Chapter Text
“What if no one comes,” Patrick says, walking into Pete’s condo.
Pete pauses, closes the door behind him. He’s changed, back into sweats and a tank top; his necklace of thorns peaks out the top. He looks warm and cozy and calm, and not like he’s about to vibrate out of his skin like Patrick is.
“They’ll come,” he answers, calm. Sure. He smells just sweet, a little worried but not about this.
“What if they don’t? What if they do and just boo us? What if it’s—”
“Trick.” Pete cuts him off. He takes two paces over to Patrick, reaches around him to unwind the scarf from his neck. His knuckles brush against Patrick’s neck, and Patrick has a sudden, involuntary flashback to New Years. This is nothing like New Years. The condo is brightly lit, and they’re stone cold sober, and Pete’s hands are practical as they unwrap Patrick. “They’ll come.”
“How do you know, though?” Patrick demands. He shrugs out of his jacket when Pete tugs on the shoulders.
“Because I do.” Pete shrugs at Patrick’s glare. “Because people miss us. Because My Songs is good. Because I kinda don’t care how many people show up as long as you guys do.”
“Pete—”
“And,” Pete goes on, cuts him off. “Because we’re going be amazing, and they’re going to love us.”
Patrick stares at him. He’s so certain. He’s always been so certain of that, ever since that day in the basement, never faltered even when none of the rest of them really believed him. Even when they were driving around in their shitty van playing for pizza.
“But what if they don’t?” Patrick asks again. He doesn’t—he can’t. He’s not a believer.
“They will.” Pete hooks a finger into Patrick’s belt loop and tugs. “And you need a distraction. I was going to maybe FaceTime Bronx, you want in?”
Patrick finds himself following. Finds himself caught up, as usual, in the wake of Pete’s unwavering belief.
Pete’s Chicago condo is much smaller than his LA house, only a couple bedrooms; it’s different than the one he had pre-hiatus, so Patrick hasn’t been there that often, but it still smells like Pete. Feels like Pete’s den, from the random shit he has lying around—hoodies, guitar picks, books, notebooks, doodles—and just from the unspeakable Peteness of it. Patrick breathes easier just being here.
“I’m still mad at you,” he says, as he follows Pete into the kitchen. Pete turns to fuss with the electric kettle. “This is just like—like you got a phone call. That’s what this is. But I’m still mad.”
“Yeah.” Pete turns the water on to boil, takes down a mug that says You’ll scream a latte, and produces a teabag from somewhere. “I know.”
The water boils. It’s silent, but for two people who talk too much, silence isn’t unusual between them, and this one isn’t uncomfortable. It’s just them. Them, like it’s been for over ten years. Even with the last few weeks between them.
The water boils. Pete pours it into the mug over the teabag, then pushes it towards Patrick. Patrick takes it, wraps his hands around it, breathes in the herbal, soothing scent of it.
It can be taking care, Andy’d said, and then, I never said he was good at it, but he was wrong about that. Pete is good at it, often. Pete takes good care of Patrick at times like these, when he’s fussy and nervous and neurotic. When he doesn’t know where to go. When he needs Pete’s dreams to counter his cynicism. That’s the whole problem—Pete is good at being Patrick’s alpha, he just doesn’t want to be.
“I just don’t get it,” he says, suddenly, into the quiet. Pete’s ears prick up like a dog waiting for acknowledgment. “You don’t believe that shit, about omegas. I know you don’t. So why do you get so…” he trails off, waves vaguely.
Pete hums. Pushes around some shit on his counter. Then, “Would you believe me,” he says, slowly. He really has grown up, thinking before he talks. “If I said I didn’t notice?”
“Yes,” Patrick replies, promptly. For someone who’s insistently, professionally navel-gazing, Pete is shockingly oblivious sometimes.
Pete makes a face at him, but keeps going. “I don’t mean to be. I don’t want to like, boss you around or control you or whatever alpha bullshit it feels like.” Patrick nods. Pete keeps going. “I just, man, I don’t know. You were this tiny adorable teenaged omega who I was throwing into all these seedy places, this whole world you had no idea about, and—I had to take care of you. I had to make sure you were okay. I’m not apologizing for that.”
“I could’ve handled it.”
“Well, it was my fault, so you shouldn’t have had to,” Pete insists, his jaw jutting out. “I was the one who had picked a teenager out of his mom’s basement and thrown him on stage, it was up to me to make sure you were okay with it. And yes, Joe, I know,” he goes on, which indeed Patrick was going to say. “But he looked more than fourteen and isn’t an omega, which is bullshit but also true. And you’re…come on, Patrick. You know you’re different.”
Patrick sighs. He’s not willing to concede any of that, for the sake of teenaged him’s pride, but—that’s not really what’s at issue here. That’s the past. Back then, he hadn’t cared about Pete’s hovering.
“I’m not sixteen anymore.”
“I know. But…” Pete shrugs.
“And even when I was—or like, when I was a teenager…you weren’t the one—I…” he trails off, but he tries to give Pete a look to translate what he means, of how often it felt like he’d been thrown into the deep end of being best friends with Pete Wentz, of all the times he’d tried to hold Pete back together with what felt like duct tape and hope and stubbornness, and felt like he was wildly unqualified for the job. Waking up to dozens of calls, one from Pete and the rest all telling him to get to the hospital, and knowing that he’d failed.
“Exactly,” Pete agrees, like Patrick had said all that. “You’ve done so much for me, and you never had to. You—you’ve been half my sanity for ten years, and it was too much for one person and you did it anyway, and I had give something back.”
“I didn’t mind. I don’t mind.” Pete gives him a look, probably flashing back to all of those Folie fights, the things Patrick, frustrated and angry and penned in, had yelled. “I don’t,” Patrick repeats, a promise. He tilts his head. “I don’t trust anyone else to do it right.”
Pete grins. “Precisely.”
“Hm?”
“I don’t trust anyone else to do it right.” He slowly eases his way towards Patrick. “I don’t trust anyone else to do you right—not do you, although, maybe, but you know, take care of you. It’s not about you being an omega. It’s about you being a neurotic obsessive perfectionist who’s had a tough couple of years.”
