fic: skeptics and true believers (Patrick/William, 1/1)
Patrick/William, ages 14 and almost-14 respectively. All callsigns’ fault. Porn CL edit: still coming!
skeptics and true believers
by Gale
SUMMARY: "That made sense," Patrick finally said. "I know," Bill nodded. "I do that sometimes to throw people off."
"Come on," Bill said, planting himself in front of Patrick's locker. Patrick just sighed and didn't bother trying to move him; he'd known Bill just long enough to know that that wasn't really an option. He was tiny and weighed maybe six pounds, but he had, like, magnets in his feet. "Give it a shot!"
"No," Patrick said, and shifted his backpack from one shoulder to the other. "I don't -- Bill, I don't sing, okay? I don't."
"But you'd be really good!" Bill said.
"No, you'd be really good," Patrick said. "I would sound like a stupid kid messing up a Blink 182 song."
Bill sighed and moved over just enough for Patrick to reach his locker. Patrick figured that was the closest he'd get to Bill actually agreeing, and started working the combination lock.
"You're not going to play the drums your whole life, you know," Bill said.
"No I'm not," Patrick agreed. "I'm going to play drums and piano and guitar and bass, and at some point I'd sort of like to know how to play the trombone."
Bill punched him in the arm.
*
The thing was, Patrick and Bill weren't friends, strictly speaking.
They were friendly, which was a whole different thing. They had friends in common, guys like Derek and Trey, guys who played together in marching band and sort of got people around them, like planets orbited stars. But Bill was already tall at thirteen, and liked to wear eyeliner and size -4 t-shirts and skinny girls' jeans, and Patrick ...liked music.
Which wasn't a bad thing, as far as Patrick was concerned, but it meant that they didn't have a lot to talk about, otherwise. Bill was like one of those sponges they sold in grocery stores -- put it in water and bam! instant full-grown T-rex! -- except instead of a dinosaur, he was a scene kid. He already liked eyeliner and skinny jeans, and he listened to bands like Blink 182 and Dashboard Confessional. He'd be going to clubs as soon as he was old enough for his face to match his fake ID. But he was smart, and funny, and he wrote stuff down a lot, poems and lyrics and whatever. Patrick had read some of it, and it was okay. Not great, not yet, but it could be great.
That was how they'd met, actually: Trey, who'd been in Public Display of Infection with Patrick, had been in one of Bill's aborted bands; the kind that hadn't been together long enough to name themselves, let alone write any songs. Patrick had dropped by Trey's house to bring him the pre-algebra homework, and Trey had looked up from dicking around on the piano long enough to say, "Oh, hey, man, this is Bill," nodding to the skinny fluffy-haired kid on the sofa, furiously scribbling in what looked like a journal. "Bill, this is Patrick."
And that was that.
*
"You should be in this band I'm starting," Bill said one afternoon, in Patrick's garage. His mom was great about him playing instruments, but it had to be in the garage -- "and out of earshot," she liked to say, even though she usually eased up and let Kevin practice violin in the house, so what the hell.
"Uh huh," Patrick said absently, not looking up from his tuning.
"No, really." Bill sat down and poked Patrick in the leg 'til Patrick sighed and looked at him. "You should, dude."
"Why? You need a drummer?"
"No," Bill said. "--well, yeah, but. I don't know. I think you'd be good." He shrugged. "I mean, I can do lyrics and stuff, but I can't write music for crap."
Which wasn't actually true, but he wasn't really great, either. "I'm not doing bands this year," Patrick said.
Bill snorted. "Yeah you are," he said flatly. "That's like -- Patrick, that's like Pete Wentz not doing a band. That's not normal."
"You really need to get over that stupid crush on Pete Wentz," Patrick said, but it wasn't like he could really fault Bill on it. Bill was the one who had a photo of Arma Angelus blown up on the back of his door, but Patrick was the one who'd gotten hold of a set list and was still trying to talk his mom into getting it framed.
"Like you're any better," Bill said, still poking Patrick in the leg. "The point is, you should do it."
Patrick looked up from his guitar, fully prepared to tell Bill to fuck off as nicely as possible--
--but Bill was staring at him, just staring, with slightly wide eyes and a pleading expression. It would take a bigger man than Patrick to say no to that.
"Fuck," he muttered. "--goddammit, Bill, one week. One."
Bill grinned.
