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Pete doesn’t know if the things Patrick does are, in fact, truly that unintentionally erotic, or his guilt is manifesting in every which way it can. Like his psyche is trying to punish him and force him to pick out another thing of Patrick’s that he sexualizes like the creep he is.
But Pete has to think there’s no way that Patrick can misunderstand what he’s doing to the lollipop in his mouth.
It’s generically erotic. That’s the worst part. Of course Patrick has to be wrapping his tongue around a lollipop, sucking on it like he doesn’t know any better. It’s innocent. He just doesn’t know. He’s a teenage boy and he doesn’t think of himself as possibly being erotic to anyone, just that he wants girls to be erotic to him. Teenage boys are incapable of being intentionally erotic. Patrick is clueless and Pete knows way too much and he’s sitting on Patrick’s bed, a pillow in his lap, fingers clutched in it so he doesn’t snap or anything. There’s a stuffed dog next to his leg, well-worn and washed-out, clearly loved to death, and Pete doesn’t even have it in him to make fun of it right now because he’s that miserably engrossed in Patrick’s mouth.
Well, what else is new, but it’s a lot worse this time.
“What?”
Patrick’s sudden, sharp voice scares Pete. He straightens up, fingers tightening in the pillow. He swallows a bunch of glue in his throat. “Huh?”
“What are you looking at?” The lollipop is tucked into Patrick’s cheek, garbling his speech. Pink spit shines on his bottom lip. He stares back at Pete, one hand on his headphones. “Dude.”
“Uh—“ Pete blinks. His brain is lounging in its own rotten puddle of slime. He clears his throat and flops down on the bed on his back, his legs stretching out. “Nothing. I’m bored. We were gonna go out, you promised, and I’m just sitting here with fucking Cuddles or whatever his name is while I wait for you to stop dicking around.”
“I said I was almost done,” Patrick mutters. “Give me a minute.”
“I’ve given you, like, ten minutes.”
“I’ll be done if you just let me work, okay?”
“I’m not doing anything!”
“I can’t work if you’re staring at me like a goddamn creep!” Patrick bends over his computer again. Pete swears he can see a blush creeping up the back of his neck—or maybe that’s another manifestation of guilt. “What’s your problem, anyway?”
“I don’t have a problem,” Pete answers, purposefully whiny and obtuse, gazing up at the vague shapes he can see in the popcorn ceiling. A unicorn. A bear with angel wings. A shiny star. Magical, otherworldly things that are light years away from Patrick sucking on a lollipop. “You know, Stumph, asking me that question is asking kind of a lot from me. I don’t wanna be stuck here any longer than I have to and if I go into details, I’ll be here for, like, the next five years.”
“Yeah, I know, I get it.” Patrick’s the one who sounds exhausted, which is, in Pete’s opinion, honestly hypocritical. A few more keyboard keys click and grate on Pete’s spine. Patrick sighs, sounding like more of a tired mother than his own mother, and slams his laptop shut, pulling his headphones off. “Alright, let’s go. I said it was only gonna be a minute.”
Pete jerks up, relieved. “Oh, seriously?”
“Seriously.” Patrick taps the lollipop against his lips, watching Pete. “Uh, I totally would’ve offered you one, but they only gave me one the last time I went for a checkup. Sorry.”
“You better be.” Pete watches Patrick back. “You were sitting there making me jealous.” Pete has his own inside jokes about a high-school kid sucking dick. But in retrospect, if he rationalizes that, he has inside jokes about much worse.
Patrick eyes Pete and pulls the lollipop away from his mouth, holding it aloft in his fingers as he approaches the bed. Pete feels his stomach drop like a stone, his heart stopping and squeezing in time to each step Patrick makes. Patrick puts his hand on Pete’s leg and Pete is suddenly sure that this isn’t real and he’s absolutely having a dream, lightheaded from the sudden rush of blood, thinking that this is it, he doesn’t have to imagine anything anymore, he’s fucking vindicated—
And Patrick takes the lollipop and pushes it into Pete’s mouth. “Now you can stop eye-fucking me,” he says, narrowing his eyes through square glasses. “Do you do that shit to girls or is it even worse with them?”
