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As Pete’s eyes go round and unseeing at the unremarkable expanse of grainy hotel ceiling, he pictures instead, for that split wide open second, some of the moments that got him here. Just snapshots. Freezeframe fragments. The space-between-breath flickers of light and memory as the breath is crushed from his lungs; the quick squeeze of time it takes to breach him, to go from expectant to spreading and spreading and spreading.
Figure 1: A shared hotel bed, the morning of the 1997 Northbrook Soccer Sectionals. Pete and a teammate. Pete tucked into the curl of his teammate’s body, a thicker, paler arm thrown over the dip between his hips and his ribs. Thin white bed sheets tangled between their legs. So limp in sleep their muscles haven’t remembered to be sore yet. Pete’s dumb sink-bleached hair irredeemably kinked. A half-chub digging into Pete’s spine. Alarm set to blare at 6:30 am. (“Sorry, dude,” his teammate says, after Pete’s elbowed him off and they’ve both cursed each other out and put shirts on. “I rolled over in my sleep and you’re like, the exact same size as my girlfriend.”)
Memory, light, breath stutters inside of him. Heat inside of him. Huge and hot. Far bigger than the quick fingers he prepped himself with; on purpose, because he wanted it like this. Wanted to feel it like this. Wanted it great, wanted it overwhelming. Like a stadium show.
Like the show two hours ago, still pulsing through his veins, still buzzing in his head, deafening and blinding. Pete needs this to be bigger than that. He needs to be forced back into his body.
After the fat head, it keeps going, thick and steady, splitting him open. Enough lube to drip to the sheets — a kindness he never asks for — but slick can’t disguise the sheer fucking weight of it. The thickness and strength of it, and the hands that hold him in place, right shoulder left hip, so Pete can take it. Has to take it.
He goes limp and loose and takes it gratefully. He throws his head back and catches a glimpse of the headboard’s dark polished wood looming above him. It looks twenty feet tall. The ceiling looks miles above his head. He can feel himself sinking back into his body, tingling from the aching soles of his feet to the tangled hair at the back of his neck, falling into the pinpoint of sensation, his skin going tight around him.
“Yeah, yeah, please,” he gasps as Patrick’s cock slides home. Thick thighs press up against the back of his own, sweaty and endlessly familiar. The soft, fuzzy nudge of the ballsack against his soft, wrinkled skin. Patrick’s dark pink face and his dark blue eyes, hooded as he peers down at Pete. Molten yellow desk lamp behind him casting him in expansive shadow.
Figure 2: Interior of their newly-bought, secondhand, cheap piece of shit van. Joe and Andy on the driving shift, Andy’s hand on the radio dial, Joe’s mouth open to argue. Pete and Patrick on the sleeping shift, two plastic orange sleeping bags side by side. Pete’s hand shoved down into the tight gap of his unwashed jeans. Twisting into the bright sting of fresh, stupidly-earned bruises. Sweat prickling at the back of his neck. Opposing headlights beaming past the front seat. Patrick’s palm slapped over Pete’s open mouth. Blood from his bitten lip smearing over warm skin. Patrick’s sleepy, furrowed brow and the annoyed squeeze shut of his eyelids. Pete’s eyes wide open at the dark van ceiling. The sticky wet mess gathering in the hollow of his pelvis.
The air trembles around them. Or maybe it’s just Pete trembling. He’s tucked below Patrick, right where he wants to be. He takes his hands off Patrick’s shoulders and curls them around the sticky back of his neck. Cropped, wet hairs prickle under his fingers. The gesture makes him feel sweet. Patrick’s face promises something else.
Pete, no matter how many times it happens, is momentarily stunned by the sensation of helplessness, entirely manufactured and nonetheless true, as he lies on his back and clings to Patrick while Patrick’s cock splits him open. The age old thrill of his body in freefall. He feels delicate. Patrick feels unyielding.
Patrick doesn’t wait for Pete to adjust; he doesn’t rub the usual soothing circles over Pete’s hip bone though his thumb twitches hungrily; he doesn’t ask if Pete is ready with his eyes: he decides he is. Just like Pete needs him to.
