Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Patrick tells this story one day, he’s going to adamantly stick to the version in which none of this was his idea. 

Which, to be completely fair, is the truth . It’s less a version so much as it is just—the way it fucking is, so Patrick doesn’t know why he’s expending so much energy trying to defend himself, against himself. It also inherently implies that Patrick is going to tell anyone about this, any of it, and he thinks resolutely, he may quite possibly, take it all to the grave. So maybe the entire point is moot. 

But. 

It’s crucial to identify what Patrick defines as this —because the definitions, each moment, rolled up in the tapestry that are this night, are many and need to be properly clarified. 

This could mean a plethora of things, really. It could be simple, the easy reference to Patrick being dragged along to this night at all. If he’s looking for someone to blame, then that pleasure will definitely fall on Sharpy. And Abby. Both the fucking Sharp’s are to blame. Which is such a standard in Patrick’s life it’s almost dull. 

A sex club. A kink themed sex club. It’s almost exactly as gaudy as it sounds, in theory. Which might not be particularly fair, because for all that Patrick was picturing (leather, so much leather), it turned out to be kind of, well, boring. In so much as it just being like a normal club, really. 

Sharpy had said the words sex and club and Patrick was imagining chains hanging from walls and lounges studded with crushed velvet. He pictured whips and cages and perhaps someone getting fucked right in the middle of the floor, but what he got was a floor that stuck to his shoes, overpriced beer and shitty music that thumped it’s bass line deep into his skull. 

So, sure, perhaps there was some leather and at one point he saw a guy walking behind his girl with a collar around his neck and a leash in her hand (which he resolutely tried not to stare at), but it was hardly the picture Patrick had been painting for himself. Or maybe the picture Sharpy had been painting. 

Patrick should have learned when he was eighteen-fucking-years-old not to trust a single word out of Patrick Sharp’s mouth. Maybe Patrick’s only ever had himself to blame. 

Patrick and Abby Sharp live what Patrick can only describe as the American Dream. Successful, gorgeous, wealthy and talented and really great parents to Patrick’s two favourite kids on the planet. And Patrick would literally only admit it under extreme duress, but, they’re both really fucking funny, too. He so desperately doesn’t want to use the word smart or any synonym thereof but—fuck it. The Sharp’s are fucking perfect. 

Maybe it’s Patrick’s version of the American Dream, but he doesn’t know many people who wouldn’t want what they have. Except, he supposes not everyone would be privy to all the necessary information. ‘Cause sure, for all that the Sharp’s reek perfection, they don’t exactly advertise how they’re also fucking freaks. 

Okay, so maybe that’s not true, or kind. Or even fair. And really, Patrick’s use of the word here is not said to degrade or judge, ‘cause he’s actually sort of really fucking jealous and he’d give anything to have the sex life they have. Because when he says freaks he does directly reference it to their sex lives and sexual preferences and he definitely doesn’t view it as a negative. 

When Sharpy had first told Patrick about this club, Patrick had sort of thought he was kidding. He had no sort of false illusions that he and Abby didn’t already have some sort of exciting, great fucking sex life, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever peg them for—whatever this is. 

Patrick had immediately assumed they were swingers, which isn’t necessarily untrue , but, if he was picturing a real ‘keys in the bowl’ situation, he was wrong. 

They have rules, apparently. Lots of them. 

No fucking anyone else if the other party isn’t present. Can only fuck someone else if both parties approve. Never fuck the same person twice. Same-sex is okay for both parties, but please see rule two. Blah blah blah. 

They like the club because, as Sharpy had so eloquently put, it was a “safe space” to meet “other like minded individuals.” He’d used air-quotes when he said it too, his grin shit-eating and eyes bright with it, like he was getting off on Patrick’s scowl. 

Patrick thinks they like it ‘cause it’s easy to hook up. No one judges them for being a married couple looking for more. Hell, people are actively seeking to be their third (or their fourth, fifth, sixth—) and he can kind of respect how, well , relaxed everyone is here. 

Patrick is fully on board with people doing whatever the hell they want to do, unless they’re not, like, a danger to others and he is all for living your best life, as it were, but he gets that Sharpy being able to just say to anyone, “yeah, my wife and I like to get a babysitter for our two kids so we can go out and fuck random people” is not exactly kosher and that sort of sucks, maybe. 

But at the club they can be themselves, have fun, get a night off and do what they want and they’re still the best fucking damn couple—the best people— Patrick knows, so, fuck it. 

And they’re solid, so solid. The level of trust that comes from what they do is something Patrick knows they don’t take lightly. And it’s that trust, that stability, that gives them this; that allows them this. Nothing threatens them, nothing weakens them and Patrick respects the fucking hell out of it. 

But, Patrick doesn’t know why he needs to be here for it. It’s not like they’ve ever asked him before, or needed him, or—whatever. 

Patrick’s default was to be really fucking flattered, when Sharpy asked if he wanted to come. Patrick uses the word asked loosely because Sharpy had also vaguely said something along the lines of, ‘if you don’t come with us I know ways to hurt you’. And not the sexy kind of hurt, either. If that was, you know, something Patrick would be into. With Sharpy. And Abby. Sharpy and Abby. Jesus fucking Christ.

Patrick knew what the Sharp’s did for fun, what they liked and damn, forgive Patrick for thinking that he was being invited to join .

Sharpy had all but laughed in his face. 

No, fuck the niceties, Sharpy did laugh in his face.

“Oh, my beautiful little Peekaboo,” Sharpy had grinned, tapping his finger to the point of Patrick’s nose. “Abby and I don’t want to fuck you.” 

Asshole. 

“Fuck you, I’m hot. Why not?”

Even Sharpy laughing was fucking gorgeous. “Maybe the answer lies within your question, Princess.”

Patrick had stared until Sharpy elaborated. 

“Maybe it’s because you’re too hot, and I’m worried my wife will have sex with you and then want to leave me.” He’d leaned in then, ducking his gaze and biting gently on his lip like he was—like he was nervous. “Maybe—maybe I’m worried that I’ll have sex with you, and want to leave her .”

Let the headlines for the mornings news read as following: 

PATRICK ON PATRICK VIOLENCE: Local man murders friend. No one is sad. No one will cry. Fuck that guy. 

The fact that what Patrick actually did was no more than glower spectacularly, is the true crime. 

Patrick Sharp is the true crime. 

Patrick had wanted to smack him, sock him one right in the shoulder but Sharpy had grabbed his wrist before he could, squeezing tight to the edge of pain and Patrick—Patrick resolutely ignored that. 

“Come with us,” Sharpy had said a moment later, voice turning gentle and smile soft. “It’ll be good for you, Peeks.”

Patrick didn’t know what that meant, didn’t want to read too much into it but, here he was. 

Here he fucking was. 

***

“Why don’t you just go to a swingers party, you know? Fabulous, fun and forty. Put the keys to that sexy Merc in a bowl.” 

Sharpy rolls his eyes, Abby laughs and just the sight of it is enough to make Patrick grin. He has to yell, just a bit, just enough to be heard over the music and leaning over the table of their booth; he desperately hopes he doesn’t put his elbow in something that will stain. This is his nicest fucking shirt.

“Firstly,” Sharpy shouts back, louder than he needs to, “we’re not forty. Secondly, fuck you.”

“And thirdly,” Abby buts in, resting her chin on Sharpy’s shoulder. “This is a lot more fun.”

They’re both smiling at him, in the way they sort of always do. Fond and exasperated, like they love Patrick to death but think he’s a little pathetic, too. Sometimes Patrick feels like their son; their twenty-five-year-old, incredibly irresponsible and disappointing son. It’s largely because he often feels like they’ve adopted him, that they protect and care for him out of some sort of pseudo-parental obligation. Although, Patrick embarrassingly admits that the obligation is most likely out of love, more than it is anything else. 

And referring to himself as their son is probably not entirely cool, considering he wants to fuck them and all. Freud would be so proud. 

Patrick ignores them. “So, what, you just like—choose someone you like? Do you fuck them here? Does that happen? Is there a back room?” 

Sharpy laughs when Patrick looks back over his shoulder, as if the room in question is going to materialise right in front of his eyes. Instead he sees sweaty bodies and lights, moving together to the relentless thrum of music in alluring tandem, skin catching in the glow of blues, greens and golds. 

Patrick’s always found something sort of beautiful about clubs. It’s the irony of it, he supposes, the stark contrast of what is so commonly accepted, creating an ethereal contrary. It’s loud and hot, air too thick and stifling and limbs flying, barely matching the beat but beautiful, all the same. Patrick thinks it’s that, in itself, that ability to let go of inhibition and to forget your sensibilities, right there on the dance floor. The moment, that perfect moment when nothing matters, when all that remains is the heat of a body against your own, rhythm in your veins and a future that doesn’t matter beyond right now. 

Beautiful. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Sharpy smirks, kicking at Patrick’s shin under the table to regain his attention. 

And yeah, Patick really kind of would, but he thinks it's more a morbid curiosity than anything else. 

“Normally I pick someone,” Abby says conversationally, biting the straw of her G and T between her teeth. “I go up to the first person I see, and just ask them to fuck me. Right there on the floor. And they do. Men. Women. It doesn’t matter. We just start fucking and no one even cares. Patrick then swaggers up, as he does you know, and he joins.” 

It takes one second for Patrick’s eyes to widen in shock, two to realise she’s joking and three to curse the name Sharp. 

“You guys are the worst,” he says, in case that wasn’t so blindingly clear. 

Sharpy laughs when he kisses at the corner of Abby’s mouth, like he’s so damn proud of her for joining him on the voyage that is captaining Patrick’s ultimate embarrassment. A terrible ship, really. 

Patrick kind of wishes someone would laugh as they kissed the corner of his mouth, but that line of thinking isn’t proactive nor productive, for anyone. 

“We don’t always meet someone,” Sharpy says. “Sometimes it is just a night out, Peeks.”

Patrick nods. “Right. But it’s a fucking sex club , Sharp. I think that kind of implies you’re trying to hook up.”

Sharpy grins in return. “Touché.”

“And kink night , no less. Animals. You’re all fuckin’ animals.” He’s laughing when he says it, the curve of his mouth matching the Sharp’s with mirrored delight. “What’s even different about kink night?” 

Patrick’s genuinely not asking to tease, he actually really wants to know. He already feels like he’s out of his depth, drowning, and he’d love to be able to tread water. 

Abby shrugs. “A different crowd, mostly. It’s not like there’s a BDSM show at midnight,” she smirks. “It’s about interests. What people are into.”

“So, like, if I walked up to someone and asked them to hit me, they would?”

Patrick’s joking, he’s joking , but the tone of it is all off, too exposed and raw and fuck, they’re both looking at him far too knowingly. 

“Do you want someone to hit you, Pat?” Abby asks, innocent and genuine and Patrick loves her. 

But he laughs all the same, a default reaction when he feels embarrassment crawl it’s way down his cheeks, to his neck, blooming in a flush he hopes is hidden by the flash of the lights. 

Sharpy saves him. A rare blessing. “It’s good not to be too narrow minded with your kinks.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I’m kind of getting the impression that your idea of ‘kink’ is narrowed down to shitty porn.”

“You’re shitty porn.”

One day Sharpy is going to strangle him and Patrick will probably deserve it. It’s not Patrick’s best. 

“I just mean ,” Sharpy says, tired, “broaden your mind.” 

“Broaden my mind,” Patrick repeats. 

“Expand your horizons.” 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Sharpy.” 

“Have fun !” Sharpy yells, far too pleased. “Meet people. Dance. Hook up. Whatever the fuck you want. Just—just have fun.” 

“You should be a fucking motivational speaker, you know that?” 

Sharpy brightens. “Really?” 

“No not fucking really , you dumb fucking—”  

“I will literally hit you both,” Abby interrupts. The corners of her mouth are curving, though, and Patrick knows he’s her favourite. Maybe they’re both her favourites. He supposes that’s fine. 

“Yeah but, we already established that Lil Peekaboo here would be into that, so—”  

Abby fists Sharpy’s hair in her hand, right at the back of his skull where it’s thick and dark and growing far too long. Patrick’s saved from his own embarrassment, caught up in the wonderment of how soft Sharpy’s hair would feel between his own fingers. That’s part of it, sure, the other part— 

“Maybe you’re into that, Sharp.” Her grin is wicked, a little teasing, too teasing for it to probably mean anything but Sharpy’s eyes are a little bright, too. 

She pulls, Patrick can see it in the tilt of Sharpy’s jaw and Patrick feels like he’s witnessing something so oddly intimate he can’t do more than clear his throat. 

It’s not hot. It’s not. 

Which feels somewhat similar to saying, the sky isn’t blue. Or water isn’t wet. 

Although, Patrick remembers once seeing an argument online over whether or not water is wet. Like, technically water makes something wet, so, that would likely imply, or indicate that— 

“You could watch us,” Abby says, loosening her grip but not letting go, not entirely. “If we pick someone up, take them home. You could come with us.” 

Thing is, Patrick knows she’s not kidding. It’s something she’s genuinely offering and it’s kind of fucked up that the suggestion, or the idea, of Patrick watching the Sharp’s fuck is something he’s taking as sweet. It’s the gesture of what they’re offering, that they want Patrick to be included and yeah, it’s sweet, but Patrick thinks it might be a little pathetic, too. 

Patrick grins, diffusing it over the tight knot forming its way over his chest. “Voyeurism, Abs? Nah. Not my thing. These hands were made for—using? Touching?” 

“And a mouth made for—”  

“I need to piss,” Patrick says sharply, cutting Sharpy off with a glare. Sharpy only grins. “Where’s the bathroom?” 

“Down that corridor,” Sharpy replies easily, gesturing the head of his beer to the entryway by the bar, dark and nondescript. 

Patrick nods, with a promise to be back and warning them not to find someone and ditch him whilst he’s gone. They both laugh, Sharpy beginning to say something that sounds suspiciously like, not if you do first and Patrick’s not interested to stick around to find out what that means.

One more drink. He’ll have one more drink, get the Sharp’s off his back about the quarter-life crisis they seem to so obviously think he’s having and then he’ll go home. He’ll go home to his nice house, with his nice bed where he can jerk off nice and normal to nice, normal, boring porn and he’ll forget whatever the hell this was meant to be. 

One more drink. He’ll get it, right after he finds these fucking bathrooms down the hallway that apparently leads to nowhere and he’ll go home. He’ll— 

Shit. 

What was it Patrick said? That he should have learned when he was eighteen-fucking-years-old not to trust a single word out of Patrick Sharp’s mouth? 

Yeah.

Patrick’s definitely only ever had himself to blame. 

*** 

The back room. 

The back fucking room. 

Patrick’s not sure what he pictured, or if he even pictured anything at all. Sharpy may have been accurate in his assumption that Patrick’s vision was narrowed largely down to shitty porn, but, it doesn’t mean he’s not fond of indulging in his imagination. And hey, shitty porn still gets his fucking rocks off. So. 

