Work Text:
“Pete,” Joe calls, trying to duck between a couple making out, and a girl bemoaning the beer churning in her stomach. Pete’s got an arm slung low around some chick’s hips, it might be the sister of a friend, but either way he’s managed to position himself directly in front of the CD player blasting old reggae, right where Joe knows he can’t hear him.
Joe steps over a pile of crushed red cups, and waves in Pete’s direction, finally getting his attention when he trips over someone’s foot sticking out from the couch. He lands hard on the floor, and Pete laughs, arm still around the girl.
“Fuck,” Joe grumbles into the dirt-caked carpet, crushed bits of chips and whatever else making the side of Joe’s face itch against the floor. He pushes himself up and tries to recover.
At least his tremendous stunt has pulled Pete away from the girl. He wanders over with a bottle of something in his hand, and his eyebrows raised.
“What the hell are you doing?” He laughs, not helping Joe brush the shit off of the front of his clothes.
Joe rolls his eyes. “Busting my ass trying to get your attention. Look, there’s this guy I want you to meet, he’s in the kitchen, you need to hear him sing.”
“Really?” Pete looks vaguely interested, but sips at his bottle instead of making any necessary move towards the kitchen, where Joe left the guy stranded between the pizza sauce stained counter, and a beer can mecca. “I’ll--“
Joe’s getting kind of psyched to point Pete in the general direction of their Maybe Future when Chris, terrible timing Chris, comes running up, tripping over his own feet, but managing not to break his ass on the floor like Joe did.
“Dude, dude, dude.” Chris is panting he’s laughing so hard. “No, you don’t even -- Pete, bro, dude, seriously, you gotta…”
It’s enough to convince Pete, apparently, because he seems to entirely forget Joe’s existence as he hurries after Chris, and they grab at each other’s shoulders and backs as they hurry through the kitchen and out the back door.
Groaning, Joe rubs his forehead, and tries to find a place to sit.
.
“Whoa, sorry,” Patrick apologizes, stepping forward when someone elbows his back, hard.
He has just enough time to look over his shoulder to see two boys, dressed from head to toe in black, duck out the back door.
“Assholes,” Some girl with bright pink hair comments over her drink, rolling her eyes.
Patrick leans back against the counter, and tries to search Joe out in the crowd.
.
“No! No, no, no, no, lighter fluid, we need some lighter fluid!” One of Chris’ friends are shrieking, bent over the empty pool that is currently the center of Pete’s universe, where Pete vows to be a part of a Light Tennis Balls On Fire and Shoot Them Forever religion. “Go look in the garage! Chris, fuck! Go!”
Chris grabs onto Pete’s forearm mid-run, laughing hysterically as they tug each other’s limbs and head in the general direction of the dark covered garage.
“Pete!” Joe calls from somewhere near the deck.
Pete glances over his shoulder, and snags a vision of blurry bleached curly hair, and a bright orange t-shirt.
“I’ll be there in a sec!” He promises, and follows Chris into the garage.
Frowning and scratching at his elbow, Joe turns back to the house just in time to watch some chick puke her guts up into a potted plant. A pretty expensive looking potted plant.
“Gross,” He mutters, turning back to lean over the railing and pretend that he is high up enough to be Ruler of the Yard.
Below the balcony, someone falls shirtless into the pool and skids down the side, scratching their back on the tile the entire way. Joe doesn’t know why it was necessary to go shirtless in the first place, he never figured fall Chicago weather to be appropriate for that. And the guy is kinda tubby anyway.
Shaking his head, he reaches into the back pocket of his pants, and pulls out his cigarettes.
He can wait it out.
.
Patrick is getting a little piece of quiet heaven in the upstairs bathroom as he washes his hands, and watches himself in the mirror until his phone rings.
Swearing and looking for somewhere to wipe his wet hands, he quickly settles for the front of his pants, then reaches into his pocket, trying to get a decent grip on the phone with still damp, soap slimy hands.
“Hi?” He answers, jumping a little when someone slams into the bathroom door from the hallway.
Laughter, and then footsteps drunkenly teetering down the creaky floorboards. Patrick rolls his eyes at his own reflection. The reflection returns the sentiment.
