again.
On the wall, his feet just peaking across and Patrick, he can’t bear to look down today; the distance, it makes him so fucking nauseous.
Two birds land beside him, pigeons, and they coo and claw at the surface beneath them. Twitter like Patrick’s mother does at get-togethers, at parties, at, well, anything.
He takes a breath that rattles his chest, and Christ, he wishes he could sit down, but this wall, it’s so thin, a hand’s-width thick.
“Patrick”, someone says in the empty space behind him.
“A little busy,” he mutters back, but somebody, the voice, it shakes him, and suddenly, well, he slips, and he’s falling right over the edge and straight into his chair.
“Patrick,” Ryan says, and he’s all raised forehead and wide eyes. “I can’t imagine that it’s a good thing to be sleeping on the job. You’re setting a really bad example for my frail, impressionable mind.”
“Then why the fuck are you here?”
Ryan holds up a plastic bag and grins too hard. “Lunch.”
*
So, Pete’s a mechanic.
A kinda terrible one, but Patrick can’t cast judgment as his knowledge of cars extends to ‘insert keys’, ‘drive’, and ‘petrol’. He almost thinks Pete’s is somewhat similar, but Joe says that the guy has like, a degree in it. And yes, Patrick is not one to cast judgment. Not at all.
Point is, Pete’s a mechanic, and that completely explains as to why he is always covered in oil. It doesn’t, however, explain why Patrick is standing three feet away from the garage watching said oil-smeared-mechanic tinker with the open top of an ugly little car.
Pete heaves a sigh, and pulls himself from his work, rocks back on his heels and reaches for a filthy cloth. He rubs his face, and Patrick opens his mouth to kinda point out how it didn’t do much more than smear the oil a little better.
Pete hovers around the bench to the side of the garage, picks up wrenches and spanners and bottles of water and petrol and things that Patrick, quite frankly, is sorta oblivious to. Pete turns around too quickly, does a little pirouette thing that brings a grin to Patrick’s face, and starts when he lifts his head enough to see the other man.
“Hi,” Pete says, and he’s grinning a little, dumping the tools back on the bench and rubbing his hands on his jeans.
“Uh, hi,” Patrick replies, and he digs his hands back into his pockets, rocks a little on his heels.
“What’s up?” And Pete has wandered over, is still smiling with too-perfect teeth, and Patrick finds himself wondering if this guy likes Disneyland.
“Not a lot,” Patrick says, “uh, I guess, I…” And he can’t think of a reason to be here, is wracking his head too hard for an excuse he knows is gonna come too late.
Pete tilts his head, and runs a hand through his hair. Patrick supposes that Pete is rather lucky to have a head full of dark hair, because if he were to do something similar the oil would be way too obvious.
“I’m doing a Starbucks run for the guys inside,” he tries, squints a little, and Pete’s smile, it might falter a little. “Do you want anything?”
“I’m fine,” Pete says. “I should probably get back to work anyway.”
“Right,” Patrick says. “Right.”
*
“Pete likes you,” Ryan says, and he’s sitting cross-legged underneath Patrick’s desk and for once, Patrick isn’t under there with him. Patrick’s sitting in the swivel-chair, the one that Maja bought him for his 25th birthday, and honestly, getting a desk chair for your birthday is fucked up at any age, but for your mid-twenties it’s just kinda pathetic.
“Shouldn’t you be at college?”
“I’m going to drop out.” Ryan shrugs, and he’s eating two-minute noodles from a paper cup. Patrick has no idea where he puts it all. Maybe in his head because he’s a smart little fucker. “Stop trying to change the subject.”
“I should hope that Pete likes me,” Patrick tries. “We’re colleagues, we could be friends.”
“You know what I mean,” Ryan says, and he pauses to say it, chopsticks hover mid-air. “Don’t play dumb.”
“We’ve hardly said more than five words to each other, and like, three of those words have been about you.”