Patrick would like to think his tastes are classier, but sadly all he needs are some bouncing tits, high-pitched moans and a ‘ fuck that’s it, baby,’ and that really does get him there nicely. He’s never fronted to be a man of class but—

But this is different. This is so different. 

The ‘back room’ isn’t so much one room as it is a small collection of private spaces, lined along a wide corridor. It’s dark and hazy in the way it makes Patrick feel, but there’s something surprisingly un-sleazy about it. It should be weirder, or perhaps it should make Patrick feel weirder, but it doesn’t. It should be dirty and unappealing, somewhere even Patrick would turn his nose up at having a quick fuck (and Patrick’s fucked in some pretty unappealing places), but it’s not. 

There’s something—refined about it. Something kind of warm and comfortable and safe and Patrick doesn’t know if that’s due to the soft, dark coloured walls, the open archways making each room feel relaxed and light or the way everyone seems, well, inviting . That’s just it, really. It’s inviting . People are here because they want to be and Patrick’s barely entered the space, barely seen what it has to offer but he feels respect here, more than anything. 

If anything, Patrick is the odd one out. He’s at risk of feeling uninvited or intrusive, like there was a password he had to drop at the door to gain entry. He feels more like Alice, unknowingly peering down the rabbit hole and falling before he had a chance to catch himself. He never even had a chance to catch his breath. 

If Patrick didn’t think it would make him the world's biggest creep, he’d spend time looking into each room, just out of a near burning curiosity to know . He’s always been like that, ever since he was a kid; he hated being left out whether it was sports or jokes or even when his sisters wanted to dress up and play without him. Patrick didn’t care, he let them dress him as a princess every time, the need to be included stronger than any unknown desire to enforce his own toxic masculinity. Patrick’s never cared so much about that. 

He was always a fucking pretty princess, too. 

So Patrick would explore more, he would, or maybe the option all along has been to turn the fuck around, walk back into that club and punch Sharpy so hard in the arm he can’t even lift his fucking drinking but— 

But Patrick feels rooted in his place, feet heavy and stuck to the floor like mud, barely capable of even keeping him fucking upright when he stands in the archway of the room to his immediate left. 

It takes him a second to process what is even happening, maybe two to properly categorise it and three to realise he’s stumbled into something that is potentially better (fuck, better, is that even the right word), than he could have ever hoped to see with his own two eyes. 

And fuck, Patrick is slow tonight. 

The room itself is nice, keeping with the vibe of what had immediately settled into Patrick’s bones as comfortable . It’s not massive, maybe no bigger than twenty-by-twenty, with an odd collection of furniture that shouldn’t match but does; long, stretched, plush couches and individual chairs, the colours muted. There’s people in all of them, distracting Patrick momentarily, because they themselves are perhaps unknowingly putting on a show that Patrick could really, really get into. Some sit in the lap of the person beneath them, back to chest and moving in a lazy grind, in an almost loving tandem. It reminds Patrick of the bodies out on the dance floor, beautiful and intoxicating and so completely intimate. 

Patrick looks at the couch closest to him, at the girl, the breathtaking girl, who lies back against the chest of her lover. Her partner. A stranger, for all Patrick knows. He doesn’t know if he can make any assumptions anymore. The man beneath her holds her hips tight, fingers surely pressing marks into her bare, wonderful, dark skin and what Patrick feels caught up in, more than anything, is the languid pleasure on her face, as her partner moves her against him, both of them watching the display before their eyes. 

Because that’s it. That’s the focus, what’s happening in the centre of the room. 

And when Patrick watches it, too, he forgets about the girl, he forgets about her and her partner and every other nameless face in the room because what’s happening at the middle of it, knocks something so deep, something that feels like pure pleasure, right into the core of Patrick’s chest. His stomach. His legs and his head and his spine; his spine most of all. 

Everywhere. He feels the heat of it everywhere . 

It’s simple, really, which is maybe what’s fucking Patrick up the most. 

In its purest form, unfiltered and clear, it’s two men. It’s a blow job, really. But to even begin to explain it simply, so blandly, doesn’t do what’s happening in front of him justice. 

It’s face-fucking. Deep-throating. Raw and wet and messy and rough and the guy on his knees is making these small, reverent noises like he’s choking but that, in itself, is what’s getting him off. 

And that—that’s what makes Patrick lose the feeling in his legs, right down to his ankles because—because the guy on the floor fucking likes it. 

Likes maybe doesn’t even do it justice. He’s moaning around it— from it—eyes closed and jaw slack and he looks like the raw and pure fact of a dick halfway down his throat is taking him somewhere Patrick doesn’t know if he’s ever been himself. 

Patrick’s never been the type to film sex and watch it back, because his self-love is okay but he doesn’t need to fucking know what he looks like when he comes. But. But he doesn’t think he’s ever looked like that. 

And he—the guy on the floor—is more than that, to Patrick. Patrick sees more than what is the obvious. Because Patrick can accept it’s hot, he can accept that seeing anyone getting their face absolutely fucked in front of him is a turn on but—but the guy taking it, is fucking beautiful.

Even from where he’s placed on his knees, Patrick can see how big he is; all pure, thick corded muscle and skin so dark from the sun it makes the sweat almost shine off him, like dotted stars Patrick could paint and collect with the tip of his finger. He watches one bead in particular, dripping down between the space of his bunched, tight shoulders, along the curve of his spine until it rests in the dip of his lower back. His wrists are bound behind him, strapped with soft-looking black tape, which oddly reminds Patrick of the tape they use at the rink for whatever fucked up injury one of their guys has obtained next. 

That should be startling, confronting, more grounding, but all Patrick can think is using that tape himself; getting that guy on his knees, right on the floor of a locker room and binding him up until he couldn’t move. 

And Patrick should leave, he should, but when he blinks, long and slow, he finds himself moving further into the room. It’s a powerless effect, pulled by the line of an invisible string to the sound at the back of the guy's throat.

He spares a second for his own shame, resting his back to the wall behind him, caught in the shadow of the archway to the room. He’s in, now; in the room, in this. Whatever that means. He feels shame for watching, when he doesn’t know if he’s even allowed to be. 

What’s happening in the room is not a secret, the suggestion of it being as such is almost humorous, but Patrick wonders if he has to drop that password again. There’s an agreement here, one that Patrick has entered into without knowing the terms but he thinks the only person who’s going to keep him accountable for it, is himself. 

No one pays him any mind, because why would they? When—when that is happening in front of them. 

Patrick barely notices the guy on his feet, not beyond his hands and the way they’re buried deep in the other guys hair. Patrick wonders what it would feel like, if it would be soft, easy to pull; it appears to be, the way the other guy uses his grip to bring him deep down on his cock. 

Patrick wonders a lot of things, really. How it would feel, all of it, to have that tight, wet, yielding mouth wrapped around his dick; the control, the power, the ability to lose himself in the moment, tethered to nothing but the slick-hot warmth of a throat that’s so—so fucking willing . Because that’s what’s getting Patrick there, what’s making him slightly hysterical, is how bad this guy wants it. 

That would be evident enough just from his face—his beautiful, gorgeous, serene face—but Patrick can see his cock, too. It’s flushed red between his legs, impossibly hard and proud and Patrick thinks it must be almost painful, with how desperately he must need friction on it. 

I could do that , Patrick thinks wildly.

The thought makes him jerk, shifting against the wall because he should be focused on the fantasy of his dick in a mouth, any mouth, but all his brain supplies is the image of getting down there on the floor with him. He’d wrap around him from behind, closed in tight to that hard, big body and take a second to just marvel from that alone. He wants to scratch his blunt nails down his chest, right over those abs and wait to hear him beg to put a hand on his dick. 

Patrick thinks he’d like his other hand curved around the base of his neck, fingers brushing in the pool of spit that’s dripping down his chin, tapping against the vein of his pulse and squeezing hard enough with his palm in the hopes he could feel the other guys cock, right there in his throat. 

Patrick’s not going to pretend he’s not hard, because he is, he so undeniably is but touching himself, even the heel of his palm he so desperately wants to press against the line of his jeans, feels like crossing a line he can’t come back from. 

Because yeah—yeah he wants that mouth on him, yeah he wants the choked moans and the soft hair and the spit messy and wet all over him but— 

But he wants to know what it feels like. 

He wants to know what the guy taking it feels. 

Patrick’s sucked dick before, which should be something that still feels more alarming, but never has been. He tells himself that it was college, that he was young and stupid and wanted to try new things, or whatever the fuck. It was drunk and easy and dumb and Patrick doesn’t regret it because he never thought there was anything worth regretting. Nothing was ever serious, nothing more than faceless frat guys, a senior on the basketball team, one very memorable evening in the stacks before finals but—but none of it mattered. 

Patrick had always thought himself to be straight, but maybe that’s sort of fucked up, if he stops and acknowledges it, for more than two fucking seconds. He doesn’t want to be one of those guys, the ones who get their dick sucked by a dude and call no-homo. Nearly all the guys Patrick hooked up with in college did that—fuck— Patrick did that and he was the one sucking the dick, half the time. Ugly. The mindset was all so ugly. 

But college was all it ever was, nothing more, nothing less, and beyond being open and honest with himself about being completely okay with getting thoroughly dicked down by Sharpy, if it meant he got to join the Sharp’s in a threesome, that’s truly been the extent of his attraction to other men. 

Until now.

Christ, until now. 

Patrick wants to feel what he feels. The guy on the floor. The ethereal lucidity, the contentment, the ability to let go and relinquish every shred of control, completely and wholly to another person. Because that’s what it looks like, that’s all Patrick can see; the way this guy gives himself up, to the man on his feet, the cock in his throat, but to everyone in the room, too. 

Patrick wants that, wants to try, but maybe that’s not even the worst part. Because—because Patrick wants him . The man on the floor. With his beautiful, soft face and dark lashes and an ass you want to sink your face into. But that—would that—Patrick doesn’t—

He doesn’t know what to think anymore.

*** 

Patrick thinks positively drinking himself into a coma is a smart plan. 

It may quite potentially be an excellent plan. 

Each sip of scotch burns, low and wonderful and scratches somewhere right down to his belly. He doesn’t even like scotch, not really, but he needed something strong and Bud just wasn’t going to cut it. He hopes it brings him answers, solutions, something that helps his brain decide what it fucking wants. 

No. Fuck that. 

He knows what he wants, it’s coming to terms with it that’s really fucking him up. Right to the centre of him, swimming deep with the scotch and leaving his fingers numb. 

He’s holed up at the bar, shoulders hunched and barely concerned for the Sharp’s. It was tempting, to find them when he’d escaped the back room. It was tempting, to grab Sharpy by his neck and throttle him until he felt a modicum of sanity. But, maybe Sharpy should stop being his scapegoat. 

He can’t blame Sharpy for this. Not really. 

It’s sad, maybe a little pathetic, that he doesn’t just go home. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t. Except, that line of thinking would require logic and logic left Patrick approximately an hour ago, when he saw thick thighs, flushed clavicles and eyelashes mottled with tears. 

He didn’t stay to watch the come he knows would have choked down the guys throat, or to hear the deep, satisfied inhale of air he would have so desperately needed when he finally, finally, got let up off the other guys cock; he didn’t stay to see him come, but god, he couldn’t escape the thought of wondering how that would have happened. 

Patrick would have gotten on the floor, right there on the carpet, hauling him in by the backs of his thighs, spreading them over his waist and bringing him up his chest until he was above his face, dick desperate to be sucked. 

He marvels in the thought of it, letting his mouth be fucked. He’d want him to put his back into it, holding Patrick by his hair, pulling in the way Patrick knows he’d like, or angling himself forward enough to get his hands on the floor, hips fucking as hard as they wanted, as hard as Patrick could take it. 

“Fuck,” Patrick says, only softly and just to himself. This may be a club full of kinky freaks but he can’t help but think he’ll be the most insane of them all if he starts talking to himself.

Fuck, Patrick’s so unfair. He shouldn’t call them that. 

Patrick watched, Patrick wanted; he’s—he’s one of them. 

People move and jostle at his sides, shouting drink orders across the slab of wood that separates them from the bartender. He’s not paying attention, not really, too focused on wallowing in self-flagellation and wondering if anything else will ever have the power to turn him on the same way watching that scene play out did. 

Results are leaning towards: no. 

“Oh, sorry dude. Watch out.”

It takes Patrick a second to realise the words are directed at him. He notices the beer, first. The beer, tipped right over onto the bar and threatening to spill dangerously close to his wrist, right up his forearm and over his shirt. He catches his hand just in time, saving the material of his precious white crewneck. It’s cotton, long-sleeved and soft and it makes his eyes look fucking phenomenal. Well, at least according to Abby. 

“Shit, bro,” he laughs, dry, leaning back from the bar. “Watch it.” 

“Yeah, hence, watch out.”

Patrick rolls his eyes, unable to help himself. He brushes his hands over his sleeves, almost mindlessly, relieved when he feels them dry. “Yeah, thanks,” he mutters, utterly insincere. 

“I’ll get you a drink.”

Patrick looks up to tell the guy thanks, but no thanks. It wasn’t even his drink, why should Patrick give a fuck? Besides, he’s not exactly here to make friends with condescending, deep-voiced dicks and with each passing second he’s just—tired. So tired. 

A good plan, a solid plan, until he sees the guy offering. 

The operative word here is ‘the’. It’s the infliction of it, how Patrick could use it. It’s intended to mean a guy, any guy, and that’s implicitly true, but it’s—

‘The’ turns into—

The guy . 

It’s—

The guy. 

Patrick wonders what his face looks like, or how long he’s been having this mental spiral. A few seconds, surely. Enough to play it off, laugh it off, but how could he? 

It’s the guy. The one from the back room. The one on his knees. The one he watched take it. 

He’s smiling at Patrick, a little amused, like Patrick’s momentary lapse in sanity is endearing and not totally fucking weird. Patrick’s sure he’s a sight; wide-eyed, shocked and a little—in awe. He doesn’t want to use word starstruck, because the dude’s hardly a celebrity, but up until this point he’d compartmentalised. The guy was abstract, unobtainable and out of Patrick’s reach, someone he could dissociate from reality by accepting he’d never know him. 

This feels too close. Too confronting. 

He feels like everything he’s been thinking, every thought that’s made him spiral these past couple of hours, is written across him like neon under blacklight. It must be startling, it feels startling, to Patrick. 

“So,” the guy muses, his tone a little teasing. “A drink?”

Patrick notices it now, too. His voice. 

Fuck. His voice. 

It’s deep, hard—that fact he already knew—but it’s wrecked, too. Scratched and rough and a crackle to it that makes Patrick think of vinyl; one that’s been spun, far too many times. 

The thought alone, the realisation of how, makes Patrick want to squirm. It’s dark enough that the guy won’t see Patrick flush, won’t see the way it wants to bloom up his neck, but Patrick feels—caught. So unbearably caught. 

