Fic: This story's going somewhere, bandom, RPS, non-gen 2/5
Part 2/5
Previous part
Danielle turns up to a few practices. She doesn't get all hyped up about them, even if she says that Andy's kind of cool, but she blows him again and agrees to come and see them when they perform. Pete watches out for her in the crowd, easy to spot her black and orange hoodie and they go out after and get coffee and talk about everything. It's good, it's as good as everything else they do, just talking and the way she lets their fingers touch across the table, and then looks away like she's embarrassed.
They have their first big fight that week when she decides that Pete turning up outside her house to walk to school with her isn't cute but a sign that he's a control freak, fails to answer what her fucking damage is and questions if someone with Pete's reputation isn't spending too much time stalking Andy and Patrick. It's an amazing fight, one that leaves him coasting on righteous fury and satisfied bitterness for the rest of the day, until he catches her panicked look in the cafeteria, that "Please let me not have fucked this up" expression he knows so well from the inside.
Neither of them technically apologise, but they make up enough that Pete's almost late for practice after school, running to catch the bus to Patrick's place.
Patrick is in a bitch of a mood. Pete can feel it before he even gets in, he doesn't need Andy nodding him in to the kitchen and saying, "This is going to be a bad practice. Faye broke up with Patrick, so--"
"Bitch," Pete says, and it's kind of a relief to say that aloud. He's been so careful not to think it in case it slips out. "Fuck, what happened?"
Andy shrugs. "Grew apart, stuff happened."
"I didn't even know they were fighting," Pete says, and that's kind of true. He'd noticed her around less and he didn't have to wait until she got up to take her place on the sofa and she wasn't talking about boring, pointless stuff about people from Acoustics 401 with Patrick, but--
"Is he okay?"
Andy looks at him for a moment, then hits the back of his head. "He just broke up with the girl he's been seeing for more than a year, so no."
And more than a year, that's before he'd even met Pete. Pete folds his arms and says, "She wasn't right for him anyway. She was kind of a bitch."
"You might be happy about this, but try not to let Patrick know," Andy says, his voice hard.
"I'm not happy!" Pete shouts, then lowers his voice. "You think I like seeing my friends hurt? I just think she wasn't right for him, and maybe in the long run it's a good thing they broke up. Was she cheating on him?"
"No, she wasn't," Patrick says and Pete jumps and feels a little better when Andy does as well. "She wasn't cheating on me. I know with your vast romantic experience that this is kind of hard to get, but not every woman cheats on her boyfriend."
Pete slouches in on himself, shoulders hunching automatically. It's not really comforting that Andy does the same, even if he covers it up better.
"And she's not a bitch either," Patrick says. "Or a cunt or a slut or a frigid ice-queen or anything like that." He sounds cold and hard, spitting out the words at Pete. "Faye is still-- we just didn't work out. Got it?"
"Got it," Pete says, making the words hard. He opens his mouth to tell Patrick not to take it out on them that his girlfriend dumped him, but Andy meets his eyes and Pete shuts it again.
So they go downstairs and practice, Joe running in five minutes late and he's either more oblivious or a better actor than Pete gave him credit for, because he's pretty much normal and that gets them through the practice, even with Patrick being psycho strict, making them go over the same chorus again and again and again. Patrick makes a nasty remark about Andy being distracted, playing in too many bands, and apologises right away. Then he tells Pete that he hasn't been practicing enough, and doesn't.
Pete's biting his tongue and tension is like something live in his veins and he's hyper aware of Patrick, of the way his voice is more vicious on the lines Pete wrote for him to sing.
It's all Faye's fault, and Pete's glad she's gone.
But Patrick obviously isn't and Pete hates Faye even more, because he recognises Patrick's movements when he's packing up, he knows that from the inside out. The way your fingers dig into everything a little harder than they have to, the way you keep your movements sharp and precise and controlled so you won't lose it completely. He goes over to Patrick and his hand hovers, uncertain if it's okay to touch him. He settles for a hand on Patrick's shoulder. "Patrick?"
Patrick jerks up and Pete can see his eyes are red, dry by force of will. "What?"
"Just-- I'm sorry?" He says. "For everything?" He gestures at the room, the world. "And for upstairs. I didn't mean..." He trails off, not sure how to end the sentence.
"You know," Patrick says, not looking at Pete, "I think it would've been easier if she had cheated on me, maybe. Or if she was a bitch. Then at least I'd know that we did the right thing, breaking up, and maybe I wouldn't--" He looks down, still hunched over the speakers he was moving, and takes his glasses off and holding them in one hand while the other covers his face. Pete crouches down and then kneels so he can look at Patrick properly.
It's horrible and painful and wrong, to see Patrick looking like that, and Pete can't take it at all, and he's not thinking, just acting, when he pulls Patrick's hand away from his face and kisses him, pulling him down with one hand and trying to find his zipper with the other, frantic movements and he knows he can kiss better than this, that it's too hard and too fast and his hand gets a flash of Patrick's skin at his waist and--
And then he's on his ass on the floor where Patrick pushed him away.
"Pete!" Patrick says. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"What? I was just--" And it hits him, that he's sprawled on the floor where Patrick pushed him away after Pete jumped him, tried to stick his tongue down his throat and his hand down his pants and Patrick's looking at him like Pete's mutant or an alien. His hands dig into the floor and he forces himself not to look away. "I was just-- you were upset, so I thought--"
"You thought you'd jump me? That you'd just-- that we'd fuck and that would-- what were you thinking?" Patrick sounds almost angry and Pete looks away and shrugs.
"I just thought, you know. It's a good way to rebound," Pete says and it sounds stupid, even to him, and Patrick's "--that we'd fuck and--" is replaying in his brain.
"Fuck, Pete. That's-- my girlfriend's just broken up with me and you're sixteen," Patrick says. "I didn't sleep with sixteen year-olds when I was one."
"Look, I wasn't-- and I'm not exactly sweet sixteen and never been kissed," Pete says, getting to his feet. "You know that, you-- it was just a fucking kiss, don't make such a big fucking deal about it."
"Just a fucking kiss and maybe just a fucking *fuck* and--" Patrick shakes his head and combs his fingers through his hair, pushing the hat back. "What made you think... That's not how most people deal with break-ups."
It kind of is, Pete thinks, but doesn't say anything because Patrick isn't looking at him anymore and he doesn't want him to start. It's pointless, because Patrick looks at him anyway. "Yeah, whatever. I misjudged the situation or something. It's nothing." He puts his hands in his jeans and shrugs, looks away but keeps track of Patrick out of the corner of his eye.
"Nothing. Right," Patrick says. His voice sounds hoarse, and it could just be from practice, but it didn't sound like that five minutes ago. Pete looks up, kind of freaked out.
"We're okay, right? It's just one stupid little mistake, I-- you know I have a girlfriend, kind of, so-- we're still cool?" He smiles, but he can feel it stretched across his face like a nervous tic. "You're not going to kick me out of the band or something, right?"
Patrick answers almost immediately. It just feels like years. "No. No, I'm not going to kick you out of the band. It was just a little bit of poor judgment. No big deal," Patrick says, and he smiles a little. Not like it's funny, but still a smile.
"We can just forget it, right? Never happened." Pete says. He steps forward to do something, hug Patrick or pat his arm or something, but stops himself. "We're good." He manages to keep it a statement not the question it wants to be.
Patrick tenses, just for a second, then he relaxes and his arm goes around Pete's shoulders, just a quick little moment of reassuring pressure, of contact. "Yeah, we're good," Patrick says, then straightens up. "I'm going to go and apologise to Joe and Andy for being kind of moody today. I'll see you at practice next week?"
Pete nods and doesn't hide his grin. Patrick hugs him again and Pete breathes easier.
And it's okay, except that Patrick is awkward for a bit. For a few weeks it's as difficult to be next to him as when Faye was still hanging around. A couple of times it hits Pete again, what he did, what Patrick said, and Stupid, he thinks and punches the side of the gym before soccer practice.
He takes Danielle to the serial comedy special and watches her mouth the words to every line of "So I Married An Axe-Murderer," and then blush when she catches him looking. She grabs his hand and puts it between her legs, reaching over to return the favour, and then after they come, after Pete licks his hand clean and then hers, she takes his hand and holds it for all of Serial Mom.
"I love your hands," she says, when they're getting popcorn in the interval. "Let me paint your nails." She holds it up, his fingers tangled in hers. His knuckles are red and a little swollen, grazed. "It'd look so fucking hot, your hand all beaten up and used, and then these pretty, shiny black nails." She rubs her thumb over his, feeling the callus.
It wouldn't be the first time Pete painted his nails, or even that his whatever of the week did it for him. He wonders if any of Patrick's exes ever did that for him, if he'd refused point blank or just let them, the way he did with people sometimes.
It would look pretty good, he thinks, staring at his hand with Danielle's long, pretty fingers between them. His grazed knuckles and nail varnish, and he wishes he was old enough to get tattooed properly, but that kind of detail work takes money and a tattooist who knows what they're doing. The kind that generally avoid heavy work on the under-eighteens. Danielle drew around his wrist again in Math class, a little cut-here line of dashes and scissors and a twisting daisy chain underneath in green and red ink. He pulls his hand behind him, so she knocks into him and kisses her and is still kind of surprised when she lets him, when she kisses back. They've been pretty much dating for almost two months, if you count the first few weeks.
"I can't wait until we're old enough to get inked," Danielle says, holding his arms. "Like, professionally, not like whatever sketchy place did your back, but like Andy has. His arms are so fucking hot." She smiles, sharp enough that Pete knows she said it at least half to make him jealous, which doesn't stop it working. "You should have him out front," she says.
"Me and Joe and Patrick aren't enough?"
Danielle shrugs. "But he's the pretty one."
"Bitch," he says, admiring her. "I'm too fucking pretty for most people already."
"Mmm. My pretty boyfriend." Danielle brushes the side of his face and then looks down, blushing. It's cute, and he thinks that maybe this is how Patrick and Andy feel, when being sixteen and in high school actually seems young.
"You're so beautiful, it hurts to look at you sometimes," he tells her and her pale skin turns pinker and his kisses her again, it feels hotter against his own.
"Yeah, same to you."
They have a show on Friday night, fifty people and Danielle's in the audience, appearing halfway through Saturday. They fuck for the first time that weekend and Pete's so happy Joe almost punches him during practice the next day, stopping to say, "You're probably going to keep smiling even if I do, right?"
"Probably," Pete says. Patrick grins and makes, Kids-today eye contact with Andy and Pete doesn't even care, just jumps on Patrick's shoulders and says, "The world is a fucking beautiful place."
And then he finds out on Monday that, less than twenty-four hours before she slept with him, Danielle screwed some random guy in the bathroom at their show.
He doesn't get out of bed for a week. His mom leaves food by his bed and he keeps his head under the covers. It's not that he doesn't want to move, but he's afraid what he'll do when he does. There's this ball of pain and anger and jealousy crawling under his skin and he thinks if he sees Danielle, he might kill her or himself or beg her to take him back or--
So he stays under the covers until his mom knocks on the door and says, "Patrick's here."