“Thanks for that.”
Pete looks unabashed. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
Patrick can’t do that, precisely, but, “I don’t need taking care of,” Patrick retorts, “I told you, I’m not sixteen anymore. I don’t—I know how to handle this. All of this. I don’t need you to protect me from the big bad predatory alphas, and I don’t need you to take all the shit about celebrity, and I don’t need you to--”
“Obviously you do!” Pete snaps back. Patrick hadn’t expected that to make him angry. “Because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t end up writing fucking—goodbye blog posts!”
That sits there for a second. Patrick hadn’t expected that, either. They’d talked about that. Or, they hadn’t, but he’d thought Pete had gotten it, when he’d reached out. When he hadn’t talked about it, and instead just—coaxed Patrick into making music again. Into remembering why it was fun. Drowning out the boos.
“It wasn’t a suicide note,” Patrick says, finally. “I wasn’t going to—it was just a bad day. A bad week. A bad month. But it wasn’t...”
“Well it was really fucking scary from where I was sitting.” Pete shoves his hair through his hair, then flexes his hands. He looks like he wants to act, wants to run. “You saying you don’t want to make music anymore means—I don’t know what happens when the songs in your head go out, and I don’t want to. That can’t happen. I won’t let that happen.” This time, he glares at Patrick, intent and sure and fierce. “I’m not going to let that happen, and I’m not apologizing for that. You’ve been the light in my darkness too many times to count. The least I can do is try to be as much of a shield as I can be. Whether that’s from knot-head alphas or fans who don’t know a good thing or paparazzi or the voices in your own head that say you’re failing somehow. I know those voices. You never let me listen to mine. Why should I let you listen to yours?”
“I—” Patrick shuts his mouth. He doesn’t know what to say to that. Doesn’t know how to articulate how that feels, that squirmy warmth of Pete’s declarations, the reluctant pleasure that Pete knows him too well, the—reciprocity of it, phrased like that.
“And I know you’re grown up, and not a kid anymore,” Pete goes on. “You’re different, and that’s fine, I mean, that’s great, I love seeing who you’ve become, I’m so fucking proud of you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to help. However I can.”
“Helping isn’t growling at fucking Travie for daring to have dated me!” Patrick retorts, before he realizes it. He knows how to argue with Pete. He’s not sure he knows how to react to the rest of it, the fierceness of Pete’s declaration. “It’s not—treating me like some helpless omega!”
“It’s not—” Pete slams his hands down onto the counter. Patrick knows him too well to jump. “The only reason I care what your dynamic is is that sometimes you smell so good I can’t think.”
“You literally just said that you thought I was weaker—”
“It’s not fucking weaker to be stuck in a shitty place in the world!” Pete strikes back. “Am I weaker because my brain chemistry is fucked?”
“Of course not—”
“Or because of what color skin my mom has?”
“That’s not—”
“You can have help, Patrick,” Pete keeps going, the full tsunami of his energy and personality crashing down on Patrick. “It’s not weak to need people.”
“It is for me!” Pete wasn’t expecting that, which gives Patrick some tiny satisfaction; he rocks back on his heels. “I’m not a hot alpha, okay? If I’m not what everyone wants, everyone expects, I fail. I make everyone else with me fail. Even with the one thing I can do. I could write the best fucking song in the world and no one would care if it’s not what they wanted, or if I weighed the wrong amount, or if I was too loud for an omega, or too angry, or too quiet, or—or—anything, and all they wanted was the me who was part of you, and if I need people then maybe I really am just that, if I need you, if I even want that, want you as my, what did you say, shield, then that’s just what they think, what they want me to be, and—”
“Trick.” Pete’s somehow next to him, a hand cupping Patrick’s neck, another tilting his chin up. His hands are warm and grounding and settling and Patrick hates that as much as he loves it, how he’s shaking into Pete’s hands. “C’mon, Trick.”
“And you can’t,” Patrick’s still going, can’t stop, not anymore, “You can’t just want that too, just want me to be that, not you, of all people, I can’t—”
Pete’s hand is on his mouth, and Patrick inhales a shaky breath that smells all of him. Pete’s so close, so solid, so known, big dark eyes and full lips and cheekbones Patrick could draw in his sleep, and he—he—
“Patrick,” Pete says, so seriously. “I swear to you, all I have ever wanted is to let you shine.” Patrick makes a sound against Pete’s palm. He’s not sure what it wants to be. “And,” Pete says, each word sure, and certain. “I’ve always been fucking honored just to be a footnote to your story, because you’ve always been the story. The boy with the golden voice.” His own voice is a little hoarse. “The world is wrong, Patrick. You know that. Maybe I fucked you up, getting you famous before you could drink, but if there’s one thing years of therapy have taught me, it’s that you can’t judge yourself based on what the world thinks of you. You’re never going to be that.”
Patrick makes a skeptical noise.
“Yeah, exactly,” Pete agrees, “I think I’d know.” He ducks his head, rests his forehead against Patrick’s. Patrick can feel him breathing. “I listen to Soul Punk a thousand times,” he admits, a whisper.
Patrick’s not surprised. Pete’s sentimental.
“Not because I missed you,” Pete goes on, in answer to what Patrick didn’t say. “Or, not just. But also because it’s fucking brilliant.”
Other people have said it before. Pete’s even said he liked it before. Patrick didn’t know how much he wanted to hear that until Pete said it. That Pete heard the thing that was the heart of him, the part of him he wanted the world to see, and thought it was good. That Pete saw it and knew it, knew him. Knew what it meant.
He tugs at Pete’s hand until he drops it. “You liked it?” he asks, quiet.
He feels as much as sees Pete smile. “Loved it,” he says.
Patrick closes his eyes. “Well,” he says, finally. “You have shitty taste in music.”
That gets a snort out of Pete, but he doesn’t say anything. Just breathes, lets Patrick’s breath synch with his. How many times have they done this? Normally it’d be Pete, unable to sleep or anxious or wild, and Patrick grabbing him to calm him down, but this isn’t the first time Pete’s helped Patrick like this, shaken him out of a spiral.
