Sunday

What Patrick remembers most vividly of Pete Wentz his mother's coworker's son,
now aged twenty-one, tattooed, with too much too-dark hair, and a toothy, too-wide
smile is five years ago, when Patrick was eleven, and Pete was sixteen: Pete hiding
beside a dumpster in the alley behind their moms' office, puffing smoke into the
cold Chicago air, and his distracted, "Don't tell my mom, kid."
When Pete shows up Sunday, mid-afternoon, for ten days of house sitting and
"Keeping a general eye on things, Patrick, we know you're too old for a babysitter,
but we worry," he looks exactly the same, except for a stupid haircut that makes
him look like someone cut it in the dark or something.
"Hey, kid," he says, first thing, lugging a huge, shiny brown duffel behind him. It's
slippery, maybe nylon, and it keeps rubbing against Pete's jeans, making some sort
of whispery zipper sound that sets Patrick's teeth on edge. "I'm here for
Patricksitting. I assume you're the Patrick?"
Patrick's teeth grit right over the edge. He briefly considers trying to catch his
parents before they get on the plane, begging them to get old Mrs. Cooper from
down the street to come watch him, with her pickle-smell and sticky fingers.

"Sorry about your grandmother, kid," Pete says. It would be more convincing if he
weren't pinching the fringe of his bangs into points, his eyes trained on the narrow
edges of the hall mirror, ducking his stupid, smiling reflection around the flower
arrangement that obscures most of it. Also, if he had it right.
"It's my great-grandmother," Patrick corrects stiffly. He finally shuts the front door,
sealing off the Chicago winter, but not without glancing longingly toward Mrs.
Cooper's barely kept yard, her collection of flower pots with gnomes nestled inside.
"Anyway. She could still make it. Your condolences are premature."
"Yeah, sure. So, where's the guest room?"
The guest room is upstairs, three doors down from Patrick's room, and if he takes
some small pleasure in Pete's face when he sees it, well.
"My Aunt Amelia stays here a lot," Patrick offers. He watches Pete blink: at the
wallpaper border of gamboling kittens, the thick stripes beneath, the bleached floral
above. "I'm sure you'll be very comfortable. There are extra quilts in the chest at
the foot of the bed, in case you get cold." Patrick smiles beatifically. "It gets chilly in
this corner of the house, sometimes." The acres of lace curtains probably don't keep
much heat in either.

"Great." Pete hurls his bag onto the bed, which creaks loudly, and sinks around the
weight of the nylon. Patrick smiles wider. "Next item," Pete says, spinning so fast
that Patrick almost trips over his shoes in an effort to step back, get out of his way.
"Fridge. Where's the fridge."
Oh, for fuck's sake. "In the kitchen."
***
Pete declares the fridge to be, "Shockingly empty of anything that makes me feel
like my mom is standing here bitching about my diet."
He orders pizza, and when it comes, he doesn't even feint toward the kitchen. "Iron
Chef is on," he says, around the piece of pizza jammed in his mouth, waving the box
at Patrick. "Maybe it's something gross, c'mon."
Pete is maybe, just maybe, a better choice than Mrs. Cooper. Maybe. He makes
Patrick laugh, not like his friends do, or like a good TV show might, but like a dog
chasing its tail, or a squirrel trying to carry a toaster. Something like that.
He demands that they pick sides, and wagers the last piece of pizza on the battle.
"You realize," Patrick says dryly, "that there are seven pieces of pizza left."
"There's always a last piece." Pete waves the one in his hand negligently; it drips
cheese, which Pete loops up with his fingers and shoves along with the bottom
three inches of his slice into his mouth, talking around it. "S'the best one."
Patrick picks Kyoko Kagata, and Pete mocks him relentlessly. "I'm just saying," Pete
laughs. "She's a chick. In Japan. On Iron Chef. It's not called Iron Chefess."
"That is so not even a word, oh my God."
"Yeah, but she's up against Chen, dude. She's not--like, there's just no way it's going
to happen."
She wins.
"I totally saw that coming," Pete says, reluctantly toeing the pizza box (empty but
for the last piece) at Patrick. "I just, you know, wanted to teach you a lesson about
underestimating women in the workplace. Chicks can do everything we can do,
man. Except piss standing up."
There really is something about the last slice of pizza. It's cool enough that the
cheese is congealed, firm against Patrick's teeth; the sauce is still warm, it squishes

up, and the puddle of grease in the cupped pepperoni oozes down onto his tongue
and yeah, okay. Delicious.
Patrick chews pointedly, and grins once he's swallowed. "That's sexism. Girls can
absolutely piss standing up. I've seen it on the internet."
"You can see anything on the Internet, it doesn't mean it's real."
"So, you're suggesting someone CGI'd a girl pissing while standing up?"
"Dude. Anything's possible."
"Except for girls being able to pee without sitting."
"Exactly. Hey, are you going to finish that?" Pete snatches Patrick's crust, and the
last three bites of actual pizza from his hand, and crams it whole into his mouth.
"Phrmks."
Yeah, definitely just like a dog chasing its tail. Maybe with a stupid hat on. "Uh huh.
You're welcome."
Monday
He misses his parents for the first time when he comes downstairs in the morning,
and instead of finding his mom in her ridiculous snowflake pajamas, he finds Pete
curled into a chair in a hoodie and boxers, sulky, dark-eyed, clinging to a cup of
coffee like it's a lifeline.
"This is inhumane," Pete complains. "Making you kids get up at this hour. I don't
remember school starting this early. God, I swear. How do you even learn anything?"
"Usually, I find a hot breakfast wakes me up. Gets me all ready for the day." A hot
breakfast that will probably not be made by Pete, since his feet are still tucked
under his ass, and his shoulders haven't moved from their pathetic slump.
Oh, and because he says, "Ooh. If you make eggs, I like mine just a little runny."
What Patrick makes are Pop Tarts, strawberry for himself, and s'mores flavor for
Pete, since he seems the type to need approximately eight metric tons of sugar just
to get on with his day. He even puts them on paper towels, just so they won't have
to do dishes. They sit together in companionable silence for a while, the quiet
broken only by chewing and the sound of Pete's chair squeaking under his constant
shifting, and just when Patrick is starting to get really homesick for his mom's
tuneless humming and his dad's newspaper-related outbursts, Pete says: "Do you
have a lunchbox or something? Because I can't make sandwiches or anything, but I

can definitely slip a Twinkie and five bucks into it."

"Dude, no, I--" Patrick stops, reconsiders, and says, "Brown paper sack, actually. I
think we're out of Twinkies though, so you should give me seven bucks instead, and
I'll just buy my own."
Pete laughs, and it's ridiculous, too big, but he musses Patrick's hair on the way to
the door, and when he comes back downstairs his hoodie is unzipped. Patrick
spends a long moment (or ten, if he's going to be honest) staring at Pete's chest
before he figures out that some of the glinting metal there is nipple ring, not just
zipper. Which is. Um. It's nothing. Patrick doesn't care, and it makes total sense. Ink,
piercings, skinny jeans and lurid shirts, it's, yeah, it makes sense. For Pete.
"Here," Pete says. He bumps Patrick's shoulder with his hip and grins, dorky, but
with glinting eyes, like people just stare at his nipples all the time.
Which, hey, they probably do. Exhibit A: pierced nipples.
He presses a handful of moist, crumpled bills into Patrick's hand and tugs Patrick's
ear. "I only had six. You can either cope, or call DCF on me. Just know that if they
put you in foster care, your new mommy won't cook you breakfast like I do."
***
Coming home to Pete's heavily bumper-stickered Saturn is kind of weird; Patrick's
used to his mom's Volvo in the drive, used to the lights being on, and something
that smells like dinner in the air. What he gets instead is a dim hallway, loud
hardcore music coming from the living room, and something that sounds
suspiciously like an orangutan in labor, but that seems to somehow go along with
the music, so. So Patrick's assuming this is Pete's interpretation of singing along.
He drops his backpack in the corner, trips over a clunky black boot in the middle of
the hall carpet, and stumbles into a hopefully casual lean in the doorway of the
living room. Pete's on the couch - standing on the couch with his hair flying,
playing enthusiastically shitty air guitar, with his mouth open and the monkeydelivering-triplets shrieks pouring out.
Patrick's course of action is clear. He fumbles his phone out of his pocket and takes
a picture, another, and when Pete turns and poses, fist above his head, Patrick gives
him a thumbs-up and snaps another shot.
"I'm sick of playing my own guitar," Pete shouts over the music. "I'm made to front,
man, get your lazy ass onstage."

It's not his taste, the music, but Patrick clambers over the back of the sofa anyway,
ducks through the strap of his invisible guitar, and leans into Pete, talking too-loud
into the sudden silence between songs.
"Like this," he says, adjusting Pete's grip. "You'll get better sound."
Air rocking-out turns into air crooning; Pete throws one of Patrick's dad's Sinatra
albums in and butchers the lyrics ("Hard on my pillow, just thinking of you") until
Patrick's curled into the couch, laughing so hard his ribs ache. He's actually crying the water catches on the bottom bevel of his glasses and fogs them up - and he has
to eventually kick Pete's feet out from under him just to make him stop. It's still long
minutes before he can breathe, and when he looks up, Pete's sprawled on the sofa
with a hand pressed to his stomach, panting.
"Pizza?"
"Dude," Patrick laughs. "We just had pizza last night, come on."
Pete huffs and bites his lip. "Yeah, okay. Chinese?"
It takes an hour and a half to settle on an order that doesn't cover half the menu,
too many minutes of which are spent convincing Pete that paying fifteen dollars for
a dozen egg rolls is possibly the stupidest idea ever, and then what feels like eleven
years of waiting for the delivery, the whole of which they spend camped out on the
sofa.
"Do you have any homework?" Pete asks. He keeps turning the mute button on and
off, turning the commercial breaks into little staccato bursts of sound. Annoying
little staccato bursts of sound.
"No," Patrick answers. "But if you keep doing that, I'm sure I can dig up some extra
credit, or something."
"Boring." Pete's finger slows on the mute button though, and Patrick gets whole
sentences before the voices are silenced again. Not that, like, he really wants to
listen to the amazing benefits of Tide laundry detergent, but still.
He shoves at Pete's leg with his foot. "Annoying."
"I'm bored."
"You're not going to be bored when I'm kicking your ass, which is what's going to
happen if you don't lay the fuck off the remote."

Pete laughs, and it's so sincere as to be genuinely irritating. "Yeah, right."

The lady on the TV says, "Ask your healthcare provider about--" and then she's
silent, though her lips are still moving, her hands gesturing excitedly.
Patrick shoves at Pete's leg again, harder. "Dude."
"Dude," Pete mimics, slapping Patrick's socked foot away from his thigh.
"Side effects may include-" says the lady on the TV, right before the next descent
into silence.
Patrick scrambles onto his knees and tries to snatch the remote from Pete's hand,
but Pete is fast and dodges, turns mute off for two words and then back on again.
Patrick is going to kill him, just as soon as he can fling the remote across the room.
He makes another grab for it, and ends up falling face-first into Pete's thigh when
the remote is snatched off to the side.
"Frisky," Pete crows, and only just wiggles away in time to evade the sloppily placed
bite that Patrick aims at his leg. "Dude," he says, laughing. "Biting?"
Pete sounds amused. He looks amused, too, lying across the arm of the couch with
the remote stretched over his head, out of Patrick's reach. Basically, being a giant
asshole.
"You're an asshole," Patrick informs him. "And I'm getting that remote."
"Awesome." Pete grins; he waggles the remote above his head, and is generally
infuriatingly amused by Patrick's annoyance.
Patrick isn't careful with his knee placement when he crawls forward, and he isn't
particularly concerned with Pete's continued ability to breathe; it results in a lot of
Pete wiggling under him, muttering sharp warnings to "Watch the knees, Christ" and
"Fuck, Patrick, a little air here" while he switches the remote from hand to hand,
pulls it between their bodies, and then back out in the air when Patrick shifts his
weight to pursue it.
Eventually, Patrick settles for squashing Pete as flat into the sofa as he can get, and
he has a forearm braced against Pete's shoulders, and Pete's hands are possibly
pinned, and he's reaching for the remote when Pete bucks and flips them both off of
the couch. Patrick lands on his back, with all too-much of laughing Pete on top of
him and oh, now it's on.

Honestly, he doesn't know when they lose the remote, but he thinks it's somewhere
between Pete on Patrick's back, smushing his face into the carpet, and when Patrick
manages to get Pete in a headlock, but it's definitely long before Patrick winds up
flat on his back with Pete straddling him, Pete's hands pressing Patrick's wrists into
the rug, and an infuriatingly smug smile spread across his face.
At least Patrick can hear every word of this commercial for McDonald's. That's
something, right?
"You are such an asshole."
Pete grinds Patrick's wrists down a little harder, grins a little wider. "But I'm not a
bored asshole."
"Still an asshole."
"A victorious asshole."
Well, yeah. Pete's actually freakishly fucking strong, and none of Patrick's dirty tricks
worked at all, not even his attempt to elbow Pete in the throat. He can't think of a
way free. He bucks a little, but Pete just clamps his knees around Patrick's thighs
tighter and holds on; tries to push up on his wrists, but Pete's grip is firm, almostbut-not-quite bruisingly tight; tries to roll to the side, but Pete just presses down and
clucks his tongue.
"Early fortune cookie," Pete says. "Accept defeat gracefully."
"You're not a cookie." Patrick is only pouting a little.
Pete is grinning, more than a little. "Better. More delicious."
"Oh, well in that case." Patrick bites him; right on the forearm that's braced next to
his head, just above the stretched tendons. It's stupid, but Patrick kind of expects
Pete's skin to taste like something. Cinnamon, maybe, because of the color. It
doesn't though; it just tastes like skin, a little sweaty. He presses his teeth into
Pete's arm, not hard enough to break skin, just hard enough to rub across the
surface.
Above him, Pete goes very still, and then gets very heavy. Patrick can feel breath on
his neck, hot and wet against his jaw, and he braces himself for retaliatory biting,
tightens his own teeth, but stubbornly refuses to stop. Pete's arm twists a little;
Patrick's mouth slides off, down to Pete's wrist, and Pete's breath stops gusting
against Patrick's neck, even though he hasn't moved further away or anything.