*
Patrick never actually joined the band, but "one week" turned into "the better part of seven months", so he figured it was fair value or something.
*
"We should do a showcase or something," Bill announced, because Bill announced everything.
"We're not doing a showcase," Patrick said, eyes squeezed shut. Bill had stopped in the middle of practice -- like, in
the middle, not during a bathroom break or whatever -- and decided he needed to practice putting on eyeliner. Which would be fine, except he'd decided to use
instead of just doing it to himself like any sensible person. "You need more than, like, a band and a half to do a showcase--"
"You guys aren't half a band!"
"Yeah, except we are." That's What She Said was Trey's idea, and it was a crappy one. But Trey assured him it was just temporary, that once they got a bass player and a singer they'd come up with a real name. Privately, Patrick wasn't sure they'd last long enough to need a bass player and a singer, but it seemed mean to say that to Trey.
"Whatever," Bill said, leaning in. They were both sitting on Bill's bed, with Bill half in Patrick's lap. "Dude, stop squeezing your eyes so closed."
Patrick snorted, but let his face relax a little.
"--better." Bill pulled on his face, trying to smooth something out, Patrick figured. Better if he didn't know. "But we should, like, do something. You know?"
"Uh huh."
There was silence for a minute.
"Patrick," Bill said, "don't you -- do you want to do this?"
"Have you put eyeliner on me?" Patrick asked. "Not particularly."
"No, I mean music."
Patrick opened his eyes at that one. Bill was looking at him. He looked concerned, but more than that, he looked pissed.
"It's just -- you're so fucking good at this," Bill said, frowning. "No, don't say anything for a minute, okay? You can play, like, fifty instruments, you can write music, you can write lyrics, you know what sounds good and what sounds like shit, but sometimes it's like..." He shook his head. "Like you don't care or something. Like you're taking it for granted."
"I'm not," Patrick said seriously. "But I'm not -- look, part of being good at music is self-promotion, right? Selling yourself? Telling the world you're the most fucking awesome thing available, and making them believe you." He shook his head. "I'm terrible at that part. You're not."
He really was. His mom had told him once, after a parent-teacher conference, that his sixth grade history teacher had told her that Patrick was a great student, but he hated group presentations and looked petrified when he was called on in class. "He's a little like a turtle," Mrs. Grueder had said, not unkindly, and Patrick thought -- still thought -- that that was the best definition of himself he'd ever heard.
"So?" Bill said. "That's like. Okay, if you have an awesome movie poster, it makes people want to see the movie, right? But if you get in and see it, and it's total crap, you're gonna go out and tell your friends 'dude, don't see that, it sucks, I don't care how cool the poster is'. That's what music's like. You can shiny up the packaging all you want, but if there's nothing underneath, it's not gonna work."
Patrick looked at him. Bill looked back.
"That made sense," Patrick finally said.
"I know," Bill nodded. "I do that sometimes to throw people off."
Patrick smiled a little. "Dork," he said, shoving Bill in the shoulder. Bill eeped and jumped him.
"Oh yeah?" he said, grinning and sprawling across Patrick, knees pinning his legs down. Patrick yelped.
"Truce! Truce! I call truce!"
"No truce," Bill said, still grinning, then -- he just leaned down and kissed Patrick on the mouth.
It was brief, and dry, and not great. Patrick didn't care; it made his stomach do things that it didn't usually do, things usually reserved for Tara McCrosky in his environmental science class.
Bill pulled back after a minute and looked at him. His hair was too long, Patrick realized; it hung in his eyes and made him look slim and pretty. Almost too pretty. Patrick wondered, idly, how many people picked on Bill between classes.
"Hey," Bill said. He sounded a little out of breath. "Is this gonna be weird later?"
Yes, Patrick thought. But he looked at Bill, expression gone guarded and kind of scared, and just shook his head. "No. I mean, unless you--"
"No!" Bill yelped, and kissed him again.
*
It wasn't a big deal.
The sort-of-band had practice three times a week, for the most part; sometimes two, sometimes four or five. Sometimes, during midterms and finals, they didn't practice at all, but they made up for it over the summer. They weren't great, but they weren't bad, either. Patrick spent most of the time pretty sure they were going to break up every other week, and he was always surprised when they didn't. Pleasantly surprised, even.
The slightly bigger deal was Bill.