Patrick doesn’t know how long they breathe like that, before Pete pulls his head back. “We need some John Hughes,” he decides. Patrick gets what he’s doing—distracting, trying to get Patrick to focus on something else—but he’s not wrong. That was—a lot. For Patrick. He’s not Pete, he doesn’t do emotions like that.
“Yeah, okay,” he agrees, and lets Pete herd him into the living room. Lets him fuss and get him a blanket and tuck it around Patrick, then totally ruin that by sitting too close on the couch. Not quite pressed against Patrick, like he might have once, but—close enough that Patrick thinks he’s staying away because he thinks he should, not because he wants to.
It doesn’t make it easier to think. Yes, the smell of him is a little less overwhelming, but Patrick’s still wrapped in his blanket and from this distance he can feel Pete’s gaze, fixed blatantly on him rather than on the Breakfast Club on the TV.
Patrick should be used to it. It’s not like Pete never used to stare. But it makes it impossible to concentrate on the movie, to think about anything but Pete’s nearness, how he’s still like a predator about to pounce.
Finally, “What, Pete?” Patrick demands, as Bender rants on the TV.
Pete doesn’t stop looking at him. “Are you still mad?”
“Thinking about it,” Patrick tells him. “I—good intentions are great, but you’ve got to stop.” Pete nods. Patrick takes a breath. Turns to look at the TV, instead of Pete. “It makes me feel like you don’t trust me.”
He’s expecting an outburst, a protest. Instead, he gets a deep exhale. Maybe Pete has grown up. “Okay, yeah, I get that. I promise to try. Not to stop caring, though. Or interfering when you’re being unhealthy.”
“I don’t have an eating disorder, Pete. I just lost weight.”
“And you don’t have any more to lose.” Pete’s hand darts out to pinch Patrick’s side, before Patrick can dodge it. “But yeah, fine.”
“And growling at any alpha I talk to isn’t helping.”
“It is when they don’t deserve you.”
“Pete.”
“Yeah, okay.” Pete sounds like it’s a huge concession, but Patrick can hear the sincerity in it. “I know you can punch them all on your own, anyway.”
“Damn right.” He can almost feel the flicker of Pete’s smile at that. “Just—stop acting like you’re my alpha when you’re not, and keep acting like my friend, and we’ll be fine.”
“I can do that,” Pete agrees. Patrick can hear him shift. “But, counterpoint—what if I was your alpha?”
Patrick nearly gets whiplash, he turns to look at Pete so quickly. Pete’s watching him steadily, a hint that stupid, charming smirk on his lips.
“What?” Patrick manages to splutter.
“It’s come to my attention recently that I might have been…repressing some feelings I have about you,” Pete goes on, like this is a fucking normal thing to say. To just—put out there. “That were maybe kind of making me act like a knothead around you.” Patrick opens his mouth. Closes it. “In my defense, how was I supposed to know your best friend’s voice wasn’t supposed to go right to your knot?” His voice is dropping, down to the low, rumbling register Patrick remembers from New Years, the tone that Patrick’s only ever heard directed at him that once. “That the scent of his heat wasn’t supposed to drive you insane enough to haunt his door so you could get even a hint? That you aren’t supposed to obsess over his lips and his hands and his ass and—”
“You didn’t,” Patrick cuts him off. “Maybe you do now, because I’m skinny and hotter and more what you like, but—”
Pete apparently gives up on the whole not touching thing. Somehow, he’s straddling Patrick’s thighs, hovering over him. Patrick can feel the weight of him, how good it feels to be pinned down, to be held. “Here’s another story, instead of the one I’ve written you for the past decade,” he says, and the heat in his gaze makes Patrick go quiet. “I only figured it out recently, but—here it is.
“Let’s say there was this guy. He’s fucked up, on and off his meds, and desperate to be seen, to be known. He knows, is sure, that he’s the worst, that he’s going to ruin everything he touches.”
“You weren’t—”
“Maybe he was wrong,” Pete admits, “But that’s what he thought. What he knew then. Anyway. There’s this guy. And then—he meets this boy. This golden boy, this boy whose voice makes the guy see the future, see what they could be, together, who looks at this fucked up guy and sorts him out and puts him together so he makes sense. This boy who is suddenly, immediately, so precious to him, that he’d die rather than see him hurt.” Patrick opens his mouth to protest again, but Pete cuts him off. “And maybe, the guy knows he could fall in love, so easily. Maybe sometimes he looks at this boy and wants to devour him whole. But see, the boy is so young. Too young. Illegally young. And he’s innocent, and pure, and good, and the guy knows that if he were to touch him, then he’d ruin that too.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were,” Pete corrects. “You were all that. But this is a story.” Patrick rolls his eyes, but humors him. It’s getting harder, though, as Pete’s warmth settles over him, as he starts to squirm under Pete. As Pete keeps looking at him, like the whole world could drop away and Pete wouldn’t notice. “So this guy. He can’t ruin the best thing that ever happened to him. So maybe, deep in his subconscious, he shifts it. If this boy is just his best friend, if everything he feels about him is totally platonic, then he can’t hurt him. Then maybe he can keep him.
“And that lasts. Maybe it slips through sometimes, maybe the guy looks at the boy, as he grows up, and sometimes he sees him kissing other alphas and he wants to claim and mark, maybe he can never believe that anyone is treating the boy right, because he knows no one could deserve the boy. Maybe he holds on to that so tight that he fucks everything up.”
“And then the boy goes away. And when he comes back, he’s still the boy—he’s older, he’s calmer, he’s a little less likely to throw tantrums—”
“Hey!”
“But he’s still the boy, he’s still got the most golden voice, he still makes the guy’s head make sense, he’s still the best thing that ever happened to him. But, old habits die hard. So maybe he still thinks he thinks of this guy as his brother, even though the boy’s still got the cutest ass this side of the Atlantic, and,” Pete shifts, reaches out. His thumb hovers right above Patrick’s mouth. “lips begging to be kissed.”
