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When Pete Wentz spoke to him for the first time, that seemed like the highlight of Joe’s life.
Then Pete asked Joe to be in a band with him and the scale Joe had been using to measure his life exploded. Pete said, “Now that I’ve heard you play, I want you in my band.”
“Subbing in Arma Angelus again?” Joe guessed. “For Racetraitor?”
“No, a new band. Something more fun than this serious-fucking-screaming scene.”
It would take a stronger man than Joe Trohman to argue with that.
So now Joe’s in a band with the three most musically talented dudes he’s ever met. He’s excited about the music, he’s excited about having a shot at fame, he’s excited about friendship, and he’s excited about cute boys. He can’t even decide which of them he has a crush on, honestly. Emo eyelined screaming Pete, who everybody wants; smart bookish Andy who seems severe but is actually just shy, who can lay out a flawless drum track first time, every time, and put all of them to shame; sweet, pink-lipped Patrick who hides under a hat like it’s fooling anyone, like they can’t hear the rawness with which he sings. There’s so much to choose from, and it’s all quality. Maybe he’s got a crush on all of them. Maybe he’s got a crush on the whole idea of them as a band, and the things they can do together, and the way the small crowds know all the words and the whole room dances and the way they laugh and argue and are doing something, really doing something, not just fucking around with some instruments in somebody’s garage. Joe Trohman: band ho. That about sums it up.
To symbolize and express his excitement, Joe makes it a personal goal to kiss every member of Fall Out Boy.
Here’s how he does it:
August
Joe struggles with a lot of things in his life but his sexuality isn’t one of them. He was raised by a pair of Jewish doctors. By the time he’s old enough to realize that his feelings for dudes in the scene are more than just hero-worship, he’s pretty cool with it and he knows his parents will be too. He’s comfortable saying outrageously, openly gay shit; but instead of working as pick-up lines, people tend to assume it’s a joke.
“The sexual tension in this van is killing me,” he comments one day, testing the waters. He’s making the rounds, picking up Pete (whose license is suspended) and Andy (who keeps trying to get out of doing the band by claiming to ‘forget’ about practices) to haul them back to his garage. Patrick is already there, lured by Joe’s claim that he needed Patrick’s help tuning up all the equipment to get the sound right. Flattery is usually enough to get Patrick to practice. Flattery, and ‘accidentally’ locking him in the garage when Joe leaves to get the other two. It’s like trying to corral cats. Sexy, musically talented, aggravating cats.
Just to clarify, Joe Trohman is not attracted to cats. Just to get that on the record. Definitely not into cats or any other non-human mammals. Also not into reptiles. Human men, women, and nonbinary genders only. Yeah.
“I get that a lot,” Andy says, with a flash of his furtive, dorky smile. Pete, distractedly thumbing into his cell phone in the passenger seat, raises an eyebrow but says nothing.
Four dudes, three kisses, one van. Joe considers the logistics. Pete’s easy, obviously; Pete will kiss anyone. Andy, though—Andy will need to be tricked somehow. Joe puts a pin in that for now. The van is buzzing with potential make-outs, the air crackling with it. This shitty van might be magic. Joe starts scheming how to get Andy alone in it.
Joe glances at Andy in the rearview mirror. The lip ring that would clack against his teeth. Andy hiding behind hair and glasses and band t-shirts, shy as if he was the lame high schooler and not the hotly pursued, first-take-perfect drummer of a thousand scene bands. Joe’s stomach flutters. Maybe it’s safer to start with Pete.
*
Flushed and sweaty and triumphant after the first runthrough of Saturday in his garage, Joe says, “Pete, I could kiss you on the mouth. That was uh-fucking-mazing.”
Pete looks at Joe, looks down at his bass, looks up at Joe again. He’s blushing. He’s still clearly working through the murky depths of whatever the fuck guy sexuality entails, let alone what Joe’s sexuality entails. He laughs unconvincingly. “Uh, me too, dude.”
Joe takes decisive action. When Andy is fiddling with his kit and Patrick’s inside getting room-temperature water to drink, Joe crosses the garage, pulls Pete by his instrument strap, and kisses him on the mouth. Their guitars smack together, the feedback screech making Pete jump back. It was an okay kiss, Joe thinks. Pete was mostly too surprised to kiss back. Joe stays close, looking into Pete’s pretty brown eyes, in case he wants to try again. Pete hesitates, tilting his head ever so slightly.