“Really?” And Patrick has no idea why Ryan seems so surprised, can’t quite tell why it would shock him that people talk about his pretty little face.
“Yeah,” Patrick says, “we think we need to mess you up a bit. You’re too sweet for this business.”
Ryan rolls his eyes, shoves a chopstick full of noodles into his mouth, and blushes when the sauce drips down his chin. “He likes you,” Ryan says, “and you’re both lonely.”
“Good thing we have you then.”
“Neither of you need me though,” Ryan says, “even if I want you too.”
Patrick chuckles a little, taps his pen on the desk. “Why would you want two old men for company?”
“No,” Ryan says, and he’s not smiling, not blinking, just staring at Patrick over the corner of the desk. “Not two old men, just you. Just - your - company.”
Patrick starts, and maybe his face drops to the floor. He leans beneath the desk before he can stop himself, stares at Ryan’s pretty hair because Ryan, he can’t meet his eye. “Me?”
“You,” Ryan says, and he pulls his knees to his chest, plays with the chopsticks.
“Pete…” Patrick starts, and he’s grasping at straws, his fingers dig in to the top of the desk.
“Pete is Pete,” Ryan says, “and he likes you, and you’re kinda in love with him too.”
*
Patrick isn’t exactly sure what Ryan was expecting would happen, but he’s pretty sure it wasn’t what did happen.
He’s pretty sure Ryan’s expectations were a little higher than Patrick throwing himself beneath his desk, behind walls, down the corridor, every time Pete wandered by. He’s pretty sure Ryan wasn’t expecting complete and utter avoidance on Patrick’s half until well, until he figured out what to do with this new piece of information.
And he genuinely is at a loss. Patrick, he never really, well, he’s always been attracted to women. He’s rather sure that this is where most of the obliviousness and paranoia stems from, because it is a bit of a leap in a new direction.
He pulls the penknife out from his pocket, and reaches up to the top of the desk, carves his name in jagged letters and honestly, he feels fourteen again, getting a taste for useless vandalism. He can’t deny the security that sitting under here provides him with though. It’s a roof over his head, a shield against the outside world.
“Patrick?”
He can see a set of particularly good-looking ankles and a rather stunning set of stilettos from beneath the desk, and well, this would probably be a good time to sit up.
“Uh, just a second, Maja, I, uh, I dropped my pen.” He pulls himself up too quickly, straight into the waiting desk chair.
Maja is staring with quirked eyebrows and a clipboard that hides the rest of her, but doesn’t succeed in hiding the person behind her.
“Patrick, this is Brendon. Brendon, Mr. Stump will be taking care of your internship here.”
Brendon, Patrick deduces, is a rather good-looking teenager (and really, with a face like that he can’t be older than nineteen). Brendon is average height, with dark hair and fading freckles, Brendon is wearing a suit that’s too big for him and a set of eyes that look too young for his face.
“Why don’t you go grab Mr. Stump a coffee, Brendon,” Maja says, and she’s all sweetness and sunshine today, a smile that could almost be real is plastered above her chin.
“Two sugars,” Patrick calls out as Brendon leaves the room, “black.”
Maja, she turns on him faster than a pyramid-periwinkle(1), and Patrick, he can’t quite hold his tongue. “Why the fuck would anyone intern here?”
Maja rolls her eyes, taps her foot too quickly against the floor. “Remember what I said about us actually standing a chance against competitors?” She blatantly folds her hands together at her waist. “Community, Patrick, people go for this shit.”
*
Patrick is very quick to establish that eighteen-year-old Brendon Urie is not as pleasant company as the nineteen-year-old Ryan Ross.
This is not to say that Brendon is not lovely company, because he is, this is just to say that Patrick has sorely missed Ryan’s presence since, well, since Ryan bashfully announced that not only did Pete like Patrick, but Ryan liked Patrick too.
Patrick’s never been popular with, well, anyone, and to suddenly discover that two rather handsome gentlemen are, for want of a better word, crushing on him, it’s almost off-putting.