“Except the guy’s subconscious is a little better now. It’s had some therapy, got on the right meds. Had a kid. It’s harder to convince that he needs to protect the boy from himself. So it starts to bleed through. Especially when the boy punches someone and the guy has to save him by pretending to be his boyfriend.”
“That is not—”
“And then, people at a party start talking to him about how he’s not taking care of the boy right, and he gets drunk, and the boy kisses him like woah, and maybe the guy overreacts a little,” Pete goes on, with a little grin that’s not quite sheepish. “Because apparently he’s been watching and thinking about that a lot, in the parts of him that he doesn’t admit exist. And then, when he’s figuring out what the fuck’s happening with that, with what he’s letting himself feel, he does something a little misjudged—” Patrick snorts “—and the boy yells at him, which maybe he needed, but the boy tells him that the guy might want to knot him, and the guy’s subconscious breaks.”
Pete leans down, leans closer. Patrick is engulfed in the sweetness of his scent, can't breathe anything else. “He starts to remember. To know all the things he didn’t before. To notice that it’s not just friends to need to be touching. To think even the boy’s worst habits are adorable. To want to wrap the boy in a blanket and keep him safe from all the worst devils in the world. To notice the boy’s tight pants and slutty shirts.” He plucks at the v-neck Patrick’s wearing, makes Patrick’s scowl. It’s not slutty, it’s comfortable. “But the boy’s still angry, until maybe he’s not anymore.” Pete shifts, but his gaze is steady. That same steady, sure gaze Patrick’s known for what feels like most of his life, that’s looked at Patrick like he was the best thing in the world. “So, ‘Trick. Want to finish the story?
God, does Patrick want to finish the story. It’s—it’s a story that makes sense. If Patrick can believe it. Can believe that Pete wants all of him, not just the parts he’s fought to conform; that Pete isn’t just reacting. That the story’s lasted that long, and it’s not just that Patrick’s skinny now; that Pete really did want him all along. That the bedrock certainty he’d built his relationship with Pete on wasn’t entirely right. That someone can want him for more than just the parts of him he’s tried to make perfect. That Pete, who knows him more than anyone, the bad and awkward and cruel and obsessive parts, could still actually want more of him.
He’s paused enough that Pete shifts, looks worried. “If it’s a bad ending—or like, if you don’t want—we forget this happens. The ending where the boy and the guy are best friends and the guy gets over it is still a good one, because they go on to make kickass music and be best friends and it’s still—”
“No, Pete,” Patrick cuts him off, this time. “No, it’s—I mean, I—” There’s a hopeful smile in Pete’s eyes, that adoration Patrick’s always known from him, no matter what, and Patrick doesn’t know—he can’t—he doesn’t have the words. He’s so fucking sick of words.
So instead he wraps a hand around the back of Pete’s head and tugs him down, and kisses him.
#
It’s not their first kiss. But Patrick wishes it were, because this is—this is the kiss he’d wanted. The kiss he’d dreamed about, behind his crumbling walls. It’s not a showy, paparazzi kiss; it’s not a challenge and a dare and frustration. It’s just—relief. A continuation of the story. It’s Pete’s mouth and his lips and the scent of him sinking into Patrick, how he can feel Pete’s glee in the way he moves over Patrick, can feel his smile against Patrick’s lips.
He pulls back before it gets anywhere, really. “Yeah?” Pete says, and his grin is irrepressible.
“Why’d you stop,” Patrick complains, in response, and Pete’s grin only widens.
“Shoulda known you’d be a brat about this too,” he says, and neatly plucks Patrick’s glasses off his face, sets them—somewhere—and then they’re kissing again, and this time Pete nips at his lower lip, tastes it like he’s been think about this as long as Patrick has, until Patrick gets impatient and opens his mouth to lick into Pete’s, to taste him like he’s seen Pete do so many times. Pete tastes like he smells, like vanilla and warmth and maybe a little bit like garlic from dinner, but Patrick doesn’t care, not when his mouth is so good, so much, and Patrick can feel himself getting squirmy, drags his hands down Pete’s back, gets one in his hair, too many fantasies to count.
“Hey, we can—” Pete pulls back again. Patrick is really not a fan of that trend. “I don’t want to push you into anything, if you want to slow down—”
“You’ve never been able to push me into anything I didn’t want,” Patrick retorts. Pete’s lips are getting swollen and his cheeks are flushed and he looks high his pupils are so big, and Patrick knew what Pete looked like turned on but he never knew how good it would feel to be because of him. “And what I want is to be fucked too hard to think about anything else.”
Pete’s lips curve into a smirk, satisfied and confident and hot. “Gotta keep my singer happy,” he agrees, and stands up. Patrick stares. That is the opposite of what he wanted. And now he feels self-conscious, without Pete covering him up, like Pete can see all the messy parts of him sprawled over the couch, and he knows he smells eager and needy and he can’t—
“I’m taking you to bed,” Pete tells him, and grabs his wrists to pull him up to standing, then tugs him in so that Pete can wraps his arms around him. “I mean, I wish I could take you out first, wine and dine you, maybe get some rose petals…”
Patrick rolls his eyes. “We’re already supposed to be dating.”
“But I want to do this right,” Pete protests. Despite that, his hands are sliding not-so-subtly towards Patrick’s ass. “We didn’t do this for so long because I couldn’t bear the thought of messing it up, I don’t want to be casual now.”
“We didn’t do this for so long,” Patrick agrees, and reaches around himself to just put Pete’s hands on his ass. “So. Now. I heard a lot of promises about how great this was going to be.”
“You are so unromantic,” Pete complains, but he doesn’t object to where his hands are now, either. “Sorry for wanting to be sweet.”
“You’re very sweet,” Patrick agrees. He wraps his arms around Pete’s neck, so he can get closer, licks his lips in the way alphas always like. “Know what would be sweeter?”
“Hm?” Pete seems a little distracted.
“If you fucking fucked me already,” Patrick says, and bites at Pete’s neck to make the point, opposite his scent gland.