“Hey, hey. It’s Joe.” His voice is loud and brassy sounding in Patrick’s ear. “Where are you?”
Patrick scratches the back of his head, nervous habit, and sits down on the edge of the tub.
“Bathroom. So did you guys leave already, or -- cause, like, I was looking for you downstairs, but I couldn’t see…” He trails off, hopelessly gesturing with his hands into the soapy smelling air.
Exhaling loud (he’s either fed up or a smoker, Patrick thinks) on the other end of the line, Joe promises, “We didn’t leave. Or, I haven’t yet, anyway. I’ve been fuckin’, trying to… shit, was that… no, fuck. I’ve been trying to track Pete down, but… Yo!” Patrick cringes when Joe yells directly into the phone. “Yeah! You seen Pete? What? What? What?”
“Joe, um,” Patrick starts, trying to be helpful.
Joe’s still yelling at someone in the background. Patrick can hear a distant reply every now and then, but mostly he just sits on the edge of the tub and picks at the fuzzy bath mat thing hanging over the side.
“Okay! Tell him to hurry up!” Joe finishes off. “Patrick? You there?”
Patrick nods, then realizes Joe’s not sitting on the edge of the tub with him. “Oh, uh. Yeah.”
“Cool. Well, come down, I’m on the back deck. Pete’s lighting shit on fire or something, I -- Pete!” A pause, then Joe grumbles under his breath some more. “He can hear me, he just… anyway, uh, yeah. Come find me.”
Nodding again, Patrick stands up and makes sure the sink taps are tight enough to not drip.
“Sure,” He says.
.
“Dude, he’s coming down!” Joe yells, hands wrapped around the iron railing of the porch as he watches Pete tear across the backyard on a shitty looking BMX. One of Chris’ friends are chasing him with tennis balls, some cut open and filled with rocks and pebbles, others lit on fire, the rest a combination of the two.
Joe cringes when Pete plows into a pretty well maintained shrub, and flies off the bike and into a fence. Dizzying amounts of laughter fill the back yard as Pete sits among the roses with his knees bent, rubbing his head and trying to avoid the flaming balls still flying towards him. Most of them slam into the fence instead, but one catches the fleshy part of his arm and makes him squeal like a George Orwell character.
Leaning down, Joe makes a frustrated noise into the back of his wrists.
“Joe.”
He peers behind him, past the curve of his upper arm, and sees Patrick stepping between the few people standing around on the porch, mostly just smoking cigarettes and laughing with hands on each others backs.
“Hey,” Joe greets, standing up. “Sorry man, I made you come to this dumbass thing and he’s just…” He motions to the expanse of green grass and flowerbed sitting in the dusk behind him with an absent look on his face. “He’s somewhere down there.”
Patrick laughs and shakes his head, coming to stand beside Joe at the side of the deck.
Somewhere on the lawn, Joe recognizes Pete’s usual melodramatic scream, and then a louder, more frantic, yelp.
.
The night ends up being a bust. Pete blows the both of them off, and goes home with some sharp hipped boy that Joe vaguely remembers from Biology. He doesn’t even say he’s leaving, even though it was his ass in Joe’s passenger seat on the way over here. Joe ends up hearing it from Chris, forty five minutes after the fact.
“Damnit!” He gripes, folding his arms over his chest. “Do you know where they’re going?”
Chris shrugs, and looks Patrick over. “Who are you?”
.
“You promise to come over tomorrow,” Joe reiterates, sitting in the driver’s seat of his car at the curb of Patrick’s parents place. “You’ve got his address, just go to the basement door, I’ll tell him you’re coming, it’ll be awesome.”
Patrick looks uncomfortable as he shifts from foot to foot, standing outside on the sidewalk with high top sneakers and a little scrap of paper in his hand. It’s got Pete’s address on one side, and the logo of some local coffee house on the other.
“Sure, I guess,” He says, sounding pretty unconvinced.
Joe nods, and leans further across the passenger side seat, so he can see Patrick’s face.
“Promise?”
Rolling his eyes, Patrick folds the paper in half. “Do you want it written in blood?”
A pause.
“Are you offering?”
.