"Asshole," Patrick mumbles again, into Pete's wrist, for emphasis.

The doorbell rings before Pete can answer, spurring him into a quick backward
scramble. He turns immediately, presents his back to Patrick, and Patrick watches
while he wedges his fingers into his pocket for his wallet, digs through it and says,
tightly, "Hungry asshole."
Tuesday
Patrick wakes up to a dry mouth and a clock that says 3:18, complete with the
mocking red dot that indicates AM. He closes his eyes and tries, for at least three
hours, to go back to sleep. When he opens them again, the numbers glow 3:20. He
tries to argue that this is impossible, but the clock is resolute. His mouth, even drier.
Stumbling out of bed is familiar. The silent trip down the hallway is as well. Skipping
the squeaky eighth, third, and bottom steps is second nature by now, and Patrick
even steps over where his dad's briefcase is usually leaning against the wall, even
though there's nothing there tonight.
All of that, moving toward the kitchen without making a sound, trying not to wake
his parents, is normal. Commonplace. Routine, even.
What's not routine is the gay porn stretched in wide-screen across the TV. Patrick
freezes just outside the arch that leads into the living room and rubs his eyes, hard
enough to see spots, but when he pries them open, there are still three guys fucking
each other. In high definition.
No, wait, Patrick's wrong. Two guys fucking each other. The third appears to be
doing something with his tongue in the vicinity of someone else's ass. Which is-well, it's something Patrick isn't really going to think about, not right now. They
seem to be enjoying it, but he can't really tell, because the TV is muted. Three men,
mouths open, rutting silently.
It's another long minute before he notices Pete on the couch.
Pete, on the couch, with his eyes shut, making little muffled noises, not even as loud
as the slick sound of skin on skin, his wrist moving steadily, pumping hard and fast.
With his eyes shut, though. Patrick doesn't understand; why have 52 inches of gay
porn, mute it, and then shut your eyes? He blinks, shifts his gaze to the TV again,
and when he looks back at Pete, he notices for the first time that Pete's pressed his
mouth against his forearm. It's an awkward angle, the way he has his elbow twisted
up, arm held out to the side, but he's mouthing the patch of skin just above his
tendons, his wrist bent far back so they stand out, raised up like a highway.

It's not until Pete licks his own skin and jerks his hand a little faster, erratic, moans
"fuck," that Patrick realizes where Pete's mouth is. It's--unless he's mistaken, it's the
same spot where Patrick bit him, like, hours ago. Pete moans again, stretches his
mouth wide over his skin. His eyes are still scrunched shut.
Patrick's ears are hot, and his stomach is upside down, burning; he can't quite
breathe, but he edges to the side, chances five silent steps until he can fully see
Pete, with his jeans open and shoved down a little, fisting his dick. He pumps,
twists, thumbs the head, and arches into it, moans again. Patrick can only hear the
undertones of it, the lower, scratchy parts, but he sees the way Pete's lips pull away
from his teeth when he does it and. God. Pete just looks desperate, like he's trying
to taste Patrick's mouth through his skin, through hours-old contact.
Out of the corner of his eye, Patrick can see pornstars coming on the screen - face
shots and jerking off onto stomachs and into hair - but he can't take his eyes off the
way Pete's chest is straining up, the frenzied stroke of his hand, the stream of single
syllable words that all seem to end in "-ck," and then he freezes, hips off the
cushion, and comes on his hand, pumping through it. From where he is, all Patrick
sees is shiny. Shiny on Pete's knuckles and shiny dotting Pete's stomach where his
shirt is pushed up, and shiny on the head of his cock when his hand slides down to
the base.
It finally occurs to him that Pete's done, could have his eyes open, could be
watching Patrick watch him, but when he jerks his eyes back to Pete's face it's still
smooth, slack, closed eyes and open mouth, his head angled back. Patrick tries to
remember every time he's ever jerked off, how long he left his eyes shut after. Or,
fuck, just how long he's been standing here since Pete came.
The only answers he can come up with are "not long enough" and "too long," in that
order. He takes a shallow breath and edges back to the stairs, creeps up, wincing at
every scuff of his heel against the carpet, and goes directly to his room without
another thought of water.
He spends ten minutes on his back, staring at the ceiling, thinking about anything
that isn't Pete Wentz (puppies, rain clouds, root canals, hats, his grandma), before
he breaks and shoves his hand into his pajama pants, schooling his mind to picture
the girl who sits in front of him in Chemistry. She's blonde, with green eyes and a
great rack, but he can't get dark hair and eyes out of his head, so he doesn't think
it's working. He eyes a crack in the stucco and tells himself the jerk of his wrist and
the flashes of white teeth against tan skin are unrelated, and then he's coming,
everything going fuzzy and white around the edges, and he can't think anything but
oh God.
***

Three hours later: daylight spreads reluctantly across the sky, the house smells
strongly like coffee - a little scorched - and Patrick wakes to the sight of an empty
nightstand.
At some point in time during the last three snooze cycles, he seems to have
crammed his alarm clock under his mattress. It's not quite as bad as the time he
managed to unplug it, shove it to the bottom of his laundry basket, and go back to
sleep for twenty-six minutes, but it's close. The mattress bulges into his side,
buzzing angrily, and Patrick's hand is still sticky. He has to leave for school in thirtyone minutes, if he wants to make it just in time to slide into his seat for first period.
Very reluctantly, he rolls out of bed and stumbles blearily into the kitchen.
Pete's already there, humming something harsh and toneless under his breath, in
boxers and a button-up shirt. The coffee in his hand is so hot that Patrick can see
steam rising from it; the mug is so full that Pete has to lean over the sink to drink it.
It runs down the curved ceramic side in weak, grim rivulets, drips onto the metal
sink with dull little pings.
"Nnnnrgh," Patrick says. He makes grabby hands at nothing in particular, but Pete
hands over his mug anyway. It's hot against Patrick's palms, still too hot, and the
first sip burns his tongue, but blowing on the surface gives him something to do
other than stare at Pete's hands, at the scars on his knees.
"I have to work today." Pete pours himself another gallon of coffee, into Patrick's
mom's giant, kitten-head mug. He levels his gaze at Patrick, clear eyes and calm
features. Patrick's left eyelid twitches. "I'll be back around seven o'clock, and we can
get food then, or if you want me to pick something up on the way, just call me."
This should be weirder. Of course, Pete doesn't know that Patrick saw him, and he
doesn't know that Patrick came so hard from thinking of him that he fell asleep with
his hand still curled around his come, that he had to spit on his hand and scrub his
palm against his t-shirt at some hour that started with a four and ended with a blur.
If Pete knew, he might not be rubbing at his yawning mouth with the heel of his
hand. He might be wearing pants, instead of threadbare boxers, so old that the slit
in the front folds inward a little. He might not be smirking at Patrick, then ruffling his
hair and saying, "I think I'll have to tuck you in earlier tonight, Patrick."
Patrick presses his fingers to his twitching eye and smiles weakly. "I'll just nap," he
mumbles, scratchy from not enough sleep. "Should be easy, without your 'singing'
wrecking my ears." He does air quotes with his pinkies, but Pete laughs at him and
swallows an obscene quantity of hot, overcooked coffee without so much as a
grimace.

"I'll call you," he says, his fingers on Patrick's wrist. "Sing to your voicemail. In case
you need a lullaby."
***
There's no Pete when Patrick gets home, of course. He has the house for three
hours, footloose and Pete-free, and he has a fuckton of homework.
He takes a nap. He doesn't mean to, even spreads his Biology book in front of him
on the bed, lies on his stomach, and bites the cap off of his highlighter. Still, he only
has two sentences encased in long, obnoxious yellow blocks when he passes out
with his nose pressed into the seam of his book.
When he wakes up, his bedroom door is open. He's pretty sure he left it closed, but.
There's music coming from downstairs, along with the smell of something that
strongly suggests dinner. It's dark in his room, even with the curtains open, and the
numbers on the clock are round and red: 8:08.
Patrick doesn't realize how sour his mouth is until he gets to the kitchen and opens
it to say, "Hey."
"Hey." Pete is already changed; he's wearing pajama pants with dogs on them and a
t-shirt for some band Patrick's never heard of, with signatures radiating out from the
cheesy, overdrawn graphic. "My mom quizzed me on how well I'm feeding you. I
don't think she approved, but now we have lasagna."
Patrick yawns. "Awesome."
Pete tsks, but grins. Bright smile, dark skin. Patrick keeps seeing it, every time he
closes his eyes. "You're not going to be able to sleep tonight. Which is good for me,
because there's a Monty Python marathon on until, like, two. And if I tell my mom
I'm not letting you sleep, maybe she'll get you out of school for a day or something,
and then we can go mini-golfing. Or egg people's houses."
"I can try listening to you talk about literature again," Patrick suggests. "I'll be
asleep in no time." He scrubs the sleep from his eyes and smiles widely at Pete,
insincere. "Tell me again of the genius of e.e. cummings. For hours."
"I can't believe I stopped and got you garlic bread," Pete says, shaking his head
sadly. "So unappreciative."
The kitchen actually smells really good, like spices and cheese and heat. Pete's set
out a bag of lettuce on the counter - near but not actually in a bowl - along with a

handful of cherry tomatoes and a bottle or two of salad dressing. Pete's idea of
vegetables, Patrick assumes.
"Fine," he says, poking Pete in the ribs on the way past. "I'll make the salad. And
later, dessert. But if you so much as mention writing, you're going to be wearing
whatever I have in my hands at the moment."
Patrick tells himself he imagines Pete's momentary hesitation and the slight hitch in
his breath when he nods and says, "Deal."
Their salad is kind of pathetic. Pete left the lettuce on the counter too long, so it's
limp and a little warm; his technique of dumping extra dressing on doesn't really
help. The tomatoes are good though, and if Patrick shakes the dressing off of his
lettuce for fifteen or so seconds, it's almost edible. The lasagna is much better. It's
hot and perfect, and it oozes sauce all over Patrick's plate, leaving his garlic bread
soggy and red. "I love your mom," he says happily, licking garlic butter from his
fingers. "Seriously. Can I trade you for her?"
"No," Pete says. When Patrick looks up, Pete's watching his mouth. Pete's laden fork
is in the air, dripping sauce. Patrick lifts an eyebrow; Pete coughs and spears more
lasagna, grinning. "She'd try to put you in the bathtub. With little boats or
something. You don't want that."
"Well," Patrick muses, drawing it out. He bites his fingertip, pretending to consider,
and flicks his tongue against the pad, grinning at Pete. "I might want that." The
"with your mom" goes unspoken.
Pete's eyes get a lot darker. Patrick assumes this has something to do with the way
his pupils widen, but he could be wrong. "You don't need my mom for that," he says.
He's not smiling. "I have bath toys. Just say the word."
Patrick is pretty sure they're not having the same conversation. "You're ruining my
Your Mom joke," he complains. Well, pretends to complain. "Seriously. Uncool."
"Sorry." The flash of white teeth is back; Patrick's jaw relaxes a little, his fingers
loosen on his fork. He really, really wishes he had some idea of what was going on
here. "I'm terribly offended by your obvious desire to nail my mom," Pete deadpans.
"Morally outraged. Righteous indignation in massive, immeasurable quantities. Are
you going to finish that?" He has the last half of the last piece of garlic bread in his
mouth before Patrick can answer emphatically in the affirmative, grinning around it.
"Phrmks."
Eye-rolling turns into loading the dishwasher, which turns into both of them staring
longingly at ice cream they don't have the appetite for, which turns into agreeing to

make stomach-room with intense television watching, which turns into Life Of Brian
on cable at one in the morning. Patrick is half asleep, with his head on Pete's thigh,
and Pete's hand in his hair, just barely sifting the strands over his knuckles. Patrick's
fingers are on Pete's knee, they've settled in and curled over Pete's leg entirely of
their own accord; his skin feels so hot, he's pretty sure his palm is sweating, and
he's damn certain he must be burning a handprint through Pete's pajama pants, but
Pete isn't complaining, so he just leaves it there.
Pete's hand stills. Patrick feels him shifting, feels the nubby fabric of Pete's pajamas
scrape under his cheek, and then Pete's breath is close, fanning across Patrick's
lashes.
"Patrick?" Pete whispers.
Patrick doesn't answer, just tries to keep his breathing steady. It's hard.
It's downright fucking impossible when Pete presses his fingers to Patrick's lips.
Light, yeah, just a ghost of a touch, but his mouth opens on its own, and then Pete
runs his fingertip over the new skin. Fuck breathing steadily. Patrick can't breathe at
all, and Pete is pretty much frozen above him, motionless but for the slow back and
forth skim of his finger.
He doesn't--Patrick doesn't know what to do. He knows what he wants to do, and
that's lick Pete's finger, tighten his grip on Pete's leg, but he doesn't really know
why, and that's the uncomfortable part. He shifts instead, draws his knees up
toward his chest, and exhales in a huff. Pete jerks his fingers away and settles his
hand on Patrick's shoulder, shaking gently.
"Patrick," he says again, not a question this time. "Wake up. Bedtime."
Pretending to wake up isn't all that hard; the slightly confused blinking comes
naturally.
Wednesday
Too much of not enough sleep is not helping Patrick be any more pleasant in the
morning, and it certainly doesn't help that Pete's turned the world upside down by
being fully awake, fully dressed, and waiting for Patrick in the kitchen, with cereal
and milk set out on the counter. He's folded a napkin, placed a carefully centered
spoon on it, and Patrick is about half a second from asking where his bud vase is
when Pete cups his hands around Patrick's hips and pulls him forward.
Patrick needs that half second now, not for sarcasm, but to figure out what the hell
is going on, and then Pete tips his chin up and kisses him. Pete's mouth tastes like
coffee - like Pete's first cup of coffee, black, no hint of the hazelnut creamer he adds

to his second and third - and toothpaste. His hands flex on Patrick's hips, fingertips
pressing just this side of too hard, and Patrick can actually feel the tension in his
wrists. Pete's arms are kind of shaking, like he's trying to pull something heavy
toward himself, but his palms are cupped outward, heels of his hands braced
against Patrick's hipbones, arms locked so even if Patrick tried to move forward, he
wouldn't be able to.
It's maybe surprise that makes Patrick open his mouth. Maybe. But that's definitely
not what makes him kiss Pete back, what makes him put hesitant hands on Pete's
arms, mapping out the ridges on the roof of Pete's mouth with the tip of his tongue.
And then it's over. Too fast; Pete's still staring at his mouth when they break apart,
his cheeks a little flushed, his breathing more than a little uneven.
"Okay," he says, and he looks lost, like he had something he wanted to say, but
forgot it somewhere along the way. He clears his throat, slides away from Patrick,
and runs a shaky hand through his hair. "I'm going to. I'm going to go now. If that
was totally out of line, or if you feel like I'm unsafe or something, then you call your
mom, or you call my mom, or you tell someone at school, or, God, please don't, but
you could call the cops."
Patrick blinks. "What?"
"If you don't want to. If I'm taking advantage of you, or if you feel pressured, you're
supposed to tell someone. I don't know how you'd tell someone if I kissed you after
school. You'd be stuck here with me all night. You might feel, like, endangered." Pete
shoves his hands in his front pockets and rocks back on his heels, smiling weakly. "I
don't want you to feel endangered. I want to kiss you, but I want you to want to kiss
me. So I'm going to go now, that way you can report me to whatever authorities you
want, if you want to, and I won't feel like opportunistic scum."
"Um." Patrick's pretty sure he hasn't moved since Pete licked his lips apart. His feet
are still rooted to the ground, heavy, like he could actually sway on them and stay
upright. He's light-years from being able to make his brain work. "You're not scum?"
Pete laughs, high and tight and nervous, and he takes a couple of quick, jogging
steps forward and presses his lips to Patrick's again. Just a brush, light like his
fingers were last night. "I'm going to go. But I'll be here. When you get home, I'll be
here. Unless you have me arrested, I'll be here."
Patrick stares at the empty doorway long after he hears Pete's car start, back out of
the drive, and fade off down the street.
***