Pete shudders. “You make a compelling argument,” he agrees, and his hands tighten on Patrick’s ass, exploring, and it’s so fucking good and it’s been a really long time since Patrick got laid, and Patrick maybe squirms into the touch a little. “Fuck, Patrick.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to get you to do. Now I guess we have to get to a bed, so…”
Pete’s eyes get a light in them Patrick knows and doesn’t trust. “Pete—”
“I bet...”
Patrick realizes a second before Pete moves what he’s going to do, and so he is almost ready for it when Pete boosts him up, ready enough at least to grab onto the closest thing—Pete’s hair—for dear life.
“Oh my god, Pete,” Patrick swears, as Pete stumbles back. He is clearly not big enough for this. “What the fuck?”
“You like alphas who can toss you around, right?” Pete asks, stumbling in the general direction of the bedroom. It is not sexy. Pete might have gotten buffer, and Patrick smaller, but Pete is still not much bigger than Patrick and Patrick is still not that tiny. “I can—”
“I like you not breaking your back right before the show,” Patrick retorts, and wiggles his way out of Pete’s hold, so he’s standing again, somewhere in the hall. “Or do you want to explain that to Bob?”
Pete’s still got that pouty, determined look on, like someone dared him to do something. “I can,” he says, certainly. “I can give you what you want—”
Patrick rolls his eyes, shoves Pete back against the wall, and kisses him again, hard enough that hopefully he gets his point across. Pete falls into it too, the same long, drugging kisses from before, the way he seems to know just where to set his tongue and teeth and lips to get Patrick slick.
It takes a second for Patrick to remember the point, when they pull apart to breathe. It’s hard to remember anything, with Pete this close, with so much permission to touch, to want, to have. With Pete’s hot eyes on him, a fantasy he’d spent so long trying not to dwell on.
He yanks his mind back, enough for words. “You’re what I want,” he says, simply. “Since I was—since before I met you. Since forever.”
Pete’s head is tucked into Patrick’s neck, a familiar pose, though different now, with their goal clear, with Pete’s hands tight on his hips. Patrick’s scent gland throbs with just the thought. “I just want to give you the world,” he mutters. “Anything you want, I wanna—”
Alphas. “Pete.” Patrick tips Pete’s head up. “You’ve given me the world already. Or what do you think the past ten years have been?” Pete opens his mouth to protest, but Patrick really doesn’t want emotions right now, he wants to get fucked. And he knows from long experience that you can’t reason with Pete’s self-deprecation. “Now, you talked a big game about what it was going to be like between us. Time to put your money where your mouth was, Wentz.”
Patrick can feel Pete take a breath, then look into Patrick’s face. Whatever he saw there must be enough, because he grins, first a little forced, then real, that mischievous, delighted grin that’s carried Patrick with him for a decade.
“I’ll put something where my mouth was,” he agrees, and Patrick’s busy groaning at that so he doesn’t protest when Pete herds him down the hall, into the bedroom. Patrick gets a sense of a Pete bedroom—surprisingly neat, notebooks on the nightstand and pictures on the walls and some brightly colored hoodie on a chair—before Pete swings him down onto the bed, follows him down so he’s straddling him again, pinning down his hips, then he’s kissing Patrick again, and he seems to have gotten with the program because this is a Pete Wentz kiss, the sort of thing Patrick’s caught glimpses of, wet and hot and overwhelming. He moves from Patrick’s mouth to his jaw, his neck, and it’s—he really must have watched, or something, because somehow he knows just where to bite, where to put pressure, to have Patrick hot and panting grinding up into him.
Pete’s relentless, though, mouths down Patrick’s neck, to his chest, shoving aside the collar of his shirt and tasting the skin there until he can’t anymore, which Patrick only notice when he pulls back.
“What?” he gets out, half-dazed. Pete is smirking very hard, which Patrick would be annoyed about except maybe he deserves it.
“Shirt off,” Pete says, and his hand are already at the hem when Patrick’s brain catches up to him, and he traps Pete’s hands there against his waist.
“I—it’s not—I mean, you know what I used to look like,” he mutters. It’s not news to Pete, but he doesn’t want the shirt to come off and Pete to see all the stretch marks and freak out, or something.
Pete sighs, like this is all very irritating, which belies the softness with which his thumb strokes across the skin above Patrick’s jeans. “If you want it to stay on, it can,” he says, “But I’ve seen you without your shirt before, it hasn’t frightened me away.”
Patrick supposes that’s true. Pete saw him without his shirt even at his heaviest, and he’s still here. Patrick nods.
Pete takes that for what it is, and eases the shirt up and off. When Patrick emerges from the other side, Pete’s really grinning at him, the kind of expression he gets when a song comes together. “What?” Patrick demands.
“A shirtless Patrick Stump in my bed,” Pete says, like an explanation. Like that’s enough.
“You too,” Patrick retorts, because he doesn’t have anything else to say. Pete sits back and strips off his shirt without any further commentary. It’s—Patrick’s seen Pete without his shirt plenty, obviously. Pete both occasionally rejects clothes as a confining societal concept, and also is vain and knows how hot he is. Patrick’s seen him shirtless when he was twenty-one and a weedy kid, and he saw him at 28 and knowing that the paparazzi would catch a picture whenever it happened, but it’s still...
Pete preens under Patrick’s gaze.
“Come here,” Patrick demands, but when Pete leans down Patrick gets the leverage to roll them over, so he can spend some time tasting all the things he’s spent so much time looking not touching—sucking along the edges of the thorn necklace, tasting the edges of Pete’s abs, down to biting at the edges of the bartskull in a way that has Pete bucking satisfyingly under him, his hands scraping over Patrick’s back and into his hair.
That decides Patrick. “I’m going to blow you now,” he informs Pete, then adds, “Unless you don’t want—”
“Trick,” Pete groans. “Just don’t—I want to fuck you too.”
“Don’t worry, you will,” Patrick says, and Pete’s sweats are easy enough to tug down out of his way.
Pete’s dick isn’t a surprise either, another remnant of too much time living together. Not even Pete mostly hard; years crammed together in various modes of transportation means no privacy at all. But this close, ready for Patrick to look at, to touch, no shame in it…Patrick licks up the side, and the sound Pete makes is Patrick’s new favorite song.