Patrick’s in his room the next day, hanging out by the window that looks over the backyard, with most of his concentration funneled into the small screen of his Gameboy. Tetris is kind of a boring, basic game, but Patrick is the best.
He hears a knock on the frame of his open door, and looks up. It’s his mom.
“If you’re going out, can you pick up some milk?” She asks, smiling.
Patrick pushes his glasses up by the nose, and shakes his head. “I’m not.”
.
“…well do you blame him?” Joe not-bitches, from where he’s hanging over the side of Pete’s sofa, playing N64, a.k.a. For Now and Evermore the Best Console Forever. “You blew him off to light fucking, balls on fire.”
Pete is picking at the dry skin on the cuticles of his nails, legs thrown over the arm of the crooked sitting office chair he’s spread himself across.
“All I said was, Joe. I thought you said that some guy was coming over here, and then you --“ Pete is cut off again when Joe gets Mario Kart lapped by fucking Peach of all people, and immediately goes into a rant about the night before, most likely fueled by the fact that he isn’t getting any decent speed boosters.
Groaning, Pete rubs his hands over his face. “Fuck, I’ll just call him if it’ll make you feel better.”
“Yeah,” Joe nods, still attached to the TV screen. “You will call him,” He says, sounding like he’s the one who thought of it in the first place.
Pete rolls his eyes, and leans back far enough for the chair to creak excitedly.
.
Patrick is elbow deep in dish water when his mom says the phone’s for him.
“Damn,” He swears under his breath, reaching for a dish towel.
.
Joe’s trying to give Pete his best half stink-eye, half I’m Masculine and Fuming face.
“Hi, is this Patrick?… Well, can I speak to Patrick?” He asks into the phone, glaring at Joe glaring back at him. It’d probably be a more ferocious glare if Pete’s mother’s cat wasn’t currently curled up and purring contentedly in Joe’s lap.
Pete covers the mouth piece on the phone, and hisses, “Why’d you give me his home number?”
.
“Hello?” Patrick is slightly out of breath from the dash between sink and hallway, and the nervous ball of phone call energy welling up in a knot beside his stomach doesn’t make the whole breathing thing any easier.
He stands awkwardly in the hall, trying to ignore the sound of his dad’s TV blaring, and his mom talking babytalk to the dog in the kitchen.
“It’s Pete.”
.
“Well?” Joe asks incredulously, when Pete hangs up.
Rolling his eyes, Pete answers, “I’m meeting him at his house tomorrow afternoon.”
.
Patrick lies his way through the accusation-conversation his mother corners him in later that night (“He’s seventeen, like me”) and tries to apologize on Pete’s behalf when she complains about his attitude (“No, I won’t be like him, I promise”). He can’t even manage a halfway decent escape until his dad bitches about being loud or something, and he has enough time to duck into his bedroom.
“I don’t think I like him, Patrick!” His mother calls through the door, once she’s realized he slunk away at his first opportunity.
Stripping his t-shirt off, and feeling around under his bed for a pair of decently clean pajama bottoms, Patrick grumbles to himself, “Yeah, I don’t think I do either.”
.
“You bastard!” Joe squawks, trying to shove back at 6th Place Pete, and knock the controller out of his hand the same way he just had done to him.
Technically Pete is having more fun screwing around with Joe’s grip on the controller than he is steering the little imaginary car through Toad’s Turnpike. He falls back into the couch cushions, laughing wildly, and doesn’t even bitch when Joe rams his kart into the side of Pete’s on-screen, and lights his ass with a Triple Green Shell pretty quickly after that.
“No, wait!” Joe grabs at the back of Pete’s belt when he starts getting up off of the couch. “One more lap, winner takes all.”
Unable to resist the challenge, but fully knowing he should be on-route to this Patrick guy’s house like yesterday, Pete grabs his controller, and falls back into the couch.
.
Patrick doesn’t mind that they’re half an hour late. Honestly, he spends most of that time pacing between the kitchen counter and dining room table. He hates first introductions even more than he hates pineapple juice.
“Are you getting that?” Patrick’s mom calls from somewhere in the back of the house, when the doorbell rings for the second time and Patrick is still hovering in the kitchen doorway.