“Sure,” Patrick says finally, mouth spilling out the word before he has a second to acknowledge the confirmation of what it means. 

He downs the remainder of his scotch, quick and eager and the guy’s mouth twists in a smirk. It’s not hot. It’s not. Except for the way Patrick feels like he’s burning up from the inside out. 

“Another scotch, or—”

“Beer,” Patrick says, cutting him off. “And a fucking towel, for your icomptenece.”

Patrick watches the confusion startle over the guy’s face, just for a second, resisting the urge to laugh. He bites down on his bottom lip to contain it. It’s a good look on the guy, confusion and offence, but it’s quickly replaced by that fond annoyance he seems to have already reserved, just for Patrick. 

Both looks are good. They’re all good . 

Patrick watches those wide, dark eyes roll and it’s so delightfully pleasing. 

“Hey,” he says quickly, loudly, turning toward the bar. “Rosa, hey.” 

The bartender—Rosa, Patrick assumes—turns sweetly to the guy, attention captured far quicker than Patrick’s ever gotten from someone behind a bar in his life. She blinks up at him, dark lashes long and heavy and lipstick stained mouth curving into a gentle smile. She knows him, obviously, in a capacity that’s maybe more than polite hospitality and Patrick feels—jealous. He feels jealousy . What the fuck. 

“Hey, gorgeous. Back so soon?” She says, flicking her long, dark hair over her shoulder. 

The guy laughs, the sound deep and sort of—nice. “What can I say? I come for the drinks, stay for the—”

“Dick?” 

He laughs louder, the motion genuine and Patrick feels—uncomfortable is not the right word. 

“Two Stella’s,” he says, “and something to clean this up.” He gestures to the spilled beer, now well and truly in Patrick’s space and Rosa grins, right at Patrick. 

“Sure. Wouldn’t want your date getting wet. Or, well…” 

She smirks, entirely too pleased with herself and Patrick can’t help it, he— 

He laughs. 

It’s not because what she's said is even particularly funny, but Patrick’s always had such a keen knack for laughing when confronted with the face of nervousness. 

“He wishes,” Patrick says, before he can think twice on it. Before he can think better of it.

It’s worth it, to watch the guy fumble on his own confidence. 

He looks at Patrick, a little shocked and a lot surprised, like it was the last thing he was expecting Patrick to say. In his defence, it was the last thing Patrick was expecting to say. 

“Two Stella’s,” Rosa nods, smirk still on her pretty lips and looking knowingly at the guy before she grabs the drinks from the fridge behind her to place in front of them both. Patrick’s not sure if her attempt to clean the bar is something his mom would classify as even moderately satisfactory, but he can’t really give a fuck, crewneck be damned. 

Rosa winks at Patrick before she leaves them, something coy and light and Patrick knows what she’s saying, he’d be an idiot not to, but he clears his throat down at his feet all the same. 

“Thanks,” he says quickly, reaching for his beer and leaning back against the bar. “You didn’t have to.” 

The guy shrugs, matching Patrick in the way he leans, effortless and casual. He’s so—big. 

He was big— imposing —when Patrick watched him on his knees, thighs spread and shoulders tight, and he’s still imposing now, large body covered in an almost-tight white t-shirt and a positively terrible open flannel shirt. Who the fuck wears flannel, to a club. No fucking taste. So why is it fucking working for Patrick?

“Don’t mention it,” he says, smile small and almost—soft. Patrick likes it. He likes a lot of things. “You look like you needed one.” 

Patrick at least has the dignity to huff a laugh. “That pathetic, huh?” 

“No,” the guy corrects, but doesn’t elaborate. “It’s Jonny, by the way.” 

“Who?” 

“Me.”

“Oh.”

The guy— Jonny —smiles again and Patrick hopes that’s going to become a habit. He holds out his hand, eager to take Jonny’s in his own and is rewarded with long, hard, calloused fingers. Jonny’s grip is strong, a little commanding and Patrick can only hope to match him. 

Jonny’s staring, almost expectantly and Patrick doesn’t—

Oh.

“Kane,” he says quickly, flashing his teeth. “Patrick Kane.” 

“Do you like your martini’s shaken, not stirred?” 

Patrick squeezes Jonny’s hand tighter, unable to let go. Not yet. He can’t. “Patrick Timothy Kane The Second, to you.” 

Jonny looks like he’s biting back a laugh. “Jonathan Toews. Just—the first.” 

“The one and only? The exclusive? Shit.” He draws out the sound, whistling through his teeth; Jonny lets go of that laugh he’s been holding. 

Patrick’s obsessed with the sound. He wants to hear it all night. 

Shit. He’s still holding Jonny’s fucking hand. 

He pictures that hand, both his hands, when he saw them tight in constrained fists, instinctively fighting against the restraint on his arms. He’d watched his fingers curl, looking for purchase, looking for something to hold on to and Patrick remembers wondering what it would be like to have them in his hair. It confirms it, now, how strong they’d be.

He lets go. 

“Well, I’ll, uh—” Jonny tries, looking momentarily awkward. “I don’t want to disturb you. From your evening, or whatever. So…” He trails off, scratching the back of his neck and Patrick frowns. 

He wouldn’t have thought of Jonny as someone who could ever get, well— nervous. But he looks it, now. Not that he knows Jonny, not at all, but—

Jonathan Toews: can get his throat fucked in the back room of a club, in front of a dozen people. 

Also Jonathan Toews: gets nervous at a little hand holding. 

Apparently. 

“No,” Patrick says smoothly, the corner of his lips threatening to tug upward. “You’re not disturbing me.”

“Right,” Jonny nods. “You did have the whole ‘No one talk to me, I want to die at the bar,’ vibe going on.”

“A sexy vibe, right?”

Jonny recovers himself from his early bout of—whatever the fuck that was, exposing his throat in a laugh. 

It’s a nice throat. Patrick wants to touch it. 

“Very,” Jonny grins, lips on the head of the beer bottle before he throws it back to take a langrouous drink. 

Patrick can’t be blamed, for feeling as if he’s transported to that room, seeing Jonny’s lips, the work of his throat; he sees sex. 

He takes a drink of his own, just to distract himself. 

*** 

To Jonny’s credit, and maybe to Patrick’s surprise, the guy is sort of fucking great. 

They fall into something simple, something quick and comfortable and it’s easy for Patrick to forget the turmoil of his own mind. That feels dramatic. Patrick’s never had much inner turmoil to deal with, not beyond failing math in the ninth grade, so this really feels like, as they say, a whole new world. 

Jonny’s funny, too dry and blunt and it takes Patrick a while to realise Jonny’s even joking, half the time. He’s shockingly polite, but equally kind of dirty in his humour and rude and also so evidently Canadian (and that’s even without the politedness). When he laughs, Patrick notices the way it makes his nose scrunch, exposing his teeth and the way they’re a little crooked. 

Every time he laughs, Patrick smiles. He can’t fucking help it. 

He doesn’t want to give Jonny any sort of credit that he’s even remotely funny , but Patrick’s so fucking powerless to that nose. To those teeth. 

He wants to lick his tongue across them. 

And that’s a real problem, the whole problem, because whilst Jonny is funny and nice, stupidly sort of charming and easy to talk to, Patrick can’t get over the fact he’s never felt so overwhelmingly attracted to someone in his life. And it’s not just because of what he saw, it’s not because he knows what Jonny looks like naked, or what sounds he makes when he’s getting off on sucking dick; it’s not because he saw tears in his eyes or spit dripping down his chin and onto his chest, it’s—it’s—

It is. 

It is all those things, clearly, but even without it, even if it never happened, Patrick looks at Jonny’s body, at that stupid flannel and the crook of his teeth, the moles to the left of his mouth and those large, dark eyes; he looks at his moppy, soft-looking chocolate-y hair and Patrick—Patrick wants. 

He’s beautiful. He’s unfairly beautiful and Patrick wants him. 

Patrick's about at his last straw when Jonny tells him he works with children. Something to do with the environment and clean energy and ‘creating positive action now, for a brighter future’ . He goes to schools, helps classrooms promote green initiatives, pots fucking plants with kids and they call him Mr Toes. 

Questioning his sexuality was one thing, but now he’s sort of questioning the rest of his life, too. 

“I’m on the development team, for the Hawks, you know, the—the hockey team,” Patrick says when Jonny asks what he does. He doesn’t know why, but he always gets—awkward, that feels like the only word appropriate, when he tells people what he does for a living. 

He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t. Because he’s fucking proud of his job, but people either don’t even follow hockey, making them completely disinterested, or—

Or they’re like Jonny. 

His eyes go wide, almost impossibly, beer thunking down on the bar and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, almost absentmindedly. His lips stay wet, regardless of the motion and Patrick can’t look away. 

“Shit,” Jonny says, clearing his throat a little. “That’s—I mean, yeah—that’s cool.”

“Yeah?” Patrick says, trying to laugh but the sound comes out a little nervous. “It’s not—it’s not very glamorous. I’m kind of—it’s basically just a glorified PT.”

Jonny shakes his head. “You’re so—but you’re so young?”

Yeah. Patrick gets that a lot, too. “I was, uh—I was going to, you know, play for them, but—”

“Didn’t work out?”

“Injury.”

Jonny nods, like he gets it. “Right.”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Is what it is. They took me on, after college and my injury when I was in the minors, just boring stuff, kind of. Helping the equipment manager and shit. But, you know, worked my way up that corporate ladder.”

Jonny laughs, a little sombre. Which was not—Patrick doesn’t want that. “Begged them for a job, eh?”

That’s a little better. “Nah, they wanted me, obviously. Had to block Stan Bowman’s number, dude wouldn’t stop ringing. ‘Please Patrick, please, carry all the sticks back and forth from the bus to the arena. Please. No one else can do the job.’ ”

Jonny laughs properly this time. “And now you're a trainer. Impressive. Must have handled those sticks nicely.”

Assistant trainer, more like, assistant to the assistant trainer, Patrick wants to correct, but—

“No one handles sticks better than me, baby.”

Jonny’s grinning when he takes a drink. Patrick can’t help but match him. 

It’s nice, with Jonny. Effortless. Easy. 

There’s a tension there, too. Something thrumming under the surface, not deep enough to ignore; not for Patrick, at least. He doesn’t know if Jonny can feel it, if he senses it in the same way Patrick does, but the air between them feels—something charged. It’s hot to begin with, especially at the bar; something humid and sticky and thick , and Patrick can’t make out the difference between what’s real and what’s not. 

He could play it up to the heat of the room, of the club, but there’s a soft flush down Jonny’s neck, disappearing beneath his collarbones and Patrick can’t help but feel it doesn’t have a thing to do with the fucking temperature. 

He’d seen that flush, right in the same spot, barely a few hours ago and now—now Patrick’s causing it. Maybe. A marvelous thing. 

He should come clean with Jonny, be honest about what he unknowingly walked in on, what he stayed for. It would be the right thing to do, it’s making him feel kind of—kind of weird not to, but the opportunity has been lacking. It’s not exactly something Patrick knows how to just blurt out. 

He doubts Jonny would be embarrassed by it, not if he was the one willing to do it, but Patrick can’t help but feel like he’s—lying. In a way. 

And there hasn’t been an opportunity, not until—

“So, what brings you to a place like this?”

I haven’t seen you here before , goes unsaid, the implication of that holding more weight than anything else. 

Jonny’s here, he’s at this club, a lot. 

“Friends,” Patrick says, easily. “They dragged me along.”

“Right,” Jonny says, slow. “And where are they?”

Patrick shrugs. “Dunno. Haven’t seen them in a couple of hours. But I’m sure they’ll text me, or whatever, if they leave.”

“And they’re…” Jonny tries, “They come here a lot?”

“Yeah. Swingers.” Patrick smirks. 

Jonny looks completely unbothered. Which—oh. Makes sense. “Married?”

“Yeah. And I guess—well, not really swingers . They like to—I don’t know. Uh.”

“Group-sex?”

“Sometimes, I think. They like to pick up here. Bring someone home with them. Normally just one person.”

Jonny nods. “Cool.”

It probably sounds utterly pedestrian to Jonny, Patrick’s sure. The Sharp’s like what they like, but—as far as Patrick’s aware—they’re not like Jonny. 

“And what about you?” Jonny asks. 

“What about me, what?”

Jonny rolls his eyes, that exasperated look creeping in gently. “You know what this club is, Patrick.”

It’s not a question. 

“Right,” Patrick says, picking at the label of his beer. It must be his third now. Maybe his fourth. “But that’s—that’s not, I mean—”

“Really?” 

Patrick looks up at Jonny, something about the tone catching him off guard. It’s light, a little knowing, too. Like—like he’s teasing Patrick, like he doesn’t believe him for one second. 

“I’m not into that.”

Jonny’s expression goes dark, just a bit, just enough to have Patrick swallowing against the lump in his throat. “Into what?” Jonny asks, utterly serious. 

Patrick tries to shrug, but it feels awkward, caught. “You know…” he trails off. 

“No,” Jonny says simply. “ ‘That’ can mean a lot of things, Pat. Group-sex, bringing home a third, like your friends. That’s one thing, yeah. One thing, on a pretty huge list of things.”

Patrick nods, chewing on the corner of his bottom lip. A terrible habit. “Sure.”

“Another thing…” Jonny says, voice low and angling his body closer into Patrick. Patrick can feel the heat of him, close enough to reach out his hand and place it right over Jonny’s heart, right over that stupid flannel, if he wanted. “Another thing, could be, I don’t know… getting on your knees, out the back, right for everyone to see, getting your mouth fucked.”

Patrick can’t keep the shock off his face, he knows he can’t and the beer in his hand twitches, enough so that it almost goes sideways and Jonny shoots out a hand to stop it, placing his fingers over Patrick, curling around the bottle. 

His touch is hot, burning, holding Patrick in place.

He doesn’t let go. 

“We don’t need another spill,” Jonny says, chest now almost at Patrick’s. “Do we?”

“No,” Patrick tries, bottom lip now positively worried. 

Jonny laughs, the sound small and barely there, like it’s a huff more than anything else. “I knew it.”

Patrick’s not going to insult either of them by pretending he doesn’t know what Jonny’s saying. “How?” he asks instead.

“Magic,” Jonny says, an amused twist to his mouth. “You’re so fucking obvious, man.”

“Did you—did you see me, in the room?” That would be sort of fucking embarrssing, but Patrick wants to know all the same. 

Jonny shakes his head, only gently. “I don’t really notice much, when I’m—in a situation, like that.”

That makes sense. Jonny looked pretty—caught up, in the whole thing. 

If, you know, caught up also means: completely fucking gone. 

That was Patrick’s favourite part. One of them, anyway.

“I didn’t—” Patrick tries, forcing himself not to be embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to—to watch you, like that, dude. I was looking for the bathroom —I just—I’m sorry—I—”

“Patrick,” Jonny says, hard. And the—the tone of it, all of it, everything etched into that one, small word, makes Patrick want to—

“Patrick,” Jonny says again, softer this time. “Don’t apologise.”