“Fuck, ‘Trick,” Pete gets out, because of course he’s loud, and then he keeps going, as Patrick takes his time, reveling in the scent of him, the taste, how Pete reacts when he sucks on the tip or takes him down further. He can feel the knot starting to form at the end, starts to pay that a little more attention as it swells. “Trick, your fucking mouth, how are you, I can’t—” It’s all babbles, praise and wonder and when Patrick glances up Pete’s staring down at him awestruck, which goes straight to Patrick’s own dick, makes him suck harder. Maybe Patrick does like dirty talk, when it’s from Pete.
Then Pete’s hands are in his hair and he’s tugging him off. Patrick lets him, but he knows he’s pouting when he sits up, licks his lips.
“If you want me to fuck you, you’ve got to stop,” Pete informs him. He’s red-faced, his hair messy like he was pulling on it too, and it’s—Patrick’s never made Pete Wentz this sort of mess. Pete’s this turned on about him. It’s a head trip of its own.
Pete turns his head aside, closes his eyes. “No, really, you’ve got to—stop,” he says, and he’s taking deep breaths. Patrick can feel how true that is, can see just how hard and red Pete’s dick is, the knot starting to swell, and it gives him the courage to stand up, unzip his jeans.
It takes a little bit of maneuvering to get them off—skinny jeans are great for everything except that—and by the time he’s wriggled out of them, Pete scooted up the bed and his eyes are open again, and they’re just hot and intent on him. Patrick can feel the slick starting to gather, how it’ll start to drip in a second, tries not to think about that.
“Told you your jeans are a problem,” Pete says. He props himself up on one elbow, watches as Patrick kicks the jeans off the rest of the way.
“So I should stop wearing them?”
“You should stop wearing all pants,” Pete tells him. He reaches out, tugs Patrick back towards him. Patrick lets him, lets him tumble Patrick down next to him. “No pants-Patrick.”
“I think the label might have something to say about that,” Patrick retorts, and Pete shakes his head, biting his lip to try to keep a straight face.
“Are you kidding? Do you know how many more tickets we’d sell?”
“I think you’re confusing us,” Patrick retorts, and it’s supposed to be a joke but Pete gets this look, a little pained and a lot determined.
“Trick,” Pete says, his voice low and hoarse, and he rolls over, so he can bite at Patrick’s thighs. Patrick lets him, though he bites at his lip, looks up so he doesn’t have to look at it. Even if feeling it isn’t any better, his thighs are sensitive, and he can feel how wet he’s getting, how Pete’ll see it soon. “I’m going to get you to believe how gorgeous you are if it takes me the rest of our lives.”
Patrick has a good response, he really does, but unfortunately it gets lost in the wet heat of Pete’s mouth on his dick, the scrape of his callouses against Patrick’s skin as he smooths Patrick’s legs apart, the look of Pete between his legs, the way the room stinks of them and the sickly smell of how turned on Patrick is, it’s all—Patrick’s head tips back his hands clutching at the bed, as Pete mumbles nothing words into Patrick’s thighs, how his mouth—
“Fuck, Trick, you taste so good,” Pete says, and Patrick looks down and his mouth is shiny with Patrick’s slick, and then he fucking licks it—
“Fuck, Pete, come on,” Patrick demands, and arches his back to give Pete better access, all shame lost in the heat between them.
And Pete’s never not given Patrick what he needs, never not known how to answer Patrick’s demands, and so his finger slides into Patrick, gentle but not hesitating, and Patrick grinds down onto it, onto the feeling of Pete in him, the way Pete’s mouth has dropped open a little like he can’t believe this is happening either.
“More,” Patrick tells him, and Pete does it, adds another finger, and his hips are grinding into the mattress too, evidence that he likes this too, and then—
“Okay, fucking knot me already,” Patrick decides.
Pete makes a face. “How long has it been? I don’t want—”
“If you don’t fucking fuck me right fucking now, I will go out onto the street and find the first knot I can,” Patrick spits, and Pete laughs, delighted.
“You have a filthy fucking mouth, Patrick Stump,” he replies, but he also pulls his fingers out of Patrick, which Patrick is not pleased about, and leans over Patrick to find a condom, which he is.
“You just saw how filthy my mouth is,” Patrick retorts. “I’m not joking, I’ll do it.”
“Yes you are,” Pete tells him. He’s back, apparently having located a condom, and Patrick can’t look away from his rolling the condom onto his dick. he leans over Patrick, his mouth a breath away from his ear. “Want to know how I know?”
He nips at Patrick’s earlobe, which Patrick didn’t know was a thing but makes him yelp now as it sends a shiver all the way down him. “How?”
“Because it is February in Chicago and your dick would freeze off,” Pete tells him, and Patrick groans and shoves at him. Pete’s still laughing as he dodges back, that dick. He’s so—Pete, about even this. Still making everything an adventure, making it easy. “You’d never! You are way too practical for that.”
“Maybe I’ll call someone up and let them talk me through it,” Patrick repeats, and that gets Pete’s attention. His eyes focus, hot glinting gold.
“That,” he murmurs, “Is not fair.”
“I don’t want to be fair, I want to be fucked.” He pauses. Pete pauses too.
“We’ll remember that line,” Pete agrees, and then he’s kissing Patrick again, and Patrick pushes into it, helpless not to under the onslaught of Pete’s mouth. “How do you want to do this?”
“Hmm?” Patrick thinks he knows what words are.
“If you don’t have a preference for how we end up knotted—”
“Oh, yeah.” Patrick does, actually. He rolls over, onto all fours, arches his back at Pete’s low oath. “This’ll be better.”
“Yeah it will.” Patrick rolls his eyes at the sheets, but then Pete’s hands are on his hips again, and he’s—then Pete’s dick is pushing into him, and Patrick moans and pushes back, and it’s—he is never going to tell Pete this, but it feels right in a way no one else ever has, feels like he was made for this, for Pete in him and around him and for him,
“Holy fuck, Patrick,” Pete murmurs, like he feels it too. His hand strokes down Patrick’s back, thumbs over the lines on his hips. “You’re so…”
Patrick doesn’t think he can handle whatever word Pete’s about to say. “Fuck me,” he orders, and Pete gives Patrick’s back one more stroke and does.