Shoving himself away from the wood and plaster, Patrick clears his throat.
“Yeah!” He calls, sounding uncomfortably suddenly confident.
.
Pete frowns, rings the bell again, and glares over his shoulder at Joe, who’s waiting in his car at the side of the road. Joe shrugs, bent over the passenger seat so he can look out the window, and motions for Pete to knock.
The door creaks open as Pete is in the middle of flipping Joe off. Inside of the car, Joe smiles and catches the action with the palm of his hand like it’s a kiss, takes the time to tuck it inside his pocket, and give Pete a coy wave. Pete is laughing when he turns back to look at Patrick.
“Dude,” Pete snickers, mildly horrified as he scans up-down and back up. “You’re kidding me with the socks, right?”
.
Joe’s sitting in the car for two hours after that, because Pete didn’t expect to fall in love so quick.
.
“Chris, dude, Chris,” Pete laughs, reaching an unsteady hand forward, to grab at his friend’s back, fingers splaying across much loved much worn fabric. “I need you to meet the apple of my eye.”
Chris is laughing too, mostly involved in a conversation with some petite girl with curly hair.
“I thought I was the apple of your eye,” He snickers, before he turns around and sees Patrick, slung low under Pete’s arm, a hat brim pulled down over his face, coy little smile smirk on his lips.
Without meaning to, Chris looks down at Patrick, and asks, as tennis balls fly in the back of his mind and bounce around, knock into things he considers pretty important like memory, “Who are you?”
“He’s Patrick,” Pete explains, letting go of Patrick’s shoulders to cling to Chris. “Duh.”
Half-heartedly smiling, Chris scratches at the side of his chest, and looks over Patrick’s shoulder to Joe, who’s got an unlit cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, and a cell phone pressed flat against his left ear.
“Tell him how happy you are to have met him,” Pete is still giggling in his ear, half hanging off of his shoulder and heart and hips. “Because I am.”
Chris awkwardly wraps his arm around Pete’s waist. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m alive, dude,” He whispers, sloppy lips against a sloppy cheek. “Seriously. Feel my pulse if you don’t believe me. Feel it!” He anxiously holds his wrist up to Chris’ face, eyes wide and bloodshot and waiting.
Somehow Joe sneaks up on all of them and tugs Patrick to the side, talking with hushed words and half smiles over the throb of the stereo playing in the other room. Chris watches their sides pressing together, the color of the backs of their shirts a real true clash.
Frowning, he tries to prop Pete up as best he can. “Have you taught him to talk yet?” He snorts, kicking at Pete’s feet to get him standing.
Pete laughs drunkenly, and crumbles against Chris’ arm.
.
“Pete, dude. We’re outta here to grab some food,” Joe calls, jingling his car keys as he pokes his head into the room a slightly more sober Pete is spread out in, with Chris on the floor by his side, looking through the diary of the room’s owner. “You coming, or what?”
Kicking one leg off the side of the bed (it’s covered in pink frills and lace chiffon, and quite frankly it makes Pete feel like he’s the plastic groom on top of a melting wedding cake), he flings his arm across the mattress, and lets his hand drop with a thump.
In Pete language: No.
“Nah, he’s not hungry!” Joe says from somewhere on the other side of the door, probably to Patrick.
Chris is mostly silent, flipping through the scented pages of the pocket sized book.
“Are you fucking him or something?” He asks, thumbing over the page that reads I’ve been waiting for this to happen forever, I just can’t believe it got here so soon.
The bed frame creaks and the mattress shifts. “Theoretically, who is the body in question?”
“The new kid,” Chris says, flippant. He tosses the book to the side. “Patrick, whatever.”
Pete turns over, and inches towards the edge of the bed, until he’s staring down at Chris’ face.
“No.” He pauses, and raises his eyebrows. “Should I be? Wait, why do I feel like I’m in the tenth grade again, and you’re the token chick friend who comes up to me to feel it out before her friend decides whether or not she wants to pursue the conquest?”
Snorting, Chris closes the book and tosses it to the side, doesn’t think about the broken hearted little girl who will inevitably come home to a sex-stained bedroom and a diary with a broken lock.
“Forget it,” He says, breathless all of a sudden as he heaves himself up off of the floor.