Bill, who was still friendly-but-polite in the hallway, the way they'd always been; Bill, who still called Patrick in the middle of the afternoon to ask if he thought Unnamed Bad Love Song #4 needed some kind of piano bridge. Bill, who'd started tying a bandana around one knee before practice, because he thought it made him look like a rock star.
Bill, who didn't seem to see anything even remotely weird about telling the rest of the guys that he and Patrick were working on something, they'd be a couple minutes, then dragging Patrick up to his room and making out with him for twenty minutes straight.
Patrick figured if Bill didn't see anything weird with that, then he shouldn't either.
*
excerpts from Things Patrick Stump Knows About Bill Beckett That He Will Never Tell Anyone, Not Even Pete, Not Even If He Asks:
1. Patrick was not the first boy Bill had ever kissed; that honor went to Jake Douglas, a kid Bill went to summer camp with when he was eleven. He was even taller than Bill, and played drums, and thought guys who wore eyeliner were totally gay.
"I figure he can't be that much of a dick, 'cause he kissed me," Bill told Patrick once, sprawled across Patrick's bed and slipping his t-shirt back on, "but he tried to use tongue after I told him I didn't want to. Then he pantsed Paul Nolan and I ignored him the rest of the summer."
4. Patrick was the first boy to go down on Bill, though it was more because he wanted to give it a try than because Bill's pleading for "just one blowjob, Patrick, please, just to see if you like it! It's for science!" actually worked.
(...okay, so it didn't entirely work.)
He wasn't that great at it; the taste was weird and bitter, and Bill lasted maybe forty-five seconds before he said something that sounded a lot like "guh" and came in Patrick's mouth, which was immediately followed by Patrick spitting and muttering "okay, I don't know how girls can do that" every couple of minutes. But Bill said he was actually really good at it, at least for a beginner; and when he told Patrick that his mouth looked "um. really pretty doing it", he was blushing bright red and scratching his eyebrow.
So Patrick did it again. And again, after Bill proved that he could manage to thump him in the shoulder in time to pull away before he came.
16. Bill was the first guy to go down on Patrick, and he was a lot better at it.
"I learned what not to do watching you do it," Bill said simply, when Patrick got his breath back and managed to ask. "I mean, I still want to try swallowing, at some point, but that's--"
"No, that's cool," Patrick gurgled, and Bill grinned and put his head back in Patrick's lap.
22. They had sex for the first time in Patrick's dad's basement, when he was away for the weekend on a business trip and Kevin was at some violin recital in Deerfield. Bill's mom liked Patrick, so she didn't see anything wrong with Bill spending the night at Patrick's house. Or the weekend.
It wasn't as awkward as Patrick had dreaded it being; he'd scrounged a Yankee candle, because the overheads made him look sallow, and as much as he said he didn't care, he really kind of did. He loaded the CD player with Marvin Gaye and some classical music, nothing that would be too distracting, and he stole some condoms and lube from his dad (which he did not ever need to think about again, thank you god).
But Bill was gentle, and he was gentle back, and halfway through they both got the giggles, which made the whole thing a hundred times better in Patrick's opinion. Bill had big hands for a just-turned-fourteen-year-old, with slender and graceful fingers, and they both went slow. It was a little painful, but not the terrifying thing half those stupid stories on Nifty said it would be, and Bill whispered "sorry, sorry, sorry" in his ear, so Patrick forgave him for that.
Also, two days later, they did it again: in Bill's room, a chair propped against the doorknob. That time Patrick was the one whispering "sorry, sorry" in Bill's ear.
Bill just bit his lip and said "don't worry about him", his voice a gasp, and grabbed tight hold of Patrick's shoulder as he thrust.
31. Patrick wrote exactly two songs about Bill, or that could be loosely interpreted as being about Bill. One of them didn't really count, because it was over the chord changes to "Lovefool" and the rhyme scheme was kind of iffy; but the other one was slow and kind of quiet, the sort of thing someone could play on an acoustic guitar, or maybe on the piano.
He never told Bill about them, let alone showed him. But years later, when he's feeling dour or particularly depressed, Patrick will absently rifle through the lyric files on his laptop -- totally not looking for it! Not at all! -- and find it, and stop, and re-read it.
He'll never tell Pete about it, even, but most of the time he'll close the file and find himself tapping out beats on his thigh. Then he'll call Bill, without really thinking about it, and ask how he's doing.
