Fic: This Love Is Not Obedient
Title: This Love Is Not Obedient (it has its own agenda) (3/4)
Rating: PG? M?
Fandom: FOB P!atd (Patrick/Pete, Brendon/Ryan)
“This is getting kind of pathetic.” And Patrick’s a lot happier than he feels he should be at the monotonous little voice.
“Does it make it even more so that I agree?”
Ryan smiles slightly, nothing more than an upturn of pouting lips. “Acknowledging your problem is the first step on the road to a full recovery.”
Patrick grins back, and he really, really has missed this kid and seeing him again, he’s not as effeminately pretty as he remembers. Which, in reality, is probably a good thing. With the way Patrick was reminiscing, he was more likely to see an eight-year-old girl in his doorway than a nineteen-year-old Ryan Ross.
“I acknowledge it,” Patrick replies. “Now heal me.”
Ryan wanders over to the desk, leans over the surface and presses a kiss to Patrick’s cheek. “You are healed.”
“I’ve missed you,” Patrick says, because sometimes you just need to be honest about these things.
“I’m sorry,” Ryan replies. “I just, I probably need to grow up a bit. I was embarrassed.”
The older man (and Patrick, he really does feel old here today), he stares at Ryan with wide eyes and a hesitant smile. “Ryan, you’re a beautiful kid, and if I were younger, if I were nineteen, I’d be all over you, but I’m not, I’m thirty, and it’s just…it would never work.”
“And you like Pete,” Ryan whispers, shoots a shaky smile, and Patrick waves a hand.
“I am at a stage where I can openly say that I find Pete attractive. I can’t say I like him because, well, I don’t know him.”
Ryan just rolls almond eyes, picks up Patrick’s empty coffee cup from the desk. “Do you want lunch?”
“I can’t go out today; I have made a mental commitment to work through my break.”
“I’ll bring it to you then.” Ryan shrugs and his smile is much more solid. “Tacos?”
Patrick nods, and Ryan wanders to the doorway, slides the door open just as the intern, just as Brendon falls through.
“Sorry,” Brendon mumbles, and he stares at Ryan with wide eyes and tight lips, and Ryan, Ryan just waves him off and continues down the hall.
Brendon turns on Patrick before anything else can be said. “Who the fuck was that?”
And Patrick, well, you could say he’s hit with inspiration.
*
As a rather expected twist of fate (if it is expected, can somebody honestly portray it as a twist? Patrick, he’s really not sure as to why these things plague his poor little head all day long), Pete has recaptured his throne, regained his status as Shirtless Oil Man.
Patrick, he can’t say that he is displeased with the regression.
Pete is almost sprawled across the floor, black tar lathered across his chest, across the front of his ripped jeans, across his face, and Patrick, he has reached a conclusion that this man, well, he’s been nothing but lovely and he should really return some of the free kindness.
“So, hi,” he starts, and Pete, he blinks open dark eyes and maybe he’d been asleep, his fingers press over his eyelids hard enough.
“Hi,” Pete grumbles out, growls it from that deep cavern of a chest, and that sound, it’s too caveman for Patrick to really like it. Too George of the Jungle. Well, it should be. He chooses to ignore the swell in his stomach, the butterflies that burst from his lung-cocoons.
“Uh, I have papers for you to sign,” Patrick says, and that was quite possibly the worst thing he could have said, this mostly being because he doesn’t actually have anything on him, not a briefcase, not a folder, not a pen.
“Oh,” Pete says, and he sits up too quickly, grabs a damn-near black rag from the corner and rubs at his face hard enough to take off the top layer of skin. Patrick is almost disappointed at the distinctive lack of Pete-imprint. He was kinda hoping that he would have shed enough to leave Patrick with an oil covered replica of his face that Patrick could pin on his wall.
Sigh.
“Contracts or insurance or like, what?” Pete smiles too hard, he must hide light bulbs behind his overly perfect teeth, because they glow like the nightlight Patrick had as a child (seventeen is still a child in all technicality). “I don’t think I’ve had to sign anything since I started work here.”