.
“Come pick me up,” Pete argues with Joe’s voicemail. “Joe, you bastard. I think I’m hung over, I don’t know where I am, and I need you to come pick me up.”
Groaning, he flips his cell shut and closes his eyes, lets his head drop against his knees as he crumples against himself on the front steps of whoever’s house. Someone is actually still passed out on the lawn, mouth wide open, and Pete feels like he just fell out of every teen movie plot coined to date.
His cell starts vibrating in his hand, startling him. It’s Joe.
“Joe, dude,” He greets, ready to plead. His head hurts, the sun is rising -- has risen, for christ’s sake -- he wants to know where the fuck Chris got to, and why he didn’t wake Pete up or take Pete with him or something. And on top of all that, all he really wants to do is crawl into the hole of his bedroom and fall asleep in his own bed. “I’m dying, I need you to come save me.”
Joe sounds confused. “What, where are you?”
“The -- I don’t know, wherever we were last night.” The grit in Pete’s eyes is even more uncomfortable than the dry feeling in the back of his throat. “Please tell me you’re not working and I’m not stranded here by myself.”
A shuffle, Pete hears fabric rustling. “You’re still at that chick’s house? Really?”
“Joe.” Pete licks his chapped lips, but his tongue feels worse, and somehow, even more disgusting. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
Something cracks in the background of wherever Joe is. “No, whatever, I’m just hanging out. I’ll be there in like, ten.”
“Thank you, god,” Pete breathes.
A pause. Then Joe replies, “You’re welcome.”
.
Patrick, shiny happy not hung over Patrick, is chilling in the back of the car when Joe pulls up.
“Where the fuck did you guys go last night?” Pete complains, dropping into the front seat with a miserable look on his face.
Joe leans over to fiddle with the heat controls. “Pizza. It was delicious.”
“We were gonna bring you some back, but someone left it on the hood of his car,” Patrick comments from the backseat, swinging against the inside of the door when Joe makes a sharp turn and pulls back out into the street.
One hand still on the heat control, Joe tries to defend himself. “I thought you had it!”
“Lame argument,” Patrick supplies, now hanging onto the door handle.
Pete glances over at Joe, “Whatever. Have you talked to Chris since yesterday?”
“Nope,” Joe shakes his head. “Me and Patrick were taking advantage of your mom’s cookies and gaming facilities.” He snickers, and leans over in Pete’s direction. “I think she fell a little bit in love with the boy who carried her groceries in.”
Patrick is about to make some indignant reply, but Pete cuts him off. “That little bastard left me there by… you carried in her groceries?”
.
Pete doesn’t hear from Chris for weeks, but he’s got the band so it’s okay. Pete knows this guy who Joe accidentally calls Anthony (Tony for short) the first two times they speak face to face, but he can play drums pretty decently and he doesn’t punch particular boys who can’t remember names very well, so they talk him into playing a couple of shows.
“His name is Andy,” Patrick whispers-reminds him one night, when they’re all hanging out in Pete’s basement with pizza and a fly on the wall, and Andy is happily chilling on the couch.
Smirking with half his mouth, Pete cracks open a Pepsi can. Joe answers, “Thank you, Pablo.”
“Fuck you.”
.
“That fucking ruled, dude!” Some guy is screaming, both his arms up in the air as he passes by the little group forming in the kitchen of Yet Another House Party. Patrick smirks a little and shakes his head, mostly feeling embarrassed for whatever his name is. Pete screams back and pumps his fists in the air as well, laughing hysterically when the drunk guy copies him back. “Woo! Dude! Yeah!”
They played the backyard of some Chicago house not zoned for backyard playing, and Patrick figures it was decent enough that deliberately drunk people keep slapping him on the back, wrapping their arms around his shoulders, and prompting Pete to grin and push back and say things like he’s mine and you wish and all these things that Patrick just tries to laugh over hearing.
“That was really good,” The pink haired girl that Patrick remembers seeing somewhere before says, cozying up in the space between where he’s standing beside Andy. Andy is pretty obliviously involved in a conversation about semiconductor nuclear physics with some guy Patrick’s never seen before in his life, and that means one thing. He’s going to be the one stuck avoiding this girl’s advances all night. “Like,” She pauses, and puts her tiny little hand on Patrick’s arm. “Really good.”