“Can I…?” Joe asks softly. He doesn’t want to do anything unwelcome. That’s not what the I Kissed Every Member of Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This T-Shirt game is about. Joe Troh, Band Ho is all about consent.
Pete’s biting his lip. He has incredible lips. Large and soft and—and—
“Like, just for fun? To clarify. You’re asking if I want to make out for fun?”
“No strings attached,” Joe says, and then plucks at his guitar to really bring the pun home.
Pete shrugs. “Yeah, okay,” he says. He leans in. Their mouths meet. They make out.
It’s fantastic.
October
Make-out hobag Pete Wentz was smooched months ago. Now it’s Joe’s senior year, they’re talking about recording an EP, the stars are fucking aligned. He’s got this. He can nail these kisses.
Theoretically. But tricking Andy is proving harder than he anticipated. Joe’s current tactic: a series of escalating bets. “Why do I always have to kiss you if I lose? Why do you always wager that one thing? You’re so fucking weird,” Andy complained at their last show, when Joe challenged him to a jumping-off-the-speakers contest.
Joe lost, though. That’s the thing. Andy never loses. Joe doesn’t see why his bets are such a problem if Andy’s never going to fucking lose.
“I bet I can drink more hot sauce than you,” tries Joe. They’re in his van, headed to an unpaid show in Indianapolis, playing hooky from school. He’s bringing all of his considerable van mojo to bear on this mission. So far Andy seems unaffected.
Joe’s first kiss was in a shitty van just like this one. He was 15 years old, on tour with Arma Angelus. Pete had gotten special permission from his parents to bring him along, lied his ass off about how upstanding and above-board and appropriate the whole thing was going to be. He’d even worn a tie in some misguided attempt to appear responsible. It is one of Joe’s favorite memories.
Andy, driving, glances at Joe in the rearview mirror. “Patrick’s the drinking weird stuff guy.”
Joe hangs off the back of the driver’s seat. From this distance he can smell Andy’s shampoo. It’s fruitier than he expected. “Dude, you smell like a strawberry,” Joe says. “It’s amazing.” He leans forward to get a better sniff; Andy swerves onto the shoulder of the highway, dodging him.
“It’s like having a nice-smelling cloud around my head all day,” Andy says defensively. “I like it. Just because you choose to smell like old milk and hot dog water…”
Joe sniffs himself conspicuously. Okay, it’s been a day or three since he bathed in anything bigger than a sink. That’s the charm of being on the road, right? More body spray will adequately address this problem, he resolves.
“I bet I can name more Iron Maiden songs than you,” Joe tries next. “C’mon, I’m bored. If you win, I’ll take the floor spot at the hotel, no contest.”
“And if you win?” Andy asks suspiciously. His odds of getting half of the bed dramatically improve if Joe’s out of the running. They both know it.
Joe tries to sound casual, like this is an ordinary dumb bet to resolve the bed issue, like this is a totally standard upping of the stakes. Platonic make-outs between friends—no big. “Uh, you have to kiss me?”
Andy shakes his head, whipping Joe with his long hair. “Sit down, Trohman. Your bets are fucking weird lately. If this is a puberty thing, I hope you grow out of it soon.”
“You’re not that much older than me. I’m almost 18,” Joe grumbles.
He slumps into his own seat, crossing his arms across his chest with full grumpitude. He side-eyes Patrick, on the bench seat beside him in a similar posture: beanie down to his eyelashes, plush-lipped scowl, arms barred forbiddingly across his body, big headphones clamped over his ears. It’s the ‘Pete has a new girlfriend’ posture. Patrick’s been especially pissy the last few days.
Joe really is bored. He leans into Patrick’s space, which is not unlike skinny-dipping in piranha-infested waters under the best of circumstances, and jabs the pause button on Patrick’s Discman.
Patrick glares furiously, hits play, and pulls the CD player out of Joe’s reach.
“What’s your problem, man?” Joe asks.
