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Pete fumbled for Patrick’s room key in his wallet and jammed it into the door, which he flung open with enough force that he had to hold his arm to stop it when it rebounded. The younger boy was half sleep and he barely lifted his head at the noise because he already knew who it was.
“Jesus, Pete, what the fuck?” he groaned, pulling the covers over his head.
“You’re a slut, apparently.” He stepped into the room as the door clicked shut behind him.
That statement grabbed Patrick’s attention like a shot had gone off. “Excuse me?” he asked, voice low and dangerous as he sat straight up, moving to the edge of the bed. His hair was messed up and he was wearing pajamas, but he still looked like he was capable of murder at that moment.
Pete didn’t seem to care, already having plunged in headfirst when he opened this can of worms. “Is there anyone on this tour you’ve haven’t slept with besides me?” Pete’s face didn’t match the tone of his voice. Not quite malice, even though he was clearly going for the cuts. No, this was some sort of upset trying to hide behind being an asshole and Patrick was having none of it.
“My sex life is none of your god damn business and you better get the fuck out of here before I hit you.” Patrick didn’t threaten violence lightly, but even that didn’t seem enough to phase Pete. If anything, the challenge seemed to embolden him
He took a step forward, sticking his chin out. “And how am I supposed to feel when you’ll sleep with a nineteen year old drum tech but not me?”
Patrick sighed and raked a hand backward through his hair. He was so fucking done. “I don’t know, Pete. I’m not in charge of your emotions.”
The older boy’s head jerked back like he’d been slapped. Any pretense of confidence or anger slid from his face with that comment. Patrick knew immediately that he had fucked up.
Pete, I–”
“Forget it,” the older boy said coldly, turning back to the door.
“But, I—“
“Fuck you,” Pete snapped, yanking the door open. “Or someone else. I don’t fucking care.”
Then the door was slamming and Patrick’s face was in his hands and sex really did complicate everything.
---
They didn’t say much to each other for the rest of the day, but Pete crawled into Patrick’s bunk on the bus that night. The singer didn't end up going to bed until almost five, so he knew the other boy had waited up for him. “Are you not mad at me anymore?” he whispered when he felt arms wrap around him from behind.
“Depends,” Pete returned, just as softly, his chin resting on Patrick’s shoulder. “Are you going to sleep with me?”
There was a sigh, a heavy one. Patrick’s chest physically hurt on the exhale. “We’ve talked about this before.”
“Remind me,” the older boy breathed into his ear.
Patrick felt a jolt of electricity travel down his spine and resisted the urge to flinch or gasp or make any sort of movement. He could feel the sharp twist of anxiousness in his stomach and all he wanted to do was press back against Pete and lose himself there, but he couldn’t. “I don’t want to fuck shit up with sex,” he mumbled.
“Why do you think it would fuck it up?” Pete sounded curious, but like he’d already made his mind up and just wanted to argue the point.
Patrick was too tired for it and that had nothing to do with the late hour. “Because sex fucks everything up,” he answered quickly. “Now, sleep." He pressed on before Pete could reply. “You can stay if you want.”
He said it mostly to shut Pete up, but he would never tell anyone how much better he slept with the other boy’s arms around him. They stayed, inked designs against his shirt.
Pete was gone when Patrick woke up at the venue in the early afternoon. There was a hoodie sitting on the pillow, almost like a note that Pete wasn’t done. The younger boy let his fingers trace over the seams of the garment before he slowly picked it up and, as if in a trance, pressed it to his face and breathed in. Then, as soon as he realized what he was doing, he yanked it away and viciously threw it out of his bunk. Half a minute later, it was flung back through the curtain.
Patrick poked his head out with a scowl. Pete was lying on his stomach in his bunk, wearing the same expression on his face. “I left that there for a reason,” he said pointedly.
“Care to share what that might be?”
“Your mom,” Pete said, sticking his tongue out. He closed his notebook and stood up. “See you inside.”
Patrick huffed and threw himself onto his back, gazing up at the fake ceiling. Pete wanted him to ask, wanted Patrick to have to wheedle the answer out of him. He wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. No, whatever game Pete wanted to play, he was going to have to play on his own. Patrick had his own games to play.
---
Pete had explained the way anxiety attacks pulled him down like he was drowning in air to Patrick enough times that the younger boy recognized there was a legitimate reason he was looking to get lost in the blur of bodies and sweat and swearing. Patrick could feel the tight pulling in his chest and he could feel it relax after he found someone to screw around in the bathroom with. It might be an hour or it might be a week before he felt the tight squeeze around his ribs again.