*
"So I have a girlfriend," Bill blurted out one afternoon, while they were walking over to Trey's house for practice.
Patrick looked at him. "What?"
Bill looked vaguely petrified. "Not a real girlfriend, but. Jess Kaspar asked me to go to the movies on Friday, and I said yes. And we're going to get McDonald's after, and maybe make out, so that sort of makes her my girlfriend. You know?"
"I." Patrick blinked. "...I guess, sure. I've never been out with anyone."
"Oh." Now Bill looked embarrassed. "Um. Sorry. But if she's gonna be my girlfriend, I don't think. She probably wouldn't like it if I did anything with someone else, so."
The only real surprise, Patrick figured, was how much hearing it hurt. It was stupid, considering he'd been telling himself all along that they were just messing around, but hearing Bill say it..it hurt.
...it hurt, but it didn't ache. And that was how Patrick knew they were going to be okay, in the end.
"Okay," Patrick said, agreeably enough, and shifted his backpack from one shoulder to the other. "Hey, did Trey tell you he wanted to find someone to play trumpet?"
Epilogue
"--so wait," Pete said. "You and Bill."
"Yeah." Patrick nodded.
"Bill Beckett."
"Yes."
"William Beckett. Tall guy, choppy hair, wears a bandana around his knee--"
"Yes," Patrick said, not looking up from his laptop. "As opposed to the other many, many Bills you know." Which was not far from the truth, really; Pete knew a frightening amount of people.
"No, but--" Pete seized his arm. "Details! I need details, Trick! Possibly diagrams and any video you might have!"
Patrick looked at him. "It's not a big deal," he said, rolling his eyes. "We were kids. I was fourteen, he was almost fourteen--"
"Oh my God, stop," Pete groaned, "you're fucking killing me." He thunked his head against his arm.
"It's not a big deal," Patrick said again. "It happened, it hasn't happened in years, so please stop freaking out and obsessing over it."
"Obsessing over what?" Bill asked, poking his head through the curtains separating the back lounge from the rest of the bus. Patrick didn't bother to ask how Bill had gotten the access code for the door; if Pete hadn't given it to him, which was probably the case, someone else had. People liked giving Bill things, like door codes and head.
"I told Pete about that thing," Patrick said, letting himself look long-suffering.
"Oh." Bill blinked. "Let me guess, he'd like a dramatic reenactment?"
"And he's not getting one," Patrick said.
"Why not?" Bill said, frowning.
Patrick and Pete both looked at him.
Bill walked over and perched in Patrick's lap -- carefully, because six feet on top of five-foot-three was maybe not the best recorded idea, especially in a rickety bus lounge -- and wrapped his arms around Patrick's neck. "Come on," he said, pouting a little. "I promise I'll be nice."
"Oh my God," Patrick sighed, but didn't shove Bill away.
It wasn't a lot like being fourteen: for starters, Bill was a thousand times taller, and he was still roughly the same height. Also, if you had told him that Pete would be three feet away, loudly complaining that he did not have a camcorder handy, Jesus fucking Christ, he would have burst out laughing and kicked the nearest person.
But Bill was still too pretty for his own good, and he still smiled when Patrick rolled his eyes.
"I still say you need to get over that stupid crush on Pete Wentz," Patrick muttered, leaning in to kiss Bill's neck.
Bill started tugging on the bottom of Patrick's shirt and grinned. "Oh, yeah, like I'm alone in that."
*
so jessa told me that patrick and bill used to sing together in each other's baby bands back in chicago; and as we all know, as soon as anyone mentions anything, ever, in my earshot, i wake up to find tiny baby bunnies eating my cereal and demanding attention. (much like bill beckett, actually, but without the jd.) finished to straylight run's cover of "with god on our side", which is weirdly appropriate; title taken from the tai song of the same name, because the older i get the worse i get at naming these goddamn things.
(today's fun facts: there is, to the best of my knowledge, no guy named trey who played with either patrick stump or bill beckett. patrick *was*, however, in a band called "public display of infection" in junior high.)
huge portions -- okay, most of it, the good parts -- are jessa's, as much as because she listened to me shriek about it as because she broke into my house and released said tiny baby bunny: so, you know, thank you for that. though i promise nothing on the sequel-that-is-not-a-sequel, in which patrick decides pete needs a *good* birthday present, so he and bill round up gabe and travis, and -- you know what? i've already said too much.
skeptics and true believers
by Gale
SUMMARY: "That made sense," Patrick finally said. "I know," Bill nodded. "I do that sometimes to throw people off."