"I don't want to see him," he yells back, but he can’t lock the door without getting up and Patrick's opening the door before he can do anything, so he just stays where he is.
"Hey," Patrick says. Pete doesn't need to see him to know he's standing in the doorway, awkward and worried. "So I-- Joe said what happened."
"Fucking great," Pete says. "Cunt." He's not sure who he's talking about, but it definitely applies. Patrick comes over and the mattress shifts when he sits on it, making Pete roll a little close. Patrick leans on the lump of Pete under the covers.
"I'm sorry," Patrick says. "This, it really sucks." Pete can feel his arm, the weight of it across his shoulders through the comforter.
"So what, are you on suicide watch?" Pete says. It's mean and he wants it to hurt Patrick. Patrick's hand tightens on his shoulder.
"Do we-- Pete, she's not worth it, she's--" Patrick says, sounding panicked through the layer of calm-the-suicidal teenager.
Pete throws of the covers and stares at the ceiling. "Or it turns out, I'm not. Worth it. Not for her." His face crumples in on itself, like watching a building implode and he turns over, throwing out an arm and hitting Patrick as he does and shoving him off the bed. He doesn't mean to, but he doesn't mean not to. "Get out, Stump. You're not fucking wanted."
"Yeah, because you really should be left on your own right now," Patrick says from the floor.
"You know, it's pretty pathetic, the way you're hanging around with high school kids," Pete says, lifting himself up on his arms to look at Patrick. Patrick's sprawled on the floor, legs bent and arms behind him for balance. "Is that why Faye dumped you? Because she thought maybe there's something pretty fucking screwy about a guy that's about to graduate college spending all his time in a basement with some fucked-up bit of jailbait?"
He drops back on to the bed and goes to pull the covers over him again, and Danielle came over here last week and they fucked on this bed and then he washed the sheets and now he wishes he hadn't because--
"Pete," Patrick says, sitting back on the bed and stopping Pete from pulling the covers over him. "I know it hurts, I know--"
"What do you know about it?" Pete says. "Like this has ever happened to you." He laughs, because the stupid thing is, Pete does know about it. It's not like this is the first time it's happened. He just thought it was different this time.
"You're not the first guy to get his heart broken," Patrick says. "Even if it feels like it."
Pete looks at him and he's not sure if he wants to punch him for understanding or crawl on to his lap. He settles for moving aside so there's more space on the bed. Patrick lies down carefully, on his side and in danger of rolling off and Pete's suddenly, viciously glad that Danielle's not the last person in here anymore, even if it's only Patrick. He ducks his head and bites his tongue against the painangerpain, and lets Patrick put his arm around him so he's a little more secure. "Hey," Patrick says, making him look up. "She isn't worth it. She's a bitch." He smiles at Pete, off-centre and worried.
Pete's mouth smiles back, even if the rest of him doesn't want to. "Yeah?"
"Psycho bitch," Patrick says, and it's weird hearing Patrick call someone that, enough to make Pete's smile stretch out a little wider. He rubs his head against Patrick's shoulder and breathes in and it smells like Patrick in Pete's bed, his showergel and Pete's deodorant and Pete being in here too long, and nothing like Danielle and her shampoo and sex.
"I miss her," he says, so quiet that he doesn't know if he wants Patrick to hear. "Do you think..." He trails off.
"Don't," Patrick says. "You're better off without her. It's gonna be okay." Pete shrugs against him and doesn't ask him to promise.
School is pretty much hell the next day, and Patrick apparently had words or something with Joe, because Joe does not fucking leave him alone the whole day which doesn't exactly help his plan to stay low-profile. He tries to avoid him, avoid everyone. Patrick's set up a practice after school, even though Pete knows Patrick normally works on Mondays, and he's just counting until he can get there and do that. Just get through the next five minutes, fighting to take each breath and not looking anyone in the eye, and he can go to Patrick's and scream and make Patrick take his words out of his head and put them in Patrick's mouth so he won't have to think about it, because Patrick will be doing that for him.
And he'll still have to deal with Joe looking at him like he's waiting to tackle Pete before he runs into traffic, Andy's remorseless understanding, but if he doesn't think about that, it's okay. Thinking about their care, his family's and his friends, just leaves him feeling oversensitive. He needs it, wants it, but it hurts almost as much to have it as to--
As to see Danielle standing at the end of the hallway. She looks at him, just for a second then turns around and he chases after her, Joe chasing after him until all three of them are in one of science labs that smells like chemicals and ink.
"Pete, you don't want--"
"Shut--" Joe grabs his shoulders to turn him around and Pete almost punches him, but changes it to, "I need to--" He turns back to Danielle, leaning against the wall next to a poster of the periodic table. He shrugs Joe off and then he's standing in front of her. "Why? What-- You couldn't just fucking break up with me the normal way, you fuck someone else and then me for the first fucking time and--"
"I didn't break up with you," Danielle says.
Pete is actually speechless and then his hand is hurting and he realises he punched the wall next to her, hard enough to crack the paint. Joe's behind him, got his arms in a lock, and Pete doesn't fight it. "Get out," Joe says to her, but Danielle ignores him
"Missed," she says, smiling at Pete, pretty and psycho-bitch goes through his head in Patrick's voice, and then she looks down and her face-- it's just a second, and she has her head tilted down so her hair covers her face, but he can see it crumple in a choked-back sob. She swallows it down and looks up at him, mouth tight and eyes red.
"You fucked some guy at our show, and then you-- what was that, throwing me a fucking bone?"
"What the fuck do you care?" She shoves him back and it makes both of them stumble, but Joe catches his balance and keeps Pete in the same hold. Her head falls forward, hunching over and her hands dig in to the wall. "I just did it, okay? I don't--"
His hand is hurting and when he looks down he can see that his knuckles are bleeding. There's a smear of red on the wall near Danielle's head, and he can see her chest shake, hear her choked back sobs and he wants to scream at her, wants to hold her and tell her he forgives her. Wants to make everything better for her, and she's hurting, and he kind of wants to kill her for hurting herself like that.
It’s probably a good thing Joe is holding him back, because his hand twitches, just to push her hair back, stroke the side of her face. Make her look at him. "You're not worth it," he says. He can see her tense, stopping herself from flinching like she's bracing for a punch. "You, you're just not worth one fucking bit of it." He relaxes and feels Joe loosen his hold, just a little, enough for Pete to straighten up, smile at and be as vicious as he can when he says, "You're not worth one fucking bit of my time or care or attention. Have a great life, Danielle. I'm sure you'll get exactly what you deserve."
They have a decent practice, even though half of it is Pete scribbling down lines because Patrick needs them on paper to make them work, not just said, and he gets home still riding that wave of righteous anger. He really doesn't want to stop, because the moment he does --flashes of the shape of her smile, those oddly shy moments, her hips, her hands, the way she'd looked when-- he'll have to deal with the fact that he misses her.
He eats dinner. He can see his parents relax and feels a little less guilty, and when he lies in bed he can pick up faint traces of Patrick from earlier. He kind of wishes Patrick wore a cologne or something, aftershave, so it'd be stronger, but it's good anyway.
He should go out and get laid, find someone so Pete doesn't have her as the last person on his skin. Patrick, Joe, even Andy's "Bitch," and hug, that helps, but-- someone to fuck, someone to fuck him, strong and hard and good enough to wipe out the little memories of Danielle's hands, her watching him roll the condom on like he was putting on a show, of her biting her lip and saying, "Oh, Pete, yes, *move*," when he was inside her.
Pete turns onto his back on the bed and thinks -Ruthie? Bill? Nicky? Reliable and no questions asked, but it's a bit late even for him to make a booty call, Monday night and his parents are downstairs. That joke about why men like masturbation runs through his head, "It's sex with the only one they really love." It's kind of funny, so he flicks through the fantasy files he keeps for something not her, and yeah, there's a good one.
He pictures Patrick as he was back then, sixteen, seventeen. Shyer than he is now, hunched in and hidden away at the back of class. Blushing, maybe, when he talked to a cute girl or that teacher he had a crush on. Blushing when he talked to Pete and stuttering a little because Pete is hot, Pete is experienced, Pete is cool and Patrick jerks off to him nightly.
Sweet sixteen and never been kissed, never been fucked and Pete doesn't have a virgin kink exactly, but he can picture it, being the first one to touch him. Patrick at sixteen, all frustration and embarrassment and Pete would notice him, maybe see Patrick watching him in class, looking a little too long on the pitch. Embarrassed and freaked out when he realised Pete had noticed. Pete licks his lips, slides his hands down his body, eyes closed.
Patrick wouldn't have any defenses, not against Pete, not when he was probably still jerking off twice a day and once between class. Pete would maybe corner him, take advantage of his reputation. Find him in the locker rooms or the library and say, "I know you've been watching me."
And Patrick would stutter, would look away and probably wonder if Pete was going to beat him up or just humiliate him, and hate himself a little for still getting off on having Pete --on having anyone-- that close and invading his personal space. "I don't know what--"
"I know what you want," Pete would tell him, and he'd push him into the wall, palming his cock through his jeans, and Patrick at sixteen would be shocked, defenceless, grinding back without meaning to. Pete would undo his jeans one handed, the other next to Patrick's head, bracing Pete against the wall, and Pete would curl his hands around Patrick and Patrick would groan. Pete would kiss him, pushy but not too pushy, because Patrick was still new to this, don't scare him off.
Maybe Patrick jerks, maybe he bites Pete's lip or his hands go to Pete, pushing his T-shirt up, greedy and Patrick says, "I've never done this before. I'm sorry, I don't know what to do." But he wants to, wants to do whatever Pete wants him to, wants to be touched however Pete wants to touch him.
"It's okay, I do," Pete tells him, and he drops to his knees and Patrick almost comes just from Pete doing that and Pete makes it good, draws it out and shows every trick he ever learnt for all of 30 seconds before it's too much, no-one's ever done this for Patrick, to Patrick before, Pete's the first and Patrick comes and Pete swallows it all, stands up and kisses him while Patrick's still shocky from it. Patrick's stunned expression, looking at Pete like he's not sure if he's real, that this isn't just another wet dream.
And Pete would kiss him, a little softer but letting Patrick taste himself on Pete, and he'd take Patrick's hand, put it on Pete's cock and say, "everything, I'll show you everything." And Patrick would close his eyes like that's the most amazing thing he'd ever heard and his fingers would curl around Pete and stroke, awkward at first because of the new angle, doing it with the same rhythm he does to himself, and then maybe switching, listening to Pete's groans and learning what works for him and--
And Pete comes over himself, caught up in the fantasy. He breathes heavily, listening to himself, then straightens up, cleans himself off and moves over to the other bed.
It smells of laundry detergent and nothing else, not Patrick or Danielle or even Pete, not really.
"I didn't sleep with sixteen year-olds when I was one."
He falls asleep thinking that it sucks that he has to pay because Patrick was a late bloomer.