The coffee machine is two rooms from Patrick’s office, and the walk is murder on Patrick’s mental health (it allows too much time for free-thought), so at every attempt he gets he sends Brendon down instead. This is quickly established as a bad thing though, because Patrick drinking coffee means Brendon drinking coffee and Brendon has problems not-talking as is.
Brendon has the attention span of a five-year-old when caffeine-free. With any form of liquid addictive in his system you’re hard pressed to get him to sit still for any space of time.
Patrick’s forehead hits the warm top of the coffee machine, and the smoke, it billows up his nostrils, fogs up his wide-framed glasses.
“Hi.” And brilliant, honestly, Patrick cannot think of a person that he would like to see less right now other than his seventh-grade girlfriend.
“Hi,” he replies, and Pete rocks on his heels, clicks his tongue and wrings the coffee mug (the one with the cat) in his fingers.
“So,” Pete says, “you know, I’ve hardly seen you over the last week.”
“Uh, I’ve,” Patrick fumbles for an excuse, grabs his own mug, now filled with steaming liquid. “I’ve been really busy, y’know, intern.”
“That Brendon kid?” Pete asks, and he grins hard enough to show off his glowing teeth. Patrick really hopes that the guy had braces in highschool, because no one should be allowed genetics like that. “He’s cool, good and stuff. Can’t really see him having a career in this though.”
Patrick shrugs, and honestly, he kinda agrees. Brendon has way too much energy; he should be prancing around a stage somewhere, singing his little heart out (coz Patrick’s heard him a few times now, he sings Disney tunes when he gets bored, which is essentially all the time).
“So, uh, what are you doing this afternoon?”
Patrick, he must flat line or something, must have hit his head somewhere along the lines, because when he says, “working till late,” he can’t really imagine somebody having a worse response.
“Oh,” Pete says, “right, of course, you must have like, paperwork to get out and shit, I understand.”
“Sorry,” Patrick says, and he turns on his heel too quickly and has to stop himself from bolting back to his office.
Brendon’s rather curious to discover him beneath his desk later, but Patrick, he just replies with a “good interns don’t ask questions.”
*
Continue to part 3.
Rating: PG? M?
Fandom: FOB P!atd (Patrick/Pete, Brendon/Ryan, one-sided Ryan/Patrick)
So maybe this is becoming a habit, because when Patrick stumbles into his office that morning, Ryan’s looking at some chick’s Myspace on the older man’s computer, blaring some pop-punk bullshit from the stereo.
“Dude, do you like, have a life?”
Ryan doesn’t say anything, gestures to the headphones he has on, and seriously, why the hell is the music so loud then?
Patrick turns off the stereo, and attempts to loom over Ryan rather ineffectively.
“What the hell are you even doing?”
Ryan glances up, shrugs shoulders and fiddles with the hair on the back of his head. “Browsing.”
“What?”
Ryan just shrugs again, and the battle is a short one, mostly coz they’re both kinda pussies, but Patrick’s got the weight advantage. In seconds Ryan’s sulking on the floor and Patrick’s closing windows of Myspace and Livejournal pages. He pretends not to see the photographs of a topless Ryan.
“Go to school,” Patrick says, and Ryan returns to the real world just long enough to flip him off.
“I graduated last year, asshole.”
“What about college?”
Ryan shrugs. “College is for retards and people with dicks bigger than their brains.”
“Right,” Patrick says, “I must have missed that at Harvard. Sorry. Must have gotten lost amongst the professors and librarians, coz I didn’t really spot the retards or the guys with humongous dicks. Well, actually there was this guy in my economics class and he had quite the bulge if you catch my drift-”
Ryan laughs a little, stands up only to sit back down on top of the four-cornered desktop. “Dude, you went to Harvard?”
“I went to Harvard.”
“What did you like, major in?”
Patrick sighs, squints up at Ryan’s pretty face. “Would you believe me if I said I can’t remember?”