Patrick shifts uncomfortably, side glancing at Pete, who is staring back at him with an amused look on his face.
“Uh,” He manages, still watching Pete. “Thanks.”
.
Everyone abandons Patrick for the fast food that just arrived in the kitchen, so he’s left red faced and stumbling through conversation with Ms. Pink Whoever (her name is actually Jane, Patrick reminds himself, feeling altogether pretty terrible, because it is a nice name).
”Why, uh,” Patrick runs a hand through his hair and steps back when she moves forward, mouth open like she’s a vampire and vants to suck his blood. “Let’s go find Pete or something.”
She snort-laughs, hacking deep in her throat as she looks up at Patrick with glossy eyes.
“What for? Pete’s a total fag.” She giggles and leans closer. “I’d rather just keep it you and me.”
The jolt to the inside of his gut isn’t as dramatic as it probably could’ve been, mostly just because he’s not all that surprised, really. It’s just, Pete, he. Well.
“Hey, chill,” He breathes, pinned against the wall. “He’s my friend, alright.”
She giggles and flips her hand around. “He can be your friend or whatev, it’s cool.”
.
Pete’s wearing a pair of handcrafted bottle rocket rollerblades in the driveway outside, laughing hysterically as Joe helps steady him, and some other guy Pete just met (he’s not a name-dude) tries to light the fuses poking out from the wheels.
Even Andy looks kind of (sort of) amused.
.
“So hey,” Pete hedges later that night, squished into the back seat of Joe’s car with Patrick pressed up against his ribs. The sidewalk skid that travels across his forehead and into his hairline is pretty obvious from where Patrick is sitting. “That chick, did you get lucky?”
Patrick keeps his arms crossed over his chest. “She was totally gross,” He lies. Kind of.
“Yeah,” Pete giggles, trying to unscrew the child’s safety lock on the cap of the Tylenol he stole from the medicine cabinet of whoever paid them thirty bucks to play. “She was.”
Joe looks at them in the rearview mirror. “Who?”
“The chick with the pink hair,” Pete flaps one hand a bit when Patrick steals the bottle and unscrews the lid without trying. “She was trying to nail Patrick.”
Scoffing, Joe stops at a red light. “You guys are insane, she was totally hot. Her shirt, with the, and the -- and her lips, holy shit, she was really trying to -- I mean, no offense or anything…” He trails off, and absently flips his turn signal off. Faulty wiring. “You really didn’t want to fuck her?”
Reddening, Patrick looks out the window on his side as Pete tosses back two pills dry.
“She was gross,” He repeats, not able to look away from the line of the street.
.
As usual, the three of them end up sneaking in through Pete’s basement window sometime around three in the morning. Patrick gets his foot stuck in Mrs. Wentz’s garden bed, but with some finesse manages to fall the six feet that separates the window from the floor. But he lands with his head, so that’s okay.
“I get the couch,” Joe calls, shuffling past the boiler room with sleep droopy eyes. Patrick is still double checking his head, and doesn’t even think to call dibs.
When he watches Joe fling himself across three entire couch cushions, he swears and debates going home to the wrath of his mother, just so he doesn’t have to sleep on a bare basement floor in November weather.
“Don’t worry about it,” Pete says through a yawn, approaching the stairs. “Just crash in my room with me.”
Eyeing the concrete floor, Joe already asleep on the couch, and the water starting to leak down the side of the wall behind the couch and onto the floor, Patrick nods his head, and follows Pete up the stairs.
“Thanks,” He stage-whispers, pausing mid flight to toe his shoes off, and leave them on the third stair from the top.
Pete smiles over his shoulder like it’s nothing.
.
“Here’s like, a pillow,” Pete shrugs, coming in from the hallway with a couch cushion in his hand, slightly faded looking and donned with gold tassels.
Patrick’s standing awkwardly near the foot of the bed, scratching his elbow.
“Did you want me to crash on the floor, or…”
Shaking his head, Pete tosses the pillow onto the foot of the bed, and cracks both his wrists before stretching his arms so far up over his head that his hoodie raises a handful of inches, hitching up in the back. “Whatever you want, man, I’m cool with anything.”