The good thing, the only good thing to come out of the Danielle thing (and Pete has to stop himself remembering too clearly so he can keep believing that) is the music. He writes pages and pages of confusion and pain and bitterness and Patrick makes him show it by asking, and then he turns it into something that makes sense. And then he gets on stage and sings Pete's words and Pete can't stop looking at him, because it's Patrick, but it's different, like he's wearing Pete's mark. Patrick's not comfortable with strangers looking at him, which Pete doesn't get --he's got to be used to it by now, right?-- but when he's got the guitar in front of him, when he's singing it's like he's armoured in music and that makes it okay.
It's hot, which isn't a surprise because being on stage, crowd screaming with you, for you, you and your bandmates, your brothers on the same high, singing the same song--
Gestalt, Pete thinks in between tracks, catches Joe's eyes and grins before the next song takes them over.
There's a show, maybe a hundred people, which they get mostly because Andy's playing drums with the headliner's lead singer's other band. Pete calls Andy their little honey trap and jokes about putting on street corners with a smile, a snare-drum and six-inch heels, until Patrick disappears into the van and comes back with a fedora. "Your new pimp hat," Patrick says, sticking it on Pete's head.
Pete adjusts it slightly, slaps Andy on the back and says, "Now get out there and show some skin, baby."
"You are never allowed to say that again," Andy says. "Joe, take that hat off him, he can't handle it."
Joe grabs for it and Pete holds it on his head with both hands and they wrestle. It's good, physical contact and closeness and Pete can't stop laughing until Patrick joins in, steals the hat back and holds it away from both of them.
"Patrick!" Pete says. "You're my best friend, you're on my side, right?"
Patrick shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Pete. I thought you were ready for the awesome responsibility of the hat." He puts it on his own head, tilting it forward so it covers his eyes. It's one of those moments that derails Pete, where he stops thinking whatever he was thinking before and it's just-- Patrick. It's not like the stage moments or the couch moments, the ones where Pete's expecting it, the situation practically demands it. It's just one of the ones that blindside him.
But he's pretty used to covering those up by now, so it only takes him a second to recover, pout and say, "Fine, but when Andy's out there tonight without protection--" and then start laughing.
There's a girl he catches sight of in the show, purple hair and grey eyes, and he wants her. Wants to fuck someone, with a pure and physical hunger that's detached from everything else, and he knows he wouldn't be thinking about anything else when he does. It's a relief more than anything else. He's fooled around a little post-Danielle, but it felt like revenge fucks even when they weren't.
This one will be just for him, just because right now, he wants it. He plans on waiting after the show, but she grabs him when he's coming off stage and kisses him, one hand on his cock before he can say hello, and fuck, but it's good. His bass is between them and he says, "I've got to--" before turning to look at his band. He should help them pack up, but Joe grabs his bass off him and says, "Why do you get all the groupies?"
"Karma," Pete says, even though he knows it makes no sense. She ends up dragging him off into a stairwell and it's good and fast and exactly what he needs, and she's done, too, smiling and panting and saying, "I love musicians. You all were fucking awesome." as she unwraps her legs from around him.
"Yeah," he says. "Thanks." His smile is wide and sincere and he means every word.
He heads back to the others, post-show afterglow, post-sex rush and it's all the same, so when Joe opens the door, he says, "I could kiss you right now."
"I know where that mouth's been," Joe says, backing up.
"We just fucked, it's not like I went down on her," Pete says, making his voice reasonable just to see Joe squirm.
"Most people spend the afterglow with the person that caused it," Joe said. "Health class was very clear on that."
Pete spreads his arms wide, catching Joe and hooking in Andy at the same time. "But I'd rather share it with you guys. My guys." It's absolutely true and Andy and Joe hug him back, strong and sincere, before he detaches and goes to Patrick to hug him too. It's as good as it always is and bends his head just to the crook of Patrick's neck and breathes in to get that little bit of recognition, of Patrick-show-mine-us-Patrick.
Patrick looks at him, kind of off. "What?" Pete says.
"Nothing," Patrick says. He shakes his head and kind of smiles and Pete crosses his arms, weirdly self-conscious until Patrick pulls him back in. Patrick isn't like Pete, he doesn't cling like Pete, sprawl across someone for hours and bury himself in their shirt, but he gives good contact. No awkwardness or holding himself back.
Pete grins and says, "I fucking love this band."
Patrick doesn't blink, just says, "You're only saying that so we'll put out."
Pete laughs. "Well, you and Andy maybe. Joe's saving himself for his wedding night."
"My parents raised me right," Joe says, thumping Pete on the back.
It's late enough when the show ends that they all end up crashing at Patrick's, rather than waking up their various parents and roommates. They unload the van and Pete's that particular kind of drunk that you only get from being tired and wired at the same time, talking over himself and play-fighting. Scissors-paper-stone puts Joe on the basement couch while Patrick, Pete and Andy have the relative comfort of Patrick's double-bed. Pete takes a quick shower, but isn't surprised when Patrick just takes off his jeans and barely makes it under the covers. Andy doesn't even manage that, falling on to the bed hard enough to make the mattress jump, and Pete goes around to pull the cover over him. The role-reversal feels strange but good, and he pulls Andy's glasses off and puts them on one of the little bedside cabinets before getting in to bed on the other side of Patrick.
Patrick's eyes open and he blinks at him a few times, his face looking naked without the usual shields of the hat and glasses.
"Good show," Pete says, quietly so they don't disturb Andy, resting his head on his hand.
Patrick nods and his eyes close. Pete can hear his breathing slow down and he watches. He doesn't feel sleepy. Tired verging on exhausted, but not sleepy. When he breathes in, he gets that hit of feeling, the I love these guys that's like falling in love without any of the usual foreboding that goes with it. Patrick's breathing feels good, feels better than good. It feels right. Pete rolls closer, careful not to disturb anyone and just close enough that his knee touches Patrick's and he can rest one hand over Patrick's side.
He falls asleep like that.
Pete knows that Patrick's got college, but it doesn't really hit him until Patrick turns up all excited and says, "So my professor thinks she can get me this internship in New York. Just a short thing, six weeks, but it's with this label, Principle Uncertainty."
"Six weeks? When?" Pete says. His throat's dry and six weeks? Does that include travel? Six weeks is a month and a half is 42 days is-- and Patrick gets upset if he misses one practice and he's gonna be gone six weeks?
"Next month," Patrick says. "I'll be shadowing a producer for most of that, but apparently they'll get me doing grunt work for most of the departments. Pete?"
Pete pulls himself together enough to say, "Wow, that sounds incredible," and even mean it mostly. "New York! You got a place to stay?"
"Friend of a friend's going to let me crash on his couch, at least until I can find a place of my own." Patrick adjusts his hat. "I've got to see if I can rent this place out for a month, I've got to get tickets and--"
Pete spends most of next class filling in the diagonals on his jeans in ballpoint, blue ink staining them. When his knee and left thigh are done, he switches to writing in his notebook, lines about rejection and being left behind that don't sound as vicious as he means them to. They just sound sad and pathetic and fucking juvenile. Nothing he can show to Patrick when he comes back. If he comes back. If he doesn't get-- there are a lot of good musicians in New York, and a lot of sleazy producers and Patrick is too fucking nice.
He spends the next class writing nasty, brutal lines about whores and seduction and theft, so at least that's an improvement. There's soccer practise after lunch and the coach makes him run extra laps because, "that shit wouldn't be allowed in England, Wentz." Which, whatever. Not like he meant to kick that hard, and if Justin can't handle a tackle that's a little bit more aggressive, maybe he shouldn't be playing.
He gets some nasty bruises on his legs and he can't even show them to Patrick who always acts appropriately impressed, so he takes a picture using someone's camera-phone and sends it to Patrick.
He gets a reply three hours later.
Ouch dont send pics like this giving me a bad rep.
He grins, and then wonders who else saw the picture, if Patrick showed it to them or if they just answered his phone or what. He debates sending a picture of him in his soccer kit, maybe shirt off and in front of a school sign, just to give Patrick something worth explaining.
He checks his mail when he gets home, but there's just the "arrived safely" email, cc to pretty much everyone. New York is warmer than Patrick thought, his roommate is nice, he's got one day of sightseeing before he starts work. He sends everyone his love.
Pete looks through the CCs and recognises Andy's email, Joe's. Nothing for a faye.morris or a f.morris or a faye.girl or anything obvious like that, unless she's one of the others, videokilled@yahoo, deco2000@ hotmail or something. Patrick doesn't talk about her much, but Pete's got the impression they're doing the still friends school of break-up denial, which isn’t healthy.
He sends a quick reply, something about watching out for strangers and not staying out late, then works on his words so he has an excuse to email him. He gives up two hours in, throwing the notebook at the wall, and writes an email about school, lunch, everything he can think of, then leaves it sitting, unsent.
Homework, then he practices on the bass, making a note of what's giving him trouble so he can get Patrick to help him when he gets back.
His email is still there, mocking him, so he adds a little note asking how often Patrick's thyme needs watering, giving him an excuse for writing to him, and sends it before dinner. He doesn't think about it all when he's eating or clearing up.
No reply when he gets back which makes sense, because it's only been thirty minutes since he sent it and Patrick's probably still out doing stuff anyway. He should probably call Joe and Andy, arrange a practice session anyway. Or he could go round to Patrick's to water his plants.
It's not like he sees Patrick every day, and they almost never have practice on a Monday, so he doesn't know why it feels like he's got way too much time on his hands now. He does homework because he can't think of anything else to do, then looks up crime statistics for New York.
The phone rings at nine and Pete grabs it before anyone else can.
"Yeah?"
"That's how you answer your phone? I've met your mom, I know she raised you better," Joe says, sounding amused.
Pete falls back on the bed. "I'm trying to overcome my upbringing. Raised by wolves looks better in the liner notes."
"That's why you're our frontman," Joe says. "You're better at that marketing, PR stuff. I would have just said raised by seals or something. Manatees."
"Manatees are cool," Pete says. "You got Patrick's email?"
"Yeah. I was thinking we should have a practice anyway, maybe Sunday? You've got the keys to his place, right?" It's actually a little strange, hearing Joe on the phone when Pete usually sees him in person. He never has to phone him, because he sees him every day in class or at the weekend. "Pete? You still there?"
"Yeah," Pete says. "Sorry, I was just-- long day."
"You probably didn't sleep well last night," Joe says. "Up all night worrying about Patrick being kidnapped by stewardesses on the way to New York."
"It could happen! I read it in Playboy." Pete grins at the ceiling. "They lure you up to first class with the promise of free champagne and all the peanuts you can eat, and next thing you know, you're stripped naked and being taken to the cockpit."
"...Maybe we should visit him while he's there?" Joe says. "You know, in case he gets lonely."
"In the cockpit?" Because really, that word gets funnier the more you say it.
"Sure. I'll distract the stewardesses while you rescue Patrick," Joe says, sounding very reasonable before adding, "You'd like that more anyway."
Pete shrugs, feeling the blanket underneath his shoulders. "I'm more the antihero type. Shades of grey, working from the shadows. Morally ambiguous gets you the hot heroine and the villainess."
"You're dragging him away from beautiful air hostesses. That's not morally ambiguous enough for you?"