“Unlikely,” Ryan replies, shrugs hard enough that Patrick’s kinda worried that the change in pace will throw him off the desk. It’s what happened to his hamster when he was nine. Then again, there is probably a bigger difference than he is willing to admit between Ryan and Sherbet.
“Uh, believe it or not-“
“Patrick.” When did Maja get here? “Working?”
Maja is staring at them both with wide eyes and a set of eyebrows that try to escape, try to run off the top of her scalp, beneath her hairline.
“Working hard, Maja,” Patrick says, forms a fist and pumps an arm into the air.
“I’m sure you are,” she says. “Patrick, who’s this?” Her smile’s all fake, all plastic teeth and stretched skin.
“My fourth cousin…” he starts, “…twice removed.”
“Oh,” she says, squints a little. “I can see a bit of resemblance, I guess…”
“We both wear hats,” Patrick says, and Ryan nods rather adamantly from his seat on the desk, widens his eyes enough that he looks to be all of about eight-years-old.
“Right.”
*
“So,” Pete says, “so how are you?”
Well, to be quite frank, Patrick is rather confused. This mostly has to do with the fact that he has no idea how he got into this conversation. “Fine, and yourself?”
“Good,” Pete says, and he rubs a hand across his forehead, smears the oil, the grime into his hair. “Really good, Ryan and me, we like, we went to dinner last night, and then I met up with some mates and we went clubbing and shit, y’know?”
“Right,” Patrick says, and Ryan, he never talks about Pete, doesn’t talk about anything important really, just about writing and books and his ex-girlfriend (which Patrick chooses to interpret as ex-boyfriend).
“Yeah,” Pete says, “hangover is a bit of a bitch though.”
“I can imagine,” Patrick replies, nods and heads back to his office.
*
Patrick’s on the edge again.
On the wall, his feet just peaking across and Patrick, he can’t bear to look down today; the distance, it makes him so fucking nauseous.
Two birds land beside him, pigeons, and they coo and claw at the surface beneath them. Twitter like Patrick’s mother does at get-togethers, at parties, at, well, anything.
He takes a breath that rattles his chest, and Christ, he wishes he could sit down, but this wall, it’s so thin, a hand’s-width thick.
“Patrick”, someone says in the empty space behind him.
“A little busy,” he mutters back, but somebody, the voice, it shakes him, and suddenly, well, he slips, and he’s falling right over the edge and straight into his chair.
“Patrick,” Ryan says, and he’s all raised forehead and wide eyes. “I can’t imagine that it’s a good thing to be sleeping on the job. You’re setting a really bad example for my frail, impressionable mind.”
“Then why the fuck are you here?”
Ryan holds up a plastic bag and grins too hard. “Lunch.”
*
So, Pete’s a mechanic.
A kinda terrible one, but Patrick can’t cast judgment as his knowledge of cars extends to ‘insert keys’, ‘drive’, and ‘petrol’. He almost thinks Pete’s is somewhat similar, but Joe says that the guy has like, a degree in it. And yes, Patrick is not one to cast judgment. Not at all.
Point is, Pete’s a mechanic, and that completely explains as to why he is always covered in oil. It doesn’t, however, explain why Patrick is standing three feet away from the garage watching said oil-smeared-mechanic tinker with the open top of an ugly little car.
Pete heaves a sigh, and pulls himself from his work, rocks back on his heels and reaches for a filthy cloth. He rubs his face, and Patrick opens his mouth to kinda point out how it didn’t do much more than smear the oil a little better.
Pete hovers around the bench to the side of the garage, picks up wrenches and spanners and bottles of water and petrol and things that Patrick, quite frankly, is sorta oblivious to. Pete turns around too quickly, does a little pirouette thing that brings a grin to Patrick’s face, and starts when he lifts his head enough to see the other man.
“Hi,” Pete says, and he’s grinning a little, dumping the tools back on the bench and rubbing his hands on his jeans.