He doesn't tell anyone. He wants to. He wants to tell everyone, because Pete Wentz
kissed him in his kitchen this morning, and Patrick spent the subsequent half hour
arguing with himself about whether or not it was possible to get away without
brushing his teeth all day, just to keep the taste of Pete in his mouth. But he doesn't
tell anyone. He talks to his mom during lunch, tells her everything is fine, and he
waves at the guidance counselor in the hallway, and on the way home he passes
three police cars, but he doesn't stop.
Instead, he pulls into his driveway and sits in his parked car for five minutes, staring
up at his house like it might bite him. He twists his keys in his hand until they're
slick with sweat and his palms are red from the serrated edges, then takes a deep
breath and pushes the door open.
Pete is in the living room, sitting on the couch, with his feet pressed flat to the floor
and his hands cupped over his knees. Patrick lines up their toes, clenching his
fingers around his keys.
"You didn't call the cops," Pete says.
"I didn't."
"Or my mom."
"Or your mom."
Pete's hand twitches; he lifts it and strokes his fingers over the back of Patrick's
wrist and says, softly, "I'm not scum?"
"You're not scum."
He's getting stupidly used to Pete's smile, and ridiculously used to returning it. "I
can kiss you again?" Pete asks, folding his hand around Patrick's wrist, tugging
gently. "Please?"
There's just enough time to send a fervent thank you to his nerves for making him
chicken out and detour to Jamba Juice on his way home, and then Pete is licking into
Patrick's mango-flavored mouth and humming. He presses Patrick down into the
sofa and crawls up, settles down against him and then shifts forward, fidgets, fits
them together to his satisfaction and smiles. Pete's lips curve up, his teeth press
against Patrick's lips, and his eyes are all crinkly and close, and oh man.
"Patrick," Pete says, but not like he wants a response, more like he's turning the
word over, tasting it. He puts his hands on Patrick's cheeks, his neck, his shoulders,

his sides, and smiles again. "Patrick Patrick Patrick."

Patrick's heart twirls in a slow, happy little circle. He licks Pete's bottom lip, presses
a kiss to Pete's chin, and tries to figure out what to do with his hands while Pete
kisses him again. He kisses like graffiti, tracing possession against the back of
Patrick's teeth, the top of his mouth, with every slick twist of his tongue. Patrick
hasn't really done this before. Not for hours, anyway, not with his head propped up
on his mom's favorite throw pillow and someone's (Pete's) weight settled on him like
a blanket, and someone's (Pete's) mouth always there like air, only warmer, better,
so that Patrick forgets to breathe, resents the need to.
They kiss until Patrick can't taste even the traces of his smoothie anymore, until the
room is dark and the back of his neck is sweaty and the creases from his bunchedup shirt pressing into his skin are so deep he can feel them sting every time he
shifts. His mouth is hot and dry, and he finds himself actually trying to lick saliva out
of Pete's mouth and into his own. Pete makes a happy sound, content, and presses
a kiss to the corner of Patrick's mouth, to his jaw, to the skin just beneath his ear.
"M'hot," Patrick mumbles.
Pete laughs, right into Patrick's skin, presses the hum of it against his neck, and it's
nice, yeah, but his breath is at least a hundred degrees and it's. Not exactly
comfortable.
Pete says, "I know."
"No," Patrick says. He swipes his fingers under his jaw, expecting sweat, and
grimaces at how right he is. "Like, it's a hundred- three hundred degrees. I'm hot."
"Aw." Pete peels off of him, and while the air that rushes into his absence can't
exactly be described as cold, it's so much cooler than Pete's weight that Patrick
almost makes an undignified noise. Almost. Instead he tilts his head to his shoulder
and winces when his spine cracks in half, liquefies, and leaks from his ear.
Ow. Ow, ow, ow. "Ow." Patrick is pretty sure he's some kind of idiot. He has Pete on
him, sitting back on his haunches with his knees on either side of Patrick's hips,
grinning down at him with a swollen mouth and flushed face, and he's complaining
about a crick in his neck. Idiot.
"Ow?" Pete asks. He scoots back, settles his weight over Patrick's thighs, and tugs
Patrick's wrist. "I've only had my Patrick for one day and I'm already breaking him?"
It is completely not possible to stay normal-colored when Pete Wentz is claiming
you. Patrick is pretty sure of this, so he forgives himself the blushing and sits up,

cooperating when Pete nudges his head onto his shoulder.

"M'fine," he says, mumbled into Pete's sweat-damp shirt.
Pete presses his fingers to either side of the bony bulge at the base of Patrick's neck
and squeezes, rubbing his fingers in small, hard circles. It feels, like, really fucking
good. "I'll take better care of you," Pete whispers, words pressed like kisses to
Patrick's temple. "I'll even feed you real food. I have ingredients."
"Ingredients are good," Patrick agrees. He drops his chin to his chest, makes his
neck longer, stretches the muscles tight so Pete can press the tension out of them.
"But do you have a recipe?"
He does. The recipe is for chicken and broccoli stir-fry, with a sauce made of
bouillon and corn starch that takes them six tries to get right. When they do,
though, it's actually really good.
"This is actually really good," Patrick says. He wipes a spilled drop of sauce off of the
coffee table with his fingers, licks his thumb, and uses the spit to rub the sheen out
of the wood.
"Of course it's good," Pete says. He's maybe going for indignant, but his mouth is
full, and he has to yank his knuckles to his lips to catch the grains of rice that he'd
been eating. "I'm a whiz in the kitchen."
"You do know whiz isn't actually another word for disaster, right?"
Pete's middle finger is pretty long. It's also a little bit crooked, and the knuckle is
knobby like he's spent too much time punching things that don't punch back. Like,
say, walls. Patrick knows these things because he can see Pete's middle finger
pretty clearly; it's right in front of his face, Pete grinning behind it.
"Fuck you," Pete says cheerfully. "I've yet to see those eggs you promised me, and
I'd hardly call Pop Tarts fine dining."
After dishes - with more stolen kisses than suds - and another hour of TV - with more
stolen kisses than commercials - Patrick finds himself pressed against his bedroom
door; Pete's hand is low on his back, fingers splayed, possessive, and the other is
braced against the door by Patrick's head. The hand on his skin is so hot he feels
branded, and he spends several idle, breathless seconds wondering if the other is as
hot, if Pete's handprint will be burned into his door, so he can line his own fingers up
to it long after Pete's gone and remember.
He goes to bed alone, grinning, with his hands clenched into fists to keep from

pumping them above his head.

Thursday
Morning is an empty kitchen, quiet but for the auto-drip of coffee. It's been days
since Patrick missed his mom, but it hits him now, sharp and furious. He throws
away the wilted, drooping flowers she left on the counter, wets a sponge and wipes
off the table, just because his mom has always just cleaned it when he comes down
for breakfast, and then stares at the contents of the fridge and tries to visualize
breakfast.
He doesn't hear Pete come downstairs, is maybe too buried in the hum of the fridge
and the faint, staticky flicker of the light, and is almost surprised when Pete's hand
presses to his stomach and he feels lips brushing the back of his neck.
"Overslept," Pete explains, yawning the word into Patrick's shoulder. "Sorry.
G'morning."
Having Pete there makes it a little easier, but he still misses his mom. "S'okay," he
says, and leans back into Pete's weight, into the hand tucked around him, into the
arm draped over his shoulder. The fridge door is still open, spilling cold air out onto
them, Patrick's fingers tapping on the edge of it, against the cool, pebbled metal.
"The eggs are raw."
"They are." Warm lips behind his ear, cold air on his knees, Pete, solid and pressed
close behind him. Patrick closes his eyes and sighs a little, shortly, heavily.
"Hey," Pete says, turning his dangling hand inward and covering Patrick's heart with
it. "You want to go to breakfast? I'll buy you some unraw eggs."
The unraw eggs won't be on Patrick's mom's favorite plates, though, and he's not
sure he can bring himself to ask a restaurant for orange juice with grenadine in it,
and above all that, he wants to keep Pete to himself for as long as he can. He knows
that may not be long at all, which is even more reason to glue his feet to the floor
and stay here, where he can turn and kiss Pete.
"I owe you eggs," he says, mumbling it into Pete's lips. "A little runny, right?"
"I like eggs."
Patrick's back hits the hard edge of the counter. He shifts forward, but hits it again
when Pete bumps into him, and that time is probably going to bruise, but he has his
hands in Pete's hair and he doesn't care much. This is probably a dream anyway.
You don't bruise in dreams.

The eggs are half runny and half burnt by the time they get cooked, but Patrick's
orange juice has just the right amount of cherry flavoring in it, and the longest Pete
goes without touching him is nine seconds. He counts.
Pete eats with his left hand so he can curl his right around Patrick's, and he narrates
the comics between - and sometimes during - bites, complete with character voices.
"That," Patrick says, tucking his ankle under Pete's beneath the table, "is not how I
imagine Cathy sounds."
"You imagined wrong. I met her once."
"Yeah? In person? How was it?"
"Good." Pete grins, too many teeth, too much happy for this early in the morning.
"She's shorter in real life, though. Smokes like a chimney."
***
Patrick's afternoons used to involve homework and video games. He distinctly
remembers last Thursday: Trig, the French Revolution, jerking off, two hours of Halo.
Today, however, he's under Pete (who is possibly the hottest guy - fuck it, hottest
person - in the history of existence), about two seconds from coming in his pants,
with Pete's breath in his ear, whispering "C'mon, Patrick. C'mon."
He comes so hard he's pretty sure he'll still be feeling it tomorrow, shuddering, the
hands he's fisted in Pete's shirt shaking, clenched so tight he can't really feel his
knuckles anymore. "God."
Patrick is not ashamed- not of the sticky, slowly cooling mess in his pants, not of the
noises he was just making, and not of the bruises that are sure to pop up on Pete's
arms by this time tomorrow. There is, he feels, only so much Pete Wentz a person
can be subjected to before they just do it, just come all over themselves, and at
least Patrick didn't do it spontaneously, in everyday conversation, after Pete
commented on the weather or something equally innocuous.
Pete grins and kisses him, sloppily, somewhere between the corner of his mouth
and his chin, and that's nice, but he's also slowing, rocking his hips down less
insistently. Patrick can still feel Pete, pressed hard against his hip, so he doesn't
understand why Pete's stopping. Unless, oh, maybe he can't. Get off this way, that
is, because he's older and obviously not a virgin and he needs more. Patrick wiggles
backward a few inches, shoves his hands between them, and manages to pop the
button on Pete's jeans with what he thinks is an impressive amount of finesse,
thanks.

"Can I?" he asks, fumbling to pry the zipper tab up with his fingernail. "I want to."
He can feel how hard Pete is, heat against his knuckles, sticky-wet and throbbing.
"Oh God, yes," Pete says. Patrick fumbles the zipper down, and Pete says, "But no."
"No?" No doesn't process. Patrick is already reaching for the waist of Pete's jeans, so
his hand is right there when Pete shoves his hips forward. "No?"
Pete's forehead falls to Patrick's shoulder; it's actually kind of hard, more than kind
of hurts, and he almost misses it when Pete mumbles, "I'm going to hell."
It's probably unkind to roll his eyes at the ceiling, but Pete can't see him, so.
Victimless crime. Patrick pushes Pete's jeans down, carefully peels the wet fabric of
Pete's boxers away from his cock, and fists it with more confidence then he feels. "Is
this okay?"
He takes the vaguely choked noise as agreement, and strokes once, twice, a third
and fourth time; he rests his free hand on Pete's side and kisses his ear and says,
"I've never done this before."
"Jail," Pete moans. "I'm going to jail."
Patrick would roll his eyes again, but he's trying to duck his chin down far enough
that he can see, because all he has right now is the feel of it; Pete's skin, hot and
slick from precome, wetter every time Patrick twists his hand up to the head and
slicks it down again, fast. Pete's flushed, overheated, biting nonsense words into
Patrick's shoulder.
"Is this?" Patrick asks, shifting, trying to get his leg out of the way. "Is it okay?"
"Oh, God." Pete's hips push against Patrick's hand. His dick slides through Patrick's
curled-up fingers, faster than Patrick can manage on his own, from this angle, and
Pete makes a noise like maybe he's dying. "Tighter," he says urgently. "Please. I
need-"
Friction. Yeah. Patrick squeezes his hand tighter and twists it slowly while Pete
pushes his weight back up through his arms and shoves his hips forward. He kisses
Patrick, hard, too fast for tongue, and pulls back, but it's okay. Patrick wants to
watch it, wants to see Pete break apart. And anyway, with Pete up like this, he can
look down their bodies and watch Pete fuck his hand, watch his fingers get slippery
with precome, watch Pete's cock slide through, dark against Patrick's too-pale skin.