Patrick feels some of the strength return to his knees. “I feel kind of—uh—shitty, about it.”

“Don’t. You think if I didn’t want people to see, I’d be getting my ass handed to me in that room?”

“Right. That’s kind of the—”

“Point?”

“Yeah.”

Patrick smiles and Jonny’s lips do the same. His thumb brushes over Patrick’s knuckles from where he still holds his hand, right over the bottle. It’s weird, or it should be, but it’s—it’s not. It’s grounding. Comforting. 

Jonny’s hand is so—big. 

“You were into it.” It’s not a question. 

“Yeah,” Patrick concedes, “yeah I—I really was.”

“That’s fine, Pat. You know that, right? The whole point is that other people will be into it, too.”

He shakes his head. “No, I know but—but not me .”

Jonny’s head tilts a little in question. “Why?”

“I dunno.” He does, but he can hardly articulate it. “It’s just—new, I guess.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Jonny smirks, but not teasing. “You see something like that for the first time, live and in colour at least, and you’re thinking, why has no one ever sucked my dick like that before?”

Jonny’s easy with it, light, but Patrick has to duck his gaze. 

Because that’s—that’s not—

“So I get it, dude,” Jonny continues. He releases his hold on Patrick’s hand and Patrick—he hates it. Misses it almost instantly. “It’s hot, totally, wanting to get your dick sucked like that. I wouldn’t judge you for that. I wouldn’t judge you for anything.”

Patrick huffs out a breath, steeling himself for something he doesn’t know how to name when he looks up at Jonny, almost through his lashes. Jonny is so tall, taller than Patrck by at least a head and it makes it confronting, to look up at him like this. But they’re so—close, now. Jonny’s too close. 

“No,” Patrick says. 

Jonny stares.

“I mean, yes, but—” Patrick drops his voice to no more than a murmur. Jonny has to lean in closer, tighter, just to hear him. He smells like sandalwood. “That’s not what I want.”

It is. Patrick does want that, given half the opportunity, but it’s—it’s not. 

Patrick feels scattered, discombobulated and dissolved and he wants Jonny to take the pieces of him, stitch them back together and send him home, complete. 

Patrick jolts when Jonny’s fingers touch lightly to his chin, it’s barely a hold, barely a touch, but it has a strength behind it that leaves Patrick powerless to do anything other than angle his face up and closer toward Jonny’s. 

And the way Jonny’s looking at him, sincere and gentle and true , makes Patrick want to float into the ceiling, never to be brought back down. 

Not if it means he can live up there, in the rafters, with Jonny. Fuck. That’s too much. 

“What do you want?” Jonny asks, too genuine. 

Patrick bites down on his lip, unable to stop himself, but Jonny moves quicker. He presses his thumb to Patrick’s bottom lip, right in the centre, pushing gentle and sure and Patrick’s mouth parts, defenceless. 

“Focus,” Jonny says, his thumb turning almost insistent. “What do you want?”

You. 

Jonny releases his lip and Patrick hates it when he does. 

“What you had,” Patrick says finally, forcing himself to keep Jonny’s gaze. His eyes are so dark. So, so dark. “I want to—I want to do what you did.”

Jonny looks at him without scrutiny, without shock or surprise. He stays level, a little questioning and a lot open. The only indication he’s registered what Patrick’s said, what he’s really said, is evident in the blow of his pupils. Patrick can see it, even in the dark, he can see the iris almost completely disappear. 

“And what’s that, Patrick?”

Patrick can’t help the way his eyebrows furrow, a tiny dent. He can’t—surely Jonny doesn’t want him to spell it out. It’s not that Patrick’s embarrassed, not to himself at least, but he doesn’t even know Jonny, he doesn’t—

“Pat,” Jonny says, almost hard. “If you can’t say it, you can’t do it.”

A fair logic. Patrick can’t argue with that. But—

“What do you want me to say, man? That I want to get down on my knees for you, have you—”

Jonny's eyes widen and Patrick’s sure he’s not much better. It’s a slip, undeniable, one word exposing himself too soon. Wanting to sleep with Jonny is not inherently the problem, because Patrick’s hit on thousands (okay, hundreds) of people in bars before, confident and cocky and knowing exactly what he wants, but something with Jonny feels too—fraught. He doesn’t want to ruin this. Whatever this, is. Maybe it’s nothing. 

“Uh, I mean, I know that’s not—” Fuck it. It’s not like Patrick can get what he wants anyway. “You wouldn’t do that. With me. You know? And not because it’s me, or you don’t think I’m—” Collect yourself, Pat. “You bottom, right? Or, I guess—I don’t know. So what I want, it’s not…” Patrick trails off, no need to make himself look any worse. 

Because that’s it, isn’t it? Patrick might not be an expert and Sharpy’s not far off the mark when he extends Patrick’s knowledge down to shitty porn, but he’s familiar with words like dominant and submissive and he knows what that means, in the context of what Jonny was doing. He’s not a complete idiot. 

But Patrick never learns his own lessons. Namely the ones where he needs to shut the fuck up. 

“And that’s cool, man. You know, you do you, and all that. I just, I guess it’s just something I want to try—” with you, “—and something I think I, uh, may want. So. Maybe you could just, give me tips, or something. Or, help me find someone who—”

“Patrick, stop.”

Patrick does. The power of it, of Jonny’s voice, is something that stills him, shocks him; it makes his spine snap straight. Jonny’s fingers curl around his wrist, over the hand that rests on the bar and the touch feels sharp, a little electric, like the socket in the kitchen at his old home in Buffalo, the one that would leave your skin buzzing whenever you plugged in the toaster.                          

A nice feeling. A consuming one. 

Jonny’s thumb rests over his pulse, pushing. 

“Pat, I like both .”

“Huh?” Patrick asks, but it barely sounds like a word. It’s an inflection of the sound resting in the back of his throat, more than anything else. 

“Have you ever heard of switching?”

“Yeah,” Patrick starts, brain scattering. Trying to keep up. “I mean—I had this friend, in college. He liked giving and, uh, taking.”

The corner of Jonny’s mouth twitches. “Right. Well. You don’t have to just be a dom, or a sub, some people like both.” 

Patrick blinks. “You do both?”

Jonny smiles, tapping his fingers against the skin of Patrick’s forearm. “Yeah. More importantly, I like both.”

Patrick hums, considering it. He’s fascinated, mostly. Which may be a lie, because mostly, all he can think is, oh shit. He wishes he could be more coherent, even to the thoughts trapped in his own mind.

“That’s cool,” he says finally, smiling back up at Jonny. He can feel something loosen between them. “I just always figured submission and domination would be—I don’t know. I’m trying not to be ignorant, man. I just mean—wouldn’t a sub have no interest in dominating someone? Or—well, either way.”

“Sure, that’s mostly the norm. Not a lot of sub’s and dom’s switch, just purely out of preference. But—well at least the way I view it—it can be good practice to understand what the other is experiencing, to some degree. Like, I’m not saying a dom has to experience subspace, or would even be able to, but I think if you’re going to be doing things to another person, you need to know how it feels, to understand the limits.” 

“Right, that makes sense,” Patrick nods. “Like, you wouldn’t want to choke someone without knowing what it felt like first? Or, I guess, more a case of knowing how hard—the certain type of pressure, or, I—”

Patrick swallows, catching himself. Jonny’s grip is tight, insistent but mindless, in the way both of them ignore it; Jonny’s hand on him is something Patrick has accepted. He pictures it, for a second, for a vacuous second; Jonny’s hands at his neck. Patrick’s not sure that’s something he’s ever wanted, not in a whole, rounded thought. It’s always felt a little abstract, the simple idea that his breath, having it restricted, would be something Patrick would like. 

He’s done it to himself before. Nothing solid, nothing confronting, but a gentle hand on his throat, caressing at his windpipe when he breathes through an orgasm, squeezing when he comes and feeling the sense heighten and become—overwhelming. 

The thought of Jonny doing that, measured and controlled and confident . Patrick—he—

He clears his throat, ignoring the way Jonny’s eyes brush down across his neck, just for a second. 

“Yeah,” Jonny says simply, saving Patrick. “For me, the fun part was figuring out what I liked. What gets me off. Back in college, I was with this girl who wanted to try some stuff, opened up about what she wanted to do and—I liked it. I really liked it. Like, it almost scared me how much I liked it because I was pretty one-track-minded, yeah? Felt like I had to like one or the other, but the minute I realised I didn’t need to do anything other than what made me happy, then it was—”

“Freeing?” 

“Pretty fucking great.” 

Patrick flashes his teeth in a grin and Jonny watches the line of it. “So you prefer it. Subbing?”

“No,” Jonny replies quickly. “I get different things out of both.”

Jonny doesn’t elaborate and Patrick doesn’t know if it’s his place to push. But fuck the line, Patrick’s never been a fan of staying behind it anyway. 

“Which one would you prefer with me?”

It would be easy to assume Jonny doesn’t care what Patrick has said, what he’s asked. His face remains neutral, impassive and clear, even his throat stays still; Patrick would have swallowed so loud it clicked. 

It would be easy to assume Jonny is unbothered or that Patrick’s lost this round, if it weren’t for the grip on Patrick’s wrist that goes so tight the skin will turn white soon. Patrick likes it, wants to see how hard Jonny can squeeze. 

Patrick: 1

Jonny: 0 

Patrick smirks, pushing into Jonny’s space. “Would you let me do that to you, Jon? ‘Cause I could.” He puts his free hand to Jonny’s hip, the one that isn’t trapped in it’s vice on the bar, and uses the leverage to angle Jonny gently backward. Jonny lets himself be pushed, so easy for it, the curve of his lower back pressing into the line of the bar. He keeps his hand on Patrick, holding them both steady. 

Patrick steps into the space Jonny has created with the part of his legs. “Yeah?” He says gently. “Would you let me take care of you?” 

There’s so much Patrick wants to say, so much he could say; it barrels around his mind, rushed and heavy. 

I’ll fuck your mouth better than he could, baby. I wanted that, too. Wanted a lot of things. You like being tied up, yeah? I could do that. Keep you tied up for me all day, just so I could fuck you whenever I wanted. Your ass, Jonny. Fucking criminal. I want my dick in there so bad, keep you all wet and fucked open, all fucking day. Just for me. Fucking eat the come out of you, just—

He laughs, a little breathless, a little wild. Patrick doesn’t know if this is allowed, if it’s breaking some sort of unspoken rule Patrick hasn’t learnt yet, even if the thoughts only exist inside his own head. 

Jonny’s skin is flushing up though, high on his cheekbones, like he can hear the picture Patrick is painting behind his eyelids; the blow of his pupils is mesmerising. He’s rolling his hips forward listlessly, like he’s searching for Patrick, asking for something he doesn’t realise yet. And Patrick realises, in this strange, reckless, heady moment—

He wants both. He wants both too. He wants everything from Jonny. 

“Didn’t think that’s what you wanted to try?” Jonny says finally, voice even. Too even, like he’s controlling himself against anything but. 

Good. Patrick likes that.

“I kind of want everything from you,” Patrick responds, too raw.

Jonny smirks. “Don’t you want to know my answer?”

Patrick’s getting caught up with the feel of Jonny’s hip beneath his hand. His fingers are dipping beneath the band of Jonny’s shirt, that fucking flannel, brushing against bare skin. Jonny’s skin is so hot, it’s blazing and so shockingly inviting. “Hmm?” he hums questioningly. 

“What I’d prefer, with you.”

Right. How could Patrick forget. 

He looks up at Jonny, close from this angle and so tempting. Patrick wants his hands on Jonny’s face, over his lips; he wants his fingers in Jonny’s mouth. 

Patrick’s grip goes a little lax, caught in the thought of his own question and credit where credit’s due, Jonny uses it to his optimum advantage. He fists both hands in Patrick’s shirt, bunching at his sternum and it’s the combination of his strength, of Patrick’s shock, of the push of his hips against Patrick’s, that causes their positions to be flipped easily. 

Patrick is backed up against the bar, hard, and Jonny’s hands go flat against his front, thumbs at the base of his ribs. It’s rough, rougher than Patrick could have anticipated, and the heat that rocks through him feels like electricity; pure, harsh, bright. 

Jonny’s grinning, confident with it and Patrick’s just trying to remember how to breathe. 

“What if I don’t want to do any of that?” Jonny says, easy. Patrick takes a second to be surprised, a little disappointed and confused, before— “What if I wanted to be gentle with you? What if I just wanted to lay you out, soft and pretty on your back and just kiss you. Every bit of skin my mouth could find, worshipping you, like you deserve.” 

Jonny takes Patrick’s hand gently from where it’s still resting mindlessly at his hip, bringing it to his mouth. “Your fingers,” he whispers, brushing his lips over the knuckle of Patrick’s ring finger. “Your beautiful wrists, up your veins to the soft skin of your bicep. Every muscle, every line, down your neck and chest and—” He stops, teeth at the delicate skin on the inside of Patrick’s wrist. “I could kiss down your thighs, learning how it feels to have the soft hair of your legs on my lips. Your knees, your ankles—right on the bone. Everywhere, Patrick. I’d kiss you everywhere.”

Patrick shudders, a full body thing, right down to his feet. “Yeah?” he tries, voice harsh. He’s picturing it, oh god he’s picturing it. “What about my mouth? My mouth on that list of places you’d kiss?”

Jonny’s eyes brush over the spot in question. “Baby, your mouth is where I’d start.”

Patrick’s hand is still near Jonny’s face, still held gently in his grasp, and Patrick feels powerless to it, when he brushes the pad of his thumb over Jonny’s bottom lip. “So,” he says, “start.”

Kiss me, Patrick thinks. Kissmekissmekissme. 

The thought feels wild, almost unhinged, with the way he so desperately wants. Because he wants Jonny, wants his mouth and his tongue and his hands and his—

He doesn’t know Jonny, but right now he barely knows himself so maybe they’ve come full circle. Maybe it’s okay. He feels a startling trust for Jonny, more than anyone else he’s met at a stupid fucking bar and that feels—heavy, more than anything. What he wants, what he wants to try, is something he knows doesn’t come without a healthy level of trust and he wants Jonny to know—to understand—he trusts him. 

Hell, Jonny could be a murderer for all Patrick knows, which is perhaps something he should assess more seriously but— 

Kiss me, he thinks again, murder be damned. 

And Jonny’s going to, Patrick can see it in his eyes, dark and wide and zeroed in on the curve of Patrick’s mouth. Patrick’s thumb still rests on Jonny’s lip, soft and warm and he can’t resist but push, to know how yielding that mouth really is. 

Jonny opens up for him beautifully, taking Patrick’s thumb in his mouth gently, softly, closing his lips around the tip, teeth at the knuckle. Fingers in Jonny’s mouth are not conducive to kissing, Patrick gets that, but the warmth of it is heady, intoxicating; Patrick can’t stop. 