Patrick slips one half off his headphones down. Warbly strains of Danny Elfman’s Batman score leak out, mingling unfavorably with the very loud Def Leppard Pete’s blasting through the van stereo. No one wins when Pete calls shotgun.
“I’m pissed at you,” Patrick growls, “for unspecified reasons.”
The growl, Joe thinks, is pretty sexy. He’s been preoccupied with the long game, with the con he’s trying to run on Andy; but at some point he’ll have to crack the seduction of Patrick Stump, too. Why not start now? Except for, like, it’s generally a bad sign when Patrick starts listening to soundtrack music. Joe figures, fuck it. He’s not one to tread lightly.
“Well,” Joe says reasonably, “do you want to specify them?”
“I do not,” Patrick says. His eyes cut to the back of Pete’s head in a telling manner.
Listen, Joe never meant to get tangled up in whatever dynamic they’ve got going on there: those two dudes haul around so much sexual fury and unrequited longing and age-of-consent angst, Joe’s surprised it all fits in this van. Patrick clearly has not forgiven Joe for having kissed Pete when Patrick hasn’t. It was a great kiss; Joe gets it. But he’s just a dude on a make-out mission. The excitement of what they’re doing here—to Joe it’s dizzying. He wants to celebrate with his lips. His queer little heart runneth over and all that. He’s in love with the idea of this band, with music and art and la bohème, with himself and his friends and their own potential. He’s not in love with Pete.
“Let me tell you my theory, then,” Joe says.
Patrick has re-attached his headphones, so Joe tugs the audio cord til Patrick’s ear pops free again.
“I am so not interested in your theory,” Patrick grumbles.
“You’re TOTALLY IN LOVE WITH—”
Patrick slaps his hand over Joe’s mouth with excessive gusto. He scowls magnificently. “You are garbage as a friend, I just want you to know that,” Patrick informs him in a furious whisper. “I can’t believe I ever thought I liked you best.”
“It’s obvious to everyone who you like best,” Joe says into the muffle of Patrick’s palm. Joe blows the wettest raspberry imaginable and is gratified by the recoil of Patrick’s muzzling hand.
“You disgust me,” says Patrick.
“Just a thought,” says Joe, struck by sudden inspiration. He wipes slobber off his face with his hoodie sleeve to look more kissable. “But I am available for revenge macking. Like, if you by random happenstance had anyone in this van you wanted to make jealous.”
Again, Patrick can’t seem to stop his eyes from flicking to the back of Pete’s bright red head, the jaunty crest of the bassist’s fauxhawk.
“I am not spite kissing you,” Patrick hisses.
But Joe can tell he’s interested.
*
Later, they’re exhausted from the drive and totally crashing from the show and just generally sweaty, tired, sore. It’s three in the morning; there is one bed, one dubiously stained recliner, and one shower. None of them have seen any such luxuries for the better part of a week.
Pete has been in the shower for 20 minutes now, because he is an asshole with no regard for others. The noises coming from the locked, steamy bathroom suggest he is enjoying it very much. Patrick and Joe keep looking at each other and then looking away like you can get chlamydia from eye contact. Joe, at least, is becoming increasingly uncomfortable as he imagines what exactly is happening in the shower stall to evoke such… carnal noises. Andy is the only person in this room who’s not blushing.
“Okay, best 3 out of 5,” Andy’s saying. He and Patrick are rock-paper-scissorsing over sleeping arrangements. Joe is trying to figure out how to introduce the topic of kissing. Listen, he’s not a total perv. It’s just that he’s driven—goal-oriented, you might say. It’s been months since he was kissed. At this rate he’ll be crusty crypt-fodder with corpse lips before he convinces anyone to come near him ever again. But with the brothel sounds emitting from the bathroom, he can’t really think of a casual way to bring it up.
“You’re got that gleam of gay mischief in your eyes again,” Andy tells him. “Are you about to challenge me to an ice cube eating contest or something?”
Joe brightens considerably at the prospect. “Why? Do you wanna?”
Andy shrugs one shoulder. “Depends on the stakes.”
Joe’s queer heart skips a beat. Is it possible—could Andy really be—are there certain implications in play here?