After Joe hangs up, Pete wonders if he should call Patrick. It's an hour later in New York and Patrick's got his first day at the studios tomorrow, so he decides not to and feels very virtuous for almost twenty minutes, before he wonders if Patrick's even in or if his new roommate's dragged him out somewhere.
He punches the pillow a few times, trying to get comfortable, and goes to sleep.
There's a party on Thursday, a fuck-school-tomorrow thing. It's actually pretty awesome-- good music, good mix of people, and Pete doesn't actually know the host so he feels no guilt about how trashed the house looks after. Pete hooks Joe up with a pretty, preppy girl by talking up the guitar thing while Joe protests that he's not that good, really, he just loves music so much. The girl looks sceptical of his act, but Pete leaves them making out on the couch. His good deed done for the day. He talks music with some guy who says he knows him from somewhere, but can't remember any details, beats two cheerleaders in a who-can-scream-the-loudest contest before getting taken down by the third. They fool around in the kitchen for a while, but he doesn't protest when she pushes him off before he gets her top off. She writes her phone number on the back of his hand.
"Pete!" Someone slaps their hands down on his shoulders and he's turned around. "I haven't seen you in ages," William Beckett says.
Bill Beckett is too pretty for his own good, and every time Pete sees him, he's surprised they haven't fucked more. They've hooked up a few times, but nothing more. Maybe that means something, or maybe it's another sign that Pete should not be allowed to choose his own dates, because he obviously sucks at that.
"Yeah, I've been busy," Pete says, yelling a little over the music.
William grabs his hand and holds it up, reading the number. "So I see. Tanya, huh?"
Pete's not actually sure she told him her name, but she looked like a Tanya, he guesses. He shrugs, but doesn't pull his hand back and William rubs his thumb over the numbers. He's got good hands and familiar calluses from his guitar and Pete thinks there are worse kinks to have.
"Good party," Pete says, nodding at the rest of the house.
"Yeah. Wanna get out?" William's smile shows his teeth and Pete pulls his hand over, quick check for company and then kisses him. Pete's honed his fuck-you attitude enough, had enough fights that got nasty to pretty much get away with kissing semi-random guys in public and going further in private, but he's not sure about Bill.
Pete likes kissing people he knows, likes feeling that knowing what they like gives him a little edge. William's just impatient enough to make Pete the same, hands under T-shirts, pulling him in. He tastes a little of beer, not enough to be off-putting and he kisses like he's already got them in bed and naked.
"Wait, we should--"
William pulls back. "Bedrooms filled up like, five minutes after the party started. Your place?"
Pete flinches at the thought of William back home, this late on a school night. His parents might not say anything, but they'd know and he'd know they knew and-- "Got a friend's place, he's out of town."
And part of him does feel a little guilty. Lending his bedroom to underage sex is probably not what Patrick had in mind when he gave Pete the keys, but really, what did Patrick expect when he gave the keys to him? It's not like Pete's known for being sensible about this kind of thing.
Plus, it's not like Patrick's going to walk in on them.
"He won't mind?" William says, and then goes back to kissing Pete before he can answer.
It's not far, a twenty minute walk that takes longer because of semi-discreet making out, and Pete's breathing hard by the time he gets there. It's odd, seeing the place look dark, knowing that Patrick's not there, and he hesitates outside the door. He's got the strangest urge to ring the bell.
William pushes up against him, Pete's back to his front and says, "Problem?" before biting at Pete's neck.
And that brings Pete back on course, shaking his head and leaning back in to him. William seems to get taller every time Pete sees him, but Pete never has to think about it because William just bends himself around Pete. He finds the keys and opens the door without looking.
They end up in Patrick's bedroom and Pete's honestly not even thinking about it until they get there, switch the light on and fall on the bed, and then he's distracted by William, by his hands and his mouth and the way he manages to wriggle out of his jeans. Pete lies on his back, hands behind his head and watches until William says, "Shouldn't you be stuffing dollars in to my G-string right now?" but not like he objects.
"Depends, how much for a lap dance?"
William climbs on the bed on his hands and knees until he's over Pete. He leans down to kiss Pete, but pulls away before he actually makes contact. "No touching the dancers," he says.
"Come on, baby. I'll make it worth your while," Pete says, lowering his voice, putting a lot of lech into his smile and his hand on Bill's waist, sliding them down to hips and then pulling him down.
"Really," Bill said, voice shaking just a little when Pete pushes up, rubs against him. "I'm not that kind of--" and then he gives up, kissing Pete like they were back at the party before sliding down his body. William's good at this and Pete likes the fact that he likes doing it, and then Bill hums this particular note and Pete thinks about Patrick without meaning to, because Bill's a singer too and it shows sometimes. He flashes back to walking in on Patrick and Faye, pictures Patrick walking in on him and William and--
In his bed, in Patrick's bed and Patrick seeing Pete like this, with William and that moment of fuck, that's hot before he realises what he's thinking. Pete tangles his hands in William's hair, not pulling or anything, just feeling and William may kiss impatiently, but he does this like he could spend all night at it.
"You wanna...?" William says, taking his mouth off Pete. "Let me suck you off, and then can I fuck you?" He sounds this weird blend of polite and rough and it makes Pete think vague thoughts of prom night clichés and high school girlfriends.
"Sounds--wait, do you have--" William looks at him for a second and then they both scramble for the bedside tables, tipping out the drawers and Bill holds up a tube of wet triumphantly.
"I've got to thank your friend," he says, smiling wide at Pete.
"Patrick," Pete says, then kind of wishes he hadn't. It's weird, off key somehow, to be saying his name when he's in his bedroom, about to get fucked by Bill. "And yeah, let's never let that happen."
William follows the plan, sucking Pete off, opening him with his clever fingers and making him come with his mouth on him, his fingers stretching him open, then turning him over when he's boneless and relaxed so Pete has his head buried in the pillow when William fucks him. He takes his time with that too, and Pete thinks it's been too long since he didn't have to worry about someone walking in, his ride waiting for him, his parents overhearing. He gets to moan, just as loud as he wants and the sound of the bed creaking makes him grin.
He comes again, his hand on his dick, jerking himself off and finishing before William does, groaning into the pillow. The room smells of them, sex, but Pete can see Patrick's posters on the walls, a book he finished on the bedside cabinet. It's strange, being in here without Patrick, but less strange than it would be if he was alone. The sound of William's breathing evening out is good enough that Pete wonders if it's possible to get that in to a song. The rhythm of it maybe.
Patrick would know.
"Is it okay if I crash here?" William says.
Pete nods. "Yeah, just help me do the laundry tomorrow."
William smiles and it's a good example of why Pete actually, genuinely, really likes the guy, before William falls asleep. Pete follows him.
Pete wakes up to his phone and wonders what the hell made him think I'm A Believer would make a good ringtone. He feels around for his phone, normally on his bedside table. It's not there, and neither is the table, replaced by someone else's head.
"Hey," Bill says, sleepily put out. He raises his head a moment later. "Your pants are ringing."
"Gimme," Pete says. Bill shifts, finds Pete's jeans by the side of the bed and throws them at him.
Pete finds his phone and answers, eyes still closed.
"H'lo?"
"Pete? Is this a bad time?" Patrick says. "I wanted to get you before you had to leave for school. I can call back later."
Pete sits up and the movement makes Bill groan. Pete puts his hand over Bill's mouth before he can say anything, making Bill glare and lick the palm of his hand. Pete takes it back, gesturing at him to keep quiet before wiping it on the blankets. "No! I'm-- I'm awake, I'm up." He gets out of bed in case Patrick can hear where he is from his voice. "I'm happy you called, even if it is at--" he checks the phone-- "seven thirty in the morning. Seven thirty? Is that right?"
"I figured you'd be up, but if you're running late--"
"I'm good, really," Pete says, smiling without meaning too. He missed hearing Patrick. Emails are okay, but the last time Pete went this long without actually hearing Patrick's voice was after the thing with Danielle. "Sounds like you're having fun there. Are we gonna have to drag you kicking and screaming back to the wilds of Chicago?"
Patrick laughs and Pete's smile stretches wider. He's aware that Bill's woken up a little more and is on his side, watching him. Bill mouths "Patrick?" and smirks when Pete nods and gestures for him to keep quiet.
"It is good. I'm-- we're setting up for this live album thing at a club here, sort of a showcase deal for the label."
"Yeah?" Pete says, heading in to the kitchen. They pretty much cleared out Patrick's fridge, but there's water in the taps and coffee in the cupboard, so makes a cup for him and Bill, giving Bill Andy's usual "Murder is a dying art" mug.
He prods Patrick to keep talking and it's kind of like the first time he made him sing, that same feeling of wrapping Patrick's voice around himself.
"So what's happening with you? Anything interesting happen?" Patrick says when he runs out of things to say.
"You've been gone, like, a week," Pete points out.
"Lot can happen in a week," Patrick says.
"Not here," Pete says, taking the coffee in to William. William's already in the shower, so he leaves it perched on the sink and sits back down on the bed. He needs to wash the sheets. "Not like for you. You're making new friends there? Just remember, they're probably more scared of you then you are of them."
"That explains the cattle-prods," Patrick says. "So I've--" he's interrupted by someone in the background, a woman saying, "Patrick! We're gonna be late if you don't get your ass into gear." And he swears, then says, "Fuck, I've got to-- and I'm probably making you late, too. I didn't mean to talk this long, just wanted to call and-- yeah, I'm coming!"
"It's cool," Pete says, holding the phone a little too tightly. "It was just really good to hear you again, you know? And you can phone tonight, right?"
"Right," Patrick says. "Take care and tell Joe and Andy that-- gimme that back!" and then the phone goes dead. Pete holds it for a moment, listening to the dial tone, then snaps it shut.
"So that's Patrick?" William says, coming out of the bathroom in a towel. "He's your lead singer, right?" He's smiling like Pete's being cute or amusing or like he understands something Pete doesn't.
Pete nods. "You should hear us when he's back," he says. "We're pretty fucking amazing when we're on." And, because he can never resist saying this, he adds, "Patrick didn't even know he was a lead singer until I told him."
"Pretty big thing to miss," William says. "The standing out front and singing into a mike didn't tip him off?"
"He didn't know he could sing," Pete says. "He's got this voice and he was just-- he didn't get it, until I told him." He's working on sounding less smug when he says that, but he's obviously got a way to go.
"So does that make you Professor Higgins or Svengali?" William says. "Or that guy in that film with Barbra Streisand?"
"The phantom, only without the psychosis," Pete says, eyeing Bill. He hooks his hands in the towel and pulls him closer.
"But with the stalkery obsession and general possessiveness?" William says, looking down at Pete. His hands go over Pete's wrists, but he doesn't push them away. Just holds them lightly, his thumb stroking back and forth. The towel hides nothing and Pete wasn't really intending to go into school today anyway.
"I haven't slept with him or anything," Pete says distractedly. "He's Patrick." Which is a great answer, in that it's true and explains everything and means he doesn't have to go into specifics.
Bill looks at him for a moment, then shrugs. "Okay." He shifts his weight, moving a little closer and pulls the towel off.
"Subtle," Pete says.
"Famous for it."