He’s seen what that mouth can do, knows what it looks like when it’s begging and open, and Patrick just wants a taste. 

He takes his thumb from Jonny’s tongue, drags it slowly out from between his lips; it’s wet, reflecting in the flash of the club lights and Patrick runs it over the part of Jonny’s mouth. He puts his palm to Jonny’s jaw, Jonny’s fingers still encircled around his wrist and—

Thinking be damned. Patrick’s not going to let his own thoughts be trapped anymore. 

If you can’t say it, you can’t do it. 

“Kiss me.” 

Jonny smirks with his mouth closed, the movement of it catching on the edge of Patrick’s thumb. His hand is hard at Patrick’s side, slipping around his waist to curl against in his shirt, fingers digging into the tight muscle of his lats. It hurts, almost, like getting worked over rough at the rink by the trainers and fuck, he needs it. He needs Jonny to loosen him up.

He sweeps his tongue over his bottom lip, wetting it mindlessly before tugging it between his teeth and he can feel it when Jonny lets out a low rumble, right in his chest, right against his own. 

Jonny pushes in closer, rougher, and Patrick’s back is at its limit against the hard line of the bar, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t— 

“Yo, Kaner! Peeksy. Peeks. Peeeeeeeks.” 

Patrick is dreaming. No, he’s having a nightmare. That must be the reason—the only reason—as to why Sharpy’s voice is cutting through the haze of his mind, the haze of Jonny, like the world's most ill-timed, irritating knife. 

It must be a nightmare, in which Patrick will be allowed to murder Sharpy, because he will. He fucking will. 

He pulls his gaze off Jonny’s mouth, from where he was wondering what the scar above his lip would feel like on his tongue, to turn his head. Jonny groans in small frustration and Patrick’s only two steps behind him.

Not a nightmare, just a living one. Patrick Sharp, live and in blistering colour, at their side. 

He may as well be clasping his hands under his chin, blinking up at them with eyes the shape of hearts, like he’s a fucking cartoon character. Patrick wants to drop an anvil on his fucking head. 

“What?” Patrick bites. 

Sharpy grins, fluttering—fucking fluttering— his eyelashes at them both. “Hello Peekaboo, it’s me, your friend, Patrick Sharp.” 

Jonny drops his grip from Patrick’s wrist, his waist, taking a step back that can't be more than an inch, barely noticeable, but Patrick feels the distance of it like an ache. His fingers brush down and over Jonny’s jaw when he drops his hand, scratching lightly at his neck and even over the thump of the bassline surging through the floor, Patrick can hear Jonny’s whine; it’s deep, regretful, like he’s going to sock Sharpy in the jaw. 

Patrick would drop to his knees in thanks if he did. 

Patrick would drop to his knees for Jonny anyway. 

“Hello,” Sharpy says again, this time smiling directly at Jonny. His grin is positively shit-eating. “I’m Patrick, but my friends call me Sharpy. I’m your Patrick’s best friend.” He emphasises the your and despite himself, Patrick feels the flush of it on his neck. 

“Hey, man,” Jonny grunts, offering his hand to Sharpy. Sharpy takes it, both of their grips impossibly tight that Patrick can see the white of their knuckles. “Jonny.” 

“Jonny,” Sharpy repeats, flashing his teeth at Patrick. “I’m so sorry to interrupt your little…” he trails off, waving his hand in front of him loosely as if it’s all the explanation they need. “But, my little Patty Cakes, my little Peekaboo, my—” 

“What the fuck do you want, Sharp?” 

Sharpy smirks. “Ab’s and I are hitting the road and I wanted to find you to make sure you were okay. But! As I can see, you look positively cosy over here, so…” 

Patrick wants to hit him in the mouth. “Great. You can fuck off.” 

Sharpy gasps, over the top and dramatic, clutching at his chest like he’s grabbing his damn pearls. “So rude, Peekaboo. Jonny, I must apologise for my little muffins behaviour, he’s normally as sweet as apple pie, so don’t let this act fool you.” 

“Are you always like this?” Jonny asks, blunt. But his tone is amused, too, like he’s not sure if he wants to laugh or frown and Patrick recognises it as a look he’s all too familiar with when it comes to Patrick Sharp. 

“Let’s get a drink sometime, you can find out.” He winks, fucking winks and Jonny—

Jonny laughs. 

All Patrick can do is roll his eyes. “Did you find someone?” 

Sharpy visibly brightens, genuine and soft and Patrick knows that look; when something has made Sharpy happy, pure and unfiltered. 

“Yeah,” he smiles. “Alex.” He nods over his shoulder and Patrick has to look past Jonny to follow the motion of it. Patrick doesn’t blame Jonny for turning his head too, both of them tracking Sharpy’s line of sight; it rests on two girls, grins wider than Sharpy’s own, resting directly on each other. 

Abby’s got her fingers wrapped up in long, dark hair and even from a distance and in the dim lights of the club, Patrick can see how she’s pulling the other girl—Alex—closer to her. Alex says something that makes Abby laugh, two sets of white teeth mirrored in delight and all Patrick can do is blink. Alex is gorgeous, irrefutable and painful and, well, Patrick’s never doubted his own attraction to Abby. 

The strobe of the dance floor flashes across them, illuminating Abby in greens and pinks and golds, right as Alex leans in to brush her lips over the corner of her mouth. Patrick’s drawn out of the trance of it—the beauty of it—by Sharpy clapping his hands together loudly. 

“Well, gentlemen, I believe that is my cue to leave.” 

Somewhere, up in heaven, there’s an angel that's smiling down on Sharpy and smirking down on Patrick. Patrick should be used to the joke by now, that Sharpy’s the luckiest person alive and all that, but it never fails to be a real fucking hit. Ha-bloody-ha. 

Sharpy runs a hand through Patrick’s hair and Patrick doesn’t hesitate to smack him right on the wrist. “Stay out of trouble, Peeksy,” he practically sings, nodding once at Jonny. “Or, don’t, your choice.” 

He walks away before Patrick can hit him again. 

Patrick watches his retreating back, resisting the urge to scowl when Sharpy catches up to Alex and his wife, two sets of small, slender hands curling around him from either side and a sound Patrick can’t hear, being laughed into his neck. 

Bastard. 

Patrick just wishes he weren’t so fucking happy for him. 

It doesn’t change the fact he’s so still so—so fucking lucky, all the fucking time and— 

Jonny’s hand touches at his hip, gentle and pulling, a reminder that he’s there and—

Oh.

Maybe Patrick’s kind of lucky, too. 

“Sorry about that,” Patrick says, hoping he doesn’t sound too terribly fond. “He’s a fucking idiot.” 

“But you love him.” 

It’s not a question, or an accusation, it’s a clear statement of gentle truth and all Patrick can do is shrug in affirmation. “Unfortunately,” he says, resisting the urge to tug his mouth into a smile. 

Patrick can’t help but feel as if the moment to kiss Jonny has gone. Which is not entirely true, because he’s sure if he were to press up on his toes, plant his hands on Jonny’s chest and take his mouth beneath his own, Jonny would melt into him. He feels he knows that, with a comforting sort of clarity that leaves him feeling powerful but—but he doesn’t know where they stand beyond that. 

“So,” he says instead, angling himself toward the bar to pick up his all but forgotten drink. “What do you—” 

“I know what I want, Patrick,” Jonny says, voice hard. 

Patrick has to take a drink just to steel himself against the look in Jonny’s eyes. They’re intense, almost shockingly so, but they’re so—soft, too. It’s confronting, to look into eyes that Patrick can’t discern the colour of between iris and pupil, but something about it—about Jonny’s eyes—has the pit of Patrick’s stomach turning in want. 

“Yeah?” he replies finally, “What’s that?” 

“I want to give you what you want. To be what you need.” 

Fuck. What Patrick needs. Patrick doesn’t know what he needs. 

He laughs, the neck of his beer pushing against his bottom lip. "What, like, you want to put me on my knees? Want to hear me beg?" He can't help it, can't stop himself when his tongue traces along the rim of the glass bottle. "You want me to call you daddy, Jon?"

And Patrick’s joking, or at least he’s trying to, but he can’t help but feel like he’s exposing himself more than anything else. He could tell himself—tell Jonny—that it was the default of his line of thought, that words like dom and sub and kink swam behind his eyes and equated to being on his knees, to begging, to—

Jonny shrugs, eyes dark. "If you want."

Patrick doesn't know what he wants, but he thinks Jonny's going to teach him. 

“Take me home,” Patrick says finally, hitting his bottle down on the bar with a thump. His voice is steady, gaze even more so and it’s pleasing, so completely pleasing, to watch the line of Jonny’s throat work in what can only mean desire.

And Patrick might not know what he wants, not specifically, but he knows he wants Jonny. And it’s evident, entirely irrefutable, that Jonny wants him too. Which makes the next words out of Jonny’s mouth— 

“No.”

Confusing. 

Or, alternatively, see: kinda fucking terrible. 

Patrick can visibly feel himself startle. “No?” He repeats, the infliction of it clear as a question. 

“No,” Jonny says again. He takes Patrick’s hands in his own, big and warm and thumb soothing quickly over Patrick’s knuckles. “I want you, Patrick.” 

“Right,” Patrick nods. Thank god they cleared that up. That shit could have gotten embarrassing. “So—”

“So, what I want from you, and what I think you want from me, shouldn’t be something we do tonight.” 

Patrick frowns. “But—”

“For one, I’m fucking tired. I dropped before, man, that shit is tiring.” He smiles, thumb pressing at the back of Patrick’s hand. Patrick doesn’t even entirely know what that means, but he can use his fucking head. “And two, I want you to be sure.”

“But—”

“And three ,” Jonny interrupts again, “it wouldn’t be very good dom behaviour of me.”

“Screw that,” Patrick says quickly, without thought. “I want it, yeah? Come on. Want—” you. 

Jonny raises his eyebrow, small and slight, like he’s figuring out a play. 

Patrick presses in tighter, he wants to feel Jonny’s chest. He wants to feel all of him. “Please,” he says, close enough he could knock his nose against the line of Jonny’s jaw. He doesn’t. God, why doesn’t he? “Please,” he tries again, softer now, lips threatening to grin. “Jonny, please. I want—”

The words on Patrick’s tongue dissolve when Jonny is quick to place a rough, almost biting hand across his mouth. The look in his eyes is fierce, dark and harsh and Patrick, despite himself, fears the trickle of fear run down his spine like rain on glass. It’s a small thing, something that pools in his fingers and—

Oh. 

Oh. He likes it. 

Patrick likes it. 

The sound he makes against Jonny’s palm is soft, Jonny won’t be able to hear it, but it’s clear from the twitch of his mouth that he’s felt it. He presses in tighter, until the line of his dick is unmistake against Patrick’s hip; hard, heavy, there. Patrick wants to touch.

“You want , Pat?” Jonny says finally, other hand cupping the back of Patrick’s skull. It’s gentle, or it could be, if it weren’t for the way Jonny tangles his fingers in his hair; he pulls and Patrick feels the urge to whine. “Fine. Come with me then.”

Both hands leave Patrick in a rush that leaves him dizzy. He sways from it, small and unfocused and despite the loss, the brand of Jonny’s touch stays, the feel of his hands committed to memory. 

***

Patrick can’t resist but flash his teeth in a grin when Jonny pushes him up against the wall. He goes with a gentle unf, the sound rocking around in his chest, vibrating somewhere in his ribs. He reaches for Jonny, trying to grab him by the belt loops of his jeans, but Jonny encircles his wrists in an almost punishing grip, pressing his hands back against the wall instead. 

He shoves at Jonny, with his chest, his hips, just to push back; just to see how hard he can. 

Patrick’s grin grows wider. 

Patrick likes the way Jonny’s mouth looks, like it’s resisting the urge to grin back, like he doesn’t want to let on that seeing Patrick like this is something he wants. Which is maybe not true, because he knows Jonny wants it, Jonny’s dick certainly fucking wants it, but he thinks the game here is Jonny isn’t meant to. 

He can’t help but feel like he’s being taught a lesson, and god, he can’t wait to learn it. Patrick’s a good learner. 

Terrible student, though. 

“You’re going to be still for me,” Jonny says, voice soft. He’s nosing at Patrick’s jaw, pressing him deeper into the wall. 

It’s quieter where they are, somewhere out the back. The hum of the music is quiet, the thumpthumpthump of the bass reverberating through the floor, up through the soles of Patrick’s shoes. He’d spared a thought to be worried Jonny was taking him to the back room, the same way he had been, putting Patrick down on his knees in front of a group of strangers and telling him to get to it. 

He didn’t. For which Patrick was grateful. Exhibitionsim seems more Jonny’s thing, which is totally cool and Patrick’s totally fucking into that, if it means he can watch Jonny, but he wants Jonny to be the only one to see him like this. At least for now. 

“We’re going to start small,” Jonny almost hums, grip tight. “This is your first lesson.”

Patrick smirks at the words that adhere so nicely with the analogy in his own mind. So this is a class; Patrick’s so fucking ready to take notes.

Jonny’s lips brush over his ear, teeth finding the spot beneath it. “Control,” he says simply. 

“Mine?” Patrick asks, “Or yours?”

Jonny withdraws, just enough to level Patrick with his hard gaze and Patrick feels the wind knocked out of him when Jonny pulls him forward just to push him back again. A whine escapes the back of his throat, caught up in his vocal chords and Jonny’s eyes graze down over his neck. “If you don’t like something, you tell me, okay?”

Patrick’s tongue runs along the line of his teeth. He nods. “Will do.”

“I’m serious.” And shit, he is. He could fucking kill someone with that stare. “Tell me you understand.”

Patrick nods once more, quicker this time. “I understand, Jonny.”

“Good.” He presses his lips to the corner of Patrick’s mouth, in what feels like a gentle promise of a kiss and before Patrick can move to meet him, Jonny is grabbing him by his jaw. It’s rough, not at all like the soft brush of his lips and Patrick practically keens. His thumb holds Patrick’s chin, fingers splayed along the line of his jaw and his palm left to rest almost at the hollow of Patrick’s throat. 

Patrick closes his eyes, just to cope with what he feels flood through his veins. Thing is, he doesn’t know what he feels, can’t identify it, just that it's warm and bright and makes Patrick feel—alive. 

The feeling settles somewhere in his groin, right in his dick, hard and desperate and trapped almost uncomfortably beneath his jeans. His hips move forward, powerless to it and Jonny gets a strong thigh between his legs, spreading them and keeping him still. 

Ha. Patrick’s still the winner. It gives him leverage to grind his cock against Jonny’s thigh; obsessed with that thick, golden muscle he’d seen straining on the floor. God, Jonny on his knees was fucking gorgeous, thighs all bunched and tight and spread like a—

“No, baby,” Jonny says against his cheek. “Keep still.”