“Listen, humans are capable of so many different kinds of love, and there are so many ways to deepen even platonic relationships that can really just be joyful for everyone—” Joe has been told he starts to blather when he gets excited. He hasn’t noticed.
Andy works to conceal a smile. “I’ve been reading about relationship anarchy too, dude,” he says. Yes, there is definitely a certain implication happening.
“Okay, so, whoever can fit more ice in their mouth—”
The bathroom door bangs open, cutting Joe’s challenge short. Pete is framed in the doorway, wet and rumpled and obscenely flushed, holding a tiny washcloth in front of his junk. “They didn’t give us any towels!” he cries. He looks so fucking hot Joe considers just killing himself, because death would be easier than staying in this room and finding a way to cope with all that exposed, soft, lobster-pink, shower-slick, inked skin.
He doesn’t get the chance to suicide, though. Patrick leaps across the bed, wrenches Joe by the arm, and kisses him full on the mouth.
Okay, so it’s a spite kiss. Patrick’s eyes are probably on Pete the whole time. It’s about jealousy, not Joe. (Joelousy?) Rationally, somewhere in his higher cortical white matter, Joe knows this. But he’s all lizard brain right now. For the bright starburst length of this moment, he doesn’t think at all—he just feels it.
Then Patrick breaks away from him, eyes gleaming, mouth red, and turns to scowl at nearly-naked Pete. Joe does not even mind that he’s been used; he flops back onto the bed in dazzlement and bliss. He has not one care in the whole world. He grins up at the ceiling. Patrick has the best lips maybe ever.
“What was that?” Pete’s asking in a tight voice.
“None of your concern,” Patrick’s throwing back.
Andy flops down beside Joe, as if to make it clear he’s got no part in this war of sexual attrition. He pokes Joe in the side. “You’re a fucking troublemaker,” Andy whispers while Pete and Patrick bicker.
“I’m a very physical person,” Joe defends himself. “Platonic make-outs are a thing. Look it up in your anarchy book. Who doesn’t want to snuggle and kiss their friends, I ask you?”
“NO YOU CANNOT HAVE A TOWEL!” Patrick yells. There’s the famous temper. “YOU CAN FUCKING DRIP DRY FOR ALL I CARE!”
Andy gives Joe such a look. They both cover their faces with pillows to stifle the sounds of their laughter.
January
Joe hasn’t forgotten about the kissing project, exactly—he still lobs bets at Andy whenever he gets the chance, usually via text message—but it’s finals, Andy’s in Wisconsin, and band practices keep getting postponed because everyone’s so busy. By the time it’s winter break and they’re cramming into Joe’s van for their already half-cancelled tour, everyone’s got runny noses and chapped lips and looks utterly sexless in their puffy down jackets.
Even the drive to their first city is more painful than usual: instead of the typical giddiness, everyone’s just kind of wearily sniping at each other, crabby with deflated holidays. Pete refuses to turn down the sound on his Gameboy, Patrick is rage-napping, and Andy makes Joe pull over every 20 minutes to check on the security and general emotional well-being of the new drum kit he just got for Christmas, as if he’s not just planning on beating the shit out of it with sticks when they get to Minneapolis anyway.
Joe doesn’t even want to talk to these cranky assholes by the time they get to the distant relation’s house they’re crashing at for the night. Kissing is the last thing on his mind.
So when there’s a knock on the door of the basement rec room that is Joe’s opulent private bedroom for the night, he really considers just ignoring it. Who’s to say he’s not already asleep? He drove 6 hours today; it’s reasonable that he’d be tired.
The knock is soft, though. Nonthreatening. If it was more petty band bullshit, it’d probably be more aggressive, right?
So Joe opens the door.
He’s nonplussed to find Andy standing there in PJs, holding a cup of ice.
“Did you come to tuck me in and give me a glass of water?” Joe asks after a beat.
Andy shakes his head, half of his weird little smile on his face, his eyes not quite looking at Joe straight on but grazing him from the corner, from behind his hair, from the side. Andy, 21, is supposed to be the grown-up here. Joe is not in the mood. So he rolls his eyes, turns from the door, and stalks inside.
Andy follows, closing the door behind him. Joe sits on the couch and Andy joins him. Andy does another sideways glance, offers the cup to Joe.