It’s the first pull out that really stings, his muscles clamping down on Patrick’s cock as it drags out of him, ungentle, letting Pete’s hips drop a little before shoving back in and forcing Pete’s spine to bow with it. The pain sends him reeling, erases every part of him but the place inside of him that it originates from and then spreads like a supernova. Pete clenches tighter, leans into it. Used to try to disappear into it, because that was the best thing he knew. Now he knows something better: the quiet noise Patrick flattens between his teeth, and the way his hips shove forward like he can’t help himself.
Patrick stills himself, balls deep, eyes closed and brow furrowed. Then he glares down at Pete, the way he always does when his concentration’s been thrown. He mutters, “Jesus, you’re so…” and then trails off as he draws out again.
The next thrust is sharper, more deliberate. A press of solid heat. A promise that he can feel. Pete makes a high, wordless sound. The grip on his shoulder gets harsher as Patrick pins his upper body against the bed, hitching him higher at the hips and forcing his thighs wider, pushing his way between them.
Figure 3: A gas station, a kicked over trash can, and their van. Pete’s half-assed half-red dye job and beneath it, his skull, thudding against the metal side door. Patrick’s hands around his throat. Dirty nails. Calluses scraping over Pete’s pulse. Pete’s Chucks scrabbling against the gasoline-stained concrete. Andy at the cash register inside the Kwik Mart, Joe seeing them through the window. Pete’s lips parted. His hands curled around Patrick’s wrists. The huge mountain heave of Patrick’s chest. The visible throb of Pete’s blood.
Pete can’t get the air back into his lungs, getting dizzy from the quick, sharp gasps he’s taking, a crowd of lights dancing behind his eyes. The muscles in Patrick’s neck flex beneath his hands, skin getting slicker, harder to hold on to. Pete tries to tugs him down to loop his arms around him instead, but his limbs are all trembling. He jostles with each shove of Patrick’s hips.
Without breath, Pete’s mouth shapes the word please, please until he can basically taste his own desperation. He’s getting drunk on it. His head is going soupy, the room going fuzzy, Patrick’s warm skin keeps warming the longer it’s touching him. The bloodrush to his head sounds like the crowd roar from the show, the way it went on and on forever and followed him back to the hotel, a deafening echo in his ears as he whispered to Patrick what he wanted him to do to him.
Adrenaline, leftover, is still fizzling in his veins. Pete bucks, wild and deaf to anything but the slam of his own pulse in his throat and the empty ocean of his head. He wants to drown it. It’s all so fucking loud.
Restless, he claws at Patrick’s nape, the back of his head, the top notch of his spine, across the taut expanse of his shoulders, trying for purchase as his fingers keep slipping in the sweat, muscles burning, curling up to reach him.
Patrick hisses in discomfort, his grip momentarily tightening. He looks down at Pete, raw pink lips parted, and then crowds in closer. He ducks his head down near Pete’s jaw and breathes there, hot, while low noises come from the back of his throat. Pete’s senses are flooded with the familiar post show perfume of sweat and old deodorant and the faint reminder of Patrick’s generic, clean nothing-scented shampoo, the one he’s been using since 2006, and Pete inhales it sharply, mouth watering.
Figure 4: A nightclub, in the DJ booth. Travie leaning over Pete, lanky arms pulling him in for a tight hug. One broad hand wrapping around the ball of Pete’s shoulder, the other slipping long fingers into Pete’s longer hair. Pete on his toes to loop his arms back around Travie’s neck. Headphones crushed into his chin. Clothing parting to bare his skinny hips. Club lights in a cocktail of neon — turquoise, green, tangerine, gold — outlining their bodies. Pete’s hooded eyes, gleaming. The bright white happy shine of their teeth. (“Great song, bro,” Travie murmurs into Pete’s ear when he slips Clothes Off!! into the mix. The scrape of his stubble makes Pete squirm. He laughs and leans into the hand-shaped promise on his hip.)
Patrick’s mouth starts working against his throat as he fucks into him, leaving sloppy, lax kisses that sting afterward because Pete’s too out of it to register the scrape of teeth along the sensitive juncture of his jaw and the sweet, secret place behind his ear. He twists as much as he can, baring his neck to the smear of spit, but his head feels loose from the top of his spine.