Jonny’s grip on his neck tightens and Patrick can’t help but let his head tip back against the wall. It exposes his throat, he knows it does and Jonny takes it for the invitation it so completely is. 

He sighs when Jonny’s teeth find the tendons near his pulse, biting gently before he places his lips there a moment later. Patrick wants the mark of it, wants him to bite—suck— harder, have his skin splotched like ink, like Jonny was careless with his canvas but careful with him.  

He’s not biting hard enough for that, much to Patrick’s disappointment, but it feels nice all the same. 

Next time, he thinks. 

He wants to bite Jonny in return, turn the skin of that golden neck purple, so everyone can see where Patrick’s been. It would be beautiful. He’d be beautiful. 

Next time. 

Jonny’s palm presses lower, right over the base of Patrick’s throat and when he pushes, small and almost barely , Patrick can’t miss the way the air around him—inside of him—tightens. Right down to his chest. It makes his pulse quicken, he can feel it, beating somewhere around his mouth and the feeling is so completely intoxicating it makes him gasp. The sound traps, though, stuck at the heel of Jonny’s hand and it only causes Jonny to press harder. 

“That’s good, Pat, so good.” Jonny’s almost whispering, reverent with it. “How we doing?”

Jonny’s grip loosens and Patrick feels the air rush it’s way back to his lungs. His body tries to sag, right against Jonny’s chest but Jonny keeps him steady. Fuck, how does he begin to answer that? Jonny—he’s barely done anything and Patrick—Patrick can’t feel his toes. 

“Good,” he says finally, swallowing down against the lump in his throat. “Good, Jonny.”

So good. So good. So—

“Yeah, baby.” 

Patrick doesn’t think he’s come in his pants since he was about fifteen, but hey, anniversaries and all. It’s been a decade, might be about time to give that a go. Which is embarrassing, sure, but he’s really not going to have another choice if Jonny keeps doing—this. 

He squeezes Patrick’s throat again, firm but gentle and sure, Patrick can’t move, he’s trying to be good, but he can’t help but feel like Jonny’s rewarding him by gently rocking his leg forward, right between Patrick’s. It feels—

The thesaruas in Patrick’s brain has melted down to the bare bones of the English language, the real fucking minimum. Bottom of the barrel. Real rudimentary stuff. 

All he feels capable of right now is categorising things as: 

Good or Bad. 

And this?

Yeah. 

This is good.

The hand that had still been gripping at Patrick’s wrist loosens, the pad of Jonny’s thumb brushing almost delicately over tendons and bone, like he can feel them through the skin. It’s soft, intimate, and Patrick has to tighten his hand into a fist just to stop from tangling Jonny’s fingers with his own. 

Jonny brushes his finger lightly up Patrick’s arm before touching his hip, dragging blunt nails along the skin just above the band of his jeans. Patrick can feel his abs tighten from it, twitching in anticipation as Jonny’s hand gets closer to the buckle of his belt. 

The touch at his neck tightens and releases in gentle waves, in and out— inandout— and Patrick can feel the tremor of each motion, each roll, rock through him like an ocean. How it feels, how it really feels inside, is not gentle; the ocean is violent, hit hard by a hurricane. 

All Patrick can do is hold on. 

“I didn’t want you to get quiet on me,” Jonny muses, smirking down at Patrick. It’s a good-fucking-look on him. Bastard. 

Patrick takes his own quietness as a show of two primary truths. 

One) he didn’t—well—he guess he didn’t know if he was allowed to speak and; 

Two) he doesn’t know if he’s even capable anymore. 

“I like you mouthy.”

He thinks Jonny may regret the power he’s given with those four, simple words. 

Jonny’s hand loosens and so does Patrick’s chest, words tumbling out of him in rolled, breathless cadence. “Shit—Jonny—you gotta fucking touch me, man, or I—”

“Tell me how it feels.”

“What? I—”

Jonny’s grip turns hard and Patrick feels his eyes roll into the back of his head. God, he’s— “Patrick, tell me.”

Like you’ve poured sunshine into my blood. Like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting to jump. Like you’ve taken every part of me, every atom and part and molecule and set them on fucking fire. Like this—just this—is going to make me come. That if you squeeze that damn, fucking, huge fucking hand any tighter I will come and I want you to be looking at me when you do it. That no one’s had this power over me before, and I don’t even know you, but I want to. Like—

“Jonny—I—”

Jonny’s hand relaxes completely, but doesn’t remove it’s hold. It’s soft, brushing over Patrick’s neck in gentle strokes, a reminder that he’s there. It’s comforting, soothing; it gives him a second to fucking think. 

“Breathe, baby,” Jonny says quietly. He kisses at the corner of Patrick’s mouth again, so fucking close to where Patrick wants him. “Breathe, that’s it, you’re so good.”

The praise melts through Patrick, twisting around his veins like vines. He wonders if he’s glowing, if they’re glowing; he feels as if they illuminate the space, lighting up the dark hallway, in colours they’re choosing for themselves. “It feels amazing,” he says truthfully. “I can’t—I can’t even think, when you—when you touch me like that.”

Jonny smiles and Patrick’s never wanted to kiss anyone more. 

“It’s—it’s a lot,” Patrick tries. “Like I—I can feel myself slipping.” He can’t explain it better than that and he hopes Jonny doesn’t make him try. It’s the only way he can think to describe it; the sensation of falling, but unbothered by throwing out his arms to break the fall. Jonny’s there to catch him. 

An emotion Patrick can’t name is in Jonny’s eyes, looking at Patrick with something that’s almost—not critical, it’s not bad, but it’s as if he's—surprised. “Do you want to come?”

Patrick is so taken aback by the question he almost laughs. “I’m about two seconds away from coming if you just choke me a little more, dude. What do you think?”

Jonny laughs, more a huff than anything else really, like he doesn’t want to give Patrick the satisfaction. “I can make you come, Patrick. But do you want me doing this when I do?” He emphasises the question with the tap of his fingers down the column of Patrick’s throat. 

Oh. That seemed sort of obvious, to Patrick at least. “Yeah.”

Jonny nods, like he’s considering it. “It’ll be intense, I think. For you.”

Patrick grins. “Counting on it.”

Patrick couldn’t say what happens next, not really. He’s conscious of the general flow of events, sure; Jonny’s hands at his belt, deft fingers tugging at his fly, pushing at the band of his boxers until they’re low enough, just enough for his cock to find Jonny’s grip. Jonny’s grip is relentless. 

Time moves in a wave that no longer feels linear. It feels rocky, uncertain yet somehow sure and Patrick’s not clear where the roll of pleasure begins and ends. Perhaps because it is neither. The pleasure simply is. 

The tunnel of Jonny’s fist is tight and it takes everything Patrick has, every will of his strength, not to buck his hips forward into the touch. He keeps still, palms flat to the wall behind him and grunting out a sound he’s sure is completely undignified. But, whatever. Fuck that. The louder he gets the darker Jonny’s eyes go and that feels like a win for all parties involved. Besides, he’d watched Jonny spit right into his own hand to make the glide of his palm smoother and how was Patrick not meant to moan from that? 

Jonny’s hand at his throat doesn’t waver, squeezing and tightening in a rhythm Patrick can’t find, cant keep pace with. It shocks him, each time, as if he’s not expecting the air to be trapped deep within his chest. It shocks him, each time, how much he likes it. 

Patrick feels weightless, light and smooth and each time Jonny’s grip goes tight, rough, Patrick wonders if this is the closest he’ll ever get to nirvana. A fanciful thought, maybe. A little overzealous, sure. Perhaps moot when Patrick can’t wonder much of anything at all. 

His head is empty, blissful and blank and nothing has ever made him feel like this. Nothing.

Patrick feels his orgasm building somewhere in the base of his spine, curving his back into a bow and bringing him off the wall. Jonny shoves him back roughly and Patrick whines. He hopes what he’s thinking is spilling out of his mouth, too, but he can’t be sure. He’s not too sure of anything.

Fuck you. Fuck you, Jonny. It’s good. It’s too good. You’re too good. Harder, that’s it, come on. I want it harder. Not gonna break. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck—

It’s important Jonny knows that. But fuck, Patrick’s mouth feels like sand. 

Jonny’s lips are at his neck, brushing somewhere up by his jaw, almost at his ear. “That’s it, Pat. You’re perfect, you know that? More perfect than I could have imagined.” Both his hands go tighter, the one on his dick quicker and Patrick can’t fucking see. “Going to do everything to you, everything you want. Going to wreck you, Pat. Let me. Let me, please. Say you’ll let me.” 

Jonny’s fingers loosen just enough that Patrick can speak. It’s difficult, the most difficult thing Patrick can ever recall having done, but he manages to find the words, barrelling around somewhere in his sternum. “Now— oh fuck me— now who’s begging, eh?” 

Intense is one word for it, yeah. Jonny wasn’t kidding about that. 

It might not cover it though. 

Because—

Shit.

Patrick fucking blacks out. 

***

“—so then I thought, that’s pretty crazy, right? Bees. Fucking bees. So I decided to make my own honey. Which, believe me, is about as hard as it sounds.” 

Patrick blinks. “Bees.” Shit, he’s pretty sure that wasn’t even a proper sound. “Bees?” he tries again. Why the fuck is Jonny talking about bees ?

“Oh, there you are,” Jonny replies softly. Patrick can feel the smile of his mouth against his own skin. His lips are closed, right over his cheek and Patrick feels an urge to tilt his head to the side, to find that mouth and kiss it stupid. 

Good in theory, difficult in practice. 

Patrick can’t feel his own hands.

He can feel the touch of Jonny’s hands come to him in stages, gentle presses that turn more present, more there , shifting into something solid. It’s nice, grounding; Patrick feels a hum escape his throat.

Shit. His throat. His mouth feels dry, scratched and tight and he swallows against it impulsively. 

Jonny’s fingers brush down the column of his neck, nothing like they had before. “You need water,” he says, matter of fact. “How do you feel?” 

Patrick takes a second to assess that. 

He doesn’t know how to tell Jonny what he’s feeling, can’t begin to explain it even to himself. Fuck Jonny’s logic, you don’t need to always say, to do. 

Nike was really onto something. 

Patrick finds the back of Jonny’s neck, arm heavier than led and relieved to rest its weight in the tangle of Jonny’s hair. It’s soft, warm and Patrick gets the perfect grip to angle Jonny’s mouth to his own. 

The sigh he releases against Jonny’s skin, right on his lips, feels like coming home. That feels like—a lot, in the context of Jonny; the context being that there is none . Jonny’s a stranger, undeniably, but Patrick has shared a part of himself he can’t get back.

He doesn’t want it, either. 

It’s Jonny’s now, whatever that means. It lives in Jonny’s hands, his fingers, his palms. It’s in his mouth now, too, crawling down his throat until he hopes it finds somewhere warm and safe, somewhere right in his chest. He might never see Jonny again, which would be alright. 

(It wouldn’t. Probably not. But Patrick’s not going to fucking cry about it.) 

Jonny kisses him in a way that feels almost tender, shockingly sweet, and Patrick would normally hate that (probably) if it weren’t for the way it helps him come back to his own skin. 

“Did you come?” Patrick asks, after a stretch of time he can’t define. It’s the only thing that comes to him, beating out the hundreds of other questions that are wanting to claw their way to the number one spot. 

It felt nice to have Jonny smile against his cheek. It feels nicer against his mouth. “No,” Jonny says simply. “This wasn’t about me.” 

Patrick stills himself, from where he was starting to bite at Jonny’s bottom lip. “Oh.” 

“Stop. I can hear you thinking.” Jonny’s hands cup the line of his jaw. “You didn’t answer me. How are you feeling?” 

Patrick kisses him again. Once. Twice. “Good,” he says finally. “Really good.” And shit, he means it. “How long was I out? Is that normal? To pass out, I mean.” 

He notices then how Jonny’s got him pressed up against the wall. Not in the way he was before, there’s no heat in it; the press of his chest, his thigh between Patrick’s legs, is there as an anchor. 

“Yes. It’s different for everyone. But yes, it’s normal. And only a minute.” 

“And was that ‘cause of the—like, did you—” 

“Did I restrict your air too much that you passed out?” 

Patrick nods. He wouldn’t mind if the answer was yes; he’s curious more than anything. 

“No. It was your body's reaction to dropping. It amplified the intensity of your orgasm.” 

Huh. “And the bees?” 

Jonny smiles and Patrick wonders if he can get away with kissing him again. “I like someone to talk to me, when I’m coming back. Just about nothing in particular. Everyone’s different, though. So I don’t know if—”

To hell with wondering, Patrick kisses him anyway. “Tell me ‘bout your hive, baby.” He licks the words into Jonny’s mouth.

***

“If you could eat only tacos for the rest of your life, would you mix hard and soft shell? Or, do you think the rules would mean you could only have one? And if it were hard shell, how would you be ending your life?” 

Patrick snorts into his burrito. “Okay, but who’s making these rules?” 

“Me.”

“You.”

“Yes.” 

“So, then fucking just—choose the rules.” 

“But it doesn’t work like that.” 

Patrick kicks Sharpy, right in his fucking shin. It brings Patrick immeasurable pleasure, to watch him wince around the salted rim of a margarita. Problem is, kicking Sharpy really opens up a whole, ‘if you hurt me, I’m allowed to hurt you’ sort of conundrum. A terrible paradox, really. One where by the end of the night Patrick’s skin will be bruised or his neck sore for being put in a too-tight headlock. And the sad part (the really sad part)? Patrick probably won’t hate it. 

He kicks him again, just to be safe. “Shut up and eat your fucking tacos.”

When Patrick was in college, Sharpy proclaimed they were going to start a tradition. Or, a club. Or... something. The Order of The Patrick’s; therein members are required to get dinner, once a week, at a location of the Ultimate Patrick’s choosing. Deciding on who was the Ultimate Patrick that week really had no rhyme or reason. The criteria was constantly changing, measured sometimes by an event that had merit, sure. Like when Sharpy became a dad. Patrick really couldn’t argue giving him the crown on that one. But sometimes it was utterly ridiculous, too. Like, Shapry once proclaimed that the jeans Patrick wore one Saturday in April were ‘disgusting’ so he lost all right to choose where they went for dinner. 

Asshole. 

Patrick is designated Ultimate Patrick this week, for a reason he honestly can’t entirely remember. Personally, he thinks he deserves the title every week but, heavy is the head that wears the crown, and all that. 

“Can you read your fucking texts? Damn,” Sharpy smirks. The ping of Patrick’s phone feels emphasised, too loud and heavy, even through the layer of his jeans. It accompanies Sharpy’s question like a statement, a harsh melody that Patrick has been trying so resolutely to ignore. 

What is that now—four? Five messages? In a span of time that can’t be longer than half an hour. Since they’ve gotten their food, certainly. 

Patrick should have put it on silent. 