“Ice eating contest?” he says. “Bet I can fit more ice cubes in my mouth than you can.”
Joe’s brain clunks, wheezes, makes the dial-up noise, tries to turn over. He doesn’t know what to do with this. “What does the winner get?” Joe asks slowly.
Andy places an ice cube on his tongue. It clicks against his metal tongue stud. He’s meeting Joe’s eyes now. His gaze is unnervingly intense. Joe’s insides squirm. Andy brings in an ice cube to Joe’s lips, hitching an eyebrow like it’s a question.
Joe parts his lips around the cold, wet pressure, tongues the ice out of Andy’s fingers. January in Minneapolis: ice is fucking cold. But Andy is undeterred. He puts another cube on his own tongue, feeds another to Joe. With strange, silent ceremony, they go on this way—ice cube after ice cube, back and forth. Four cubes; five. Joe’s covered in goosebumps; his cheeks ache. He tries not to let Andy see him shiver. His nipples are hard as fuck. Frozen spit and frigid icemelt chill the back of his throat; his lips are going numb. His teeth hurt. Andy holds another ice cube to his mouth.
Then: brainfreeze.
With an agonizing stab right up his corpus callosum, the cold abruptly becomes too much. Joe turns his head and sprays ice out all over the grotty basement carpet. “Ow! Fuck!” he curses. There is icy drool on his chin. It is not his sexiest moment.
Andy starts to choke, laughing. He spits his mouthful of ice back into the cup, which is only slightly less vile than spewing it on the floor, and flushes a full, blue-lipped grin.
“S-s-six,” Andy proclaims. His teeth chatter. “I win.”
Joe hugs his arms around himself. Fuck, he’s cold in his bones. This was a stupid bet.
Yet his every nerve is galvanized, waiting on the outcome. “Okay, w-winner,” he chatters back. “What do you get?”
“You,” Andy says. Joe’s heart freezes along with the rest of him. “Wasn’t that the point?”
“I didn’t know—you wanted to,” shivers Joe. “You refused to lose any of my bets.”
Andy shrugs. “And you refused to just ask me. I’m not really a gambler.”
Joe’s body betrays him with a big, exaggerated shudder of cold. The ice on the floor isn’t even melting, that’s how cold this fucking basement is.
Andy leans into him all at once, apparently too cold for preamble. His cold lips collide with Joe’s, and the conflicting rush of temperature makes Joe’s stomach drop out in the best way. Icy lips yield to Andy’s tongue and frozen stud. He licks heat back into Joe’s arctic mouth. Joe kisses back like a hypothermic man, like a Jack London story, like crawling inside a taun-taun on Hoth. Joe kisses back hungry for heat, for Hurley, and is surprised to feel himself—melt.
Joe’s arms slide around Andy’s torso of their own accord, and his next shiver rubs their bodies together in a rather unforgettable way. The next thing he knows, Andy’s laying on top of him, and their bodies are moving just as reflexively but in ways unrelated to the cold. No—these movements are about heat.
Joe is pretty much insensible with Andy’s mouth on his and his hands on the tattooed skin of Andy’s back by the time his brain thaws out, catches up, realizes what’s happening. “Wait,” he says, so fucking breathless. “Andy. You want to—with me?”
Andy’s laugh reverberates in Joe’s collarbone, sets his whole skeleton aglow, just fucking irradiates him. “It would appear so,” he says, hips shifting against Joe’s, pajama pants keeping no secrets for either of them. “Do you?”
“I’m just a simple band ho,” says Joe. He can’t help himself: he’s laughing too. “I never expected—”
“Fooling around first,” suggests Andy, punctuating the request with a judicious nip to Joe’s clavicle. His teeth are still popsicle-cold. “Existential treatise on anarcho-queer friendship later?”
Joe groans in answer to the teeth or the question or both. His hips grind up against Andy’s without any interest in his permission. “God yes,” he says, and puts his still-chilled lips back on Andy’s. Gotta get warm and all. Wouldn’t want pneumonia. They’ve got a show tomorrow, after all.
For once, they pass an entire night without squabbling over who gets the floor. Joe is warmed fucking through, come morning.