“Uh,” Patrick says, “uhm, well, contract insurance…stuff, you know, come to think of it I left them in my office anyway. I’ll just, I’ll go and get them.”
Right, he’ll just scurry on back to his office and pick up the non-existent papers and hurry on back, because Patrick, he’s pretty sure he said earlier that when he panics he says stupid things.
And this, this whole ‘contract insurance stuff,’ yeah, stupid.
“Okay,” Pete says, and he’s still grinning, albeit with quirked brow and eyes that are too honest to lie.
Patrick thinks that this would be a good time to go sit under his desk for a bit. Maybe he can harass Ryan into sitting with him.
*
“So,” Brendon says, and he rocks back on his heels, leans against that vast area of nothingness behind him. “So, this Ryan-guy…”
Patrick tries to hide a smile that fights for a position on his face, instead takes off his glasses and rubs at them with the bottom of his yellow tie. “This Ryan-guy?”
“Yeah,” Brendon mumbles, and he rolls his eyes to the ceiling, threads his fingers behind his back and Patrick, he can actually see the physical and mental strife that this concentration, this effort not to fidget is causing the boy. He almost feels sorry.
He can almost relate.
“Are you guys like…like friends or…” and Brendon shrugs, can’t quite make eye-contact with anything that isn’t the rickety fan that wavers above Patrick’s desk. “An item, or like, I dunno, together?”
“Actually,” Patrick starts, and this, this is what he’s been waiting for all week, “well, Ryan’s single.”
The corner’s of Brendon’s lips twitch, and Patrick can’t help but smile back, smile until his cheeks ache for what he knows will be hours. “And y’know, I just happen to know that there’s this new underage-night-club opening,” Patrick says, and he doesn’t think he’s been able to articulate something this easily since, well, ever. “Ryan will probably need someone to go with.”
Brendon just grins a little harder, rolls his neck until his eyes face the floor, and Patrick can only see a head full of dark hair. “Cool,” Brendon says, and he fiddles with the edges of his shirt, runs a hand across the back of his neck, and Patrick, he can see his grin every time he sways. “Cool.”
*
Patrick thinks that there must be some astronomically large statistic on the number of times guys are turned down when offering their dignity up on a silver platter to the object of their affection. Seriously, he can’t remember how many times he wandered up to pretty girls (and some pretty average one’s to be honest) only to be either laughed at, stared at or, well, slapped.
Patrick could go on for hours, but really, the point is that Ryan said no, and Patrick has no fucking clue as to why.
Brendon’s his age, Brendon’s good-looking, Brendon’s smart and funny, and well, okay, a bit of a tool, but a cute tool, like a shovel or a spanner or something, not like a pitchfork or a trowel which, let’s face it, are really unattractive objects.
“It’s all right and all,” Brendon mumbles, and he’s downing banana smoothies like some people down vodka. “I mean, we don’t even talk or anything. He’s just, he’s really pretty, and you know, like, the first thing I thought was how much I wanted to kiss him or something, and-“
And Pete’s at his window, Patrick scoots back on his chair just enough to open it, to see Pete’s fingers gripping the window ledge and a rather unhappy stare on his very pretty face.
“What?” Patrick says, mostly coz he’s pretty sure Brendon’s four seconds from playing drunken dumped guy to Patrick’s bartender.
“What the fuck did you do?” he says, and maybe it was meant to be a whisper, but it kinda falls into that category of loud speaking-quiet yell.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Ryan’s pretty fucking upset.” And Pete glances over at Brendon, crinkles his nose and rolls his eyes. “Don’t even get me started on that kid. He talked at me for like, three hours this morning.”
“I win,” Patrick says, and his eyes are half-lidded, he glances at the clock on the wall. “He’s been here since ten.”
The clock, it reads almost three-thirty, and Patrick makes a mental note to never, ever help anyone ever again.
“Jesus,” Pete says, “and talk to Ryan, he’s cut up and pissed off and he should be talking to you, not me.”
Patrick feels the urge to point out to himself that this is the least awkward conversation he and Pete have ever had, and really, that’s pretty goddamn incredible.