He rolls his eyes, for good measure. “Relax, yeah? I’m being polite.” 

“To who? The person blowing up your phone?” 

“No. You.” 

Sharpy barks a laugh. “Patty, my little curly-haired angel of the morning. My sunrise. My—”

Patrick reaches out to hit him, but Sharpy grabs his wrist before he can. He smacks their hands down on the table, Patrick’s palm flat, pinning him there. 

He doesn’t let go.

“I am flattered, Peeks, that you take date night so seriously. I really am.” 

Sharpy’s fingers squeeze and Patrick presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, just to suppress a begrudging laugh.

“But after—gosh, what is it now? Six years? Goodness. Time really flies when you’re having, as they say, too much fun. Far too much fun. Dare I say—” 

“Sharpy."  

“ Right. After six years, I think I will forgive you if you check your phone during dinner. Do not mistake, I may feel a temporary degree of rejection. Because, undeniably, my company is both the highlight and delight of your week, I’m sure. It is shocking to me that you don’t want to stare into my eyes lovingly whilst we eat but—” 

“Sharpy.” 

Sharpy snickers. “Read your fucking messages, baby.”

Sharpy’s hand loosens and Patrick snatches his own back. He’s tempted to ignore his phone, if only to watch Sharpy’s irritation grow at each, sharp trill of his text alert, but—

But. 

It’s not that Patrick doesn’t want to read his messages. He knows what they’re going to say, or, at least the theme and he’d really rather not read them in Sharpy’s presence because— 

what about gags? 

your mouth would look good around a gag 

but if i gag you i can’t feed you my cock 

shame 

how about restraints? 

Yeah. 

It’s fine, he’s fine, he’s had years to school his expression where Patrick Sharp is concerned. But— 

He hides behind his margarita all the same. 

This has been going on for weeks now. The texts. The texts from Jonny. And despite the obvious, or what is perhaps so contrary to the obvious, they’re not sexts. Or dirty talk. Or whatever the fuck. 

At times they inherently are, because Jonny can pretend all he wants but surely even he is not so dense as to write out words like, “but if i gag you i can’t feed you my cock” and think, “yes, this is an acceptable message to send that is not at all dirty.” 

It makes no sense for Patrick to smile, but he does. 

He taps out a quick response. 

i love it when you sweet-talk me. 

and yes, restraints are good. 

gags too. if you decide to give me a break from all that dick in my mouth. 

also, sharpy wants to know: hard or soft shell tacos?

Patrick likes to picture the curve of Jonny’s mouth, how Patrick’s messages would make him smile in return. He hopes they do. He hopes a lot of things. 

“It’s lover-boy isn’t it?” 

Patrick flicks his gaze up at Sharpy, groaning when he sees the smirk there. 

“I don’t know why you’re so embarrassed, Peeks. I think it’s adorable.” 

If only you knew, Patrick thinks. 

Shit. Sharpy would still think it was adorable, even given all the facts. 

The facts Sharpy had been given were about zero. If it weren’t for the slight issue of Sharpy actually having met the guy, Patrick would have hidden Jonny away so far from anywhere Sharpy could ever get his damn hands. 

But, sadly (for Patrick) (and maybe for Jonny), Sharpy has met Jonny, shook hands and all and Sharpy never really has had a good grasp at the whole, “leaving someone or something alone” life philosophy. Any day now Patrick’s expecting him to ask for Jonny’s social.

“Is he still begging for a chance to see those curls again? I know I would be.” 

Patrick laughs, an exasperated thing. Sharpy’s not wrong, not exactly, but he’s certainly not right, either. 

Jonny’s texts aren’t a pickup, or his attempt to woo Patrick, or something equally as straightforward and Patrick’s going to pretend he never even thought the word woo . But. The truth remains. 

It can be said that two things are inherently true. 

One) Jonny does want to see Patrick again. And yeah, Patrick wants to see Jonny; 

Two) Jonny’s compiling a list. 

He’s never outright said that’s what he’s doing, not in a way that’s overt. But he texts Patrick questions, sometimes out of nowhere, interrupting their normal, regular conversation by asking his opinions about varying degrees of sex acts. 

Sometimes they’re innocuous, like: 

do you like being tickled ?

(Patrick had to assume that meant in a way that was even remotely sexual. Even if it wasn’t, the answer was still: if someone tickles me i’m not to be held responsible for kicking them in the face. ) 

Sometimes they were just … a lot. 

spanking, caning, flogging, whipping, paddles: yes? no?

Patrick had been at work when he got that one. He’d spilled coffee all over his desk.

i’d be into trying it, yeah he’d responded. 

spanking Yes he’d added a second later. 

When Jonny had said goodbye that night, he’d done it with his number written on Patrick’s arm, a kiss to the line of his cheekbone and a wish to see him again. 

The street outside the club was loud, somehow louder in it’s commotion; the sound of screeching wheels on pavement, drunken conversations yelled from down the block and the beat still reverberating from inside, spilling out, echoed. Everything had been amplified; Jonny most of all. 

He barely touched Patrick, but his grip flayed all the same. A hand to Patrick’s lower back, fingers at his wrist—it kept Patrick centred, grounded, when he felt so in fear of falling without sense. It was a feeling he couldn’t entirely explain, one that had him feeling—off. 

But in a good way. A really good way. 

Patrick didn’t know Jonny, but he couldn’t help but feel a gentle anxiety rolling off of him, like—like Jonny was—guilty. It didn’t feel right, skewed Patrick up as well and before Jonny had a chance to raise his hand for a cab, Patrick had grabbed his wrist instead. 

“You good?” Patrick had asked, for lack of anything better. 

He felt vaguely conscious of the knowledge that whilst he was the one who had felt powerless (a good, consuming, wonderful powerless) to Jonny in what they had done, he was the one who held all the power. 

Jonny had barely answered the question before Patrick was stopping him. He’d taken Jonny’s face in his hands, something that felt more intimate than what had transpired between them in that hallway, and forced his gaze to be on Patrick. Only Patrick. 

It was a little vague, too morose and serious; something about how he shouldn’t have done that to Patrick, without talking it through properly; how he could have hurt him, crossed a line and put Patrick in a position of vulnerability he didn’t want to be in and—

That’s when Patrick had grabbed him. 

“I appreciate your concern,” he’d said gently, “but shut the fuck up.”

Jonny had smiled and—yeah. Yeah. That was nice.

“Next time, we do it right,” Jonny said, confident and soft. 

Next time. 

It stuck with Patrick, like honey he couldn’t quite lick clean from his fingers. 

Next time. 

Jonny had written his number, then. It seemed a bit old school to Patrick and he’d laughed when the marker touched his arm, making the sensitive, pale skin twitch. 

“I have a phone, Jonathan.” 

“Well, you better put my number in it, Patrick.” 

Patrick was half in the cab when Jonny reached out for him, tucking his fingers in the collar of Patrick’s shirt, bunching at the material like one pull, one tug, and he could make Patrick stay. 

“We don’t—” he’d started, fingers tightening, loosening, like he couldn’t make up his mind. “We don’t have to have sex. We don’t have to do anything. Shit, just a drink, yeah? Whatever you want. I just—” 

Want to see you again, went unsaid, caught in the sound of Chicago’s beat. 

Patrick had felt his mouth tilt in a lazy grin, something like a laugh huffed out from his lungs. “Oh,” he’d said, putting his knuckles to Jonny’s jaw. He’d rapped them there, lightly against the bone, just to see the cut of Jonny’s teeth when he smiled. “Don’t worry, there will be sex.” 

Jonny’s nose had scrunched when he laughed and it took everything Patrick had not to kiss him there. He’d pushed Jonny away instead, laughing with him when the door to the cab closed; the sound of Jonny was gone, silenced with a snap and Patrick had frowned at the back of the headrest in front of him. 

Call me, he thought he heard yelled from the sidewalk, the sound muted through the glass window. Patrick didn’t turn back to check. 

The number felt like a brand; Jonny’s messy scrawl large and thick and there , for everyone to see. Patrick had touched it on the way home, sitting in the back of a cab with his fingers tracking the numbers on his skin, wondering if he could imprint them to memory. 

He didn’t need to, he’d put them in his phone the second he got home but—

He wanted to imprint Jonny. 

Patrick had texted him the next day. 

“Yeah,” Patrick says finally, looking up at Sharpy. “Yeah he wants to see me.” 

Sharpy’s smiling, in the small, gentle way he sometimes does. It’s always utterly disconcerting. “Call me old fashioned, Peeksy, but when a boy likes a boy, and both boys had what I believe to be a positively rambunctious time, well—” 

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Look at you with all your big words.” 

“I’ll have you know, I am highly educated.” 

Patrick opens his mouth to bite back, the opportunities are positively endless, but Sharpy holds up a hand, stopping him. Patrick thinks if they were close enough he would have put his finger to his lips or a hand over his mouth. Too fucking bad. You lose, Sharp. 

“You like him,” Sharpy says. Simple. Plain. Nowhere to hide. “And you’re happy.” 

It’s an odd reaction, but Patrick frowns. 

“Why would you not want to run toward that?” 

Patrick’s frown only deepens. 

It should be impossible, or maybe it’s impressive, that Sharpy manages to reach across the table between them without knocking over his drink; Patrick thinks at minimum he deserves an elbow dipped in guac. He puts his palm to Patrick’s forehead, holding it there until Patrick starts smiling, they both do; a cunning plan all along. “You’ll get frown lines if you keep doing that. I wouldn’t want you messing up that pretty face, Peekaboo.” 

“You’d still love me if I had frown lines.” 

Sharpy pushes Patrick’s head gently, tapping his thumb to his temple before he pulls away. “True.”

Patrick wants to sigh, a drawn and suffering sound, but he doesn’t. 

Not wanting to see Jonny is not the issue. 

Patrick knows the map of their future together, whatever that may be, rests solely in his hands. He likes that and hates it, all at once. He’s always liked the control of his own story, wouldn’t like Jonny much if he wanted to command it, but sometimes Patrick just wishes the decision could be made for him. 

Fuck. It’s barely even a decision. 

He knows Jonny’s not lying when he says they can do anything and nothing, whatever Patrick wants, but Patrick can’t see a world in which the next logical step for them isn’t sex. Sex and dynamics and—kink. Shit. Patrick doesn’t even know how to explain it. Because it’s not just sex, it won’t be. 

Nerves don't exist from a place of hesitancy or lack of want. Because Patrick wants Jonny. Holy fuck, he wants Jonny. He wants everything he has to give, all of it, however Jonny’s willing to give it; Patrick will settle for a taste, if that is all he’s allowed. One taste of Jonny felt better than anything Patrick had ever touched and call him gluttonous, call him greedy and selfish but—he can’t settle for just that. That’s the problem with wanting more, the drive never stops. It’s caught fire now, and Patrick wants to burn in it. 

Nerves exist from a place in his mind that block Patrick to think differently than what he’s learnt to accept. Being with Jonny will—and has already—broken down walls he didn’t know he had and he doesn’t know if he’s ready for them to break, not completely. 

But Patrick’s an idiot. A complete, fucking idiot. 

Maybe it’s time to let the walls shatter. 

“I want to see him,” Patrick says, keeping it light. There’s hot sauce dripping down the side of his hand, he swipes his tongue up the trail of it. It’s too much all at once and his face scrunches from the burn. “Yeah I—I want to see him.” 

Sharpy laughs, throwing a balled up napkin right at his head. “Cool. Text him that. And stop making a fucking mess.” 

Easier said than done.

Patrick sighs, just how he wanted, and Sharpy kicks his foot lightly against his ankle. It’s oddly comforting and Sharpy knows it. 

He doesn’t hesitate, when his thumbs tap across the screen. 

i hope that list is ready. next saturday?

*** 

Patrick blinks and Saturday materialises in front of his eyes like it holds no meaning. It’s so shockingly normal it’s almost dull. There’s no announcement, no big display, no fireworks in the sky or flashing lights when Patrick opens his eyes that morning. Saturday simply is. 

I’m going to get fucked today, he thinks when he wakes up. He’d thought about it half a dozen times before he even got out of bed. A dozen more at the gym. At work, thankful that the team didn’t have a game tonight. Maybe only a few more on the way over to Jonny’s. Perhaps it never left. He keeps waiting for something to change, keeps waiting for a sign. Nothing comes. There’s a hum, deep and low, settling around his breastbone and it doesn’t leave. All day, it doesn’t shift. Excitement. It’s excitement.

Standing in front of Jonny’s front door feels like a beginning and an end. The end of this game they’ve played, for weeks now, from the moment Jonny nodded his grin in Patrick’s direction at a dark bar, a spilled drink and liquid-hot potential between them; and the start of something that could be—pretty fucking great. 

Patrick’s knuckles rap on the door the same way they’d done to Jonny’s jaw in the moment before they parted; it’s just as gentle and holds just as much promise. 

When Jonny opens the door all Patrick can think to say is, “What? No flannel tonight?” 

Jonny’s exasperated huff is laced with humour and Patrick thinks, yeah, we got this.

Followed closely by, shit, he looks good. 

Because Jonny does. Holy fuck he does. It’s not as if the flannel has been ditched for anything classier (if Patrick himself is any judge when it comes to class). He’s just in a white t-shirt and shorts, the ones he probably wears when he works out and Patrick doesn’t know why that does it for him but it does. It really fucking does. It also could be said that Jonny does it for him, and all roads will have led to the same conclusion. 

Patrick doesn’t know if it’s time or his acceptance of what he wants, but Jonny looks devastating. Fucking devasating. It’s obscene frankly, his whole—everything. 

But it’s fine. Positively aces, in fact. Patrick can be civilised and act like a fucking normal human being. He went twenty-five years just fine without Jonny—so he’s capable of lasting a few minutes. Potentially more minutes, when Jonny asks if he wants a drink. 

Patrick can do drinks. That’s chill. Thing is, if Patrick ignores his dick for two seconds (a harrowing and—if history has proven anything—sometimes impossible job), he sort of forgot just how much he enjoys Jonny’s company. Because it’s easy. Shit, it’s all so simple and Patrick realises, standing across from Jonny in his too-small kitchen that smells like fresh mint, that he missed the curve of Jonny’s mouth when he spoke. 

He missed everything. He missed Jonny and he doesn’t care what that means. He likes what it means, maybe. 

He’s keeping it light, utterly smooth and warm and Jonny is matching him, pulling Patrick in with nothing but the timbre of his voice. Patrick could have almost forgotten how—gentle, Jonny was. How gentle he is. 

Which is ridiculous and Patrick is a liar, because all he’s pictured, all he’s thought about in moments he no longer wants to refer to as weakness, is the way Jonny had touched his throat. 

He’d been gentle. So, so gentle. 

Patrick’s tried so hard to imitate it; a soft, squeezing hand at his neck when he jerks off, tightening the way Jonny had, thumb at the point of his pulse. He wants to remember how it felt to fall, to slip into a place within himself; dark and deep and dripping in thick ecstasy. It’s not the same, no matter how hard he tries, but Jonny’s name never fails to roll around on his tongue, trapped and sharp like salt, making his face twist. 