He looks up in time to see Pete watching him watch, his lip bitten, gaze narrow.
They lock eyes, and Pete gasps, "Patrick," and then jerks his hips forward again,
again, erratic, desperate, and then he comes over Patrick's hand, his t-shirt, with
shaking elbows and loudly whispered profanity.
It's a good five minutes before Pete lifts his head again, presses a kiss to the curve
of Patrick's neck, and says, "Seriously. Jail."
Patrick pats Pete on the back with as much sympathy as he can muster up. Loving,
friendly, Mother Teresa-like sympathy. "I'm sure you'll be very popular."
***
He gets another goodnight kiss at his door; it's not like his dad is just inside with his
finger on the porch light and his eyes on the second hand or anything, but Pete
seems to have some thing about Patrick's boundaries. It's just. Pete's Patrick
Boundaries aren't anywhere near Patrick's actual boundaries, and it drives him a
little insane to crawl into his empty bed and get used to all of his skin being the
same temperature, no hot, hand-sized brand anywhere on him.
Basically, it sucks.
Patrick kicks at his blankets petulantly, but all that earns him is a twisted-up sheet
and a rush of cold air under his covers. Also, the sneaking suspicion that this is
exactly why Pete leaves him at his door at night: he's sixteen. And kind of an idiot.
There are three bulges of spackle on the ceiling that look like bunnies, one that
looks like a T-Rex, and one that looks like either a teapot or an octopus; Patrick can't
decide which, but he names it Fergutrand and stares at it for a while anyway. For
how long, he's not sure, but he's still staring when Pete knocks on his door.
"Um." Maybe Pete didn't knock on his door. Maybe he's asleep. Patrick blinks up at
Fergutrand and goes to pinch himself awake, but decides to fuck off that part and
just says, "Come in."
Pete's paler in the moonlight, the whites of his eyes lit up by the faint light, the
small, careful slice of his smile. "I'm an idiot," he says, shutting the door behind him
with a quiet click. "I can't sleep, because I'm a huge idiot."
Patrick nods. He's not sure if Pete can see him, but it feels like an occasion for
nodding. "I say that all the time," he agrees. "Not the thing about sleeping, but the
part about you being an idiot."

"I can see why I like you so much." Pete's still talking quietly, like there are people
to wake up, like it's not just the two of them rattling around in an empty house. "You
kiss like a god, you can't cook for shit, and you're oh-so-good for my ego."
His knees hit the edge of the bed and jitter, shaking the mattress. Patrick wants to
put a quarter in him, see if he'll really get the thing moving, but he gets the feeling
Pete has a whole bunch of promises ready that add up to "no" on that one.
He tangles his hand up in Pete's instead, yawns into the back of his wrist, and says,
"What's up, Pete?
"I want to sleep with you. Just sleep, I promise, but. I miss you like you're more than
two rooms away."
Patrick's getting a little sick of Pete promising away the things he wants, but he can
have this much, apparently, so he wiggles closer to the wall and shoves the covers
down. "Yeah. Or wait, guest room? The bed's bigger."
"Here," Pete says. He's hot like an electric blanket, wrapping his warmth around
Patrick, his toes tucked under Patrick's calves, his hands curving over Patrick's
shoulder, his elbow, his ribs. "The bed's smaller."
Friday
The first things Patrick registers Friday morning are heat and sweat. Right after
those comes cold. At some point in the night, Pete has managed to twist the sheets
into a bizarre caricature of covers. They're currently covering Patrick's left knee, his
stomach, half of his head, and nothing else. The rest of him is either bumped over
with cold, or sweating where it's covered in Pete.
Pete, it seems, is a furnace when he sleeps. A messy-haired, slightly drooly, openmouthed, sleep-mumbling furnace, who presently has his arms flung around Patrick
and tucked under his back, knuckles twitching restlessly against sweat-slick skin.
And, you know, Patrick's vertebrae. It's pretty far from comfortable, and the alarm
(the most annoying alarm available, the bastard love child of a police siren and a
particularly sultry foghorn) is blaring obnoxiously, just out of reach past Pete's torso,
but Patrick has never wanted to get up less in his life.
He sinks his teeth into the closest available Pete - which turns out to be the skin on
his underarm - and promises himself he'll find some way to balance out the bad
karma he must accrue in the shadow of smug satisfaction he feels when Pete jolts
awake with a series of startled consonants.
"Alarm," Patrick grumbles. "I can't turn it off. There's a house on me. S'very heavy."

The air the alarm clock gets when Pete swats it off the table is pretty impressive.
The way Pete's fingers find each of Patrick's ribs and stroke isn't bad either.
"Don't melt in the shower," he mumbles into Patrick's shoulder, his breath sweet
and hot, floating across Patrick's sleep-wrinkled skin. "I'd miss you."
It's way, way too early for Pete-logic. Patrick snuggles in, tugs Pete's warmth over
his cold side, and exhibits his own share of pre-dawn eloquence with: "Huh?"
"Wicked Witch of the West? Melting? Bucket of water? You weren't making a Wizard
of Oz reference?"
"No." Patrick buries his nose in Pete's neck and shuts his eyes, revels in the spread
of warmth to his numb fingers, toes, hip. "I was just being a dick. Is the alarm still
plugged in?"
He feels Pete's chin brush his hair when he nods, feels the shudder of Pete's yawn
against every inch of pressed-together skin, and smiles when Pete starts back
awake to talk, like he was already asleep, but his last thought was of Patrick, of
forgetting to answer him. "Unfortunately."
Nine minutes, then.
Except nine minutes turns into eighteen, which turns into twenty-seven, which turns
into Pete scrubbing at his eyes and pressing kisses to each of Patrick's fingertips.
"You suck at waking up, dude."
"It's okay," Patrick argues. "If I skip breakfast and wear this shirt to school, all I have
to do is throw on jeans-"
"And brush your teeth."
"-and shoes, and brush my hair-"
"And kiss Pete goodbye."
"-and speed, and I totally have time to sleep for nine more minutes."
"No sleep." Pete clambers on top of him, knees against hips, hands curled over
shoulders, sour breath against Patrick's cheek. "Nine minutes, Patrick," he
wheedles, rocking his hips down, and oh. Oh. There are some things in this world
better than sleep. "Think what we can do with nine minutes."
"Make out?"

Pete presses a smile into Patrick's jaw, but shakes his head no.
"Um?" Patrick rocks up against Pete again, but he can't quite bring himself to
suggest, like, dry humping. Or head. Or, God, sex.
"Nu'uh," Pete whispers, even rocking down again, scraping morning-slippery teeth
over Patrick's earlobe. "Breakfast, Patrick. Coffee, and maybe a bagel. Fruit, if you
swing that way."
Patrick slides his hands hopefully down Pete's sides, tucks them into the elastic of
his pajama pants, presses up harder. "Overrated," he says, only a little breathless.
"Breakfast is the least important meal of the day. Kiss me."
"You could kiss me."
Everything is narrowed down to parts of Pete: his hips, all dirty friction; his teeth,
slippery on Patrick's neck; his hands, pressed against the mattress, knuckles
brushing Patrick's shoulders; his hair, messy ends tickling Patrick's nose. And yeah,
Patrick can kiss him. He can do that. He does do that, turns his head and presses
the first kiss against Pete's temple, the second against his cheek, the third catching
his mouth. Pete's mouth is slimy, stale, too hot, and Patrick's is dry and scorched on
the roof, and it's maybe the best kiss of his whole life, like, ever, because Pete's
finally giving him pressure. It should be uncomfortable, maybe, with Pete's sharp
hipbones, grinding down hard, but it's not. It's nothing like uncomfortable. It's
perfect, and Patrick gasps, arches up, and then Pete's gone, crawling backward,
straddling Patrick's thighs and smiling at him with scrunched up eyes and tight lips.
"Breakfast," he says, firmly. "I have your mom's list of instructions. I can show it to
you, but nowhere on it is keep Patrick in bed all day and rob him of his innocence.
So c'mon. Get up."
Patrick does not appreciate the slap to his thigh as Pete crawls out of bed, and he
does not appreciate the sly, sideways smile Pete gives him when he sets the alarm
clock back on the table, but he does appreciate the play of shadow when Pete
stretches back, his skin tight across his ribs. So, it could be worse, he supposes.
"Fine. But I want waffles. And if I'm late, you have to come sign me in to school."
He showers on autopilot, very nearly washing his hair with his mom's after-shower
lotion, and brushing his teeth for too long, mesmerized by the spray of one errant
stream of water against the tile of the shower stall. When he gets downstairs, Pete
is pulling maple and chocolate syrups out of the fridge one-handed, his cup of
coffee clutched protectively to his chest; he still hasn't brushed his teeth, and the

coffee-sharp, sleep-stale taste of it feels more comfortable than Patrick's cinnamony

toothpaste. It makes his teeth ache. "Chocolate syrup?"
"It's good," Pete says, sneaking another sip of coffee. "Trust me."
It is good. Pete scrapes butter into the waffle's divots and shoves them back into the
toaster oven so it melts, little puddles of gold swimming in his breakfast, and then
he adds more chocolate syrup when Patrick's hand is a little sparing, and then he
plops an apple down next to Patrick's plate with a grin, and sits.
"I'll eat later," he says in response to Patrick's unasked question, the slight angle of
his head. "I slept too well. Food this early will just upset my stomach."
Patrick likes being the reason Pete slept well. He likes being the fingers that Pete
licks excess syrup off of, he likes Pete's toes stacked on top of his tennis shoe,
wiggling, and he really likes the way Pete kisses him goodbye at the door, with
sticky fingers tucked through his belt loops and smiles pressed into the corners of
Patrick's mouth.
"You're grounded," he whispers, knees twitching like he wants to nudge Patrick back
against the wall. "So if you have plans. Cancel them."
"Grounded?"
"So, so grounded."
***
Grounded apparently means coming home to an empty house and a note from Pete
that reads: called into work try not to burn the house down have dinner on the table
when I get home patty pat pattycake?
Patrick makes a mental note to break Pete of nicknames, flags it "urgent," sticks a
mental gold star on it, and gets back in his car for groceries. He ends up with
enchilada sauce, flour tortillas, two packages of cheese, and a set of crossed fingers
that he's hoping will translate to chicken in the freezer. It does, and by the time Pete
gets home two hours later, Patrick has a loaded dishwasher, a clean sink, and
cheese bubbling away in the oven.
He also has the radio on, and a mouthful of The Beatles, and then, suddenly, Pete's
hands on his hips and Pete's breath in his ear, whispering, "I didn't know you could
sing."
"Everyone can sing," Patrick says, wiggling around in the tiny slice of space Pete's

left between himself and the edge of the counter. It's not a lot of space, just enough
that if Patrick presses back hard against the rounded edge, hard enough to bruise,
he can almost, almost breathe. He laughs, or goes to, but then there's not enough
room for anything, let alone breathing, because Pete's hands are under his shirt,
and Pete is nuzzling his throat, licking his pulse.
Pete mumbles, "Not like that, they can't," and licks again, sinks his teeth into
Patrick's skin and swallows the hum of Patrick's response, which was supposed to be
words, would have been words if it weren't for Pete's mouth, and Pete's fingers
sliding under the waistband of his jeans.
"Do it again."
Huh? Patrick is maybe not sure what Pete wants him to do again. He tilts his head
back, holds on to Pete's arms for balance, and belatedly remembers to ask, "What?
Do what?"
"Sing." Pete's mouth on his throat, still, Pete's fingers on the button of his jeans,
Pete's shampoo, vaguely medicinal, swirling around in Patrick's head and he doesn't
understand what Pete wants him to do. Sing? What?
"What?" He can't seem to make his brain work. Or at least, he can't make it work
past knuckles on his stomach and Pete's impatient hum against his jaw.
"I," Pete says slowly, mouthing the words into Patrick's neck with pronounced
enunciation. "Want you. To sing. Right now, so I can feel it."
Suddenly, Patrick can't remember any words to any song ever, and he just wants to
push up against Pete's hands, but he doesn't have room.
"C'mon." It's just a gust of air against Patrick's neck, and he's about ready to sing
anything, to sing Ring Around The Rosy, to sing the theme song to Barney, to sing
It's A Small Fucking World, but the oven timer goes off, right beside them, loud and
blaring.
Pete jumps a little, bites down too hard, and pulls back, wincing. "Sorry," he says,
pressing the side of his foot down toward the floor. "I didn't mean-"
"It's cool." It takes two tries to jab his finger against the timer button and turn it off;
his hands are clumsy, shaking a little.
When Patrick turns around, Pete is half a dozen steps away, grinning, hands shoved
in his pockets. "You actually made dinner? Like a good little housewife, Pattycake?"

"Yeah, um. About that."

They go through two dozen variations of "nickname" "no" "nickname?" "NO" before
Pete finally gets it: Patrick hates and loathes nicknames.
"I liked Pattycake a lot," Pete says mournfully, rubbing a freshly-punched arm. "It
made me want to frost and eat you."
Patrick mumbles, "Too bad," around a bite of too-hot enchilada, and congratulates
himself on pulling his punch. Pete looks like he gets enough bruises on his own.
He shakes more Tabasco onto his food, and lifts an eyebrow when Pete laughs.
"What? What?"
"Your mouth."
"Um?"
"My mouth is burning. Yours, when I kiss you, it's going to be, like, hot."
Patrick feels his face turn about thirteen shades of pink; he jabs his fork at his food,
hides his face behind his cup, takes a deep, long drink of cold water, and says,
"Yeah, um. About that."
"What? No kissing?"
Kissing is awesome. Kissing Pete is somewhere beyond awesome in the way that
the sun is somewhere beyond warm, but. "I thought. Maybe, um. More than kissing."
"Patrick."
"Mom?"
"This is." Pete waves his fork at Patrick, licks a stray thread of melted cheese off of
his lip, and maybe, unless Patrick's mistaken, flushes a little. "Look. I really like you.
But you've got. I mean, you've probably got, like, Stockholm Syndrome."
Patrick is rethinking pulling that punch. "What?"
"Like-" Pete nearly puts out Patrick's eye with the fork-waving this time, which only
shortens his already shrinking life expectancy. "You're stuck here with me. And I'm,
like, older. And the boss of you, so you're mentally all confused, and if I perform
sexual acts upon your underaged person, it would be highly unethical. And also, you
might feel bad about it and then not go out with me."