Subtlety is overrated, Pete thinks.
Next part.
Previous part
Danielle turns up to a few practices. She doesn't get all hyped up about them, even if she says that Andy's kind of cool, but she blows him again and agrees to come and see them when they perform. Pete watches out for her in the crowd, easy to spot her black and orange hoodie and they go out after and get coffee and talk about everything. It's good, it's as good as everything else they do, just talking and the way she lets their fingers touch across the table, and then looks away like she's embarrassed.
They have their first big fight that week when she decides that Pete turning up outside her house to walk to school with her isn't cute but a sign that he's a control freak, fails to answer what her fucking damage is and questions if someone with Pete's reputation isn't spending too much time stalking Andy and Patrick. It's an amazing fight, one that leaves him coasting on righteous fury and satisfied bitterness for the rest of the day, until he catches her panicked look in the cafeteria, that "Please let me not have fucked this up" expression he knows so well from the inside.
Neither of them technically apologise, but they make up enough that Pete's almost late for practice after school, running to catch the bus to Patrick's place.
Patrick is in a bitch of a mood. Pete can feel it before he even gets in, he doesn't need Andy nodding him in to the kitchen and saying, "This is going to be a bad practice. Faye broke up with Patrick, so--"
"Bitch," Pete says, and it's kind of a relief to say that aloud. He's been so careful not to think it in case it slips out. "Fuck, what happened?"
Andy shrugs. "Grew apart, stuff happened."
"I didn't even know they were fighting," Pete says, and that's kind of true. He'd noticed her around less and he didn't have to wait until she got up to take her place on the sofa and she wasn't talking about boring, pointless stuff about people from Acoustics 401 with Patrick, but--
"Is he okay?"
Andy looks at him for a moment, then hits the back of his head. "He just broke up with the girl he's been seeing for more than a year, so no."
And more than a year, that's before he'd even met Pete. Pete folds his arms and says, "She wasn't right for him anyway. She was kind of a bitch."
"You might be happy about this, but try not to let Patrick know," Andy says, his voice hard.
"I'm not happy!" Pete shouts, then lowers his voice. "You think I like seeing my friends hurt? I just think she wasn't right for him, and maybe in the long run it's a good thing they broke up. Was she cheating on him?"
"No, she wasn't," Patrick says and Pete jumps and feels a little better when Andy does as well. "She wasn't cheating on me. I know with your vast romantic experience that this is kind of hard to get, but not every woman cheats on her boyfriend."
Pete slouches in on himself, shoulders hunching automatically. It's not really comforting that Andy does the same, even if he covers it up better.
"And she's not a bitch either," Patrick says. "Or a cunt or a slut or a frigid ice-queen or anything like that." He sounds cold and hard, spitting out the words at Pete. "Faye is still-- we just didn't work out. Got it?"
"Got it," Pete says, making the words hard. He opens his mouth to tell Patrick not to take it out on them that his girlfriend dumped him, but Andy meets his eyes and Pete shuts it again.
So they go downstairs and practice, Joe running in five minutes late and he's either more oblivious or a better actor than Pete gave him credit for, because he's pretty much normal and that gets them through the practice, even with Patrick being psycho strict, making them go over the same chorus again and again and again. Patrick makes a nasty remark about Andy being distracted, playing in too many bands, and apologises right away. Then he tells Pete that he hasn't been practicing enough, and doesn't.
Pete's biting his tongue and tension is like something live in his veins and he's hyper aware of Patrick, of the way his voice is more vicious on the lines Pete wrote for him to sing.
It's all Faye's fault, and Pete's glad she's gone.
But Patrick obviously isn't and Pete hates Faye even more, because he recognises Patrick's movements when he's packing up, he knows that from the inside out. The way your fingers dig into everything a little harder than they have to, the way you keep your movements sharp and precise and controlled so you won't lose it completely. He goes over to Patrick and his hand hovers, uncertain if it's okay to touch him. He settles for a hand on Patrick's shoulder. "Patrick?"
Patrick jerks up and Pete can see his eyes are red, dry by force of will. "What?"
"Just-- I'm sorry?" He says. "For everything?" He gestures at the room, the world. "And for upstairs. I didn't mean..." He trails off, not sure how to end the sentence.
"You know," Patrick says, not looking at Pete, "I think it would've been easier if she had cheated on me, maybe. Or if she was a bitch. Then at least I'd know that we did the right thing, breaking up, and maybe I wouldn't--" He looks down, still hunched over the speakers he was moving, and takes his glasses off and holding them in one hand while the other covers his face. Pete crouches down and then kneels so he can look at Patrick properly.
It's horrible and painful and wrong, to see Patrick looking like that, and Pete can't take it at all, and he's not thinking, just acting, when he pulls Patrick's hand away from his face and kisses him, pulling him down with one hand and trying to find his zipper with the other, frantic movements and he knows he can kiss better than this, that it's too hard and too fast and his hand gets a flash of Patrick's skin at his waist and--
And then he's on his ass on the floor where Patrick pushed him away.
"Pete!" Patrick says. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"What? I was just--" And it hits him, that he's sprawled on the floor where Patrick pushed him away after Pete jumped him, tried to stick his tongue down his throat and his hand down his pants and Patrick's looking at him like Pete's mutant or an alien. His hands dig into the floor and he forces himself not to look away. "I was just-- you were upset, so I thought--"
"You thought you'd jump me? That you'd just-- that we'd fuck and that would-- what were you thinking?" Patrick sounds almost angry and Pete looks away and shrugs.
"I just thought, you know. It's a good way to rebound," Pete says and it sounds stupid, even to him, and Patrick's "--that we'd fuck and--" is replaying in his brain.
"Fuck, Pete. That's-- my girlfriend's just broken up with me and you're sixteen," Patrick says. "I didn't sleep with sixteen year-olds when I was one."
"Look, I wasn't-- and I'm not exactly sweet sixteen and never been kissed," Pete says, getting to his feet. "You know that, you-- it was just a fucking kiss, don't make such a big fucking deal about it."
"Just a fucking kiss and maybe just a fucking *fuck* and--" Patrick shakes his head and combs his fingers through his hair, pushing the hat back. "What made you think... That's not how most people deal with break-ups."
It kind of is, Pete thinks, but doesn't say anything because Patrick isn't looking at him anymore and he doesn't want him to start. It's pointless, because Patrick looks at him anyway. "Yeah, whatever. I misjudged the situation or something. It's nothing." He puts his hands in his jeans and shrugs, looks away but keeps track of Patrick out of the corner of his eye.
"Nothing. Right," Patrick says. His voice sounds hoarse, and it could just be from practice, but it didn't sound like that five minutes ago. Pete looks up, kind of freaked out.
"We're okay, right? It's just one stupid little mistake, I-- you know I have a girlfriend, kind of, so-- we're still cool?" He smiles, but he can feel it stretched across his face like a nervous tic. "You're not going to kick me out of the band or something, right?"
Patrick answers almost immediately. It just feels like years. "No. No, I'm not going to kick you out of the band. It was just a little bit of poor judgment. No big deal," Patrick says, and he smiles a little. Not like it's funny, but still a smile.
"We can just forget it, right? Never happened." Pete says. He steps forward to do something, hug Patrick or pat his arm or something, but stops himself. "We're good." He manages to keep it a statement not the question it wants to be.
Patrick tenses, just for a second, then he relaxes and his arm goes around Pete's shoulders, just a quick little moment of reassuring pressure, of contact. "Yeah, we're good," Patrick says, then straightens up. "I'm going to go and apologise to Joe and Andy for being kind of moody today. I'll see you at practice next week?"
Pete nods and doesn't hide his grin. Patrick hugs him again and Pete breathes easier.
And it's okay, except that Patrick is awkward for a bit. For a few weeks it's as difficult to be next to him as when Faye was still hanging around. A couple of times it hits Pete again, what he did, what Patrick said, and Stupid, he thinks and punches the side of the gym before soccer practice.
He takes Danielle to the serial comedy special and watches her mouth the words to every line of "So I Married An Axe-Murderer," and then blush when she catches him looking. She grabs his hand and puts it between her legs, reaching over to return the favour, and then after they come, after Pete licks his hand clean and then hers, she takes his hand and holds it for all of Serial Mom.
"I love your hands," she says, when they're getting popcorn in the interval. "Let me paint your nails." She holds it up, his fingers tangled in hers. His knuckles are red and a little swollen, grazed. "It'd look so fucking hot, your hand all beaten up and used, and then these pretty, shiny black nails." She rubs her thumb over his, feeling the callus.
It wouldn't be the first time Pete painted his nails, or even that his whatever of the week did it for him. He wonders if any of Patrick's exes ever did that for him, if he'd refused point blank or just let them, the way he did with people sometimes.
It would look pretty good, he thinks, staring at his hand with Danielle's long, pretty fingers between them. His grazed knuckles and nail varnish, and he wishes he was old enough to get tattooed properly, but that kind of detail work takes money and a tattooist who knows what they're doing. The kind that generally avoid heavy work on the under-eighteens. Danielle drew around his wrist again in Math class, a little cut-here line of dashes and scissors and a twisting daisy chain underneath in green and red ink. He pulls his hand behind him, so she knocks into him and kisses her and is still kind of surprised when she lets him, when she kisses back. They've been pretty much dating for almost two months, if you count the first few weeks.
"I can't wait until we're old enough to get inked," Danielle says, holding his arms. "Like, professionally, not like whatever sketchy place did your back, but like Andy has. His arms are so fucking hot." She smiles, sharp enough that Pete knows she said it at least half to make him jealous, which doesn't stop it working. "You should have him out front," she says.
"Me and Joe and Patrick aren't enough?"
Danielle shrugs. "But he's the pretty one."
"Bitch," he says, admiring her. "I'm too fucking pretty for most people already."
"Mmm. My pretty boyfriend." Danielle brushes the side of his face and then looks down, blushing. It's cute, and he thinks that maybe this is how Patrick and Andy feel, when being sixteen and in high school actually seems young.
"You're so beautiful, it hurts to look at you sometimes," he tells her and her pale skin turns pinker and his kisses her again, it feels hotter against his own.
"Yeah, same to you."
They have a show on Friday night, fifty people and Danielle's in the audience, appearing halfway through Saturday. They fuck for the first time that weekend and Pete's so happy Joe almost punches him during practice the next day, stopping to say, "You're probably going to keep smiling even if I do, right?"
"Probably," Pete says. Patrick grins and makes, Kids-today eye contact with Andy and Pete doesn't even care, just jumps on Patrick's shoulders and says, "The world is a fucking beautiful place."
And then he finds out on Monday that, less than twenty-four hours before she slept with him, Danielle screwed some random guy in the bathroom at their show.
He doesn't get out of bed for a week. His mom leaves food by his bed and he keeps his head under the covers. It's not that he doesn't want to move, but he's afraid what he'll do when he does. There's this ball of pain and anger and jealousy crawling under his skin and he thinks if he sees Danielle, he might kill her or himself or beg her to take him back or--
So he stays under the covers until his mom knocks on the door and says, "Patrick's here."