It’s a drugged, half dangerous sensation, but pinned like this, Pete can’t unscrew and fall apart. Patrick is wide and reassuring over him. Containing him. He bears down so that the full heft of his body is pressing Pete down into the bed, flat against each other from the crux of their legs to their chests. His thick stomach traps Pete’s dick against his own stomach, wet from where it’s been drooling, and the slick, crushing friction has Pete whining, high and choked. His chest heaves against Patrick’s. Patrick’s cock brushes over his prostate.
“Yeah?” Patrick murmurs into his jaw. Pete rolls his lolling head into a dazed, frantic nod.
Patrick used to be nervous about dropping his whole weight on top of Pete — self-conscious — but Pete reassured him that he likes it and the way it makes it that much harder for Pete to breathe. He floats under the solid, uncompromising pressure, skin going tingly all over. Weightless, like swimming out in Lake Michigan as a kid and going under and then holding himself just below the surface, staring up at the big, blank sky filtering through the murky water. Pete feels tiny, like this.
Figure 5: The last stall in the men’s bathroom of some unremarkable, sleazy bar. Fag graffiti on the walls. A sharpied phone number two digits off of Patrick’s. Dense pulse of music behind the door; jammed, because the lock is broken. Pete on his knees and this random guy’s giant hand curled around the back of his head. Pete choking on this random guy’s coke can dick. Somewhere in the ambient particles of this scene is the picture Pete has in his head of choking on Patrick’s coke can dick instead. His eyes going unfocused on the thick curls tickling the tip of his nose. Knees grinding into grime and piss-soaked tiles. His throat convulsing. His jeans staining.
Patrick pulls back to kneel upright and Pete surfaces, sucking in a big, grateful rush of the humid air between them and staring up at Patrick with what he knows must be a stupid needy expression on his flushed face. The blood beneath his skin feels hot enough to melt through. He needs it hotter, grander, unrestrained like a wildfire so it’ll burn right through him and then burn out.
“Come on,” he rasps, and stretches out prettily. Patrick’s lip curls.
He tugs Pete up by the waist into the cradle of his lap and his dick feels bigger at this angle, plunges deeper, rubbing right over a spot that isn’t Pete’s prostate but is almost as good. He sighs into it and tries to help Patrick rearrange his legs so they hook above the handles of his hips, but they’re quivering like jello.
Callused hands smooth along Pete’s trembling calves, up over his flanks to dig briefly into the meat of his ass, pulling the cheeks apart so Pete can really feel where he’s being held open, then the thumbs slide around to settle firmly into the dip of Pete’s pelvic bone.
Patrick shoves his hips forward and yanks Pete’s hips back at the same time, so that Pete’s body is sliding against the sheets, one arm back to brace himself against the headboard because he can’t catch purchase on the slippery high-thread fabric he’s being dragged over. He’s weightless again, light and easy. So easy. Flushed to the brim and stunned helpless. He can feel his heels bouncing in the air, nudging into the fleshy sides of Patrick’s lower back on every odd thrust, and the picture of it behind his eyelids is so—
“Patrick,” he chants, “Patrick, Patrick, oh fuck, Patrick.” Above him the ceiling is a million miles wide and indifferent to the shake and spasm of Pete’s limbs under Patrick’s broad body. The solid expanse of him. Pete is safe below.
Figure 6: A temporary gravel parking lot next to the fields where stages are being methodically disassembled for the night. Pete on his back, Gabe sprawled on top of him. All long, lean limbs. His purple zip up fanning out over their sides like wings. Big enough that Pete beneath him disappears from sight completely. Lips numb from the sloppy makeouts and cocks numb from the substances clogging their bloodstreams. A pool of vomit next to someone’s car. Gabe giggling and Pete barely breathing. When Gabe lifts his head a little, he blocks out the stars. He blocks out Pete.
Patrick’s movements stutter to a stop and he pulls all the way out, too fast, and Pete yelps, then makes an even more embarrassing noise when Patrick hooks a hand under one of his legs and tugs him over until Pete rolls onto his stomach, then up onto his knees. Both hands wrap firmly around his hips, palms cupping the jutting bone, fingers pressing into the tightening flesh of his pelvis, pinkies dipping into the mellowed remnants of his v-line. Pete tugs a pillow toward himself as Patrick resettles behind him.
“Yeah, good,” he hears Patrick mumble, mostly to himself, like when he’s tuning his guitar or testing something in GarageBand and Pete feels so fucking cared for that his gut twists with the twin urges to bask in it and curl away from it.