Pete’s frozen with the taste of strawberry and Patrick-spit on his tongue. He shakes his head and manages around the lollipop, “Definitely the worst with you.”
“You’re a fucking freak,” Patrick mutters, turning to the bedroom door. “Come on.”
Pete’s going to come with him. It’ll just be a minute. He shuts his eyes and rolls the little ball of candy under his tongue, smooth and slick. He has to dig his fingernails into the black ink on his arm and think about anything other than the sugary Patrick-spit in his mouth before he can stand again.
Patrick tries to carry on a conversation with Pete at the pizza place and it doesn’t really work out, because Pete can still taste the lollipop and the ninety percent of his brain he isn’t supposed to be using is focusing on every other little thing Patrick does.
It’s the bitten, dirty nails on the sweating can of soda. It’s the strands of hair that get stuck to Patrick’s round, soft cheeks. It’s the crack in Patrick’s voice when he explains the intricacies of what he tried to turn their shitty samples into. It’s the rosy lips that close over fingers skilled beyond their years, still trying to build up calluses from getting so overworked lately, sucking away grease and sauce. So many little distractions that make Pete glassy and far too quiet, feeling like a bundle of Christmas lights with a huge knot in the middle. Whoever’s trying to untangle him is just making it worse.
“Pete.”
Hearing his voice directly makes him blink. Pete clears his throat and sniffs, rubbing the raw, purple skin underneath one eye. “Yeah?”
Patrick gazes back, brow furrowed. He has garlic salt at the corner of his mouth. “Did you even hear what I said?”
“I—yeah. No. No, uh, sorry.” Pete looks down like he’s been reprimanded. Somebody fucking needs to. “Run that by me again.”
“How much of that?” Patrick asks tiredly.
“All of, like, the important stuff. The vital information.”
“I asked you if you’d gotten a fucking confirmation on that gig we were supposed to be getting.”
That, at the very least, makes Pete feel like more of a human being again. He’s able to talk about that with genuine heart and talk about it somewhat at length, telling Patrick about how he’s trying and they’re lower on the venue’s (the tiny, shitty community college’s) priorities and how they’re still playing at Gramaphone and they should be so lucky and hey, what about the samples again?
It relaunches Patrick’s stream of consciousness. Pete’s safe again. Even as he watches Patrick suck on his fingers one more time, Pete’s still okay.
“You’ve been acting really fucking weird all day,” Patrick says in the car, looking crossly at Pete from the driver’s side after the engine cuts. It’s the first non-small-talk sentence he’s voiced so far the whole trip and that in and of itself kind of makes Pete feel like shit. “Weird for you. Did I, like—“ He falters and bites his lip. “—did I do something?”
Which makes Pete feel even worse. “Jesus fuck, no, you’re okay, you’re perfect, you’re—“ He has to stop before it continues to climb uphill. “I’m just.” He rubs his eyes and plays with the radio with his free hand, trying to distract himself as much as possible. “I’m, like, tired. Got six hours of sleep in the past three days. Trying to write and keep up with our communications. And I’ve got this Ethics assignment due Monday. I’m a businessman first, musician second, and best friend third, as much as I know that negatively affects people who deserve to have best friend first.” The assignment was due last Wednesday. He got a C.
Patrick bats his hand away. “Bullshit. You won’t, like...”
When Pete looks up again, Patrick is blushing this time and it’s not just a manifestation. A mutual, familiar, deep-set affection and fascination fills Pete’s chest. Patrick looks out the windshield rather than at Pete when he finishes his sentence. “...you don’t, uh, you’re keeping your distance from me a lot. You’re always fucking with me and, like, touching me and you don’t do that anymore. You haven’t for a couple of weeks. It’s not like I ever asked for it, you know, obviously, but it’s like I have some kind of disease all of a sudden. I dunno.”