They're using real plates, and the clink of the ceramic against the coffee table is
loud, sharp, and ominous. Or, at least, it's ominous if Pete has half a brain cell still
sparking somewhere in that head of his. "You think I have Stockholm Syndrome?"
"Maybe?"
"Are you actually retarded? Because I'm pretty sure that there are laws against
taking advantage of the mentally handicapped, even if I am only sixteen."
Patrick takes a lot of pleasure in Pete's wince. He takes even more pleasure in the
way Pete sets his plate carefully on the side table, and unprecedented amounts of
pleasure in the way Pete warily resettles himself on the couch. "Patrick."
"Pete."
"I just. I think, like, I'd like to take you on a date. After your family gets home, and if
you change your mind. I mean, I don't want to go to jail, but that's not even." Pete
sighs, hand jammed in his hair, weak smile painted purple and yellow in the TV's
light. "Jail would suck. You dumping me when your mom gets home would suck, too,
and on a more realistic level."
"You're an idiot."
It's actually really fucking hard to stay annoyed at Pete when he's smiling at you like
that, big teeth and scrunched-up eyes. Hard, but not impossible.
"I want to keep my Patrick," Pete says, and yeah, okay, totally impossible.
Patrick takes another sip of water; before he can lose his courage, with the clink of
ice still humming against his teeth, and the sudden rush of cold to his brain, he
slides onto his knees on the floor and puts his hands on Pete's thighs.
Pete says, "Patrick," again, but it's different this time, less wary, more strained.
"You have two options," Patrick mumbles, trying to channel Alaska, the Arctic, cold
washcloths, anything to cool the flush he feels spreading across his cheeks. "You
can shut up, or I can punch you."
Pete shuts up. This may have something to do with the first press of Patrick's mouth
to his stomach, or maybe the nervous, shaking fumble of Patrick's fingers on his
pants, but either way. He shuts up, and Patrick closes his eyes, and maybe he's
going to make a fool of himself, but at least the lights are dim. Besides, he can
avoid Pete for four days, right? If it goes horribly wrong?

Anyway, all head is good head. Patrick has heard that all head is good head, and the
one time he did this - half-did this - before, it seemed. Okay. It seemed okay, even if
it was awkward, on his knees in front of a bean bag chair, and even if he had nearly
choked when the guy bucked up, and even if he had pulled off, coughing, and
mumbled something about his ride being there, then ran outside, walked two
blocks, and called his mom to come get him.
He probably can't call his mom to come get him this time, but Pete's sharp inhale at
the first touch of Patrick's tongue to his cock - a long, careful lick up the underside makes him bold. And there's a lock on his door, anyway, and he can get in and out
through the window until Tuesday if he really has to, so he takes a deep breath and
licks the head of Pete's cock into his mouth, eyes closed, hands on Pete's hips,
praying to God or Allah or Zeus that Pete doesn't buck, doesn't choke him.
Everything is by feel; Patrick's hand is wrapped around the base, just in case, and
his eyes are tightly closed, and his other hand is resting on Pete's stomach, fingers
stroking random, nervous patterns across skin and tense muscles. It's
simultaneously the hottest and scariest thing that has ever happened to him.
Pete says, "Hey," and Patrick slides his eyes open a little, just a sliver, and hums
questioningly, and then Pete says, "Oh God," and his hands find Patrick's face. Not
pulling, and Pete's hips are unnaturally still - his body is tight, Patrick can feel how
hard Pete is bracing his feet against the carpet, and he gets it, and he's grateful and don't match the rapid, shallow suck of breath into Pete's chest, but Pete's
fingertips are skimming over Patrick's cheeks, his temple, smoothing through his
hair.
He slides his eyes open a little more, watches Pete trap his bottom lip between his
teeth and stare, watches Pete's pupils widen and his teeth get less shiny from too
much air sucked in too fast, and then Pete's fingertips brush across Patrick's jaw, up
to his mouth. Pete rubs his thumb over Patrick's stretched-tight bottom lip, and it's-Patrick is just glad his jeans are still on, zipped up tight. He moans a little, pulls back
so he can suck in a breath and lick Pete's thumb.
"Jesus." When Patrick looks up this time, Pete's arching, his back bowed up off the
back of the sofa, and his eyes are scrunched tightly shut. "Just. Stop for a second,
God." He puts his fingers in Patrick's hair and pushes him off, gentle but insistent,
and says, "I need. I don't want to come yet, fuck, just. Just give me a minute."
Patrick may not have a lot of experience, but he's pretty sure that's a good thing. Or
an okay thing, anyway. He hums agreement into Pete's hip, kisses his way down
strained muscles, and when he gets to Pete's thigh he can't really help himself,
bites down before he realizes what he's doing.

And then Pete's hands are in his hair again, tugging, and Pete moans, says, "Fuck it.
I'll jerk off six times next time. Last all of fifteen minutes or something just, please,
fuck."
This time, when Patrick flushes, it's not from embarrassment; it's the fast, throbbing
rush of blood to his face, his ears. His throat is working, hard, thick swallows that
taste like spit and salt, and he scrunches his eyes closed and remembers the slide
of Pete's hand on himself, tries to mimic it, twists his knuckles up to meet his
mouth. The rhythm doesn't match. He can't get the right angle, so he surges up a
little, higher, until he actually has to bob to get his lips low enough to brush his
hand. Mouth and tongue and fingers and Pete's slippery skin, and Pete's hands in
his hair, and Pete's labored, filthy exhalations. Then it's his own name ringing in his
ears, and Pete coming in hot, thick spurts.
Patrick has to duck down fast to swallow, and even then he misses some, feels it
drip onto his knuckles. He was too shocked to taste it the first time, so he unwraps
his fingers and licks them clean and it's. It's stale, a little. Bitter, but it's Pete, so.
Pete says, "Fuck," again, and then his hands are tangling in Patrick's shirt, fisting
and yanking. Patrick's on the couch before he can blink, with Pete's mouth on his
stomach, lingering while he tugs Patrick's belt open, pressing kisses above Patrick's
jeans as his fingers work at buttons and pull on zippers.
"I'm going to jail," Pete says, calmly, evenly. "And fuck, but I don't even care."
He yanks - doesn't even wait for Patrick to lift his hips, just yanks the fabric out of
the way - and then it's just hot and wet and mouth and oh, fuck. "Oh, fuck," Patrick
chokes, scrambling for something to hold on to, ending up with a fistful of his own
hair and another of sofa.
Pete's fingers are hard on his hips, maybe harder than necessary, and Patrick has a
scattered, snatched thought about bruises tomorrow morning, but then Pete's nose
bumps against his stomach and yeah, bruises. He wants them, because otherwise
there's no way he's going to believe this actually happened.
***
Something about coming in Patrick's mouth seems to have flipped Pete's already
dubious ethical philosophy off like a switch. He wants, like, everything. And he
wants it as soon as he can have it. Which is probably not actually as soon as he'd
like, since they're not already floating in post-coital afterglow by the time the clock
threatens to click over into the wee hours of Saturday morning.

"You don't have lube," Pete announces. He says it without asking first, without even
checking the drawers and really, that's kind of rude.
"I could have lube," Patrick counters, scowling. "I could have, like, a gallon of lube. I
could be lubing it up with bikers every fucking night."
He doesn't, though. Have lube.
"No," Pete says, head shaking, chewing his thumbnail. "You don't have lube."
"I have lotion?" Specifically, he has his mom's Avon lotion. It smells like cucumbers.
"No," Pete says, again, turning his thumb over and gnawing at the nail from the
other side. "I'm not. I mean, we're going to need some lube. This is already going to
be- I just don't want to hurt you."
Pete makes an excellent point. Patrick is emphatically in favor of a lack of pain.
And more than that, maybe, he'd prefer not to have Pete give him that look, that
anguished "I have to do right by you, God as my witness" Scarlett O'Hara-leveldrama look that he's got right now, even kneeling between Patrick's legs, dipping
the bed down with his weight. Every time he shifts - which is often - the comforter
twists under him, until the down liner is rolled up under Patrick's back, prodding him
uncomfortably.
"So," Patrick says slowly, trying to wiggle the bedding flat beneath him, and failing.
"So we'll get lube."
"What, like now?"
It's possible. There are always 24-hour pharmacies and stuff, but Patrick's never
lived the kind of life where he's had to run out for personal lubricant and condoms
at just-past-whore o'clock in the morning, and he's not entirely sure he wants to
start now. It seems so sordid. He's not sure he wants someone's dick in him, if it's
going to be sordid. "There's tomorrow."
Pete's expression yo-yos, falling quickly, and then yanking back up. Patrick wants to
laugh at him, but then he shifts forward, half-naked in the slants of light that sneak
in through the blinds, and he's smooth and right there, nipple rings and concave
stomach and ridiculous hair and all of him is Patrick's, at least for now.
He skims his palms up Pete's arms, traces the tension in his back, and yeah, there's
a part of him that wants to insist on hand lotion, or on throwing on some clothes
and speeding to the pharmacy, but there's another part that just wants to kiss Pete

to sleep and worry about the rest of it in the morning.

That part is maybe the terrified virgin part of him, but he thinks if he tries hard
enough he could still taste Pete in the ridges of his molars, so he's going to let
himself slide on this one.
"Tomorrow," Pete echoes doubtfully. He leans forward more, kisses Patrick's nose,
the rise of his ear. "Yeah?"
He's all stubbly, prickly skin raking over Patrick's cheek while he nuzzles, and he
smells like vanilla ice cream and cinnamon, a little like coffee when he breathes out
(only Pete would drink coffee at midnight, like a giant, stupid fuck you to sleep).
Patrick's toes curl up, sweaty even though his knees are cold; he puts his hands flat
on Pete's stomach, slides his palms up in a wide V to tuck over Pete's shoulders, to
curl around his neck and try to angle his face for kissing. Patrick's mouth tastes like
toothpaste and nerves, and he wants to lick the sweet off of the roof of Pete's
mouth until the sun rises, if possible.
"Yeah," he answers, more a breath than a word. "C'mere."
Saturday
Patrick is probably never going to get over the fact that he lost his virginity to half a
bottle of strawberry flavored lube. Okay, so not technically to the bottle, but there's
so much of it dripping off of Pete's hand that Patrick knows (has an errant thought)
that he's going to have to change the sheets, or else roll around in slippery
strawberry all night.
They start slow; just one finger, so slick that beads of lube drip, rolling down
Patrick's skin, itchy, uncomfortable, but he still gasps and tenses when Pete pushes
in, bites his lip and says, "It's too much." He gets a soft kiss to his stomach and
Pete's finger twisting in more, carefully, slow slow slow in response.
"It's okay," Pete says, mumbled into Patrick's stomach. "Just relax."
He can't. He can't possibly relax, because it's weird, so weird, but Pete keeps
twisting, pressing up, dropping kisses along the seam of Patrick's thigh and then
it's--less weird. And then even less weird, and then, "Oh, God."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Just. Can you-"
Pete does it again, twists and presses and there's something, and it's right there,
almost there and then there, yes, just like that. Good, intensely good, and still

weird, but really, really good. Patrick closes his eyes; there's tension draining out of
his thighs and his shoulders, but it's migrating somewhere around his bellybutton,
thick and hot. Pete just keeps doing that thing, slick finger sliding in and up and out
and then back in until Patrick whines at the loss of it every time. He tries to arch
down into Pete's hand, but Pete is careful, slow, and it's. It's just.
"It's not enough," Patrick complains, gusting the word out on an exhale, trying to
twist against Pete's hands. "It's not. Pete, please."
"Shhh," is all he gets, vibrating against his hip, Pete's finger still moving slow, like,
agonizingly slow. He doesn't relent until Patrick bucks up hard. He feels Pete's
knuckles pressed against him, and there's a burn at the tip of his finger that
reminds Patrick oh yeah, ten minutes ago, I remember that, but it disappears fast
enough, lost in Pete laughing into his skin. He presses the second finger next to the
first, and it's pressure, too much, then in, and it burns, but not as badly as the first.
Or maybe it does, but it's different, and he knows if he can just ease up, let Pete
twist and stroke he'll"Fuck." Yeah, just like that. Every inch is like new ground again, uncomfortable but
with this edge of yes yes yes, and this time Pete knows right where to go, twisting
his knuckles up and raking them against whatever it is that makes heat spike out,
flush through to Patrick's fingertips, his ears. He's impossibly hot, sweat prickling
the crease on his neck, and he doesn't realize he's gripping the comforter until his
nails press so hard through the fabric that his palms sting.
Pete just keeps on, steady, pressing in and out, in and out, in and up and out and
it's slow and careful; he's dark, narrow eyes trained on Patrick's face, he's stubble
he hadn't bothered to shave rubbing Patrick's hip raw, he's bitten lips and quick
breath, and Patrick wants him so bad it hurts, actually hurts, aches in a place he
didn't even know he had.
Patrick whimpers, arches, and says, "Pete," desperate, wanting something he
doesn't even really know how to ask for. "Please."
"Soon." Pete kisses him again, another half-nibbling trip across Patrick's stomach.
"You're not ready."
"There's no such thing as more ready than this," Patrick manages. It's a struggle,
making actual words in actual order, even though telling Pete he's wrong usually
comes so easily.
Pete moves, slippery fingers fumbling at a foil packet, at the cap of the lube,
pouring too much of it into his hands and slicking it over latex. He climbs up,
presses one hand in the mattress next to Patrick's head, and the sharp, alcohol-

strawberry wash of smell makes Patrick's head spin.