“Fine,” Patrick says, “just get back to work.” He slams the window shut, and Pete might glare for a few moments, before packing himself up and storming back to the garage.
“Brendon,” Patrick starts, grimaces a little when Brendon looks up with glassy eyes and dark rings which sorta more than imply that this kid, he didn’t sleep much last night. “Brendon, have I introduced you to the glorious thing that is sitting under a desk?”
*
When he packs up to leave that night, Ryan’s sitting in the chair opposite his desk. He’s all long-limbed tonight, and he’s thinner than Patrick remembered.
“Why would you do that?”
“Do what?” he asks, but he collapses back into his chair, throws his briefcase back onto the floor.
Ryan stares for a second, before closing his eyes and rubbing at the bridge of his nose with angry fingertips. “Get Brendon to ask me out?”
“I didn’t get him to do anything, I just-“
“For fuck’s sake, Patrick!” Ryan, he’s standing up too quickly, has shoved the chair back so it hits the floor with a dull thud. “I tell you I like you, and the first thing you do is try to hook me up with your fucking intern, and I’m not, I just…”
Thing about Ryan is he gives up too quickly. He falls back onto the floor with less of a sound than the chair made, his legs wide spread and his hands hiding his face.
“Jesus,” Patrick says, and he didn’t have these problems in highschool, well, to be fair, he didn’t have guys crushing on him in highschool, so these problems were probably irrelevant. “Ryan, I’m not…I wasn’t disregarding your feelings or anything, I was just-“
“Shut up,” Ryan says, and he’s lying down now, with eyes almost as glassy as Brendon’s were that morning. “Just shut up.”
Patrick sighs, stands up and wanders around his desk to go collapse next to Ryan on the floor. He wraps an arm around the other boy’s tiny, tiny waist, and tries not to cringe when he feels the bones shift, when he swears he can feel the blood pulsing beneath the skin. “I’m sorry.”
Ryan sighs too hard and too fast, but he mumbles out a “me too,” so Patrick, he’s pretty sure they’re okay.
*
That night, Patrick dreams again.
It’s all the same, apart from the pigeons.
Tonight there are four of them.
*
Continue to part 4.
Rating: PG? M?
Fandom: FOB P!atd (Patrick/Pete, Brendon/Ryan)
“This is getting kind of pathetic.” And Patrick’s a lot happier than he feels he should be at the monotonous little voice.
“Does it make it even more so that I agree?”
Ryan smiles slightly, nothing more than an upturn of pouting lips. “Acknowledging your problem is the first step on the road to a full recovery.”
Patrick grins back, and he really, really has missed this kid and seeing him again, he’s not as effeminately pretty as he remembers. Which, in reality, is probably a good thing. With the way Patrick was reminiscing, he was more likely to see an eight-year-old girl in his doorway than a nineteen-year-old Ryan Ross.
“I acknowledge it,” Patrick replies. “Now heal me.”
Ryan wanders over to the desk, leans over the surface and presses a kiss to Patrick’s cheek. “You are healed.”
“I’ve missed you,” Patrick says, because sometimes you just need to be honest about these things.
“I’m sorry,” Ryan replies. “I just, I probably need to grow up a bit. I was embarrassed.”
The older man (and Patrick, he really does feel old here today), he stares at Ryan with wide eyes and a hesitant smile. “Ryan, you’re a beautiful kid, and if I were younger, if I were nineteen, I’d be all over you, but I’m not, I’m thirty, and it’s just…it would never work.”
“And you like Pete,” Ryan whispers, shoots a shaky smile, and Patrick waves a hand.
“I am at a stage where I can openly say that I find Pete attractive. I can’t say I like him because, well, I don’t know him.”
Ryan just rolls almond eyes, picks up Patrick’s empty coffee cup from the desk. “Do you want lunch?”
“I can’t go out today; I have made a mental commitment to work through my break.”
“I’ll bring it to you then.” Ryan shrugs and his smile is much more solid. “Tacos?”
Patrick nods, and Ryan wanders to the doorway, slides the door open just as the intern, just as Brendon falls through.