Then the fat head is pressing into him again, and Patrick’s working his way back in with these tight, cruel little jerks, while his fingertips sink future bruises deep into Pete’s softer, trusting places. Pete moans as he takes it, his dick twitching and dripping onto the mussed sheets, spine arching up to meet him as Patrick sinks in deeper and deeper, thrusts digging like he’s searching for something.
The pillow takes the brunt of Pete’s pathetic noises. He turns his face into it, trying to smother the hopeless open hang of his mouth, but a hand catches his chin and pulls him back into the room. Patrick knows how mean Pete wants him to be. Pete squeezes his eyes shut and tilts his hips up higher, tasting the smear of his drool soaking into the smooth pillow fabric.
Figure 7: A hotel room with all the lights out in a country Pete’s forgotten the name of. Light pollution from the open curtains. Window bright and cold and clear like an exit. Pete’s spine climbing the opposite wall. The face of the guy lost in the shadows of Pete’s collarbones. His arms pinning Pete in place. His hips hitching Pete’s higher and higher. The darkness around their bodies tangible and gathering. Pete’s nails pulling at the faceless stranger’s huge back. Bruises smeared all over his jutting hip bones. Lips snarled in the shape of harder. His soft, drooling cock slapping against his stomach. His toes barely brushing carpet.
“God, Pete,” Patrick says, voice hoarse. Pete can barely hear him over his own noises. The wildfire is racing through him, gracious and cleansing, burning bright enough to light the bed on fire. Earlier tonight his glow could fill a stadium, illuminate a whole crowd, light up every individual face; now it’s all getting tucked back inside of him, shoved down and held here in this tiny, insignificant body so Pete can go back to just being Pete.
Patrick gives it to him so good. Pete can’t believe there was a time he was scared of this, or that he used to go to other people for it because he couldn’t dare ask Patrick for it — or doubted Patrick could. God, he spent so many years growing larger than anybody could contain, aimlessly throwing himself into whatever momentary distraction could grant the illusion of crushing him back down into himself again, like Peter Pan trying to reattach his runaway shadow. Whatever could reduce him down to nothing.
Patrick doesn’t make him nothing. “Pete,” he murmurs again, and drapes himself over Pete’s back to bury his face in the crazy tangle of Pete’s hair, soaked through with sweat. One hand traces up past Pete’s heaving ribcage to wipe away some straying strands that are sticking to his face. The gesture makes him melt.
He grinds back harder, and Patrick bites a curse into his neck, hand flying back down to Pete’s hip and gripping him tight as he fucks into him mean and sweet. He presses his forehead to the back of Pete’s skull. A mindmeld. Pete tries to project a picture hard through the layers of skin and hair and bone, thinking: do you remember the first time you looked at me do you remember the first time you wanted this do you remember when it was like an open wound do you remember—
Figure 8: Butch’s recording studio in Santa Monica, in the earliest, most uncertain month of the record. Pete behind the soundboard, slouched low in the rolling chair, balls of his feet on the floor to hold himself steady. Patrick somewhere between the chair and the doorway, all fading blonde and disconcertingly slim hips. His hand on the back of Pete’s chair. The weight of it. (“I think that sounded okay,” Patrick says, somewhere between confident and asking. Pete says, “Yeah! Sounded great, dude,” a little too cheerfully and suppresses a wince.) Broad shoulders at a slant, overhead light making a halo of Patrick’s hair, throwing his shadow over Pete. Pete’s chin tilted up to meet him. Pete’s pupils expanding.
One particularly deep thrust and Pete’s spine dips low enough that his cockhead brushes the slippery sheets, and he’s suddenly aware of how fucking badly he needs to come. His arms are crushed beneath him, limp and numb, hands death-gripping the pillow beneath his head, so he turns a little more to try and peer over his shoulder at Patrick.
Dizzy with heat and drunk on sensation, his eyes can’t quite focus on anything. His eyelashes catch on the loose hairs over his forehead as he watches the pale golden-flushed smudge of Patrick rocking behind him, head hidden where it’s ducked between Pete’s shoulder blades. Pete drops his own face back into the pillow, whining into the wet fabric and tries to grind his hips back down into the bed, to get some unsatisfying too-smooth friction against his aching dick, but Patrick doesn’t seem to notice right away, holding him right where he wants him.