Pete fucks with a musician’s rhythm and energy from Patrick doesn’t know where; if this is what was happening all those years, he doesn’t blame the scene kids who lined up for him. Pete seems to get where he needs it, the right angle, how to go—it’s only when he manages to hear Pete’s words that he figures out that it’s because he’s babbling instructions and nonsense mixed together, because Pete’s saying shit like, “Your voice,” and “that better?” after a particularly loud groan and “okay babe, I got this,” and all other sorts of nonsense except that Patrick’s never been able not to listen to Pete, and the sound of his voice and the scent of them, mixed together, and the feel of him pounding into Patrick and everything is building, and then Pete’s hand is on his dick, and Patrick groans and pushes back against him, feels Pete mouthing over his scent gland, and his teeth brush against it and it all crescendos over Patrick as he comes, moaning against Pete’s hand.
“Fuck, Trick,” Pete mutters, as Patrick sags, boneless, into him. “You sound like—can I—”
“Knot me, Pete,” Patrick tells him, and Pete lets out a relieved breath and just—lets go, all of his wild energy driven into Patrick, and it’s not exactly comfortable but it satisfies something deep and instinctual in Patrick, something that soothes even as he wants to cry out from the overstimulation.
“Talk to me,” Pete says, begs. “Wanna hear your voice, ‘Trick—”
Patrick doesn’t think he’s especially good at dirty talk, but he’s feeling pretty generous, right now. “Want do you want to hear, Pete?” He asks. “Wanna hear about how I feel, after you fucked me so well? About how good you are compared to anyone else I’ve ever had? About how I’m going to be feeling this, tomorrow—” Pete comes on a choked groan, and Patrick can feel it, can feel the pulsing in him, the sudden fullness, the catch of knotting that makes Patrick whine, quiet, as Pete collapses over him.
Patrick lets him have a moment like that, nosing at Patrick’s back, before he flattens out, gets Pete onto his side too, so they can be more comfortable. Pete goes, lets him rearrange them, and immediately throws an arm over Patrick’s side, a leg over his thigh, and tucks his nose into Patrick’s neck. Of course Pete will take any opportunity to cuddle.
It’s nice, though, Pete wrapped around him. Pete’s hand stroking soft circles on his belly. They’d fucked. They’d really—Patrick had never thought, but—it happened. He mentally high fives his teenaged self. It had happened, and it’d been good.
Patrick lets himself drift, in Pete’s arms, the feeling of Pete full in him, connected to him. The rest of our lives, Pete had said, he’d do this for the rest of our lives. Pete says shit, Patrick knows this, ridiculous, extravagant things he doesn’t mean after the moment had passed, but…this isn’t casual. This can’t be casual, not with everything they’d talked about. Everything Pete had said about Patrick.
The more Patrick thinks, though, the more he remembers. The single tomorrow. The concert. Getting booed off stage. Albums tanking. He just got Pete, but if he fucks this—
“But seriously, what if they don’t come?” He asks, urgent. Pete makes a sleepy, uncomprehending noise. “Tomorrow. What if no one comes?”
“Then we play a great concert for ourselves,” Pete slurs against Patrick’s sweaty hairline.
“But what if no one buys the album? The label—”
“Then we move back to Chicago and you write songs and I pretend to write poetry and we’ll be professional Damned Things groupies,” Pete says, like all of that makes sense. “But that’s not happening.”
“How can you be so sure?” Patrick demands. Pete’s hand smooths down his stomach, callouses soothingly rough against his skin.
“Well, it helps that I’m still knot deep in this sexy omega who just fucked my brains out,” Pete replies, still sounding languid.
“Pete, seriously.”
“Seriously?” Pete sounds a little more with it. “I’m sure because all the kids out there have missed us. I’m sure because if this can happen,” he tugs Patrick closer, shifts his knot inside him, “Than anything can. I’m sure,” he says a third time, certain like only he can be, that belief that’s carried Patrick for a decade, that’s never wavered, “Because you are still my brilliant, amazing golden ticket, and we’ve still got higher to fly.”
Patrick opens his mouth to protest, to say—something. But Pete’s hand slides over it.
“Everyone is going to love you,” he says, and it’s a statement, not even a promise, “They always do. And if they don’t, I’ll make them.”
Patrick smiles despite himself, and the pure Pete of it. Pete’s still muffling him, so he can’t say anything, but he tugs Pete’s other arm over him, a wordless thank you.
They lie there in silence for a little while longer. The anxiety tries to come back, but it’s hard, with Pete still tucked up behind him, the echo of his words. It’s easier to drift, to revel in the feel of Pete, to think about what this might be.
“What’s that?” Pete asks, quietly.
“What?”
“You were humming.”
“Oh.” He was, Patrick realizes—something that feels like this moment, some happy contented melody smoothing over the bass tension threatening, something about anticipation and exhaling all at once. “I guess I was.”
“I liked it,” Pete tells him. “Don’t think I have words for it, though.”
“It’s okay.” Patrick turns his head so he can brush Pete’s cheek with a kiss. “It doesn’t need them.”
#
The morning is not quite so picturesque. Neither of them remembered to set an alarm for the god awful call time, and so they’re woken up by Patrick’s phone ringing loudly, Bob demanding why his driver says there’s no car at his place. Then it’s a scramble of getting ready—no sexy morning shower; instead, they do the morning routine that’s more habit than anything. Pete, who’s better at mornings, shoves Patrick towards the coffee maker and goes to shower himself; by the time he’s out Patrick is human and can handle his own shower. Both their clothes from last night are pretty gross—Pete looks way too proud of himself for that—so Patrick pulls on some of Pete’s jeans and a black shirt that hopefully looks somewhat innocuous, then they’re both tumbling downstairs.
“Where are my—”
“Here,” Pete says, and plucks Patrick’s glasses off the table, sets them on Patrick’s nose. Pete’s smiling face comes into focus. “There you are.”
“Here I am,” Patrick agrees. He doesn’t—what do they do now, poised here, close and on the edge—
A honk comes from outside.