“Uh, hi,” Patrick replies, and he digs his hands back into his pockets, rocks a little on his heels.
“What’s up?” And Pete has wandered over, is still smiling with too-perfect teeth, and Patrick finds himself wondering if this guy likes Disneyland.
“Not a lot,” Patrick says, “uh, I guess, I…” And he can’t think of a reason to be here, is wracking his head too hard for an excuse he knows is gonna come too late.
Pete tilts his head, and runs a hand through his hair. Patrick supposes that Pete is rather lucky to have a head full of dark hair, because if he were to do something similar the oil would be way too obvious.
“I’m doing a Starbucks run for the guys inside,” he tries, squints a little, and Pete’s smile, it might falter a little. “Do you want anything?”
“I’m fine,” Pete says. “I should probably get back to work anyway.”
“Right,” Patrick says. “Right.”
*
“Pete likes you,” Ryan says, and he’s sitting cross-legged underneath Patrick’s desk and for once, Patrick isn’t under there with him. Patrick’s sitting in the swivel-chair, the one that Maja bought him for his 25th birthday, and honestly, getting a desk chair for your birthday is fucked up at any age, but for your mid-twenties it’s just kinda pathetic.
“Shouldn’t you be at college?”
“I’m going to drop out.” Ryan shrugs, and he’s eating two-minute noodles from a paper cup. Patrick has no idea where he puts it all. Maybe in his head because he’s a smart little fucker. “Stop trying to change the subject.”
“I should hope that Pete likes me,” Patrick tries. “We’re colleagues, we could be friends.”
“You know what I mean,” Ryan says, and he pauses to say it, chopsticks hover mid-air. “Don’t play dumb.”
“We’ve hardly said more than five words to each other, and like, three of those words have been about you.”
“Really?” And Patrick has no idea why Ryan seems so surprised, can’t quite tell why it would shock him that people talk about his pretty little face.
“Yeah,” Patrick says, “we think we need to mess you up a bit. You’re too sweet for this business.”
Ryan rolls his eyes, shoves a chopstick full of noodles into his mouth, and blushes when the sauce drips down his chin. “He likes you,” Ryan says, “and you’re both lonely.”
“Good thing we have you then.”
“Neither of you need me though,” Ryan says, “even if I want you too.”
Patrick chuckles a little, taps his pen on the desk. “Why would you want two old men for company?”
“No,” Ryan says, and he’s not smiling, not blinking, just staring at Patrick over the corner of the desk. “Not two old men, just you. Just - your - company.”
Patrick starts, and maybe his face drops to the floor. He leans beneath the desk before he can stop himself, stares at Ryan’s pretty hair because Ryan, he can’t meet his eye. “Me?”
“You,” Ryan says, and he pulls his knees to his chest, plays with the chopsticks.
“Pete…” Patrick starts, and he’s grasping at straws, his fingers dig in to the top of the desk.
“Pete is Pete,” Ryan says, “and he likes you, and you’re kinda in love with him too.”
*
Patrick isn’t exactly sure what Ryan was expecting would happen, but he’s pretty sure it wasn’t what did happen.
He’s pretty sure Ryan’s expectations were a little higher than Patrick throwing himself beneath his desk, behind walls, down the corridor, every time Pete wandered by. He’s pretty sure Ryan wasn’t expecting complete and utter avoidance on Patrick’s half until well, until he figured out what to do with this new piece of information.
And he genuinely is at a loss. Patrick, he never really, well, he’s always been attracted to women. He’s rather sure that this is where most of the obliviousness and paranoia stems from, because it is a bit of a leap in a new direction.
He pulls the penknife out from his pocket, and reaches up to the top of the desk, carves his name in jagged letters and honestly, he feels fourteen again, getting a taste for useless vandalism. He can’t deny the security that sitting under here provides him with though. It’s a roof over his head, a shield against the outside world.
“Patrick?”
He can see a set of particularly good-looking ankles and a rather stunning set of stilettos from beneath the desk, and well, this would probably be a good time to sit up.