It had never woken him up before.
He sat up in his bed, sweat making his hair stick to his forehead and gasping for air that seemed to have stopped existing in the vacuum of the hotel room. He struggled to get the covers off of him. His hands felt swollen and dumb, not listening to the simplest commands. He glanced at the clock and felt himself growing smaller. It was too late. There was nothing he could do about it. There was no one. There was . . .
“Fuck.” He said it out loud to the empty room and shook his head. No. He couldn’t.
But he could. The feeling was too much and when the tears actually started to leak out of the edges of his eyes from the pain, Patrick pushed his glasses up his nose and found Pete’s card key, trying to be quiet when he pushed the door open. Part of him hoped the sight of Pete sleeping would be enough to force him back to his room and hide in the bathroom or under the bed until morning, when he could find someone else to give him his fix.
Pete wasn’t sleeping. He was in bed and the lights were off except the lamp, but he was leaning against his pillows and reading. Patrick could tell by his hair that he had fallen asleep and woken back up at some point. He looked up at Patrick with a small smile, frowning instantly when the singer stepped into the faint light and his expression became visible. He closed his book without marking the page and sat up.
“Trick? What’s wrong?”
The younger boy muttered something under his breath, knowing Pete couldn’t hear it. He didn’t want to say it. He really didn’t want to say it. Maybe he could just go back to his room and pretend this hadn’t happened. Hiding in the bathroom looked a lot more comfortable right now.
“Sorry?” Pete asked, slipping out from underneath the covers to move forward on the bed, revealing he didn’t have anything on but his navy blue boxers, which was not helping Patrick’s situation at all.
He could feel something reach up through his throat and grab his neck, squeezing until his words were cut off. He couldn’t run now, even if he wanted to. So he moved, feet shuffling closer to the bed until his knees touched it and he put his hands out, crawling forward. He and Pete were eye to eye now. Patrick could smell faded cologne and the saltiness of concert sweat that never quite went away. He could see the lines of Pete’s tendons underneath his shoulders and every single one of his eyelashes.
There usually wasn’t kissing involved, but it was the quickest way to make his point, so Patrick leaned forward and caught Pete’s mouth with his. There was that moment, he could feel, where Pete almost pulled back from shock before leaning in and opening his mouth, moaning softly as his tongue slipped past Patrick’s teeth. “Now?” he asked when they broke apart.
Patrick nodded frantically. “And don’t read into it. It’s just sex.” Somehow, self-preservation still found a way in utter panic to make itself known.
“Just sex,” Pete repeated softly before hooking his hands under Patrick’s arms to haul the younger boy toward him. He claimed the boy’s mouth as two sets of hips crashed together, twisting wildly against each other. Those noises Patrick was making were too much too soon and Pete could tell immediately, but he didn’t say anything.
“Hurry,” Patrick breathed against the older boy’s lips. It wasn’t a sexy plea draped in arousal. It was desperate and wrapped in a different kind of need.
Pete nodded. “I need to get in my bag,” he told Patrick in what he hoped was a reassuring voice. “Lay down.”
They maneuvered and when Pete turned back to the bed after grabbing what he needed from his bag, he could tell Patrick was already taking his clothes off under the covers. He barely returned the kiss Pete tried to give him. “Just hurry,” he repeated. He whimpered as he felt the other boy’s fingers trace up his thighs and turned his head, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to keep his face still.
The fingers were tentative when they pushed in and Patrick bit the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming. This wasn’t going to work. He needed it fucked out of him, not Pete’s slow and steady whatever the hell love making technique he was attempting. He counted backward from ten, trying to force himself to make it through the prep. Then he could hook his legs around Pete’s waist and make him go faster.
Patrick didn’t need much in the way of preparation and Pete tried to push that to the back of his mind where it could bother him later, make him think about it so much that he would write it down and tear the page out. He pulled his own boxers off after his fingers slipped out. Condom, more lube, and Pete tried to kiss Patrick one more time before he pushed in, but the younger boy refused to turn his head.
Patrick bit his lip when he felt the initial push in. Slight pain and then he could already feel himself relaxing as he was filled. Pete was slow at first and Patrick immediately brought his legs up around the older boy’s waist, still refusing to look at him. He didn’t look at anyone when he let them fuck him, but Pete was the first one that seemed to take it personally. “Ready?” the older boy asked in a thick voice.