“We’ve got to go,” Pete says, and herds Patrick to the hall, where he grabs his boots and jacket. He really hopes whatever wardrobe they have for this shoot has a hat.
Pete steals glances at him all through the car ride, over the rim of his travel mug. Patrick lets him for a while, but finally, “What?” He demands.
Pete shrugs, smirks. His fingers tangle in the hem of Patrick’s shirt, which gives him a hint. “I like you in my clothes,” he says.
Patrick rolls his eyes, though he looks away from Pete before he does. “Be more a stereotype.”
“Fine, I will.” Pete leans over, into Patrick’s space, noses at his neck. Patrick steals a glance at the driver, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “It makes you smell like me.”
“Control the possessiveness, man,” Patrick tells him, but he can’t help the smile. He doesn’t mind smelling like Pete either, when it’s—real.
“I will, I promise.” Pete licks at Patrick’s neck, which is definitely not sexy in this context, but is the sort of thing Patrick is used to enough to let happen. “Or, I mean, I’ll try, I can’t promise not to get jealous when I have the best boyfriend.”
They hadn’t used that word yet. The rest of our lives, Pete had said, but—
“Right?” Pete asks, and lifts his head to look at Patrick, the worry clear in his face, on those open brown eyes that Patrick’s known and loved so long. “Boyfriends? This wasn’t some sort of, I don’t know—I mean, if you don’t want, obviously—”
“I’m in this,” Patrick cuts Pete off, and, blushing, presses a kiss to his mouth. Pete smiles into it. “Can you trust me on that and not freak out if I talk to anyone else?”
“Yes.” Pete pauses, then turns, tucks himself against Patrick’s side in another classic Pete Wentz move. “I do. Trust you, you know. Just because I get irrational about how you could do better doesn’t mean I don’t.”
“You brainwashed me when I was way too young for that,” Patrick retorts, and Pete snorts. Then he turns his face into Patrick’s shoulder.
“And—I’ll try to be better. About taking care of you like you want. And not fussing.”
“It’s just…” Patrick sighs. “Trust me, right? About this too.”
“I do.” Pete straightens, looks right at Patrick, his eyes clear and sure, the vow a little too heavy for the pre-dawn Chicago streets. “You’re all grown up, I know that. I just…like you needing me too.”
“I do need you.” Patrick swallows. Doesn’t look away. Maybe, he can admit this. To Pete, at least, who doesn’t think less of him for it. “Obviously, I need—I was a mess without you. I need you to believe in me, and like, to keep me from going crazy into the music, and all the shit we do. To get me out of my head.”
“I do think I’m good at that,” Pete agrees, and waggles his eyebrows. Patrick refuses to be charmed. “I could do that now—”
“I am not showing up to this shoot looking like we just made out in a car.”
“We’ll just go to makeup anyway.”
“People will see us first.”
“They all think we’re fucking anyway.”
“Not Andy and Joe.”
“Patrick.” Pete grabs Patrick’s shoulders, overdramatic. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but they really aren’t going to be surprised. They basically gave me a shovel talk already.”
“I know, but…” Patrick shakes his head. Then, “Wait, why do you get the shovel talk? Shouldn’t they be giving me the shovel talk too?”
“They know your pure gentle heart would never hurt me,” Pete says, then, “Ow, wait, no, I take it back, you definitely need the shovel talk!” when Patrick swats at his head.
When they get out of the car, Andy and Joe are already there, waiting for them, the bonfire already started in the open, frozen field. Patrick is wearing his own jacket, and his own boots, and he did not let Pete get away with anything in the car, and yet—one look at them, and Joe is laughing, and Andy’s shaking his head.
“You guys good now?” Joe asks, and Pete grins, and takes Patrick’s hand, laces their fingers together. Patrick lets him with a sigh.
“Yeah, we’re golden.”
“Man, this is going to be insufferable,” Joe tells Andy. “I thought Pete couldn’t get more sickeningly sweet about Patrick.”
Andy looks at them both, but his eyes linger on Patrick. Patrick nods. He’s good.
“He can’t get worse,” Andy decides, “So it’s only up from here. Maybe Patrick will keep him in line.”
“Yeah, Pattycakes. Gonna keep me in line?” Pete asks, leering at Patrick. Patrick rolls his eyes, and doesn’t let go of his hand.
#
They show up. Photoshoot, announcement, interviews, and show, and when they get to the show—the kids show up.
The Subterranean is full, and screaming, and singing their songs back to them, the room reeking of excitement and sweat and a show, and Patrick is soaked through from the heat of the lights and the bodies crammed into the venue, because it sold out in seconds, someone had said.
And Patrick sings, and everyone yells back at him, caught up in this miracle they’ve made, and then—
“This is our last song,” Pete yells into the mic, over the sound of vamping, “Last chance to dance.”
He glances at Patrick, and Patrick looks over at Joe, who nods; back at Andy, who’s glistening with sweat and grinning too, and then he starts to play.
“I’m good to go,” he sings, and it’s caught by hundreds of voices, of kids struggling onto the stage only to leap back down, and Patrick closes his eyes for a second, lets himself just—feel it, feel the music and the energy and the love echoed a thousand times. Maybe they don’t know all of him, don’t want all of him, but they want this, they want what he can give, they love this, he can do this.
He opens his eyes, and turns, and Pete is grinning at him, glowing bright as only he can, incandescent in stage lights and adoration, and then he smirks, eyes softening, and mouths I told you so.
Patrick makes a face back, turns to the stage. Then Pete’s pushing past him, diving into the crowd; Patrick glances at Joe for quick, fond eyeroll. Then he’s looking out at the crowd, and Pete’s there, held up by their fans, his face lit with it, and looking right at Patrick, like Patrick’s the one who made this happen.
“Me and Pete,” Patrick sings, and tries to meet his eyes back, tries to tell him everything he’s ever done for him, everything they’ll do. Pete blows a kiss back, and Patrick’s—here, with his band and his music and the people who love him, love them, with Pete smiling at him like he gets that, Patrick’s whole. “In the wake of Saturday, Saturday…”