“Sorry,” Brendon mumbles, and he stares at Ryan with wide eyes and tight lips, and Ryan, Ryan just waves him off and continues down the hall.
Brendon turns on Patrick before anything else can be said. “Who the fuck was that?”
And Patrick, well, you could say he’s hit with inspiration.
*
As a rather expected twist of fate (if it is expected, can somebody honestly portray it as a twist? Patrick, he’s really not sure as to why these things plague his poor little head all day long), Pete has recaptured his throne, regained his status as Shirtless Oil Man.
Patrick, he can’t say that he is displeased with the regression.
Pete is almost sprawled across the floor, black tar lathered across his chest, across the front of his ripped jeans, across his face, and Patrick, he has reached a conclusion that this man, well, he’s been nothing but lovely and he should really return some of the free kindness.
“So, hi,” he starts, and Pete, he blinks open dark eyes and maybe he’d been asleep, his fingers press over his eyelids hard enough.
“Hi,” Pete grumbles out, growls it from that deep cavern of a chest, and that sound, it’s too caveman for Patrick to really like it. Too George of the Jungle. Well, it should be. He chooses to ignore the swell in his stomach, the butterflies that burst from his lung-cocoons.
“Uh, I have papers for you to sign,” Patrick says, and that was quite possibly the worst thing he could have said, this mostly being because he doesn’t actually have anything on him, not a briefcase, not a folder, not a pen.
“Oh,” Pete says, and he sits up too quickly, grabs a damn-near black rag from the corner and rubs at his face hard enough to take off the top layer of skin. Patrick is almost disappointed at the distinctive lack of Pete-imprint. He was kinda hoping that he would have shed enough to leave Patrick with an oil covered replica of his face that Patrick could pin on his wall.
Sigh.
“Contracts or insurance or like, what?” Pete smiles too hard, he must hide light bulbs behind his overly perfect teeth, because they glow like the nightlight Patrick had as a child (seventeen is still a child in all technicality). “I don’t think I’ve had to sign anything since I started work here.”
“Uh,” Patrick says, “uhm, well, contract insurance…stuff, you know, come to think of it I left them in my office anyway. I’ll just, I’ll go and get them.”
Right, he’ll just scurry on back to his office and pick up the non-existent papers and hurry on back, because Patrick, he’s pretty sure he said earlier that when he panics he says stupid things.
And this, this whole ‘contract insurance stuff,’ yeah, stupid.
“Okay,” Pete says, and he’s still grinning, albeit with quirked brow and eyes that are too honest to lie.
Patrick thinks that this would be a good time to go sit under his desk for a bit. Maybe he can harass Ryan into sitting with him.
*
“So,” Brendon says, and he rocks back on his heels, leans against that vast area of nothingness behind him. “So, this Ryan-guy…”
Patrick tries to hide a smile that fights for a position on his face, instead takes off his glasses and rubs at them with the bottom of his yellow tie. “This Ryan-guy?”
“Yeah,” Brendon mumbles, and he rolls his eyes to the ceiling, threads his fingers behind his back and Patrick, he can actually see the physical and mental strife that this concentration, this effort not to fidget is causing the boy. He almost feels sorry.
He can almost relate.
“Are you guys like…like friends or…” and Brendon shrugs, can’t quite make eye-contact with anything that isn’t the rickety fan that wavers above Patrick’s desk. “An item, or like, I dunno, together?”
“Actually,” Patrick starts, and this, this is what he’s been waiting for all week, “well, Ryan’s single.”
The corner’s of Brendon’s lips twitch, and Patrick can’t help but smile back, smile until his cheeks ache for what he knows will be hours. “And y’know, I just happen to know that there’s this new underage-night-club opening,” Patrick says, and he doesn’t think he’s been able to articulate something this easily since, well, ever. “Ryan will probably need someone to go with.”
Brendon just grins a little harder, rolls his neck until his eyes face the floor, and Patrick can only see a head full of dark hair. “Cool,” Brendon says, and he fiddles with the edges of his shirt, runs a hand across the back of his neck, and Patrick, he can see his grin every time he sways. “Cool.”