"Come on," Bill said, planting himself in front of Patrick's locker. Patrick just sighed and didn't bother trying to move him; he'd known Bill just long enough to know that that wasn't really an option. He was tiny and weighed maybe six pounds, but he had, like, magnets in his feet. "Give it a shot!"
"No," Patrick said, and shifted his backpack from one shoulder to the other. "I don't -- Bill, I don't sing, okay? I don't."
"But you'd be really good!" Bill said.
"No, you'd be really good," Patrick said. "I would sound like a stupid kid messing up a Blink 182 song."
Bill sighed and moved over just enough for Patrick to reach his locker. Patrick figured that was the closest he'd get to Bill actually agreeing, and started working the combination lock.
"You're not going to play the drums your whole life, you know," Bill said.
"No I'm not," Patrick agreed. "I'm going to play drums and piano and guitar and bass, and at some point I'd sort of like to know how to play the trombone."
Bill punched him in the arm.
*
The thing was, Patrick and Bill weren't friends, strictly speaking.
They were friendly, which was a whole different thing. They had friends in common, guys like Derek and Trey, guys who played together in marching band and sort of got people around them, like planets orbited stars. But Bill was already tall at thirteen, and liked to wear eyeliner and size -4 t-shirts and skinny girls' jeans, and Patrick ...liked music.
Which wasn't a bad thing, as far as Patrick was concerned, but it meant that they didn't have a lot to talk about, otherwise. Bill was like one of those sponges they sold in grocery stores -- put it in water and bam! instant full-grown T-rex! -- except instead of a dinosaur, he was a scene kid. He already liked eyeliner and skinny jeans, and he listened to bands like Blink 182 and Dashboard Confessional. He'd be going to clubs as soon as he was old enough for his face to match his fake ID. But he was smart, and funny, and he wrote stuff down a lot, poems and lyrics and whatever. Patrick had read some of it, and it was okay. Not great, not yet, but it could be great.
That was how they'd met, actually: Trey, who'd been in Public Display of Infection with Patrick, had been in one of Bill's aborted bands; the kind that hadn't been together long enough to name themselves, let alone write any songs. Patrick had dropped by Trey's house to bring him the pre-algebra homework, and Trey had looked up from dicking around on the piano long enough to say, "Oh, hey, man, this is Bill," nodding to the skinny fluffy-haired kid on the sofa, furiously scribbling in what looked like a journal. "Bill, this is Patrick."
And that was that.
*
"You should be in this band I'm starting," Bill said one afternoon, in Patrick's garage. His mom was great about him playing instruments, but it had to be in the garage -- "and out of earshot," she liked to say, even though she usually eased up and let Kevin practice violin in the house, so what the hell.
"Uh huh," Patrick said absently, not looking up from his tuning.
"No, really." Bill sat down and poked Patrick in the leg 'til Patrick sighed and looked at him. "You should, dude."
"Why? You need a drummer?"
"No," Bill said. "--well, yeah, but. I don't know. I think you'd be good." He shrugged. "I mean, I can do lyrics and stuff, but I can't write music for crap."
Which wasn't actually true, but he wasn't really great, either. "I'm not doing bands this year," Patrick said.
Bill snorted. "Yeah you are," he said flatly. "That's like -- Patrick, that's like Pete Wentz not doing a band. That's not normal."
"You really need to get over that stupid crush on Pete Wentz," Patrick said, but it wasn't like he could really fault Bill on it. Bill was the one who had a photo of Arma Angelus blown up on the back of his door, but Patrick was the one who'd gotten hold of a set list and was still trying to talk his mom into getting it framed.
"Like you're any better," Bill said, still poking Patrick in the leg. "The point is, you should do it."
Patrick looked up from his guitar, fully prepared to tell Bill to fuck off as nicely as possible--
--but Bill was staring at him, just staring, with slightly wide eyes and a pleading expression. It would take a bigger man than Patrick to say no to that.
"Fuck," he muttered. "--goddammit, Bill, one week. One."
Bill grinned.
*
Patrick never actually joined the band, but "one week" turned into "the better part of seven months", so he figured it was fair value or something.