“Uh, just a second, Maja, I, uh, I dropped my pen.” He pulls himself up too quickly, straight into the waiting desk chair.
Maja is staring with quirked eyebrows and a clipboard that hides the rest of her, but doesn’t succeed in hiding the person behind her.
“Patrick, this is Brendon. Brendon, Mr. Stump will be taking care of your internship here.”
Brendon, Patrick deduces, is a rather good-looking teenager (and really, with a face like that he can’t be older than nineteen). Brendon is average height, with dark hair and fading freckles, Brendon is wearing a suit that’s too big for him and a set of eyes that look too young for his face.
“Why don’t you go grab Mr. Stump a coffee, Brendon,” Maja says, and she’s all sweetness and sunshine today, a smile that could almost be real is plastered above her chin.
“Two sugars,” Patrick calls out as Brendon leaves the room, “black.”
Maja, she turns on him faster than a pyramid-periwinkle(1), and Patrick, he can’t quite hold his tongue. “Why the fuck would anyone intern here?”
Maja rolls her eyes, taps her foot too quickly against the floor. “Remember what I said about us actually standing a chance against competitors?” She blatantly folds her hands together at her waist. “Community, Patrick, people go for this shit.”
*
Patrick is very quick to establish that eighteen-year-old Brendon Urie is not as pleasant company as the nineteen-year-old Ryan Ross.
This is not to say that Brendon is not lovely company, because he is, this is just to say that Patrick has sorely missed Ryan’s presence since, well, since Ryan bashfully announced that not only did Pete like Patrick, but Ryan liked Patrick too.
Patrick’s never been popular with, well, anyone, and to suddenly discover that two rather handsome gentlemen are, for want of a better word, crushing on him, it’s almost off-putting.
The coffee machine is two rooms from Patrick’s office, and the walk is murder on Patrick’s mental health (it allows too much time for free-thought), so at every attempt he gets he sends Brendon down instead. This is quickly established as a bad thing though, because Patrick drinking coffee means Brendon drinking coffee and Brendon has problems not-talking as is.
Brendon has the attention span of a five-year-old when caffeine-free. With any form of liquid addictive in his system you’re hard pressed to get him to sit still for any space of time.
Patrick’s forehead hits the warm top of the coffee machine, and the smoke, it billows up his nostrils, fogs up his wide-framed glasses.
“Hi.” And brilliant, honestly, Patrick cannot think of a person that he would like to see less right now other than his seventh-grade girlfriend.
“Hi,” he replies, and Pete rocks on his heels, clicks his tongue and wrings the coffee mug (the one with the cat) in his fingers.
“So,” Pete says, “you know, I’ve hardly seen you over the last week.”
“Uh, I’ve,” Patrick fumbles for an excuse, grabs his own mug, now filled with steaming liquid. “I’ve been really busy, y’know, intern.”
“That Brendon kid?” Pete asks, and he grins hard enough to show off his glowing teeth. Patrick really hopes that the guy had braces in highschool, because no one should be allowed genetics like that. “He’s cool, good and stuff. Can’t really see him having a career in this though.”
Patrick shrugs, and honestly, he kinda agrees. Brendon has way too much energy; he should be prancing around a stage somewhere, singing his little heart out (coz Patrick’s heard him a few times now, he sings Disney tunes when he gets bored, which is essentially all the time).
“So, uh, what are you doing this afternoon?”
Patrick, he must flat line or something, must have hit his head somewhere along the lines, because when he says, “working till late,” he can’t really imagine somebody having a worse response.
“Oh,” Pete says, “right, of course, you must have like, paperwork to get out and shit, I understand.”
“Sorry,” Patrick says, and he turns on his heel too quickly and has to stop himself from bolting back to his office.
Brendon’s rather curious to discover him beneath his desk later, but Patrick, he just replies with a “good interns don’t ask questions.”
*
Continue to part 3.