"I don't want to see him," he yells back, but he can’t lock the door without getting up and Patrick's opening the door before he can do anything, so he just stays where he is.
"Hey," Patrick says. Pete doesn't need to see him to know he's standing in the doorway, awkward and worried. "So I-- Joe said what happened."
"Fucking great," Pete says. "Cunt." He's not sure who he's talking about, but it definitely applies. Patrick comes over and the mattress shifts when he sits on it, making Pete roll a little close. Patrick leans on the lump of Pete under the covers.
"I'm sorry," Patrick says. "This, it really sucks." Pete can feel his arm, the weight of it across his shoulders through the comforter.
"So what, are you on suicide watch?" Pete says. It's mean and he wants it to hurt Patrick. Patrick's hand tightens on his shoulder.
"Do we-- Pete, she's not worth it, she's--" Patrick says, sounding panicked through the layer of calm-the-suicidal teenager.
Pete throws of the covers and stares at the ceiling. "Or it turns out, I'm not. Worth it. Not for her." His face crumples in on itself, like watching a building implode and he turns over, throwing out an arm and hitting Patrick as he does and shoving him off the bed. He doesn't mean to, but he doesn't mean not to. "Get out, Stump. You're not fucking wanted."
"Yeah, because you really should be left on your own right now," Patrick says from the floor.
"You know, it's pretty pathetic, the way you're hanging around with high school kids," Pete says, lifting himself up on his arms to look at Patrick. Patrick's sprawled on the floor, legs bent and arms behind him for balance. "Is that why Faye dumped you? Because she thought maybe there's something pretty fucking screwy about a guy that's about to graduate college spending all his time in a basement with some fucked-up bit of jailbait?"
He drops back on to the bed and goes to pull the covers over him again, and Danielle came over here last week and they fucked on this bed and then he washed the sheets and now he wishes he hadn't because--
"Pete," Patrick says, sitting back on the bed and stopping Pete from pulling the covers over him. "I know it hurts, I know--"
"What do you know about it?" Pete says. "Like this has ever happened to you." He laughs, because the stupid thing is, Pete does know about it. It's not like this is the first time it's happened. He just thought it was different this time.
"You're not the first guy to get his heart broken," Patrick says. "Even if it feels like it."
Pete looks at him and he's not sure if he wants to punch him for understanding or crawl on to his lap. He settles for moving aside so there's more space on the bed. Patrick lies down carefully, on his side and in danger of rolling off and Pete's suddenly, viciously glad that Danielle's not the last person in here anymore, even if it's only Patrick. He ducks his head and bites his tongue against the painangerpain, and lets Patrick put his arm around him so he's a little more secure. "Hey," Patrick says, making him look up. "She isn't worth it. She's a bitch." He smiles at Pete, off-centre and worried.
Pete's mouth smiles back, even if the rest of him doesn't want to. "Yeah?"
"Psycho bitch," Patrick says, and it's weird hearing Patrick call someone that, enough to make Pete's smile stretch out a little wider. He rubs his head against Patrick's shoulder and breathes in and it smells like Patrick in Pete's bed, his showergel and Pete's deodorant and Pete being in here too long, and nothing like Danielle and her shampoo and sex.
"I miss her," he says, so quiet that he doesn't know if he wants Patrick to hear. "Do you think..." He trails off.
"Don't," Patrick says. "You're better off without her. It's gonna be okay." Pete shrugs against him and doesn't ask him to promise.
School is pretty much hell the next day, and Patrick apparently had words or something with Joe, because Joe does not fucking leave him alone the whole day which doesn't exactly help his plan to stay low-profile. He tries to avoid him, avoid everyone. Patrick's set up a practice after school, even though Pete knows Patrick normally works on Mondays, and he's just counting until he can get there and do that. Just get through the next five minutes, fighting to take each breath and not looking anyone in the eye, and he can go to Patrick's and scream and make Patrick take his words out of his head and put them in Patrick's mouth so he won't have to think about it, because Patrick will be doing that for him.
And he'll still have to deal with Joe looking at him like he's waiting to tackle Pete before he runs into traffic, Andy's remorseless understanding, but if he doesn't think about that, it's okay. Thinking about their care, his family's and his friends, just leaves him feeling oversensitive. He needs it, wants it, but it hurts almost as much to have it as to--
As to see Danielle standing at the end of the hallway. She looks at him, just for a second then turns around and he chases after her, Joe chasing after him until all three of them are in one of science labs that smells like chemicals and ink.
"Pete, you don't want--"
"Shut--" Joe grabs his shoulders to turn him around and Pete almost punches him, but changes it to, "I need to--" He turns back to Danielle, leaning against the wall next to a poster of the periodic table. He shrugs Joe off and then he's standing in front of her. "Why? What-- You couldn't just fucking break up with me the normal way, you fuck someone else and then me for the first fucking time and--"
"I didn't break up with you," Danielle says.
Pete is actually speechless and then his hand is hurting and he realises he punched the wall next to her, hard enough to crack the paint. Joe's behind him, got his arms in a lock, and Pete doesn't fight it. "Get out," Joe says to her, but Danielle ignores him
"Missed," she says, smiling at Pete, pretty and psycho-bitch goes through his head in Patrick's voice, and then she looks down and her face-- it's just a second, and she has her head tilted down so her hair covers her face, but he can see it crumple in a choked-back sob. She swallows it down and looks up at him, mouth tight and eyes red.
"You fucked some guy at our show, and then you-- what was that, throwing me a fucking bone?"
"What the fuck do you care?" She shoves him back and it makes both of them stumble, but Joe catches his balance and keeps Pete in the same hold. Her head falls forward, hunching over and her hands dig in to the wall. "I just did it, okay? I don't--"
His hand is hurting and when he looks down he can see that his knuckles are bleeding. There's a smear of red on the wall near Danielle's head, and he can see her chest shake, hear her choked back sobs and he wants to scream at her, wants to hold her and tell her he forgives her. Wants to make everything better for her, and she's hurting, and he kind of wants to kill her for hurting herself like that.
It’s probably a good thing Joe is holding him back, because his hand twitches, just to push her hair back, stroke the side of her face. Make her look at him. "You're not worth it," he says. He can see her tense, stopping herself from flinching like she's bracing for a punch. "You, you're just not worth one fucking bit of it." He relaxes and feels Joe loosen his hold, just a little, enough for Pete to straighten up, smile at and be as vicious as he can when he says, "You're not worth one fucking bit of my time or care or attention. Have a great life, Danielle. I'm sure you'll get exactly what you deserve."
They have a decent practice, even though half of it is Pete scribbling down lines because Patrick needs them on paper to make them work, not just said, and he gets home still riding that wave of righteous anger. He really doesn't want to stop, because the moment he does --flashes of the shape of her smile, those oddly shy moments, her hips, her hands, the way she'd looked when-- he'll have to deal with the fact that he misses her.
He eats dinner. He can see his parents relax and feels a little less guilty, and when he lies in bed he can pick up faint traces of Patrick from earlier. He kind of wishes Patrick wore a cologne or something, aftershave, so it'd be stronger, but it's good anyway.
He should go out and get laid, find someone so Pete doesn't have her as the last person on his skin. Patrick, Joe, even Andy's "Bitch," and hug, that helps, but-- someone to fuck, someone to fuck him, strong and hard and good enough to wipe out the little memories of Danielle's hands, her watching him roll the condom on like he was putting on a show, of her biting her lip and saying, "Oh, Pete, yes, *move*," when he was inside her.
Pete turns onto his back on the bed and thinks -Ruthie? Bill? Nicky? Reliable and no questions asked, but it's a bit late even for him to make a booty call, Monday night and his parents are downstairs. That joke about why men like masturbation runs through his head, "It's sex with the only one they really love." It's kind of funny, so he flicks through the fantasy files he keeps for something not her, and yeah, there's a good one.
He pictures Patrick as he was back then, sixteen, seventeen. Shyer than he is now, hunched in and hidden away at the back of class. Blushing, maybe, when he talked to a cute girl or that teacher he had a crush on. Blushing when he talked to Pete and stuttering a little because Pete is hot, Pete is experienced, Pete is cool and Patrick jerks off to him nightly.
Sweet sixteen and never been kissed, never been fucked and Pete doesn't have a virgin kink exactly, but he can picture it, being the first one to touch him. Patrick at sixteen, all frustration and embarrassment and Pete would notice him, maybe see Patrick watching him in class, looking a little too long on the pitch. Embarrassed and freaked out when he realised Pete had noticed. Pete licks his lips, slides his hands down his body, eyes closed.
Patrick wouldn't have any defenses, not against Pete, not when he was probably still jerking off twice a day and once between class. Pete would maybe corner him, take advantage of his reputation. Find him in the locker rooms or the library and say, "I know you've been watching me."
And Patrick would stutter, would look away and probably wonder if Pete was going to beat him up or just humiliate him, and hate himself a little for still getting off on having Pete --on having anyone-- that close and invading his personal space. "I don't know what--"
"I know what you want," Pete would tell him, and he'd push him into the wall, palming his cock through his jeans, and Patrick at sixteen would be shocked, defenceless, grinding back without meaning to. Pete would undo his jeans one handed, the other next to Patrick's head, bracing Pete against the wall, and Pete would curl his hands around Patrick and Patrick would groan. Pete would kiss him, pushy but not too pushy, because Patrick was still new to this, don't scare him off.
Maybe Patrick jerks, maybe he bites Pete's lip or his hands go to Pete, pushing his T-shirt up, greedy and Patrick says, "I've never done this before. I'm sorry, I don't know what to do." But he wants to, wants to do whatever Pete wants him to, wants to be touched however Pete wants to touch him.
"It's okay, I do," Pete tells him, and he drops to his knees and Patrick almost comes just from Pete doing that and Pete makes it good, draws it out and shows every trick he ever learnt for all of 30 seconds before it's too much, no-one's ever done this for Patrick, to Patrick before, Pete's the first and Patrick comes and Pete swallows it all, stands up and kisses him while Patrick's still shocky from it. Patrick's stunned expression, looking at Pete like he's not sure if he's real, that this isn't just another wet dream.
And Pete would kiss him, a little softer but letting Patrick taste himself on Pete, and he'd take Patrick's hand, put it on Pete's cock and say, "everything, I'll show you everything." And Patrick would close his eyes like that's the most amazing thing he'd ever heard and his fingers would curl around Pete and stroke, awkward at first because of the new angle, doing it with the same rhythm he does to himself, and then maybe switching, listening to Pete's groans and learning what works for him and--
And Pete comes over himself, caught up in the fantasy. He breathes heavily, listening to himself, then straightens up, cleans himself off and moves over to the other bed.
It smells of laundry detergent and nothing else, not Patrick or Danielle or even Pete, not really.
"I didn't sleep with sixteen year-olds when I was one."
He falls asleep thinking that it sucks that he has to pay because Patrick was a late bloomer.