But they mindmelded, and they’re probably soulmates, and Pete’s dumb needy noises get louder, and no one can read him like Patrick can, especially not with all the practice he’s had now with this.
A hand leaves his hips and slips around to jerk him steadily, tight and slick with the mess between Pete’s legs, in time with the rhythm of Patrick’s cock inside him. Patrick’s soft, sturdy chest comes down to rest against Pete’s back once more. Hot breath. Warm skin. Sweat. A gentle carpet of curly, furry hairs across the center of Pete’s spine. Pete’s dick blurts more precum, throbs violently, and then, with a perfect hitch in Patrick's hips that catches his prostate dead on, Pete’s vision goes completely blank white while he empties onto the bed below.
Figure 9: Pete’s bedroom, Pete’s freshly washed, about-to-be-washed-again sheets, Pete’s former personal trainer pressing his face into the pillow. His firm, square hand spanning Pete’s jaw, thumb pressing into Pete’s chin, pinky pressing into the space behind his ear where his cropped, salon-bleached hairline now begins. The other hand gripping his thigh. Two muscular bodies stacked and locked. Gym-cut hips shove into the gym-plush meat of his ass. The dip of his spine bowing under the shadow of his old trainer’s waxed chest. Sweat slicking dark, thick hair. Taking the day off from the studio. Pete’s phone on silent. Pete’s mouth open in a gasp.
Patrick keeps fucking into Pete’s spent body and Pete rocks with him, making soft, happy, overstimulated noises as Patrick’s thrusts gets lazier and start to lose their steady drummer rhythm. He’s totally limp, sagging into the bed, so Patrick’s grip shifts higher around his waist to hold him up and angle it right so that he’s not shoving in anywhere sensitive. Pete absently admires the straining flex of Patrick’s biceps against his panting sides. Patrick makes this pretty grunting noise into the back of his neck, and Pete echoes it reflexively.
He feels amazing. Fortified. Heart rate slowly sinking. Nerves sparked beyond fried. He basks in the delicate rippling sensation over the surface of his skin wherever Patrick touches him. Patrick’s sweat rolls down Pete’s spine — or maybe it’s his own? Maybe both. Pete is wet and full and secure under the snug drape of Patrick’s heavy body, Patrick gripping him tight, Patrick panting his release against the top of Pete’s spine.
He releases Pete, lets Pete’s body sink down fully into the soaked, rumpled sheets. He’s braced over Pete on shaky palms, exhaustion finally catching up to him, shivers running up and down his broad frame. Pete feels comfortably small beneath him but doesn’t like how untethered he feels; he stretches his back flat and curls his hands back under the pillow. “C’mon,” he mumbles. “Get on top of me, we’ll clean up later.”
“Ugh, I wanna clean up now,” Patrick says, but then he’s lowering back over Pete, crushing him back into the mattress, pressing the air out of his lungs. “Jus’ for a bit,” he grumbles. Pete squirms in tired delight, just a little, just as much as he can.
Figure 10: One of the back hallways at a faceless venue, an ephemeral point in time that Pete can find on a calendar later but exists nowhere as it unfolds. (“Are you serious?” Patrick asks after one too many jokes and he catches the way Pete can’t stop looking at him.) A gray painted stone wall and Patrick’s wide shoulders hemming Pete in against it. The wall humming with sound. (“Yeah,” Pete says, and then “Sorry,” just in case.) The smell of equipment, stale dust, ambient sweat. A hand on Pete’s jaw, another tucked around the back of his head, threaded into his hair, holding him in place to get kissed breathless. (“You actually—” Patrick starts and then doesn’t finish, so Pete does for him: “I like that you’re bigger than me. And I like you. It’s a sex thing. And also, like, more than a sex thing.”) (“Sorry,” Pete adds again.) Low, utilitarian light murky around them. Patrick’s thigh pressed between Pete’s legs and his stomach pressed to Pete’s and Pete’s spine twisting odd, caught mid-squirm, trying to get closer. (“I think I maybe knew that,” Patrick murmurs, because he always says something else before he gets to what he’s really saying.) Pete’s eyelashes fluttering. All his tiny hairs standing on end. (“Yeah, okay,” Patrick says finally. “Hey, me too. C’mere.”)