"This is gonna," Pete says, breathing the words between kisses scattered along
Patrick's neck. "Tell me if it hurts too much, and I'll stop."
"If you stop," Patrick grits out, "I'm going to kill you."
He feels Pete's other hand, shaking but careful, and then the press of something
bigger, blunter, colder. "I haven't even started."
This is not the time for semantics. Patrick informs Pete of this with another death
threat, and Pete's still laughing when he pushes in. No more than an inch, and it's.
It's different than fingers. Not bad, just different. Patrick makes an impatient noise,
pulses clinging fingertips against Pete's waist, and tries not to come just from the
noise Pete makes when he sinks in another inch, two inches.
After that it's kind of a blur of oh god fuck yes and no no wait ow. Pete mouths
Patrick's neck through the first, laughs his way apologetically through the second,
and at some point, Patrick regains consciousness to realize that every inch of him is
overheated. Blood in his veins too hot, his ears burning, hands slick, sweat pooled in
his bellybutton, and that at some point he's started begging Pete for something he
can't even name.
"Please. Please please please, Pete." Like a chant, or a prayer, spilling from his lips
too fast, breathless. Please and Pete until they run together and he can't tell them
apart, even in his head.
Patrick comes first. He's vividly sure of that much, because he remembers every
callus on Pete's hand raking over him when he comes, and the jerky, erratic slap of
Pete's skin against his. When Pete comes, it's loud, with his shoulders shaking,
spilling noise into the hollow at the base of Patrick's throat. His hand is still on
Patrick's cock; it squeezes, almost too hard, and then Pete melts against him, his
arms dribbling down and pooling on the bed. On the sweaty, sticky bed, the
unpleasantness of which Patrick has plenty of time to ponder, while Pete's shoulders
stop twitching, while his breath levels out.
"We're going to switch to the guest room," Patrick announces. Another bead of lube
runs down his ass - unbearably prickly on stretched, sensitive skin - and drips onto
the sheet. "Or we have to change the sheets. One of the two."
Pete huffs a breath or two of laughter against Patrick's neck, notching his chin on
Patrick's shoulder and rolling his face to the side to smile. It's blinding, smug,
content. "I feel so close to you, too, Patrick."

"Yeah, no, like, I want to cuddle until the sun sets, I do." Patrick tangles his fingers
up in Pete's hair and presses a kiss to his temple, thumbs Pete's eyebrow back into
obedience, and tries to give off snuggly, sentimental vibes, but. "But this sheet is
like a fucking Slip 'n Slide and I am covered in lube. And, um, other stuff. So maybe
we can go make calf eyes at each other in the guest room, where everything is dry.
And if I happen to trip and land on a wet washcloth on the way, then hey, no harm
done."
His nerves don't set back in until he's clean and dry, crawling into the mushy guest
room bed in pajama pants and a t-shirt. Pete stays naked, wanders to the kitchen
and comes back with a glass of water. It's probably stupid to blush now, when
they've already--well. Patrick blushes, but there's a lot of convenient Pete chest to
hide his face against, so that's something.
"Don't freak out," Pete says, pressing the last of a yawn into his fist. "I mean, if
you're freaking out about the satanic kittens on the wallpaper, that's one thing. But
don't freak out about the sex, okay?"
Yeah, okay. "Why not?"
Pete wiggles closer; he ignores the standard personal boundaries implied by things
like, say, putting on a shirt, and presses so close that Patrick actually has to take a
moment to offset their breathing - inhaling when Pete exhales, exhaling when he
inhales - because there's not room enough for both of their chests to rise at the
same time. He puts cool hands on Patrick's back and presses his face to Patrick's
neck, and Patrick knows he's smiling, even if the only things in his line of sight at
the moment are evil kittens. "Because there's no good reason to."
Which is laughable, actually, since Patrick has just had gay sex with a guy he
essentially met five days ago, and he's not even sure that lube's going to come out
in the wash, which is not something he really wants to explain to his mom, thanks.
Still, Pete's warmth is reassuring (even if the vaguely strawberry scent still clinging
to him makes Patrick's face heat more), and he's got fingers splayed out on his
back, stroking, and he's almost to the point where breathing Pete's hair up his nose
doesn't even faze him anymore, so maybe. Maybe.
"I'm going to be sore," he says quietly, but he relents and drapes his arm around
Pete, letting his knees go soft so Pete can stack one between. "I can kind of already
feel it."
"S'okay." Pete's lips buzz against Patrick's skin, mumbling, tickling in a way Patrick is
wholly unused to. "I'll kiss it better later."
***

Waking up is unsettling, to say the least. First, there's the distinct and not entirely
pleasant feeling that he's been fucked up the ass by a not-so-modestly proportioned
object. Which, hey, is what happened. And yeah, it was awesome, but now he just
kind of feels like his spine is going to slither out of his body through places that are
really not supposed to be this loose. That, and the window is ajar; there's a little bit
of a breeze coming through, and it keeps rattling the blinds, sending light flickering
onto the wallpaper. The kittens look like they're on the prowl. On the deathly,
satanic, human-eating kind of prowl. It's kind of creepy.
"That's kind of creepy."
Pete hums, lilts the end of it up in a question; Patrick jerks his chin toward the
wallpaper border.
"Yeah," Pete says, tucking his chin over Patrick's shoulder and nodding. "I know. I've
had nightmares all week. Eaten alive by mewling kittens."
"I think we should get up. Before they get us." Plus, dinner. And maybe a quick stop
to the bathroom, just to make sure nothing has fallen out. But then, definitely,
dinner.
"I think we should stay down," Pete argues. It's a lazy thing, more sincere than it is
convincing, and Patrick's too hungry to give in, so no.
"No." He bites down a little on Pete's shoulder. Sweat and skin and sleep and none
of it doing anything to make Patrick's stomach stop bopping around, buoyant,
fizzing. "M'hungry. Feed me."
Pete's nose finds the curve of Patrick's jaw and nuzzles. It's almost like Pete has
some sort of snuggling superpower; one minute he's next to you on the bed, the
next his hands are up your shirt like they've been woven right into the fabric, and
you can't quite remember a time when your feet weren't tangled with his, and
there's the itchy rumple of pajama pants pressed into your knees by the one he's
got wedged between.
"We've only got a few days," Pete mumbles around sweet, noisy pecks. "I can't
believe you want to waste them eating."
Which is. Well, it's not that Patrick hasn't thought about the fact that his family is
coming home. Obviously he has, every time he notices that his dad's coat isn't on
the hook, and every time he doesn't have to sit through 60 Minutes, and every time
he ends up nibbling on cubes of cheese at six o'clock because Pete can't decide how
he'd like to clog his arteries that particular night, it's just that he hasn't really

thought about it in terms of things ending. Things, in this case, being whatever he
has with Pete.
Patrick says, "Oh," and then kisses Pete so he won't have to say anything else. He
manages a good three minutes of introspection (panic) before he decides to let it go
(gives in) and loses himself in Pete's sleepy kisses and appraising hands. Beyond
losing himself, he loses a good hour, and the next time he looks up with any intent,
he's surprised to see that the kittens have gone dark; they lurk in shadows now, and
all he can see are their tiny, gleaming white eyes. It's probably a trick of the
wallpaper's finish, but whatever. He still wants to get up, get somewhere where
there are lights on, where he can look at Pete and find some imperfection that he
can tell himself he'll be glad to get rid of.
"Seriously," he starts, but Pete cuts him off with a laugh and a, "Yeah, I know, you're
a growing boy. You need food and fresh air, and later we'll water you."
He gets one more kiss as Pete climbs over him to get out of bed, and then he gets
to lie there while Pete digs pajama bottoms out of his suitcase and tugs them on,
shameless in nudity, in stretching into bizarre contortions, and Patrick is going to
need a really strong light, if this plan of his is going to work.
Possibly some kind of high powered spotlight, because not even Pete's shameless
food thievery or loud soup-slurping makes Patrick think anything other than, Shit,
I'm going to miss this. Him. This.
"You are so going to miss me," Pete says, mouth full of happy and won ton soup.
"Admit it."
"Yeah." Patrick makes his voice as dry as he can, wrings it out with all of the twisting
that implies, and rolls his eyes at Pete. "What will I do with myself if I have to eat my
whole meal without interference?"
"Poison your grandfather, probably. Just to get your parents out of town again."
Patrick spears Pete's one remaining egg roll with his chopstick.
"Hey," Pete protests. "That's totally mine. Bad, bad Patrick." Patrick licks Pete's one
remaining egg roll, and Pete raises an eyebrow, smirks. "Seriously, you think that's
going to stop me?"
"I can stop you like this," Patrick says, forcing a grin. He sticks his finger in his
mouth, sucks hard, and when Pete's eyes start to narrow, go all pupils, he pulls it
out and shoves it in Pete's ear.

"Oh God, oh God." Pete's all low-slung jeans and arms curled in when he hits the
floor, more of a thump than an oof, feet still curled around the rung of his tipped
over chair. "Seriously, you know I hate that."
The egg roll is delicious. Patrick shoves half of it in his mouth and smiles, lips
stretching to stay closed around the mess. "I know."
Sunday
Patrick is soaked through with rainwater; he suspects he's also soaked through with
half a lemonade. Pete claims he didn't spill it all down the back of Patrick's shirt, but
wide eyes and bright smiles aside, Patrick has never heard of a weather
phenomenon where one spot rains ice cold for four seconds. Plus, Pete's brand new
cup had been half empty when Patrick turned to glare at him, squinting through the
rain and his plastered-down hair.
"I still think they should have let us ride the Ferris wheel." Pete's hanging half out
the door, dumping water out of his tennis shoes; his jeans are almost black with
damp, his shirt wrinkled up and sodden. Patrick kind of just wants a towel.
He eyes his mom's carpets, the runner up the stairs, trying to calculate how much
damage he could do with his dripping clothes, the sloshy soles of his shoes. It's
probably pretty bad. The rain smells vaguely like plants, and smog, like heavily
watered-down lemons and sugar, and it'll probably seep into the nub, fill the house
with wet dog smell that they won't be able to get rid of by Tuesday, but. Patrick
really does want a towel.
"It was raining," he says absently, watching Pete squirm to keep most of him inside
the house while he wrings out his clothes. "I don't think you can ride carnival rides
in the rain."
"There wasn't any lightning," Pete protests. He tosses his shirt in the corner, on top
of the damp pile of his shoes and socks, his hideous hoodie. Patrick is still fully
dressed; he drips water down Pete's arms when they slide under his shirt. "I wanted
to kiss you in the rain, at the top of the world. Aren't carnies supposed to be moneyhungry and unethical?"
Patrick lifts his arms obediently, letting Pete peel his shirt up and off. It knocks his
hat to the ground, but Pete's hands are on his sides, and even cold and clammy
they make Patrick's skin feel hotter, too hot. He's not really worrying about skewed
glasses or tangled, smooshed-down hair.
"You offered the dude, like, seven bucks," Patrick says. "I think he'd rather go
smoke."

"It's all I had on me."

There's a loud, wet thunk when Patrick's shirt hits the wall. He'd worry about the
spreading pool of water under it, the second one at his feet, but Pete's hands are on
his button, Pete's mouth on his neck muttering, "Shoes, Patrick. Take off your
shoes."
Patrick toes them off and almost stumbles, made clumsy by clingywet jeans and
Pete's hands, his determined fingers prying the zipper down
It is absolutely impossible that Patrick is going to get hard right now. He is cold, and
his skin is goosebumped, and the heat is going, but not quite enough; Patrick can
feel the promise of warmth, but he's still clammy. He thinks about telling Pete this,
but Pete drops to his knees and starts peeling Patrick's jeans off, and it just seems
rude.
Patrick's jeans scrape over his knees - too tight from rain, from running home in it and his thighs touch each other, chilled skin brushing chilled skin. He shivers,
almost stumbles again, and has to brace his hands on Pete's shoulders to stay up.
Which is nice, actually, because Pete's skin is impossibly warm, dark in the spaces
between Patrick's bloodless fingers.
He says, "Pete," because Pete has his jeans shoved to the floor and his hands on the
backs of Patrick's thighs, his mouth pressed just above Patrick's knee.
"You smell so clean," Pete mumbles. "It makes me want to do filthy things to you."
Patrick says, "Oh god," because apparently it's not absolutely impossible that he's
going to get hard right now, not with Pete biting his way up, hot tongue and sharp
teeth. The rest of Patrick is still so chilled that it feels like all of the blood in his body
rushes to wherever Pete's licking. It tingles. Like summer weather and sunburns, but
dizzying.
"Filthy," Pete says again, like Patrick didn't get it the first time. Pete stands, which is
not where Patrick thought this was going, and Patrick makes a vague noise of
protest around the slide of Pete's lips against his own.
Pete mumbles, "Jeans," into the kiss. Patrick is confused, until he realizes that Pete's
stepping on the denim, holding them to the floor, and that his hands are on Patrick's
hips, nudging him backward.
It's an awkward thing, extracting his feet from his jeans, but he manages; Pete's
pushing him back before he even gets the second foot down, bumping them

together from chest to thighs. His eyes are mostly closed - Patrick notices that much
when he slits his own open - and he seems to be navigating the path back toward
the kitchen from memory. They hit the wall in the hallway, hard, with the surface
flat against his back, smooth and somehow softer than Pete, mouth and fingers
biting. He still has his boxers on, laid out tight against his skin by the press of his
mom's wallpaper. Pete pulls him off the wall and aims him toward the arch, almost
gets it this time, but Patrick's shoulder still rolls across the trim on the edge. He
feels every ridge and bevel against his skin, sinking deep to a place where he still
has blood flowing. It's a ridiculous amount of sensation. Patrick moans. He blushes
when Pete grins into his mouth.
Pete starts tugging Patrick's boxers down the minute they cross into the kitchen.
Warm tile under Patrick's feet, and Pete's hands hot on his skin, and then the blocky
edge of the kitchen table against his thighs. He says, "Pete," urgently, because Pete
is still pushing, but Patrick has nowhere to go, and the ridge of the wood is hard,
digging into the back of his legs.
Pete says, "Patrick," grinning still, and then he does something that starts with his
hands tucking under Patrick's knees and ends with Patrick sitting on the table, with
Pete's hand flat on his chest, shoving him down. His head hits the wood; he blinks at
the dark, switched-off light bulbs of the lamp hanging above him, and are they
really going to have sex right here? On the table? That's. Unsanitary.
Before he can protest, there's the rolling chill of his boxers being pulled off, and then
there's Pete's hands disappearing. Patrick struggles up onto his elbows, slippery skin
sliding against the smooth wood of the table, but Pete's head has disappeared, too.
He says, "Pete," again, but a question this time.
He gets another "Filthy," in response, and then Pete is pushing Patrick's knees up
and tucking them over his shoulders. Which is. Huh.
Less "huh" is the first kiss Pete presses to his skin, right in the crease of his thigh,
open mouth and hot tongue. So, so hot. He's still recovering from the shock of that,
from the way he feels it all the way to his toes, when Pete spreads him open and
licks. Patrick has no control over the way his hips jerk off the table. If he did, he'd
have stopped it, because his elbows slide out from under him and he hits the table
hard, knocking his teeth together. He grits out, "Jesus fucking Christ."
Pete stops long enough to say, too clearly, too calm, "I've wanted to do this all day."
He licks again, a long slide of his tongue that flicks up and stops somewhere
insanely sensitive, some spot Patrick didn't even know he had apparently, because
oh God, that's just.
"I want you to do this to me," Pete says, licking again, hard, short, wet, searing laps