The good thing, the only good thing to come out of the Danielle thing (and Pete has to stop himself remembering too clearly so he can keep believing that) is the music. He writes pages and pages of confusion and pain and bitterness and Patrick makes him show it by asking, and then he turns it into something that makes sense. And then he gets on stage and sings Pete's words and Pete can't stop looking at him, because it's Patrick, but it's different, like he's wearing Pete's mark. Patrick's not comfortable with strangers looking at him, which Pete doesn't get --he's got to be used to it by now, right?-- but when he's got the guitar in front of him, when he's singing it's like he's armoured in music and that makes it okay.
It's hot, which isn't a surprise because being on stage, crowd screaming with you, for you, you and your bandmates, your brothers on the same high, singing the same song--
Gestalt, Pete thinks in between tracks, catches Joe's eyes and grins before the next song takes them over.
There's a show, maybe a hundred people, which they get mostly because Andy's playing drums with the headliner's lead singer's other band. Pete calls Andy their little honey trap and jokes about putting on street corners with a smile, a snare-drum and six-inch heels, until Patrick disappears into the van and comes back with a fedora. "Your new pimp hat," Patrick says, sticking it on Pete's head.
Pete adjusts it slightly, slaps Andy on the back and says, "Now get out there and show some skin, baby."
"You are never allowed to say that again," Andy says. "Joe, take that hat off him, he can't handle it."
Joe grabs for it and Pete holds it on his head with both hands and they wrestle. It's good, physical contact and closeness and Pete can't stop laughing until Patrick joins in, steals the hat back and holds it away from both of them.
"Patrick!" Pete says. "You're my best friend, you're on my side, right?"
Patrick shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Pete. I thought you were ready for the awesome responsibility of the hat." He puts it on his own head, tilting it forward so it covers his eyes. It's one of those moments that derails Pete, where he stops thinking whatever he was thinking before and it's just-- Patrick. It's not like the stage moments or the couch moments, the ones where Pete's expecting it, the situation practically demands it. It's just one of the ones that blindside him.
But he's pretty used to covering those up by now, so it only takes him a second to recover, pout and say, "Fine, but when Andy's out there tonight without protection--" and then start laughing.
There's a girl he catches sight of in the show, purple hair and grey eyes, and he wants her. Wants to fuck someone, with a pure and physical hunger that's detached from everything else, and he knows he wouldn't be thinking about anything else when he does. It's a relief more than anything else. He's fooled around a little post-Danielle, but it felt like revenge fucks even when they weren't.
This one will be just for him, just because right now, he wants it. He plans on waiting after the show, but she grabs him when he's coming off stage and kisses him, one hand on his cock before he can say hello, and fuck, but it's good. His bass is between them and he says, "I've got to--" before turning to look at his band. He should help them pack up, but Joe grabs his bass off him and says, "Why do you get all the groupies?"
"Karma," Pete says, even though he knows it makes no sense. She ends up dragging him off into a stairwell and it's good and fast and exactly what he needs, and she's done, too, smiling and panting and saying, "I love musicians. You all were fucking awesome." as she unwraps her legs from around him.
"Yeah," he says. "Thanks." His smile is wide and sincere and he means every word.
He heads back to the others, post-show afterglow, post-sex rush and it's all the same, so when Joe opens the door, he says, "I could kiss you right now."
"I know where that mouth's been," Joe says, backing up.
"We just fucked, it's not like I went down on her," Pete says, making his voice reasonable just to see Joe squirm.
"Most people spend the afterglow with the person that caused it," Joe said. "Health class was very clear on that."
Pete spreads his arms wide, catching Joe and hooking in Andy at the same time. "But I'd rather share it with you guys. My guys." It's absolutely true and Andy and Joe hug him back, strong and sincere, before he detaches and goes to Patrick to hug him too. It's as good as it always is and bends his head just to the crook of Patrick's neck and breathes in to get that little bit of recognition, of Patrick-show-mine-us-Patrick.
Patrick looks at him, kind of off. "What?" Pete says.
"Nothing," Patrick says. He shakes his head and kind of smiles and Pete crosses his arms, weirdly self-conscious until Patrick pulls him back in. Patrick isn't like Pete, he doesn't cling like Pete, sprawl across someone for hours and bury himself in their shirt, but he gives good contact. No awkwardness or holding himself back.
Pete grins and says, "I fucking love this band."
Patrick doesn't blink, just says, "You're only saying that so we'll put out."
Pete laughs. "Well, you and Andy maybe. Joe's saving himself for his wedding night."
"My parents raised me right," Joe says, thumping Pete on the back.
It's late enough when the show ends that they all end up crashing at Patrick's, rather than waking up their various parents and roommates. They unload the van and Pete's that particular kind of drunk that you only get from being tired and wired at the same time, talking over himself and play-fighting. Scissors-paper-stone puts Joe on the basement couch while Patrick, Pete and Andy have the relative comfort of Patrick's double-bed. Pete takes a quick shower, but isn't surprised when Patrick just takes off his jeans and barely makes it under the covers. Andy doesn't even manage that, falling on to the bed hard enough to make the mattress jump, and Pete goes around to pull the cover over him. The role-reversal feels strange but good, and he pulls Andy's glasses off and puts them on one of the little bedside cabinets before getting in to bed on the other side of Patrick.
Patrick's eyes open and he blinks at him a few times, his face looking naked without the usual shields of the hat and glasses.
"Good show," Pete says, quietly so they don't disturb Andy, resting his head on his hand.
Patrick nods and his eyes close. Pete can hear his breathing slow down and he watches. He doesn't feel sleepy. Tired verging on exhausted, but not sleepy. When he breathes in, he gets that hit of feeling, the I love these guys that's like falling in love without any of the usual foreboding that goes with it. Patrick's breathing feels good, feels better than good. It feels right. Pete rolls closer, careful not to disturb anyone and just close enough that his knee touches Patrick's and he can rest one hand over Patrick's side.
He falls asleep like that.
Pete knows that Patrick's got college, but it doesn't really hit him until Patrick turns up all excited and says, "So my professor thinks she can get me this internship in New York. Just a short thing, six weeks, but it's with this label, Principle Uncertainty."
"Six weeks? When?" Pete says. His throat's dry and six weeks? Does that include travel? Six weeks is a month and a half is 42 days is-- and Patrick gets upset if he misses one practice and he's gonna be gone six weeks?
"Next month," Patrick says. "I'll be shadowing a producer for most of that, but apparently they'll get me doing grunt work for most of the departments. Pete?"
Pete pulls himself together enough to say, "Wow, that sounds incredible," and even mean it mostly. "New York! You got a place to stay?"
"Friend of a friend's going to let me crash on his couch, at least until I can find a place of my own." Patrick adjusts his hat. "I've got to see if I can rent this place out for a month, I've got to get tickets and--"
Pete spends most of next class filling in the diagonals on his jeans in ballpoint, blue ink staining them. When his knee and left thigh are done, he switches to writing in his notebook, lines about rejection and being left behind that don't sound as vicious as he means them to. They just sound sad and pathetic and fucking juvenile. Nothing he can show to Patrick when he comes back. If he comes back. If he doesn't get-- there are a lot of good musicians in New York, and a lot of sleazy producers and Patrick is too fucking nice.
He spends the next class writing nasty, brutal lines about whores and seduction and theft, so at least that's an improvement. There's soccer practise after lunch and the coach makes him run extra laps because, "that shit wouldn't be allowed in England, Wentz." Which, whatever. Not like he meant to kick that hard, and if Justin can't handle a tackle that's a little bit more aggressive, maybe he shouldn't be playing.
He gets some nasty bruises on his legs and he can't even show them to Patrick who always acts appropriately impressed, so he takes a picture using someone's camera-phone and sends it to Patrick.
He gets a reply three hours later.
Ouch dont send pics like this giving me a bad rep.
He grins, and then wonders who else saw the picture, if Patrick showed it to them or if they just answered his phone or what. He debates sending a picture of him in his soccer kit, maybe shirt off and in front of a school sign, just to give Patrick something worth explaining.
He checks his mail when he gets home, but there's just the "arrived safely" email, cc to pretty much everyone. New York is warmer than Patrick thought, his roommate is nice, he's got one day of sightseeing before he starts work. He sends everyone his love.
Pete looks through the CCs and recognises Andy's email, Joe's. Nothing for a faye.morris or a f.morris or a faye.girl or anything obvious like that, unless she's one of the others, videokilled@yahoo, deco2000@ hotmail or something. Patrick doesn't talk about her much, but Pete's got the impression they're doing the still friends school of break-up denial, which isn’t healthy.
He sends a quick reply, something about watching out for strangers and not staying out late, then works on his words so he has an excuse to email him. He gives up two hours in, throwing the notebook at the wall, and writes an email about school, lunch, everything he can think of, then leaves it sitting, unsent.
Homework, then he practices on the bass, making a note of what's giving him trouble so he can get Patrick to help him when he gets back.
His email is still there, mocking him, so he adds a little note asking how often Patrick's thyme needs watering, giving him an excuse for writing to him, and sends it before dinner. He doesn't think about it all when he's eating or clearing up.
No reply when he gets back which makes sense, because it's only been thirty minutes since he sent it and Patrick's probably still out doing stuff anyway. He should probably call Joe and Andy, arrange a practice session anyway. Or he could go round to Patrick's to water his plants.
It's not like he sees Patrick every day, and they almost never have practice on a Monday, so he doesn't know why it feels like he's got way too much time on his hands now. He does homework because he can't think of anything else to do, then looks up crime statistics for New York.
The phone rings at nine and Pete grabs it before anyone else can.
"Yeah?"
"That's how you answer your phone? I've met your mom, I know she raised you better," Joe says, sounding amused.
Pete falls back on the bed. "I'm trying to overcome my upbringing. Raised by wolves looks better in the liner notes."
"That's why you're our frontman," Joe says. "You're better at that marketing, PR stuff. I would have just said raised by seals or something. Manatees."
"Manatees are cool," Pete says. "You got Patrick's email?"
"Yeah. I was thinking we should have a practice anyway, maybe Sunday? You've got the keys to his place, right?" It's actually a little strange, hearing Joe on the phone when Pete usually sees him in person. He never has to phone him, because he sees him every day in class or at the weekend. "Pete? You still there?"
"Yeah," Pete says. "Sorry, I was just-- long day."
"You probably didn't sleep well last night," Joe says. "Up all night worrying about Patrick being kidnapped by stewardesses on the way to New York."
"It could happen! I read it in Playboy." Pete grins at the ceiling. "They lure you up to first class with the promise of free champagne and all the peanuts you can eat, and next thing you know, you're stripped naked and being taken to the cockpit."
"...Maybe we should visit him while he's there?" Joe says. "You know, in case he gets lonely."
"In the cockpit?" Because really, that word gets funnier the more you say it.
"Sure. I'll distract the stewardesses while you rescue Patrick," Joe says, sounding very reasonable before adding, "You'd like that more anyway."
Pete shrugs, feeling the blanket underneath his shoulders. "I'm more the antihero type. Shades of grey, working from the shadows. Morally ambiguous gets you the hot heroine and the villainess."
"You're dragging him away from beautiful air hostesses. That's not morally ambiguous enough for you?"