*
"We should do a showcase or something," Bill announced, because Bill announced everything.
"We're not doing a showcase," Patrick said, eyes squeezed shut. Bill had stopped in the middle of practice -- like, in
the middle, not during a bathroom break or whatever -- and decided he needed to practice putting on eyeliner. Which would be fine, except he'd decided to use
instead of just doing it to himself like any sensible person. "You need more than, like, a band and a half to do a showcase--"
"You guys aren't half a band!"
"Yeah, except we are." That's What She Said was Trey's idea, and it was a crappy one. But Trey assured him it was just temporary, that once they got a bass player and a singer they'd come up with a real name. Privately, Patrick wasn't sure they'd last long enough to need a bass player and a singer, but it seemed mean to say that to Trey.
"Whatever," Bill said, leaning in. They were both sitting on Bill's bed, with Bill half in Patrick's lap. "Dude, stop squeezing your eyes so closed."
Patrick snorted, but let his face relax a little.
"--better." Bill pulled on his face, trying to smooth something out, Patrick figured. Better if he didn't know. "But we should, like, do something. You know?"
"Uh huh."
There was silence for a minute.
"Patrick," Bill said, "don't you -- do you want to do this?"
"Have you put eyeliner on me?" Patrick asked. "Not particularly."
"No, I mean music."
Patrick opened his eyes at that one. Bill was looking at him. He looked concerned, but more than that, he looked pissed.
"It's just -- you're so fucking good at this," Bill said, frowning. "No, don't say anything for a minute, okay? You can play, like, fifty instruments, you can write music, you can write lyrics, you know what sounds good and what sounds like shit, but sometimes it's like..." He shook his head. "Like you don't care or something. Like you're taking it for granted."
"I'm not," Patrick said seriously. "But I'm not -- look, part of being good at music is self-promotion, right? Selling yourself? Telling the world you're the most fucking awesome thing available, and making them believe you." He shook his head. "I'm terrible at that part. You're not."
He really was. His mom had told him once, after a parent-teacher conference, that his sixth grade history teacher had told her that Patrick was a great student, but he hated group presentations and looked petrified when he was called on in class. "He's a little like a turtle," Mrs. Grueder had said, not unkindly, and Patrick thought -- still thought -- that that was the best definition of himself he'd ever heard.
"So?" Bill said. "That's like. Okay, if you have an awesome movie poster, it makes people want to see the movie, right? But if you get in and see it, and it's total crap, you're gonna go out and tell your friends 'dude, don't see that, it sucks, I don't care how cool the poster is'. That's what music's like. You can shiny up the packaging all you want, but if there's nothing underneath, it's not gonna work."
Patrick looked at him. Bill looked back.
"That made sense," Patrick finally said.
"I know," Bill nodded. "I do that sometimes to throw people off."
Patrick smiled a little. "Dork," he said, shoving Bill in the shoulder. Bill eeped and jumped him.
"Oh yeah?" he said, grinning and sprawling across Patrick, knees pinning his legs down. Patrick yelped.
"Truce! Truce! I call truce!"
"No truce," Bill said, still grinning, then -- he just leaned down and kissed Patrick on the mouth.
It was brief, and dry, and not great. Patrick didn't care; it made his stomach do things that it didn't usually do, things usually reserved for Tara McCrosky in his environmental science class.
Bill pulled back after a minute and looked at him. His hair was too long, Patrick realized; it hung in his eyes and made him look slim and pretty. Almost too pretty. Patrick wondered, idly, how many people picked on Bill between classes.
"Hey," Bill said. He sounded a little out of breath. "Is this gonna be weird later?"
Yes, Patrick thought. But he looked at Bill, expression gone guarded and kind of scared, and just shook his head. "No. I mean, unless you--"
"No!" Bill yelped, and kissed him again.
*
It wasn't a big deal.
The sort-of-band had practice three times a week, for the most part; sometimes two, sometimes four or five. Sometimes, during midterms and finals, they didn't practice at all, but they made up for it over the summer. They weren't great, but they weren't bad, either. Patrick spent most of the time pretty sure they were going to break up every other week, and he was always surprised when they didn't. Pleasantly surprised, even.
The slightly bigger deal was Bill.