Quick nod and then Patrick let his legs fall back down because fuck that was perfect. He turned his head so his hands could scramble up to Pete’s shoulders and grab on to keep himself from being slammed against the headboard with each thrust. His eyes squeezed shut, but the older boy still took the advantage of kissing him on the mouth. Their teeth almost clashed and Patrick bit him on purpose so he had to pull back, but it was worth it.
The younger boy was swearing and moaning as the breaths escaped the back of his throat. He tried to bite his lip to keep the noises contained at first, but there was no point. He rocked his hips upward on a particularly deep stroke and had to fight to keep his eyes from popping open as Pete’s hand wrapped around his cock. This was going to be quick. Embarrassingly so if Patrick cared, but he didn’t. Already, all he could think about was burying his face in a pillow and falling asleep after he came.
Pete straightened up slightly, his hands reaching out to grab Patrick’s hips and pull the boy closer to him, shallow strokes now that hit his prostate dead on almost every time. They might wake someone up with the noises they were making, but he didn’t care at all about that. Pete moved his hand back to Patrick’s cock, stroking quicker and watching the way the muscles twitched in the younger boy’s throat as the orgasm started to creep up on him.
“Pete?” Patrick asked suddenly, his voice a strange mixture of arousal and fear.
The older boy didn’t stop, just let the knuckles from his free hand graze over the boy’s hip as he continued to thrust into him. “I’m right here,” he said. “It’s okay. Let go.”
Those words seemed to flip a switch and Patrick was crying out as he came, but his eyes were open and they caught Pete’s for a moment before drifting to the ceiling. He was shaking as Pete felt the warm liquid covering his hand. Then Patrick was whimpering as he felt the older boy pull out of him.
Pete threw the condom in the trash and immediately laid back down, wrapping his arms around Patrick before the younger boy could move to get up and leave. Sure enough, the younger boy tried to pull away the second he felt the warm body pressing against his. Pete was still hard, his erection pressing against the back of Patrick’s thigh, but he didn’t seem concerned about it.
“Don’t,” Patrick whispered, embarrassed.
He didn’t let go. “I hold you all the time,” he reminded the younger boy, leaning forward to kiss his bare shoulder blade. But not naked, he knew, and not like this.
“Pete,” Patrick whined, only trying half-heartedly to pull away that time.
“Just stay. That way you’re here if you need me again.”
It wasn’t fair, but the other boy was too tired to put up much protest. He was asleep within five minutes and Pete stayed awake watching him until the alarm on his phone went off reminding him that they needed to pack.
---
Patrick let Pete fuck him again on the bus three days later. It was late and no one was awake except the bus driver. The older boy dragged him into the back lounge and shut the door. It didn’t lock. Pete held a finger to his lips and Patrick nodded. This time Pete held his hips while he knelt behind the younger boy on the couch. Afterward, he tried to kiss the singer again and he ducked his head to avoid it.
Pete did manage to shove his way into Patrick’s bunk afterward, even though the other boy tried to keep him out. “You need me,” Pete told him and Patrick didn’t tell him that was the entire fucking problem. He just squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to think about the arms crossed over his chest and the cheek lying against his back.
It didn’t look any different than it did a week ago, but it felt different. The twisting in his stomach had been replaced by another weird feeling in the bends of his knees and elbows, behind his ears. Sex messed everything up. He didn’t have anyone to blame but himself.
The next time Pete and Patrick left to have sex, it was during the daytime. Patrick didn’t even have to say anything. He left the room with a look on his face and the clear intent in his mind to find someone else to take care of the problem, but Pete was already following him down the hallway. “Do you want to go to the bus?”
“I just want to be alone,” the younger boy lied, not knowing why he bothered. He and Pete couldn’t lie to each other; they could only agree to pretend to believe each other’s lies. (And he knew Pete wasn’t in the mood for that.)
Pete shook his head and shoved his hands into his hoodie pockets. “No.” He didn’t say anything other than that and neither did Patrick, just quickened his pace. Once he pushed the venue doors open, Patrick actually broke into a run for the bus thinking he might be able to lock it if he just got there first. Of course, Pete could run faster than him, but his brain wasn’t running off logic at the moment.
The older boy waited until they were already there before he gave himself the extra burst of speed he needed to grab Patrick by his shoulder and then throw him against the bus next to theirs. No one should have been in it at that point during the day. “Hey, asshole.”
“Dick,” Patrick returned pitifully.
Pete sighed, not something he usually did at the other boy. “I’m trying to help,” he pointed out as if it were perfectly obvious.