*
Patrick thinks that there must be some astronomically large statistic on the number of times guys are turned down when offering their dignity up on a silver platter to the object of their affection. Seriously, he can’t remember how many times he wandered up to pretty girls (and some pretty average one’s to be honest) only to be either laughed at, stared at or, well, slapped.
Patrick could go on for hours, but really, the point is that Ryan said no, and Patrick has no fucking clue as to why.
Brendon’s his age, Brendon’s good-looking, Brendon’s smart and funny, and well, okay, a bit of a tool, but a cute tool, like a shovel or a spanner or something, not like a pitchfork or a trowel which, let’s face it, are really unattractive objects.
“It’s all right and all,” Brendon mumbles, and he’s downing banana smoothies like some people down vodka. “I mean, we don’t even talk or anything. He’s just, he’s really pretty, and you know, like, the first thing I thought was how much I wanted to kiss him or something, and-“
And Pete’s at his window, Patrick scoots back on his chair just enough to open it, to see Pete’s fingers gripping the window ledge and a rather unhappy stare on his very pretty face.
“What?” Patrick says, mostly coz he’s pretty sure Brendon’s four seconds from playing drunken dumped guy to Patrick’s bartender.
“What the fuck did you do?” he says, and maybe it was meant to be a whisper, but it kinda falls into that category of loud speaking-quiet yell.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Ryan’s pretty fucking upset.” And Pete glances over at Brendon, crinkles his nose and rolls his eyes. “Don’t even get me started on that kid. He talked at me for like, three hours this morning.”
“I win,” Patrick says, and his eyes are half-lidded, he glances at the clock on the wall. “He’s been here since ten.”
The clock, it reads almost three-thirty, and Patrick makes a mental note to never, ever help anyone ever again.
“Jesus,” Pete says, “and talk to Ryan, he’s cut up and pissed off and he should be talking to you, not me.”
Patrick feels the urge to point out to himself that this is the least awkward conversation he and Pete have ever had, and really, that’s pretty goddamn incredible.
“Fine,” Patrick says, “just get back to work.” He slams the window shut, and Pete might glare for a few moments, before packing himself up and storming back to the garage.
“Brendon,” Patrick starts, grimaces a little when Brendon looks up with glassy eyes and dark rings which sorta more than imply that this kid, he didn’t sleep much last night. “Brendon, have I introduced you to the glorious thing that is sitting under a desk?”
*
When he packs up to leave that night, Ryan’s sitting in the chair opposite his desk. He’s all long-limbed tonight, and he’s thinner than Patrick remembered.
“Why would you do that?”
“Do what?” he asks, but he collapses back into his chair, throws his briefcase back onto the floor.
Ryan stares for a second, before closing his eyes and rubbing at the bridge of his nose with angry fingertips. “Get Brendon to ask me out?”
“I didn’t get him to do anything, I just-“
“For fuck’s sake, Patrick!” Ryan, he’s standing up too quickly, has shoved the chair back so it hits the floor with a dull thud. “I tell you I like you, and the first thing you do is try to hook me up with your fucking intern, and I’m not, I just…”
Thing about Ryan is he gives up too quickly. He falls back onto the floor with less of a sound than the chair made, his legs wide spread and his hands hiding his face.
“Jesus,” Patrick says, and he didn’t have these problems in highschool, well, to be fair, he didn’t have guys crushing on him in highschool, so these problems were probably irrelevant. “Ryan, I’m not…I wasn’t disregarding your feelings or anything, I was just-“
“Shut up,” Ryan says, and he’s lying down now, with eyes almost as glassy as Brendon’s were that morning. “Just shut up.”
Patrick sighs, stands up and wanders around his desk to go collapse next to Ryan on the floor. He wraps an arm around the other boy’s tiny, tiny waist, and tries not to cringe when he feels the bones shift, when he swears he can feel the blood pulsing beneath the skin. “I’m sorry.”
Ryan sighs too hard and too fast, but he mumbles out a “me too,” so Patrick, he’s pretty sure they’re okay.
*
That night, Patrick dreams again.
It’s all the same, apart from the pigeons.
Tonight there are four of them.
*
Continue to part 4.