Bill, who was still friendly-but-polite in the hallway, the way they'd always been; Bill, who still called Patrick in the middle of the afternoon to ask if he thought Unnamed Bad Love Song #4 needed some kind of piano bridge. Bill, who'd started tying a bandana around one knee before practice, because he thought it made him look like a rock star.
Bill, who didn't seem to see anything even remotely weird about telling the rest of the guys that he and Patrick were working on something, they'd be a couple minutes, then dragging Patrick up to his room and making out with him for twenty minutes straight.
Patrick figured if Bill didn't see anything weird with that, then he shouldn't either.
*
excerpts from Things Patrick Stump Knows About Bill Beckett That He Will Never Tell Anyone, Not Even Pete, Not Even If He Asks:
1. Patrick was not the first boy Bill had ever kissed; that honor went to Jake Douglas, a kid Bill went to summer camp with when he was eleven. He was even taller than Bill, and played drums, and thought guys who wore eyeliner were totally gay.
"I figure he can't be that much of a dick, 'cause he kissed me," Bill told Patrick once, sprawled across Patrick's bed and slipping his t-shirt back on, "but he tried to use tongue after I told him I didn't want to. Then he pantsed Paul Nolan and I ignored him the rest of the summer."
4. Patrick was the first boy to go down on Bill, though it was more because he wanted to give it a try than because Bill's pleading for "just one blowjob, Patrick, please, just to see if you like it! It's for science!" actually worked.
(...okay, so it didn't entirely work.)
He wasn't that great at it; the taste was weird and bitter, and Bill lasted maybe forty-five seconds before he said something that sounded a lot like "guh" and came in Patrick's mouth, which was immediately followed by Patrick spitting and muttering "okay, I don't know how girls can do that" every couple of minutes. But Bill said he was actually really good at it, at least for a beginner; and when he told Patrick that his mouth looked "um. really pretty doing it", he was blushing bright red and scratching his eyebrow.
So Patrick did it again. And again, after Bill proved that he could manage to thump him in the shoulder in time to pull away before he came.
16. Bill was the first guy to go down on Patrick, and he was a lot better at it.
"I learned what not to do watching you do it," Bill said simply, when Patrick got his breath back and managed to ask. "I mean, I still want to try swallowing, at some point, but that's--"
"No, that's cool," Patrick gurgled, and Bill grinned and put his head back in Patrick's lap.
22. They had sex for the first time in Patrick's dad's basement, when he was away for the weekend on a business trip and Kevin was at some violin recital in Deerfield. Bill's mom liked Patrick, so she didn't see anything wrong with Bill spending the night at Patrick's house. Or the weekend.
It wasn't as awkward as Patrick had dreaded it being; he'd scrounged a Yankee candle, because the overheads made him look sallow, and as much as he said he didn't care, he really kind of did. He loaded the CD player with Marvin Gaye and some classical music, nothing that would be too distracting, and he stole some condoms and lube from his dad (which he did not ever need to think about again, thank you god).
But Bill was gentle, and he was gentle back, and halfway through they both got the giggles, which made the whole thing a hundred times better in Patrick's opinion. Bill had big hands for a just-turned-fourteen-year-old, with slender and graceful fingers, and they both went slow. It was a little painful, but not the terrifying thing half those stupid stories on Nifty said it would be, and Bill whispered "sorry, sorry, sorry" in his ear, so Patrick forgave him for that.
Also, two days later, they did it again: in Bill's room, a chair propped against the doorknob. That time Patrick was the one whispering "sorry, sorry" in Bill's ear.
Bill just bit his lip and said "don't worry about him", his voice a gasp, and grabbed tight hold of Patrick's shoulder as he thrust.
31. Patrick wrote exactly two songs about Bill, or that could be loosely interpreted as being about Bill. One of them didn't really count, because it was over the chord changes to "Lovefool" and the rhyme scheme was kind of iffy; but the other one was slow and kind of quiet, the sort of thing someone could play on an acoustic guitar, or maybe on the piano.
He never told Bill about them, let alone showed him. But years later, when he's feeling dour or particularly depressed, Patrick will absently rifle through the lyric files on his laptop -- totally not looking for it! Not at all! -- and find it, and stop, and re-read it.
He'll never tell Pete about it, even, but most of the time he'll close the file and find himself tapping out beats on his thigh. Then he'll call Bill, without really thinking about it, and ask how he's doing.