There’s a myriad of jokes Pete could easily pluck out of everything Patrick said, so much he could toy with, Model Magic it into something that would make Patrick’s blush worse and have his knuckles grind into Pete’s arm and issue a threat to leave Pete on the side of the road like a retarded puppy and make him walk home, but Pete’s too busy wading through a puddle of self-pity to do it. He’s the one with the disease, not Patrick.
“I can’t overstep anything,” Pete mutters. He rubs his thumb against an absently-Sharpied fingernail, smearing the ink. “Like—I can’t fuck you up. I won’t fuck you up.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Patrick is cluelessly frustrated, staring at Pete in want of an answer that Pete doesn’t really want to give. “You think I’m gonna catch something you’ve got? I think it would’ve happened by now, asshole. If you’re gonna fucking torture yourself or whatever over trying not to touch me and give me your crazy, I’ll just deal with whatever it is. It’s a million times better than dealing with whatever this is.”
“It’s not that, fucking Christ, it’s not—it’s not me being crazy.” Gum. Gum and glue and molasses in Pete’s throat. Maybe some glass. It’s a sundae. “You’re always, like, you put shit in your mouth like it doesn’t matter. Like no one’s gonna see it and like it’s not a /thing/ that you do, you know? Fucking, you know, basically kissing the mic when you sing and grabbing it and licking your lips and putting your fingers in your mouth and doing what the fuck you did earlier? With your hand right here? It’s all goddamn bait. I think there’s a word for that, Patrick.”
“What? You think I’m—wait.” Patrick stares at him. The incredulity is almost insulting to Pete’s intelligence. Which is kind of dangerous, considering that it’s been waning considerably all day. “Exactly what do you think I did earlier?”
“You with the—the eyes! You shoving that in my mouth!” Pete’s tone is whiny, whinier than it should be, because he knows it’s just going to set Patrick off more. “You know what that was! If you were a fucking girl, I’d totally be in jail right now.”
Patrick’s frozen, befuddled expression cracks when he starts to laugh. And with it, every shred of Pete’s dignity falls apart. Or at least what was left of it. “Did you—did you think I was hitting on you? What the fuck?”
“What else even was that!?” Pete has to raise his voice over the sounds of Patrick nearly hacking to death, limp against his seat. “Oh, fuck you! Don’t you dare sit there and—“
“And what?” The glee shining through Patrick’s voice as he climbs over the center console breaks Pete further. The righteous indignation is mostly what makes him shrink back against the passenger’s door. What’s even worse is that Patrick’s trying to force a casual tone; it only pisses Pete off more. “You really are a freak, dude, I’m not even kidding.”
“Yeah? Just me?” Pete loses his breath in between words, suddenly whitehot under his clothes. Patrick’s knee slides between his legs. “Sharing, like, candy is all just a fucking joke to you, right? The next time we’re at practice, I wanna see you spit gum into Trohman’s mouth and act like that shit is normal.”
“You said you’d go to jail if I was a girl and you’re asking me what my problem is, Pete. Y’know, just so we’re on the same page.” Patrick is essential crumpled into Pete’s lap. All Pete can smell is sweat masked with deodorant and stale Coke and fabric softener, a very Patrick-y smell. Something Pete would smell if he had his face tucked into the crook of Patrick’s neck, distracting him from doing entirely necessary work on his laptop or entirely unnecessary homework. Right now, it’s getting the better of him. “You know you could still go to jail even if I’m not a girl, right? I think they’d probably be way tougher on you since I’m not, actually. They’d definitely just tear you open like tissue paper.”