of his tongue against skin that Patrick can't possibly arch closer to Pete's mouth. "If
you want to."
And yes. Yes he does, really does, wants Pete's hips bucking against his palms,
wants Pete's hands in his hair, wants Pete to make the noises he can distantly hear
coming out of his own mouth. "Yes yes yes," and "fuck, fuck," and he's not sure if
Pete takes it as agreement and request, but Pete says, "Your fucking mouth," and
ducks his head again.
He presses fingers against Patrick, light, and licks around them, licks in half circles
and longer slicks of tongue that make Patrick moan so loudly he expects the light
above him to rattle. He licks until warmth spreads out from Patrick's stomach,
makes his fingers sweaty and slippery against a smooth table that gives him no
purchase, nothing to hold on to, and then Pete presses his fingers in. Two, Patrick
thinks, which is maybe a little more than he can handle, even if they're slick with
spit. It burns; he has to close his eyes because his head spins, flushed with heat,
thick with static and wantwantwant.
He can't feel the fingernails he's scraping against the table. He's vaguely aware that
there's sweat trapped between the hollow behind his knees and Pete's shoulders,
itchy, but it's nothing compared to the twist of Pete's fingers in him. Deep, crossed,
knuckles pressing Patrick open, and the flat of his tongue raking over stretched,
sensitive skin.
Patrick begs. It seems like the thing to do, babble "Please" at Pete until he relents,
until he slides his mouth up higher, angles his fingers in further, licks up Patrick's
cock and sucks the head into his mouth. It's hotwettight, and it's so fucking good
that Patrick feels it in the tips of his ears, his bellybutton, the soles of his feet. Pete
bobs and opens his mouth on the way back up, licks again, bottom lip scraping.
"I love you like this," Pete says, nowhere near calm, raw, scratchy. "Because it's
mine."
Patrick whimpers. He doesn't know what to do, whether he should press against the
slow, hard twist of Pete's fingers, in and out, in and around and out, or if he should
buck up into Pete's mouth, into the soft buzz of Pete's lips, muttering, "I could get
off on driving you crazy. I could come right now, just from the way you sound."
It's way too much. Patrick can't handle the lazy slide of Pete's tongue and the curve
of his fingers and the images, the idea of Pete getting off like this, onto the kitchen
floor, the underside of the table, maybe with his hand curled loose around his cock,
stroking in time with the press of his fingers into Patrick. He just. He says, "Oh God,
Pete," and splays his hands out flat against the kitchen table, leverage to shove up
when he comes. Pete takes it, swallows hard around Patrick's cock; he pulls his

fingers out and stands, climbs onto the table with his knees to either side of
Patrick's hips, hand on his cock, jerking hard.
He's all heavy breathing, shiny lips and flushed dark skin, chest heaving, knees tight
against Patrick's sides.
Patrick says, "I want--" but doesn't finish the thought. He can't move as fast as
Pete's hand is, not right now, not from this angle, so he slides his hand between
them instead, wiggles it between their bodies and cups Pete's balls. Soft, thumb
swiping across the base of Pete's cock, fingertips stroking anything he can reach,
calluses against soft, taut skin, Pete hissing his response.
Pete says, "Fuck, fuck, Patrick, I'm gonna-" and Patrick says, "Yeah, c'mon," and Pete
comes. Hot, across Patrick's stomach instead of on the floor, pooling in his
bellybutton and dripping down his sides instead of sprayed against the underside of
the table, squished between them when Pete collapses, notches his forehead into
the bend of Patrick's neck.
Patrick is going to have to bleach this table three times before his mom gets home.
He doesn't say it out loud, though, because Pete likes his romance. Instead, he
layers his fingers through Pete's hair and breathes in the fresh-rain-sugar-sweat-salt
smell of him.
"You're gonna think about me," Pete mumbles, sounding smug, breathless. "Every
time you eat at this table."
"Every time," Patrick agrees, even though he knows he won't need the table. He'll
remember Pete every time he so much as breathes.
***
His mom calls that night around six o'clock, like she usually does. Patrick has to
clamber out of the corner of the couch he and Pete are crammed into and go
outside to talk to her. He shivers in the cold, just a t-shirt and pajama pants
between him and the icy air, feet bare against wood so cold it feels harder, frozen
through. It smells like snow, not strong enough to hope school will be canceled, but
enough that he's pretty sure he needs to get up fifteen minutes early in the morning
to let his car warm up, to scrape the ice off of it and shovel his way out of the drive.
It's definitely cold enough that he can blame his watery eyes and shaky voice on it,
cold enough that when his mom asks if he's okay he can wipe his nose clean and
say, "Yeah, just taking out the trash. It's freezing."
Her voice is a little strained, scratchy from winter phone lines and distance, but it's

his mom's voice, and it's so achingly familiar that he almost wants her to be home
right now, making him cookies or yelling at him to do his homework.
He definitely wants her home, actually, but at the same time he needs more time.
More time with Pete, to soak up the infinite number of ways he seems to want to
kiss Patrick, all of his happy noises, his jerky, nightmare-twitching cuddling, the
stupid faces he makes when plays video games, and his unbelievably shitty taste in
music. He needs weeks, months maybe, before he'll feel like he understands Pete.
Patrick is pretty sure he'll never understand what it is Pete sees in him, though, why
they can't be in a room together for longer than three seconds before Pete is on
him, even if it's just a head on his shoulder or fingertips on his wrist.
So he needs her to stay away, but even thinking that when she's asking how he's
holding up, if he's eating, if he's sleeping, if he shrunk his socks in the wash yet, it
makes him feel so guilty he wants to hug her tight and tell her he's sorry.
It doesn't matter, anyway. She'll get home after he's gone to school on Tuesday,
which means he has two more days of waking up with Pete, and one more day of
coming home to Pete, and then... and then, he's not sure. There won't be rooms for
them to be in, and without heads on shoulders and fingertips on wrists, who knows
how long Pete will remember the kid he spent ten days with in some suburban
house twelve minutes across town.
Patrick says he's eating fine, sleeping perfectly, all socks intact, and then he says, "I
love you," on a burst of visible breath, puffing out like fog in winter twilight. He
hangs up and wiggles numb toes against the porch, then goes inside.
Pete is still on the couch, curled up, hands tucked between his thighs. Patrick drops
his phone, it skids across the coffee table and thunks to the floor, but Patrick is
crawling onto the couch, pressing his stinging-cold nose to Pete's shoulder and
sandwiching his knee between Pete's thighs.
"Shit, you're cold," Pete says, half a laugh. He rubs his hands together hard and fast,
and layers them, friction-warmed, on the back of Patrick's neck. "Put on a fucking
sweater next time, okay?"
"It's not that cold."
It is that cold, though, and Pete's warm clothes and warmer skin feel good,
comfortable.
Pete laughs again and says, "They just said on the news that it's going to snow
tomorrow, moron. It totally is that cold." He tugs a blanket off of the couch and
drapes it over them, using his weirdly agile toes to grip the bottom edge and pull it

down over Patrick's legs, his tingly, thawing feet. "How's your, um, grand-person?"
Pete has yet to remember which family member is sick. It makes Patrick smile into
his shoulder; his lips scrape against Pete's threadbare t-shirt, but it's good.
Sensation, feeling something other than cold. "Great-grandmother. She's hanging
in."
"Awesome." Pete stacks his chin on the side of Patrick's head and blows his hair out
of his face. His voice is vague, a little slow, like he's actually watching the TV. "No
funerals for you. Whose pizza crusts would I steal?"
"Please," Patrick scoffs. He wedges his toes between the couch cushions, trying to
press heat in around them, and slips his hands under Pete's shirt, grinning at the
squirmy hiss of complaint he gets. "You'd steal the Pope's crusts."
"Probably. But yours are tastier."
Monday
Pete is really, really bad at sleeping. At his best, he's about half-decent, sleeping
light but solid, fitful; these times, he manages to stay down most of the night. At his
worst, he's tense, mumbling anxious nonsense into his pillow, into Patrick's neck,
into nothing in particular.
The fourth time he wakes Patrick up by squeezing too hard, his whole body stiff, his
arms painfully tight around Patrick's ribs, Patrick seriously considers stabbing him.
He cracks an eye at his watch, at the jaunty green numbers taking great pleasure in
informing him that it is, in fact, 4:01am.
There's nothing within arm's reach to stab Pete with, though, unless he unscrews
the light bulb and shatters it against the edge of the nightstand. He's still
considering this course of action when Pete shifts restlessly, curls his knees up too
tight against Patrick's thighs and mumbles, "Don't," into the over-warm span of
Patrick's back.
Which is, you know, either a coincidence or some pretty amazing sleep-guilting.
Pete twitches again, makes some noise low in his throat that snaps Patrick's resolve
in half. There's no way he's going to be able to fall back asleep, not with Pete like
this. He sighs, and starts peeling Pete's arm off of him.
Pete says, "Don't," again, but clearer, and Patrick shushes him.
"Hey," he whispers, squirming free so he can climb carefully over Pete, away from
the wall, cramming himself between Pete's back and the edge of the bed.

Pete is still mostly curled up, facing the wall Patrick was against just, like, five
seconds ago.
"Scoot," Patrick says. He puts his hands on Pete's back and shifts him forward a
little. He fishes the pillow he was hugging out from under the covers and presses it
to Pete's chest; Pete's arms lock around it, lift it and smoosh it tight against his face.
He inhales, deep, and Patrick curls around him, slides an arm under Pete's neck and
bends it up enough that he can take Pete's hand, press his palm to Pete's knuckles
and lace their fingers. He tucks his other arm against Pete's side, folded up, and
stacks his hand over Pete's heart; his thumb strokes over warm skin. Pete is warm
all over - almost fever-hot - except where the metal of his nipple ring rolls under
Patrick's palm.
Pete mumbles, "M'sorry," but Patrick's pretty sure he's still half asleep, drifting
somewhere between conscious misery and unconscious anxiety, so he shushes him
again.
The shhh lasts too long, until he's singing it more than breathing it, and Pete
wiggles back a little, loses some of the tension from his shoulders. Which is, well. A
sleeping Pete means a sleeping Patrick, and a sleeping Patrick means a happy
Patrick, so.
Patrick sings, pressing the first few words of some remembered lullaby out past his
yawns and too-slow tongue. He gets through three songs, mumbling more often
than is strictly pleasing to the ear, but Pete's gone boneless, slumped back against
Patrick's chest with the pillow hugged tight, with his hand limp against Patrick's and
his heart beating slow and steady under Patrick's palm.
He doesn't look at his watch again. It only takes three deep breaths from the crook
of Pete's neck to fall asleep again, anyway.
***
Morning officially crashes down about two hours later. Two hours of quality sleep do
not a pleasant Patrick make, so the universe fails utterly to be surprised when he
rolls over and viciously smashes his blaring alarm clock.
Pete wiggles and says, drowsily, voice warm, "Morning, sunshine."
Patrick hates everything. He hates the clunking, static sound of the heater working,
he hates the fact that his hair has dried against the part, that it aches down to his
scalp where it bends in the wrong direction, he hates that he's too hot in Pete spots
and not hot enough in non-Pete spots. He hates that the Earth is still orbiting the
sun and that bread is sliced and, especially, that he is fortunate enough to live in a

country where schooling is available to all minors.

"I hate you," he says.
"Just me? Or all of creation?"
"All of creation," he says promptly, kicking ineffectually at Pete's scrambling
warmth, hands wandering and weight settling on top of Patrick. Pete presses his
nose to Patrick's neck, tucks his hands under Patrick's back, and, even as adorable
as he is, makes it impossible for Patrick to go back to sleep. "But especially you. Get
off me."
"Never."
"Now. Right now."
Pete has the nerve to laugh at him, sleep-chapped lips pressed to his collarbone,
thumbs stroking just this side of ticklish. "Never ever ever, and you can't make me."
He can though. He definitely can, it would just take one well-placed knee, and"Hey, heeeeey, watch the fucking knees."
Pete is entirely too fast for ass o'clock in the morning. Patrick really, really hates
that about him.
"I'm fucking sleeping," he grumbles, his hands on Pete's shoulders, trying to shove
him off. "Go away."
There is absolutely no reason to laugh. It's definitely not funny; not Patrick's
headache, his dry mouth, his twitching, sleep-craving eye. Pete's laughing anyway,
though. Mostly because he's an asshole.
"You're an asshole," Patrick says, helpfully, just in case Pete didn't know.
"You adore me." Pete sounds entirely too sure of this, the same way his hands are
stroking the swell of Patrick's back entirely too familiarly.
Patrick glowers at the top of Pete's head, rumpled, messy hair, shiny forehead, his
one visible eyebrow. "Do not."
"Do too."
"Yeah, except not."