*
"So I have a girlfriend," Bill blurted out one afternoon, while they were walking over to Trey's house for practice.
Patrick looked at him. "What?"
Bill looked vaguely petrified. "Not a real girlfriend, but. Jess Kaspar asked me to go to the movies on Friday, and I said yes. And we're going to get McDonald's after, and maybe make out, so that sort of makes her my girlfriend. You know?"
"I." Patrick blinked. "...I guess, sure. I've never been out with anyone."
"Oh." Now Bill looked embarrassed. "Um. Sorry. But if she's gonna be my girlfriend, I don't think. She probably wouldn't like it if I did anything with someone else, so."
The only real surprise, Patrick figured, was how much hearing it hurt. It was stupid, considering he'd been telling himself all along that they were just messing around, but hearing Bill say it..it hurt.
...it hurt, but it didn't ache. And that was how Patrick knew they were going to be okay, in the end.
"Okay," Patrick said, agreeably enough, and shifted his backpack from one shoulder to the other. "Hey, did Trey tell you he wanted to find someone to play trumpet?"
Epilogue
"--so wait," Pete said. "You and Bill."
"Yeah." Patrick nodded.
"Bill Beckett."
"Yes."
"William Beckett. Tall guy, choppy hair, wears a bandana around his knee--"
"Yes," Patrick said, not looking up from his laptop. "As opposed to the other many, many Bills you know." Which was not far from the truth, really; Pete knew a frightening amount of people.
"No, but--" Pete seized his arm. "Details! I need details, Trick! Possibly diagrams and any video you might have!"
Patrick looked at him. "It's not a big deal," he said, rolling his eyes. "We were kids. I was fourteen, he was almost fourteen--"
"Oh my God, stop," Pete groaned, "you're fucking killing me." He thunked his head against his arm.
"It's not a big deal," Patrick said again. "It happened, it hasn't happened in years, so please stop freaking out and obsessing over it."
"Obsessing over what?" Bill asked, poking his head through the curtains separating the back lounge from the rest of the bus. Patrick didn't bother to ask how Bill had gotten the access code for the door; if Pete hadn't given it to him, which was probably the case, someone else had. People liked giving Bill things, like door codes and head.
"I told Pete about that thing," Patrick said, letting himself look long-suffering.
"Oh." Bill blinked. "Let me guess, he'd like a dramatic reenactment?"
"And he's not getting one," Patrick said.
"Why not?" Bill said, frowning.
Patrick and Pete both looked at him.
Bill walked over and perched in Patrick's lap -- carefully, because six feet on top of five-foot-three was maybe not the best recorded idea, especially in a rickety bus lounge -- and wrapped his arms around Patrick's neck. "Come on," he said, pouting a little. "I promise I'll be nice."
"Oh my God," Patrick sighed, but didn't shove Bill away.
It wasn't a lot like being fourteen: for starters, Bill was a thousand times taller, and he was still roughly the same height. Also, if you had told him that Pete would be three feet away, loudly complaining that he did not have a camcorder handy, Jesus fucking Christ, he would have burst out laughing and kicked the nearest person.
But Bill was still too pretty for his own good, and he still smiled when Patrick rolled his eyes.
"I still say you need to get over that stupid crush on Pete Wentz," Patrick muttered, leaning in to kiss Bill's neck.
Bill started tugging on the bottom of Patrick's shirt and grinned. "Oh, yeah, like I'm alone in that."
*
so jessa told me that patrick and bill used to sing together in each other's baby bands back in chicago; and as we all know, as soon as anyone mentions anything, ever, in my earshot, i wake up to find tiny baby bunnies eating my cereal and demanding attention. (much like bill beckett, actually, but without the jd.) finished to straylight run's cover of "with god on our side", which is weirdly appropriate; title taken from the tai song of the same name, because the older i get the worse i get at naming these goddamn things.
(today's fun facts: there is, to the best of my knowledge, no guy named trey who played with either patrick stump or bill beckett. patrick *was*, however, in a band called "public display of infection" in junior high.)
huge portions -- okay, most of it, the good parts -- are jessa's, as much as because she listened to me shriek about it as because she broke into my house and released said tiny baby bunny: so, you know, thank you for that. though i promise nothing on the sequel-that-is-not-a-sequel, in which patrick decides pete needs a *good* birthday present, so he and bill round up gabe and travis, and -- you know what? i've already said too much.