“Fucking tear you open.” Pete’s lungs collapse and expand in a disjointed rhythm. “What do you think I wanna do to you?” Tell me tell me tell me I need to hear it come out of that mouth tell me tell me tell me
“Something creepy and scary and morally bankrupt,” Patrick replies amicably. His eyes have that manic kind of glint that gives away that he’s even more anxious than Pete is, and there’s some comfort in that. Even if it’s petty comfort. “Was I just supposed to wait for you to date-rape me before I got the message or was I supposed to ask you why you kept avoiding me? How long have you been freaking out about this, anyway? While you’ve been alone with me, you’ve just been sitting there, like, mentally undressing me, wishing you could do horrible shit to me, right?” Patrick’s voice climbs higher and higher, cracking and sounding shrill. Yeah, definitely giving it away.
Pete blinks back at Patrick, flushed and twitchy. It’s not that he can’t understand what Patrick is saying. He totally can. It’s just that it’s a little hard to remember any of it past the half-second mark. “Hey, you know what, hold on a sec.” Without breaking Patrick’s line of sight, his hand dives into the pocket of his hoodie and withdraws a peppermint, snatched from the bowl on a table next to the door of the restaurant.
“Okay, continue,” Pete says, tearing open the cellophane. “What did I wanna do to you again? You lost me right around ‘date-rape’.”
“Fuck you.” Patrick begins to pull away, but Pete snatches him by the arm and yanks him back. He can see the way Patrick’s pupils dilate and hear the shudder in his breath, either from a twinge or fear or arousal. As the assigned freak that Pete is, both are equally hot. Pete flicks the cellophane away and says, “Open your mouth.”
Stubborn to the core, almost always to the point of detriment, Patrick just glares. “Why?”
“Just do it, alright? Open your mouth,” Pete says, his voice sharpening. “I’m not even playing.”
Patrick eventually does, looking unnerved and hateful. Pete hears his own heart thrum rapidly and feel his blood rush as he puts the peppermint between his teeth, grabs the back of Patrick’s head, and pulls him close.
Patrick’s lips are every bit as soft and girlish as Pete had thought they would be. He feels like he’s nine years younger than he is, almost feeling innocently excited, like this is his first kiss ever. He feels like he’s going to burn. Patrick isn’t exactly responsive, but he doesn’t try to pull away, either. He whines softly against Pete’s mouth, his hand clenching in the worn hoodie underneath him. Pete tongues the peppermint into Patrick’s mouth, and that’s when he breaks away again.
Pete licks his lips and says, “That’s—that’s how you’re supposed to share it.”
Patrick looks scared out of his mind, scared enough that he forgets to be angry. His eyes are wide and owlish, his lips parted. Pete can see him shift the peppermint to the inside of his cheek.
Pete opens his mouth to offer a flurry of apologies, his heart plummeting with the fear that he’s scarred this fucking kid for life, but then Patrick’s hand makes a clumsy grab for the side of Pete’s face.
Patrick kisses like a sixteen-year-old, inexperienced and too hesitant and too enthusiastic all at once. It’s a kind of hot that makes Pete’s blood run warmer, sinking between his hips, seeping through his bones. Patrick’s fingers drag over Pete’s skin and he expects it to tear, like Cenobites trapping him in an eternity of pain and pleasure and pulling at his body with hooks. Patrick tilts his head, his tongue running over Pete’s, and Pete suddenly tastes the sharp, sweet dig of peppermint again.
And the warm mouth is gone again, the peppermint slick on his tongue. Patrick looks at Pete defiantly, his breathing sounding determinedly even. Pete feels the sugar singe his tastebuds as he tries to form words, normal words, something words, anything words. “‘Trick—“ he croaks out, “I—“
Then Patrick scrambles back across the seat, opens the driver’s door, and slams it behind him. He leaves Pete in the car, running across the street and up the walkway of the Stumphs’ house. Pete watches him disappear through the front door, but not before Patrick gives him one last glance.
Pete drops his head against the passenger window, his body throbbing. He sucks idly on the peppermint, keenly aware of the tightness of his jeans.
He smiles a little bit. Not enough to make himself feel too accomplished, but just a little bit. Pete’s going to have to invest in more candy.