Nodding, Patrick stops scratching his elbow long enough to itch the back of his arm.
“The bed is cool,” He says, letting his hand drop to his side. Pete smiles with half his mouth, and shrugs for whatever reason that Patrick figures is just over his head. Usually most things are.
Pete disappears into the bathroom for what Patrick imagines is an endless parade of beauty products, skin refiner and hair product. Except a minute later, Pete pokes his head back around the doorframe with a mouthful of toothpaste, and a brush sticking out from the curve of his lips.
“The show was awesome,” He comments around the toothbrush, eyebrows raised as he watches Patrick shuffle around the foot of the bed, secretly wondering which side Pete sleeps on. “You sounded so good. Like. So good.”
Biting the bullet, Patrick bends his knees stiffly, and sits down on the left side.
“I was alright,” He shrugs, resting his elbows against his thighs and his chin against his knuckles.
Pete scoffs, which sends a glob of toothpaste hurtling towards the ground. “Whatever, you just can’t take a fucking compliment.” Patrick’s pretty sure he’s about to turn around and head back into the bathroom to spit when he adds, “And you’re sitting on my side.”
“Sorry,” He apologizes automatically, standing up fast.
Pete comes out of the bathroom wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He gets a toothpaste streak all up the back of his arm, and Patrick hates that he can’t help but notice.
“Relax, dude,” He snickers, and that’s when Patrick realizes his pants are gone, and now all he’s wearing is underwear and the same hoodie that rides up like… “It’s no big deal.”
Patrick’s sure his face is red, because he feels hot. Like, temperature wise.
“Whatever,” He mumbles, ducking past Pete to hide in the bathroom.
.
When he comes out, Pete is asleep and stretched across the entire mattress like some kind of bed hog. Standing at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed, Patrick considers his options, and ends up curling up as best he can on Pete’s right side.
.
Patrick wakes up with a leg hanging off the side of the bed, and a crick in his back.
“What the…” He grumbles, still mostly asleep as he reaches up to palm the sleep out of his eyes. When he realizes his glasses are still on his face (not crooked, like when he falls asleep with his cheek against a pillow) he also realizes he’s not in his own bed. “…where the…”
Wide awake beside him, Pete is propped up against the headboard with both his hands crossed over his chest.
“You’re look pretty cute asleep you know,” He comments. “Like a little baby animal.”
Startled and still feeling hazy, but mostly just surprised that someone else is in the room with him, Patrick falls out of the bed, and hits his head on the night stand on his way to the floor.
Groaning after the impact, he opens his eyes just in time to see Pete peer over the side of the mattress with some kind of dumb smirk on his face.
“Sorry, sunshine,” He snickers. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Feeling totally miserable despite the fact he’s only been awake a few minutes, Patrick pushes himself up onto one elbow, and runs a handful of fingers through his hair.
“Shut up,” He grumbles, heaving himself up off of the floor and back into the bed. Pete is grinning with his mouth closed, a smarmy look on his face. “My mother is going to flip, what time is it?”
Pete shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Oh yeah? Why not?”
Shrugging with his shoulders up against the bed frame, Pete blinks his eyes slowly, and explains, “When you’re in my bed, time doesn’t really exist.”
“Because your bed is a loophole in the fabric of space and time?” Patrick scoffs.
Pete grins crookedly and crosses one arm up behind his head. It looks like a vaguely uncomfortable position, but Patrick feels more offset by the fact that Pete’s still only wearing his underwear, one leg hidden underneath the blankets, the other bent at the knee and all too distracting.
“How convincing am I?” Pete asks, catching Patrick off-guard as he tips his head back against the wall, stretching out the muscle in his neck, the sleep stubble on his jaw more apparent from this angle than it was before.
Patrick pulls his legs up to his chin and wraps his arms around them, bundling himself up like he’s firewood and Pete’s looking to carry him in. “How convincing in what aspect? You’re a very convincing jerk, if that’s what you mean.”
“You’re not very nice to me when you’re in my bed,” Pete comments, lazy, rolling his head to the side.