“So stop.” Patrick’s voice cracked and he ducked his head down as the tears leapt into his eyes of their own accord. He felt Pete’s grip on his shoulders loosen, but it didn’t matter. He slumped against the bus and slid down it, letting his arms cross on his knees and his face burrow into them. He fought the tears, but the harder he tried the quicker they slipped down his cheeks and the more his shoulders shook.
Patrick heard keys and then a sound he took to be the door. Then there was Pete, next to him, pulling him to his feet. He let the older boy lead him up the stairs and he fell onto the couch the moment he could. Pete sat next to him, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and pulling Patrick’s head to his chest, kissing the top of his forehead. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “I know why you’re doing this, you know. So why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”
Patrick sniffled, still crying a little bit. He couldn’t tell Pete. He wanted to. There was nothing more he wanted to do than sit knee to knee with Pete like they used to in the old apartment and tell him everything that was wrong. Then Pete would say something that made it seem like it had been stupid to worry about it in the first place without making Patrick feel stupid. The problems weren’t as simple as they used to be. “If you know, then you already know.”
Pete’s fingers were gentle as they ran down Patrick’s spine through his shirt. “I know why you’re having sex. I don’t know why it’s different with me.”
He was lying. Patrick could tell. There was something about his tone, maybe. He wasn’t sure what, but he always knew. This time he decided to pretend to believe it so maybe Pete would return the favor. “It’s not it’s you. It’s that it’s you so much.”
There was a pause. “Variety being the spice of life?” Pete asked quietly, disbelief evident in his voice.
Patrick felt a chill go up his spine and he shivered. “Don’t do this, Pete,” he whispered. There’s no coming back from this.
The older boy lowered his head to let his lips graze Patrick’s ear. “Why is it different with me?” he repeated.
There weren’t just tears now. A sob tore itself from Patrick’s throat as he realized the older boy wasn’t going to let this go. This was it. This was him standing at the end of the cliff he had been trying to avoid by taking the trail this way and that way, but somehow he still ended up back on the edge, staring down through the clouds. “Pete,” he tried again, one final time, choking on the word.
“Patrick,” the older boy murmured, voice warm when he said it, lips pressing against the shell of the ear he had whispered into, arms tightening to give him a small squeeze.
Patrick was crying for real now, choking on sobs and getting Pete’s shirt wet and wiping at his eyes with the sleeves of hoodie. He was clinging to Pete and then realizing what he was doing and trying to pull away, but the older boy’s arms were a vise keeping them locked together.
“Don’t make me tell you I love you.”
A sort of stillness seemed to settle over Patrick when he said it. He was still crying, but he choked on a final sob and his breathing started to even out. He didn’t look up when he said it, didn’t try to pull away. This could be it. This could be the last time he felt those arms around him and that smell surrounding him and that breath in his ear. He was going to have to be dragged away kicking and screaming.
“’S not that bad, ‘Trick.”
That too cute sounding voice was the last thing the younger boy expected to hear and enough to make him sit up and pull his glasses off, wiping at his eyes and then the lenses. “What?” He pushed them back up his nose, a look of shock on his face.
“Being in love with me,” Pete said. “It’s not that bad.”
Patrick’s mouth was dry and he blinked. “This . . . that’s not . . . Pete!” He buried his face in his hands and almost started crying again.
“What? You don’t need me to tell you I love you, right? Like, didn’t you figure that out years ago when everyone else did?” His voice was so matter of fact that Patrick had to resist the urge to hit him.
Blue eyes peeked up from behind fingers, narrowed. “Does it sound like I fucking knew that?”
Pete held his hands up in surrender. “Dude, don’t get mad. We just had a moment.”
“Which you ruined.”
Pete huffed and crossed his arms. “Oh, please. There wouldn’t have been a moment if it weren’t for me in the first place.”
“If you had just told me you were in love with me ‘years ago’, as you put it, we wouldn’t have needed to have a moment,” Patrick snapped, but he was laughing suddenly and leaning forward to kiss Pete on the mouth. Soft, chaste, warm. His cheeks were still wet and his eyes stung a little from crying, but that was okay. He was okay. It was all going to be okay.
“Can I just stare at you until the show?” Pete asked, bringing a hand up to stroke his cheek.
“No,” Patrick whispered, smiling when the other boy’s face fell. “Just until sound check.”
This time when they laid down in Patrick’s bunk, they faced each other. Pete held Patrick’s hands in both of his and kissed each knuckle and then his palms and then his mouth again. Patrick’s fingers traced the designs of Pete’s tattoos on his arms and his chest and his back. He kissed his shoulders and the bones of his spine and his neck right below where the hair stopped.
He didn’t realize his stomach had untwisted until they were walking back into the venue.