The alarm goes off again, with the faint wheezing sound that means Patrick's
abused it one time too many.
"Well," Pete says, catching Patrick's flailing hand and pinning it to the mattress,
incurring even more righteous wrath as the alarm continues to blare, loudly,
screechingly, justifiable-homicidally. "You'll learn to, don't worry."
Patrick says, "Ugh," and glares, but he's lost the heat behind it, because Pete's still
nuzzling, stroking his thumb over Patrick's pulse, and pressing little kisses under his
jaw. It's pretty hard to stay mad. Not to stay miserable, that part goes along with
the sunrise, but mad is pretty impossible. "I will consider forgiving you," he says
grudgingly, "if you will start my car while I'm in the shower. And make me bacon."
"How about I take a shower with you and make you come so hard you forget to hate
all of creation, and me in particular?"
That is maybe not the worst idea Patrick has ever heard. Still, hating everything is
kind of satisfying, in a grim, smash-and-burn kind of way. He bites his lip,
considering, and Pete laughs again and says, "And I'll start your car. And make you
bacon, if you make the eggs."
And that, Patrick thinks, is actually a pretty fair deal.
***
Patrick is painfully, acutely aware that this is the last time he'll be coming home to
Pete. It hurts like breathing too much too-cold air too fast, makes his chest all tight,
squeezes until his eyes feel like they're popping out a little, and like there's not
enough room in his body for his body. His skin is shrinking. His ribs are digging into
his lungs. And then, when he gets home, there's no Pete.
Well, there's no Pete's car. There's still Pete everywhere: Pete's shoes, unmatched,
neon sneakers strewn in the corner, mocking the idea of pairs; Pete's three coffee
cups on the kitchen counter, two with dark, hardened rings beneath them that
Patrick has to scrub to clean up; and Pete's shirt tangled in Patrick's sheets, wound
tight in the fabric like it fell off during naptime and this is how it survived the Pete
Wentz sleep experience, all twisted up and stretched out.
Patrick quietly remakes his rumpled bed; after tomorrow, there won't be any coming
home to his bed after Pete's claimed it for an afternoon nap. He gets light-headed
three times before he smoothes his comforter over the not-quite-flat-enough sheet.
In his closet there's a box of stuffed animals he outgrew sometime around when he

outgrew letting his mom pick out which superhero t-shirt he was going to wear that
day: Batman or Sammy Davis Jr. He digs through rumpled, chewed-up bears, one
blue and stained-black alligator, and a grotesque rubber shrunken head before he
finds the long-armed orange monkey he got when he was eight and named "Pete."
He puts it on his bed.
Immediately, he feels stupid for doing it, but he leaves it there when he turns off the
lights and goes downstairs.
He's halfway down the stairs - right between the picture of him at five (as a
bumblebee) and him at six (as a pirate) - when Pete comes home. And by "comes
home", he means "tumbles in the front door with his arms full of bags, wearing
Patrick's second favorite hoodie, and shouting, "Patrick! Patrick, where are my
fucking Cheetos?"
"Um? Is this, like, a trick question? Am I supposed to guess a bag?"
Pete drops his bags (Sports Authority, Hot Topic, Sephora), and bounds up the first
few steps, tucking Patrick into a combination hug, noogie, tongue kiss that almost
has him sprawled out on the steps.
"No," he says, grinning, dragging Patrick down the stairs at a speed that could only
be described as reckless endangerment. "I sent you like, three texts. About getting
me Cheetos on your way home, and the right kind of Cheetos, and the right size bag
of Cheetos."
Whoops. "I, uh, um. I didn't get them?"
"Any of them? I sent three." Pete is still dragging him, but to the door, and then
digging around in his Hot Topic bag and yanking out a black knit hat covered with
skulls and crossbones, in the oh-so-appealing green that screams "I GLOW IN THE
DARK." "Three very specific and helpful texts about my fucking Cheetos, here, hold
still, let me-" He tugs the hat on, pulls bits of Patrick's hair out from under the edge,
lip bitten, eyes scrunched in concentration. "There. I'm taking your hoodie, so I
bought you a hat to replace it."
That makes absolutely no sense. "I like that hoodie," Patrick says mildly.
"Don't you like the hat?"
Well. Sort of. He cups his palms around Pete's elbows and smiles, kisses him on the
corner of the mouth. "I love the hat." The hat won't keep him warm, but. He's not
going to push it, not today. "But I don't have your Cheetos, sorry."

"You didn't get the messages? Do we need to call your phone company? Because
you're going to need an unlimited plan."
"Um. I kind of didn't check?"
Pete looks dumbfounded, genuinely confused as to why Patrick wouldn't have
checked his messages. But then, Pete's phone is a constant, always peeking out of
his pockets or spinning in his hands, end over end. "You... didn't check them?"
"I usually, uh, don't?"
"Usually don't," Pete echoes.
"Uh, yeah?" Patrick feels a twist of something like guilt in his stomach, pulsing in
time with the slow blink of Pete's lashes.
"Yeah, no," Pete says, shaking the stupor out of his eyes (and his bangs into his
eyes, but hey). "I'm pretty much going to need you to be surgically attached to your
cell. I'm spoiled by all this 24/7 Patrick-time, so I'm going to need you to be, like,
constantly available via phone."
Patrick runs that sentence through his mind a few times. Spoiled, Patrick-time,
constantly available via phone. That doesn't really sound like Pete going back to
whatever magical, caffeine-fueled land he came from and never looking back.
Patrick blinks at him, blankly, but manages to make his mouth work enough to say,
"Oh. But, I thought--" He stops, because he can't quite figure out how to say that he
thought Pete would, you know, seduce a virgin and then head for the hills without
making Pete sound like the world's biggest asshole. "Um."
"You thought?" Pete tugs the hat down a little, far enough that it makes Patrick's ear
bend out uncomfortably. His scalp is kind of sweating; the heater's on too high.
"Uh. I mean, I didn't think we were--after you left, I thought--" He's stuttering,
blushing, tripping over his tongue, and oh man, this is not how he pictured this. He
was cool, in his head. Indifferent. "See you around, Pete," in his head. "Thanks for
memories, Pete," while he brushed his teeth in the morning, planning his goodbyes.
Pete just stares at him. Patrick swears the little chocolate flecks in his eyes are
turning like wheels, putting the whole thing together.
"Okay," Pete says, slowly. "You thought... what? I leave tomorrow and then it's
over?"

Patrick blushes harder. He reclaims his hands and shoves them in his pockets, toes
the ground. "Um. Not, like--"
"Too bad," Pete huffs. "You're not getting rid of me that easily. Seriously, I can give
you phone numbers. I have half a dozen exes who can tell you that there's no
fucking way breaking up with me is that simple. It's, like, a twenty step process.
Sometimes it involves the police and a professional mediator. Me walking out that
door? Is not going to do it."
No, hey, Patrick can handle that. Except the part where he calls Pete's exes. And the
part where, um. "Breaking up?" Really, he'd be happy to stop parroting Pete. Any
time now.
Pete stares at him for what feels like about a year; the clock ticks, the heater clangs,
the wind blows something sharp against the window, and Pete just stares. "Okay,"
he says, finally. "Let me clear this up. You and I are dating. In that you are actually
my boyfriend, and I am actually yours, and if you don't believe me, we can go out
right now and you can try to hook up with someone else. The subsequent property
damage should convince you, I guess, if nothing else does."
"You sound like a lawyer."
"I sound like a jealous boyfriend," Pete corrects, grinning. "Which is what I am, so it
works out. Now put on a fucking coat, so we can go get the goddamn Cheetos and I
can teach you about the miracle of communication."
***
Night comes too fast; the sun whizzes toward the horizon, even as they cook, eat,
wash dishes. Patrick feels as if he's in the middle of a video effect, like he's moving
in normal time and everything else is blur-fast behind him: plants sprouting and
flowering, ice creeping over the mountains, the whole world spinning on its axis like
a child's top.
Pete kisses him until he's dizzy, hands splayed, restless, and says, "I want you to
think about me every time you're in the office, for sure," but Patrick can't possibly
make it that far.
He winds his fingers in Pete's shirt and tugs him down, mumbles, "The stairs. I want
to think about you every time I take the stairs," and he doesn't mind the rug burn at
all, afterwards.
After the afterwards, once they're showered and dressed, socked feet and still-wet
hair, huddling under the covers together in the tiniest slice of bed they can squeeze

into, Patrick tries to coax his eyes to stay open, his brain to keep working; he tries to
memorize every swipe of Pete's thumb over his arm, the exact sound of Pete's bad
knee popping, the smell of his shampoo, the precise pace at which his voice slows,
goes thick and drowsy with sleep.
He fails, of course, only manages to count seventy of Pete's slow, even breaths
before his eyes fall shut.
Tuesday
What Patrick expects to remember most vividly about his ten days with Pete Wentz
(first ten days, he's sure Pete would insist), is the way he smiles, bright and wide,
like he's got a handful of silver linings in his pocket, like there's not a damn thing in
the whole world that's big enough to cast a shadow over him.
Which is why, when he wakes up Tuesday morning to a quiet, watchful Pete, with a
sucked-in lower lip, and dark, solemn eyes, he thinks maybe he's having a bad
dream. Or, like, the house is on fire. That's Pete logic: "The house is on fire, but
Patrick looks so comfortable sleeping, I'll just give him another five minutes."
The alarm hasn't even gone off yet; Patrick's not sure why he woke up. He scrubs
his eyes, yawning, and tries to wiggle closer to Pete. It's not actually possible,
considering he's about to tan through osmosis, seriously, but still. "S'wrong?"
"Couldn't sleep," Pete says, but quietly, all wrong.
Patrick finds a way to press closer: hands under Pete's shirt, nose pressed to the
pulse at the base of his throat, toes tucking under the arches of his feet.
"Hey," he mumbles, trying to gauge how long Pete has been awake by the
temperature of his skin. An hour, maybe. "Sleep is your friend. Embrace the sleep."
"Can't. I just." Pete curls back, turns himself into a cup and fills himself up with
Patrick, stomachs together and his calf looped around Patrick's knee. His hands are
still hot, his breath is in Patrick's hair, and his voice is so thick Patrick thinks he
should be able to feel it, lumping out his throat. "I don't know. You. I have to go to
sleep without you tonight. I'm trying to make that make sense, but it's not working."
Ten days. It's been ten days, and Patrick doesn't know all the ins and outs, he
doesn't know where all the switches are, much less which ones to flip every time,
but he knows a few things.
"It's true," Patrick says, nodding, forehead bumping Pete's Adam's apple. "It sucks
that you're going back to the Ukraine and marrying that abusive old butcher, and
we'll never see each other again, nor will we be able to use the miracle of

technology to communicate. But hey," he kisses Pete's neck, because he can't not,
kisses the round edge of his collarbone. "We'll always have Glenview, right? And
now that I'm sexually awakened, I'm sure I'll be able to find someone--ow."
"Ass," Pete grumbles, but he takes the hand he just smacked the back of Patrick's
head with and winds it up in his hair, tugging gently. "I know. I know, it's like fifteen
minutes--"
"Ten, the way you drive."
"--twenty, the way you do, and I know that, I do. It's just. You've been mine for days,
and now I'll have to, like, schedule time to see you, and it sucks."
Pete is kind of an idiot, sometimes. But an earnest one, and Patrick doesn't know if
Pete's like this with everyone or not, but he lays himself bare like he has a zipper up
the front of his chest. Patrick feels kind of like he needs to find the tab and tug it up
a little, hold some of Pete in for him.
"Don't be retarded," Patrick says, pouring every ounce of seriously irrational levels
of affection he feels into it. "You don't need an appointment. Dude. Just, seriously.
Don't ever make me say this again, but I'll drop all my shit if you want to see me."
"Promise?"
"You know I don't actually usually spend every afternoon and evening home all by
myself, right? Like, that there was stuff I could have gone and done but didn't
because you were here?"
Above him, there's just breath and heartbeat for a measure or two,
thumpthumpthump and the whoosh of air, and then, heavily, "The thing about
honeymoons, Patrick, is that it's hard to maintain- OW."
"Would you shut the fuck up with that?" Not that he doesn't feel Pete's pain, he
does, because as much as he wants his mom to come home, he also wants Pete
tucked against his side in the middle of the night, and it's not something he's
looking forward to giving up, but honestly. "Put on some pants, and we'll go out to
breakfast, and I will play footsie with you under the table, and then maybe you'll
figure out that two more people in Chicago aren't going to make me like you any
less."
They play footsie under the table, and Pete bats his eyelashes at the waitress for
crayons; he draws a tree for what is apparently the express purpose of carving their
initials into it with purple wax.

Nobody looks at them twice. Except maybe when they stand outside the restaurant
and kiss between their cars for twenty minutes, until the dew burns off the metal
and Patrick's ass is numb from being pressed against the door. He's late to school,
but he has the placemat with their tree folded away in his back pocket, so he smiles
the whole way to the Administration office.
***
It's hard when he comes home and Pete isn't there, but he thinks it will be harder
tomorrow, when the rush of MomMomMomMommy isn't there to wash over it. Plus,
it's not weirdly quiet like it feels like it should be: there's jazz ringing through the
house, his father's rich voice singing along, his mother shouting across three rooms
about scurvy and the total lack of fruit in the kitchen.
Patrick doesn't even try for cool, he just tosses his backpack in the corner and
buries his face in his mom's shoulder.
There are hours of questions and stories, a digital camera shoved in his hands so he
can flip through the pictures - family memories on a tiny, crystal-clear screen - and
hear about Aunt Mildred's latest boyfriend.
Then there's dinner (heavy on the greens and heavier on the quizzing about school),
a ten-minute period in which he talks entirely too much about Pete and doesn't fail
to catch his mom's speculative glance, and after, his dad waving him off with an,
"I'll wash the dishes, you go do your stuff."
Only then does he remember that he left his miraculous technological
communication device in his backpack.
He has eleven missed messages. They start with: miss you already at eleven o'clock
in the morning, which must have been when Pete was stepping out of the house,
locking it, dropping the key through the mail slot; progress through tactical error i
have no patrickmemories in my house will email you driections and sersly im going
to superglue your phone to your hand; and end, fifteen minutes ago, with writing
words on pages youre not ready to turn to yet patrick call me when youre done
being a stumph.
Patrick presses the call back button and Pete answers, his voice melting over the
phone line, "Hey."
Patrick grins at the ceiling, and says, "How's the Ukraine?"
"It's cold. The butcher won't let me steal his crusts, and I miss you."

"Sucks." He wiggles under sheets his mom must have washed, because they smell
like springtime and not Pete, but he can close his eyes and pretend. "I can come
reclaim you. What are you doing tomorrow?"