Frowning, Patrick feels Pete’s ankle skim the side of his leg as he stretches them out. “Well.”
“Patrick,” Pete smiles low, voice dangerous, to Patrick at least. “What do I have to do to get you?”
Wrinkling his nose up like he’s either confused or disgusted, Patrick tightens up the grip he has on the backs of his legs, and stares across the bed at Pete.
“You have to make sense, I think,” He says, and it makes Pete laugh, an immediate burst of laughter that spreads over the winter droll seeping in through the window, and washes over the waxed wood floor like magic.
Reaching forward to grab Patrick’s ankle and then quickly let go, Pete raises his eyebrows and says, still with a laugh-smile on my face. “It’s like, you’re my distraction.”
“Okay,” Patrick sounds bored or tired or bitchy or something. “Say it without the hidden meaning, seriously. It’s too early to be dealing with your poetic injustice, and -- ”
Reaching forward, arm long enough to touch the back of Patrick’s head with his hand, Pete pulls Patrick towards him, fingers pressed against his scalp, his other hand coming up to steady the front of Patrick’s chest as he almost falls forward. Before Patrick can bitch or ask what the fuck is going on, use words Pete, regular words, Pete’s kissing him like they’ve done it a million times before or something, and Patrick’s faltering.
“It’s,” Pete murmurs against his lips, kissing them again. “Like that.”
.
Patrick doesn’t know what happened. One second he was some kid in high school, feeling pretty insecure and sitting at the very back of the classroom, wishing Susie Whateverthefuck would pay him some attention. The next he’s got some guy totally naked on top of him, with that guy’s hand down the front of his pants, and a very fresh hickey somewhere in the upper region of his chest.
“Pete, ah,” He manages, panting, head foggy as Pete’s hands wrap around his hips and he feels thumbs slide under the waistband of the jeans that he wore to bed the night before.
Pete mouths the curve of Patrick’s throat, and undoes the button on the front of his pants.
.
Joe’s chilling on the couch with a fresh baked muffin and an N64 controller when Pete bounces down the stairs, Patrick a couple steps behind him.
“Dudes I’m totally fucking kicking Luigi’s ass,” Joe comments, not looking away from the screen. All of the overhead lights are still off, the screen is reflecting in the huge mirror hung over the back of the couch, and Pete wonders if Joe’s even been to bed at all. “Come watch me take the victory lap.”
Patrick’s holding his shoes in one hand and has his jacket in the other, cheeks still flushed, hands still a bit shaky. Pete grins at him sideways, and thinks about mouthing something but can’t think up anything good enough.
“The adventure level is pretty sweet too,” Pete comments, sitting himself on the arm of the couch as he watches Patrick start tugging his shoes on, not undoing the laces. “Where are you going?”
Patrick’s hair is all stuck up in the front, he runs a hand through it and makes it even worse.
“I gotta go home. My mom is probably freaking,” He says, kind of apologizing with a shrug of the shoulders. He doesn’t look too sorry, though. “Joe, you wanna drive me home?”
Joe brushes him off with a flip of the hand, then swears when the movement has some kind of toll on the game. “Motherfucker,” He hisses at the screen.
“So come back tonight, or something,” Pete says kind of quietly, which is really just at a normal volume and not Pete-volume. Patrick doubts Joe can hear them over his game, anyways. “We’ll write some songs, I’m sick of playing Minor Threat covers.”
Scratching behind his ear, Patrick nods with his face pointed down at the floor.
“Yeah, yeah,” He nods, glancing up at Pete over the frame of his glasses. Sometimes it’s easier to see that way, things are blurry and not as confusing. Pete is kind of smirking, even without perfect vision Patrick can see that telltale curve. He scratches the side of his head (and now he thinks I’ve got scabies or something, Patrick thinks to himself, awesome), and tries to get Joe’s attention again.
It doesn’t work until the following race.
.
Hurrying up the front steps of his house, Patrick feels breathless as he tries to work his keys out of the front pocket of his jacket. Behind him, Joe tears away from the curb at a speed that tells Patrick he’d rather be playing with CGI racecars, but he just can’t help himself from smiling as he unlocks the front door, and tries to sneak inside.