After Joe hangs up, Pete wonders if he should call Patrick. It's an hour later in New York and Patrick's got his first day at the studios tomorrow, so he decides not to and feels very virtuous for almost twenty minutes, before he wonders if Patrick's even in or if his new roommate's dragged him out somewhere.
He punches the pillow a few times, trying to get comfortable, and goes to sleep.
There's a party on Thursday, a fuck-school-tomorrow thing. It's actually pretty awesome-- good music, good mix of people, and Pete doesn't actually know the host so he feels no guilt about how trashed the house looks after. Pete hooks Joe up with a pretty, preppy girl by talking up the guitar thing while Joe protests that he's not that good, really, he just loves music so much. The girl looks sceptical of his act, but Pete leaves them making out on the couch. His good deed done for the day. He talks music with some guy who says he knows him from somewhere, but can't remember any details, beats two cheerleaders in a who-can-scream-the-loudest contest before getting taken down by the third. They fool around in the kitchen for a while, but he doesn't protest when she pushes him off before he gets her top off. She writes her phone number on the back of his hand.
"Pete!" Someone slaps their hands down on his shoulders and he's turned around. "I haven't seen you in ages," William Beckett says.
Bill Beckett is too pretty for his own good, and every time Pete sees him, he's surprised they haven't fucked more. They've hooked up a few times, but nothing more. Maybe that means something, or maybe it's another sign that Pete should not be allowed to choose his own dates, because he obviously sucks at that.
"Yeah, I've been busy," Pete says, yelling a little over the music.
William grabs his hand and holds it up, reading the number. "So I see. Tanya, huh?"
Pete's not actually sure she told him her name, but she looked like a Tanya, he guesses. He shrugs, but doesn't pull his hand back and William rubs his thumb over the numbers. He's got good hands and familiar calluses from his guitar and Pete thinks there are worse kinks to have.
"Good party," Pete says, nodding at the rest of the house.
"Yeah. Wanna get out?" William's smile shows his teeth and Pete pulls his hand over, quick check for company and then kisses him. Pete's honed his fuck-you attitude enough, had enough fights that got nasty to pretty much get away with kissing semi-random guys in public and going further in private, but he's not sure about Bill.
Pete likes kissing people he knows, likes feeling that knowing what they like gives him a little edge. William's just impatient enough to make Pete the same, hands under T-shirts, pulling him in. He tastes a little of beer, not enough to be off-putting and he kisses like he's already got them in bed and naked.
"Wait, we should--"
William pulls back. "Bedrooms filled up like, five minutes after the party started. Your place?"
Pete flinches at the thought of William back home, this late on a school night. His parents might not say anything, but they'd know and he'd know they knew and-- "Got a friend's place, he's out of town."
And part of him does feel a little guilty. Lending his bedroom to underage sex is probably not what Patrick had in mind when he gave Pete the keys, but really, what did Patrick expect when he gave the keys to him? It's not like Pete's known for being sensible about this kind of thing.
Plus, it's not like Patrick's going to walk in on them.
"He won't mind?" William says, and then goes back to kissing Pete before he can answer.
It's not far, a twenty minute walk that takes longer because of semi-discreet making out, and Pete's breathing hard by the time he gets there. It's odd, seeing the place look dark, knowing that Patrick's not there, and he hesitates outside the door. He's got the strangest urge to ring the bell.
William pushes up against him, Pete's back to his front and says, "Problem?" before biting at Pete's neck.
And that brings Pete back on course, shaking his head and leaning back in to him. William seems to get taller every time Pete sees him, but Pete never has to think about it because William just bends himself around Pete. He finds the keys and opens the door without looking.
They end up in Patrick's bedroom and Pete's honestly not even thinking about it until they get there, switch the light on and fall on the bed, and then he's distracted by William, by his hands and his mouth and the way he manages to wriggle out of his jeans. Pete lies on his back, hands behind his head and watches until William says, "Shouldn't you be stuffing dollars in to my G-string right now?" but not like he objects.
"Depends, how much for a lap dance?"
William climbs on the bed on his hands and knees until he's over Pete. He leans down to kiss Pete, but pulls away before he actually makes contact. "No touching the dancers," he says.
"Come on, baby. I'll make it worth your while," Pete says, lowering his voice, putting a lot of lech into his smile and his hand on Bill's waist, sliding them down to hips and then pulling him down.
"Really," Bill said, voice shaking just a little when Pete pushes up, rubs against him. "I'm not that kind of--" and then he gives up, kissing Pete like they were back at the party before sliding down his body. William's good at this and Pete likes the fact that he likes doing it, and then Bill hums this particular note and Pete thinks about Patrick without meaning to, because Bill's a singer too and it shows sometimes. He flashes back to walking in on Patrick and Faye, pictures Patrick walking in on him and William and--
In his bed, in Patrick's bed and Patrick seeing Pete like this, with William and that moment of fuck, that's hot before he realises what he's thinking. Pete tangles his hands in William's hair, not pulling or anything, just feeling and William may kiss impatiently, but he does this like he could spend all night at it.
"You wanna...?" William says, taking his mouth off Pete. "Let me suck you off, and then can I fuck you?" He sounds this weird blend of polite and rough and it makes Pete think vague thoughts of prom night clichés and high school girlfriends.
"Sounds--wait, do you have--" William looks at him for a second and then they both scramble for the bedside tables, tipping out the drawers and Bill holds up a tube of wet triumphantly.
"I've got to thank your friend," he says, smiling wide at Pete.
"Patrick," Pete says, then kind of wishes he hadn't. It's weird, off key somehow, to be saying his name when he's in his bedroom, about to get fucked by Bill. "And yeah, let's never let that happen."
William follows the plan, sucking Pete off, opening him with his clever fingers and making him come with his mouth on him, his fingers stretching him open, then turning him over when he's boneless and relaxed so Pete has his head buried in the pillow when William fucks him. He takes his time with that too, and Pete thinks it's been too long since he didn't have to worry about someone walking in, his ride waiting for him, his parents overhearing. He gets to moan, just as loud as he wants and the sound of the bed creaking makes him grin.
He comes again, his hand on his dick, jerking himself off and finishing before William does, groaning into the pillow. The room smells of them, sex, but Pete can see Patrick's posters on the walls, a book he finished on the bedside cabinet. It's strange, being in here without Patrick, but less strange than it would be if he was alone. The sound of William's breathing evening out is good enough that Pete wonders if it's possible to get that in to a song. The rhythm of it maybe.
Patrick would know.
"Is it okay if I crash here?" William says.
Pete nods. "Yeah, just help me do the laundry tomorrow."
William smiles and it's a good example of why Pete actually, genuinely, really likes the guy, before William falls asleep. Pete follows him.
Pete wakes up to his phone and wonders what the hell made him think I'm A Believer would make a good ringtone. He feels around for his phone, normally on his bedside table. It's not there, and neither is the table, replaced by someone else's head.
"Hey," Bill says, sleepily put out. He raises his head a moment later. "Your pants are ringing."
"Gimme," Pete says. Bill shifts, finds Pete's jeans by the side of the bed and throws them at him.
Pete finds his phone and answers, eyes still closed.
"H'lo?"
"Pete? Is this a bad time?" Patrick says. "I wanted to get you before you had to leave for school. I can call back later."
Pete sits up and the movement makes Bill groan. Pete puts his hand over Bill's mouth before he can say anything, making Bill glare and lick the palm of his hand. Pete takes it back, gesturing at him to keep quiet before wiping it on the blankets. "No! I'm-- I'm awake, I'm up." He gets out of bed in case Patrick can hear where he is from his voice. "I'm happy you called, even if it is at--" he checks the phone-- "seven thirty in the morning. Seven thirty? Is that right?"
"I figured you'd be up, but if you're running late--"
"I'm good, really," Pete says, smiling without meaning too. He missed hearing Patrick. Emails are okay, but the last time Pete went this long without actually hearing Patrick's voice was after the thing with Danielle. "Sounds like you're having fun there. Are we gonna have to drag you kicking and screaming back to the wilds of Chicago?"
Patrick laughs and Pete's smile stretches wider. He's aware that Bill's woken up a little more and is on his side, watching him. Bill mouths "Patrick?" and smirks when Pete nods and gestures for him to keep quiet.
"It is good. I'm-- we're setting up for this live album thing at a club here, sort of a showcase deal for the label."
"Yeah?" Pete says, heading in to the kitchen. They pretty much cleared out Patrick's fridge, but there's water in the taps and coffee in the cupboard, so makes a cup for him and Bill, giving Bill Andy's usual "Murder is a dying art" mug.
He prods Patrick to keep talking and it's kind of like the first time he made him sing, that same feeling of wrapping Patrick's voice around himself.
"So what's happening with you? Anything interesting happen?" Patrick says when he runs out of things to say.
"You've been gone, like, a week," Pete points out.
"Lot can happen in a week," Patrick says.
"Not here," Pete says, taking the coffee in to William. William's already in the shower, so he leaves it perched on the sink and sits back down on the bed. He needs to wash the sheets. "Not like for you. You're making new friends there? Just remember, they're probably more scared of you then you are of them."
"That explains the cattle-prods," Patrick says. "So I've--" he's interrupted by someone in the background, a woman saying, "Patrick! We're gonna be late if you don't get your ass into gear." And he swears, then says, "Fuck, I've got to-- and I'm probably making you late, too. I didn't mean to talk this long, just wanted to call and-- yeah, I'm coming!"
"It's cool," Pete says, holding the phone a little too tightly. "It was just really good to hear you again, you know? And you can phone tonight, right?"
"Right," Patrick says. "Take care and tell Joe and Andy that-- gimme that back!" and then the phone goes dead. Pete holds it for a moment, listening to the dial tone, then snaps it shut.
"So that's Patrick?" William says, coming out of the bathroom in a towel. "He's your lead singer, right?" He's smiling like Pete's being cute or amusing or like he understands something Pete doesn't.
Pete nods. "You should hear us when he's back," he says. "We're pretty fucking amazing when we're on." And, because he can never resist saying this, he adds, "Patrick didn't even know he was a lead singer until I told him."
"Pretty big thing to miss," William says. "The standing out front and singing into a mike didn't tip him off?"
"He didn't know he could sing," Pete says. "He's got this voice and he was just-- he didn't get it, until I told him." He's working on sounding less smug when he says that, but he's obviously got a way to go.
"So does that make you Professor Higgins or Svengali?" William says. "Or that guy in that film with Barbra Streisand?"
"The phantom, only without the psychosis," Pete says, eyeing Bill. He hooks his hands in the towel and pulls him closer.
"But with the stalkery obsession and general possessiveness?" William says, looking down at Pete. His hands go over Pete's wrists, but he doesn't push them away. Just holds them lightly, his thumb stroking back and forth. The towel hides nothing and Pete wasn't really intending to go into school today anyway.
"I haven't slept with him or anything," Pete says distractedly. "He's Patrick." Which is a great answer, in that it's true and explains everything and means he doesn't have to go into specifics.
Bill looks at him for a moment, then shrugs. "Okay." He shifts his weight, moving a little closer and pulls the towel off.
"Subtle," Pete says.
"Famous for it."
Subtlety is overrated, Pete thinks.
Next part.