He’s begged for Jonny, in the only he can and he’s begging for the same, now. He wants to take those hands from the counter, uncurl them from around his shit, microbrew beer and curl them around his throat instead. 

He wants. He wants he wants he wants. 

With a need that’s almost dizzying, Patrick finds his own fingers curling on the counter. He watches them, stretches them, sees how wide they can spread until his joints feel the urge to crack . Jonny’s hand is close and Patrick could touch, he could; he could reach out and take. 

“It’s good to see you,” Jonny says and Patrick’s eyes flick to his face. 

Jonny’s eyes are dark, so beautifully, intoxicatingly dark and Patrick’s not going to pretend he forgot them. He sees them, he can’t stop, every time he closes his eyes. Every time he’s come. Patrick wonders if stars would reflect in Jonny’s eyes if he stood beneath them; he wonders why he can see them still, even now. 

“Yeah,” Patrick replies, less than eloquent. He shakes his head, laughing completely at himself in disbelief. Jonny’s going to think he’s crazy, positively bat-shit insane, but—but Jonny’s smiling. He’s smiling right at Patrick, like he’s someone he missed, too. 

Patrick can’t resist looking at the shirt pulled tight across Jonny’s chest, imagining what Jonny would do if he reached across and ripped it open; he can’t help it, when his hand on the counter inches forward. 

Jonny’s fingers follow. 

Patrick wants to taste the touch of Jonny’s skin. He wants it to be the way he remembered; heady and thick and pulling him so dangerously under he forgot what it meant to think. 

Jonny breathes, deep and long like it’s purposeful, and Patrick’s not sure he can miss the way Jonny’s gaze brushes across his mouth, right down to his neck. His eyes settle on Patrick’s hand, now inches from his own and Patrick thinks if he were to reach out and place a hand over Jonny’s chest, he would feel the way it tremored. 

“So,” Patrick says finally, tightening his fingers back into a fist. “Are we…” he trails off, unsure of what he wants to say. 

And, no. That’s not it, not really, because Patrick thinks he knows what he wants to say, he just doesn’t know Jonny’s play here.

It’s not as if Patrick expected Jonny to open the door and put him straight to his knees, but with each passing second, time is drawing into ropes of forever and Patrick’s so keyed up he could crawl right out of his skin. 

Jonny stares, expression shifting into something Patrick can’t place and Patrick’s fingers tap against the marble counter. 

“I’m going to watch the game,” Jonny says, levelled, quiet, easy. It’s a shift, the air between them turning thick from Jonny’s tone and Patrick’s jaw tightens in an involuntary response. 

He blinks as Jonny walks away, his back to Patrick and sure, Patrick can take a second to appreciate the view, but—okay. He knocks back the rest of his drink, thunking the empty glass down on the marble with a force that echoes his desperation; loud, sharp, harsh.

Jonny’s on the couch when Patrick finally catches up enough to follow him. His thighs are spread, wide and inviting and the material of his shorts has ridden up so high, nice and tight against the skin that Patrick wants to bite . He takes up so much space it should be ridiculous, and it is, because Jonny’s body is so completely ridiculous but Patrick wants to fit himself to it, see how much of it he can cover with his hands, his chest, his mouth. 

He chews on his lip watching him, caught in the span of his arms stretched over the back of the couch and the way his shirt bunches from it. He’s focused on the TV, sipping lazily at his beer and Patrick doesn’t know if it’s fair, that he can make watching hockey look like sex. 

When Jonny speaks, Patrick almost jerks from the surprise of it. “Sit down.”

It’s tempting, to bite back, to push Jonny ‘till he cracks. He wants to break him, only to be broken so completely in return. On you? he wants to muse, causing Jonny to stutter, to turn those cheeks pink. 

He tampers the urge, biting his tongue against the impulse but smirking all the same at the run of his own thoughts. 

Maybe he could; he could say nothing at all when he approached the couch, digging his blunt nails into Jonny’s shoulders, pulling tight at the material of that stupidly-soft shirt and climbing right into his lap. He wonders if Jonny’s hard. Patrick is. He’s been halfway there practically from the moment Jonny opened his door. 

“Patrick,” Jonny says, the tone of it hard. “Get down.” 

Patrick stares and Jonny’s legs part wider, inviting, easy and smooth and when his dark eyes flicker, right to the spot between them on the rug, Patrick—

Oh.

Oh. 

Patrick can’t help it, but he grins. He fucking grins and Jonny drops a hand to his own thigh. It’s quick, almost too hard and the sound of his own palm hitting his skin smacks. 

Patrick swallows. 

Jonny pulls at the material of his shorts, right at the hem where they’re stretched sinful and tight and it’s mindless, or it could be, but his grip tightens; something in Patrick’s chest does, too. It’s an invitation, in a way Patrick isn’t sure he can explain but—

It’s on. 

It’s fucking on.    

“Finally,” he sighs, happy with it. 

Patrick drops his hands to the muscle right above Jonny’s knees and it’s so thick, so hard and warm that Patrick can’t help but squeeze in a way that must be almost painful. He doesn’t stop, keeping his grip tight when he falls to his knees, right between Jonny’s legs and if Jonny’s hurting, he doesn’t show it. 

Patrick wants him to fucking show it. 

“This where you wanted me?” Patrick asks lazily and the muscle beneath his palms twitches. 

Patrick shifts closer, knees knocking at the side of the couch and he wants to get his grip higher, wants to explore the muscle of Jonny’s thighs, but when he moves to do so Jonny snaps. His fingers wrap around Patrick’s wrists, lightning quick and digging against the veins. 

Patrick sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, powerless to do anything less and Jonny’s touch is so tight it’s painful. It’s so completely painful and Patrick’s dick jumps, right beneath his jeans. 

Jonny moves his hands to his sides, slow and calculated and Patrick misses the warmth of his skin almost instantly. He shifts closer into Patrick’s space, so close his nose almost brushes against Patrick’s hairline and Patrick can’t resist but tilt his chin upward, getting his tongue on Jonny’s jaw. He licks a long, dragging sweep toward Jonny’s mouth and he moans at the feel of it, of the taste. 

Jonny’s skin is rough with day-old stubble and he tastes just like the fucking mint from his kitchen. Patrick’s obsessed. He wants to lick right into Jonny’s mouth. 

But fuck Jonny. Fuck him when he pulls back, holding Patrick in place and stopping him from falling forward. 

“Baby,” Jonny says softly, a small smile playing on his lips. Patrick doesn’t know if Jonny’s conscious of it, but his tongue darts out the corner of his mouth, right where Patrick’s been, like he wants to taste him in return. “Baby, if you want something, you have to ask.” 

Patrick wishes he could do something more dignified than whine, but— 

“Come on.” 

“Yes, Pat?” 

Patrick huffs. “Jonny, come on.” 

Jonny sits back, thighs splitting wider when he does and he takes his hands so smoothly from Patrick’s wrists it’s as if they were never there. Patrick knows better than to follow him. 

“You’re going to sit and be quiet.” 

A terrible request, really.

Jonny looks at him, like he’s challenging Patrick to say no but Patrick’s going to show him, he’s going to fucking show him. 

***

Jonny watches the game and Patrick watches Jonny. 

Patrick’s not particularly interested in the score; he’s more concerned with the play in front of him. He wants to know so desperately how he can win. 

From this angle he can see the cut of Jonny’s jaw, watching the way it dips to shadow, right on his neck and Patrick should have licked his throat when he had the chance. His adam's apple swallows around his beer and Patrick wants to feel the pulse of that, too. 

He watches Jonny’s chest, mapping out the line of his heart with his eyes, wondering if the beat of it is something he could feel beneath his palm. He focuses on it, on each small, gentle intake of air Jonny needs and it oddly centres him. One. Two. Three. Jonny takes a drink and he starts again. 

Jonny knows he’s watching, he’d have to, but his gaze on the TV doesn’t waver. 

One. Two. Three. 

It goes on, this time.

Patrick doesn’t know if it’s the rise of Jonny’s chest or his thumb that starts to circle in a gentle glide on the inside of his thigh, but Patrick can feel himself—relaxing. Shit. It’s nice, too. It shouldn’t be comfortable, to be knelt on the floor, and it hadn’t been, not at first. But Jonny’s chest doesn’t stop its gentle cadence, up and down, in and out, and Patrick finds his own breath wanting to match. 

It’s deep. Quiet. Patrick’s eyes feel a drag to close, to tuck his chin down to his chest and breathe. Just breathe. 

When Jonny’s hand tangles  in his hair, Patrick almost doesn’t react. It takes a second—longer than it should—for him to register the feel of it. Jonny’s being soft, moving his fingers in an almost tender sweep and Patrick can’t resist when his lips part with a gentle breath on them. 

But Jonny’s still not looking, his eyes still so resolutely on the screen, but it doesn’t matter, not when his touch feels like that; not when his thumb brushes across his temple, scratching there lightly before it buries itself back in his hair. 

Patrick doesn’t know if Jonny pulls or he lists, but he finds his cheek brought gently to Jonny’s thigh. It’s warm, fuck it’s so warm and Patrick wants to chirp at him for running so hot, to wonder how it could even be possible, but it only serves for him to press his face closer. Because it’s nice, too comfortable and soft and it shouldn’t be. Jonny’s thighs are corded with pure, thick muscle, muscle that Patrick wants to sink his teeth into and it shouldn’t be soft, it shouldn’t be, but it is. 

Patrick’s mouth is so close to the line of Jonny’s shorts he wants to taste them; he parts his lips at the thought, right against Jonny’s bare skin and before the thought can complete another one takes its place. He mouths at Jonny instead, grazing his teeth over the soft flesh of his inner thigh and he wants his lips pressed there so badly he feels his hands in his lap twitch. 

So he does.

Jonny’s hand runs through his hair and Patrick’s lips run along Jonny’s skin. He doesn’t move his head, keeps his cheek pressed tightly to his quads and he wants to commit this taste to memory. It’s fire-hot, heady like musk and the sun and something so inherently man. It’s intoxicating, completely thrilling and Patrick thinks he could do this forever; kissing lightly at Jonny’s thigh, licking the sunshine right from him. 

Jonny’s fingers scratch and Patrick feels the arousal of it run straight to his cock. He’d already been halfway there, just from watching the spread of Jonny’s thighs when he told him to kneel, but it’s irrefutable, now. 

Patrick’s always associated the thick, hard swell of his cock with the desperate urge and need of immediate pleasure. Getting hard requires release and Patrick’s always acted in a way that’s quick and desperate, just to achieve it. It feels nothing like that, now. Instead he’s comfortable with it, basking in it, like the steady thrum of want has settled, content. 

It’s an odd feeling. A nice one, too.

Jonny could keep him like this, just like this, with his cock hard and his hair in his hands and Patrick would simply revel in the weightlessness of it all.

When Jonny speaks it pulls at Patrick like a thread, tugging somewhere deep in his stomach, right up through his sternum. “You’re doing so good, baby.” 

I’m not doing anything, Patrick wants to say, but all that comes is a quiet murmur, almost whispered into Jonny’s now damp skin.

Because he’s not. He’s not doing anything. So why can’t he fucking speak? 

“Come on, look at me.” 

Patrick does, or at least he tries, angling his head upward to try and catch Jonny’s gaze. It doesn’t work, not really, so when Jonny’s hand pulls, Patrick is content to follow. His head feels heavy, like it’s weighted too thick on his shoulders and if it weren’t for Jonny’s hand he’d simply find himself back where he started. Not a terrible idea.

Jonny’s smiling, bright and warm like he’s—like he’s proud and Patrick doesn’t know why, doesn’t know what it says about him to admit it, but it makes him feel—good. So fucking good. 

Jonny’s hands frame Patrick’s face, smoothing his palms over his cheeks and Patrick sighs into the touch. It feels nice, to be touched, to be held; Patrick’s never been fine china, never wanted to be treated like it either, but all he can manage is to melt closer. He’ll allow himself this. 

“What do you want, Pat?” Jonny asks, warm. 

Patrick blinks. 

If you can’t say it, you can’t do it. 

He opens his mouth once, twice, tries again. When he speaks it’s quiet and huh, Patrick doesn’t know when the TV stopped blaring, but the silence resonates against the scratch of his voice. “Touch me.” 

Jonny grins and Patrick wants to lick him again. “I am touching you, baby.” 

It’s so childish, Jonny’s a fucking idiot and Patrick shouldn’t like it so much. “Let me touch you .” 

Patrick doesn’t wait for Jonny to respond, wrapping his fingers around his bare, warm ankles. He presses his thumbs deep, tapping them against the bone and he marvels in how soft the skin is. 

Jonny hums, considering and deep. “What am I going to do with you?” 

“Let me touch your dick, I hope.” 

Jonny laughs, almost startled like the sound surprises him and Patrick digs his fingers deeper. Jonny figures two can play the same game. His hold slips back into Patrick's hair, going impossibly tight; it’s punishing and sudden and Patrick’s cock jumps in sympathy. 

“Please,” he breathes, teeth at his lip. “Come on, Jonny. Please.” 

“You know...” Jonny muses slowly, as if he’s talking only to himself. “That night, at the club—”

“No? I don’t remember it.” 

Jonny’s hands tug roughly and all Patrick can do is whisper out a breathless, “fuck” in response. Jonny doesn’t let him drop his head.

“At the club,” Jonny continues, “I liked it.” His voice is low, thick. “I liked it, when you begged. I couldn’t resist.” 

Knew it, Patrick thinks, pleased. 

Jonny’s mouth is near his own and Patrick knows it would be warm, wet with beer and the taste of Jonny and he wants to remember it. He wants to have it. 

“If I beg, will you let me suck your dick?” 

“Baby, if you beg, I’ll let you have anything.” 

Patrick doesn’t care if it’s not allowed, if it’s breaking the rules; he doesn’t care if this goes against Jonny’s plan or that he could be punished for it. Fuck it. Maybe that’s what Patrick’s aiming for. He doesn’t care, when he pushes forward to take Jonny’s mouth with his own. 

It’s hard, almost impossible with Jonny’s fingers in his hair and the tilt of his jaw, but it’s worth it. It’s so fucking worth it, to feel Jonny moan right into him. Patrick loves kissing, always has, and he wants to suck on Jonny’s fucking tongue for hours. 

Jonny’s sweet, just how Patrick remembered him being and he takes a second to wonder if Jonny’s toothpaste has lemon in it. Probably does. Fucking weirdo. Fuck, Patrick wants him so fucking bad. 

“Fuck,” Jonny breathes, wet against his lips. He kisses Patrick again, once, hard and thorough and Patrick has to stop himself from sitting up on his knees, just to surge into him. 

“I’ve thought about this,” Jonny says, pulling back just enough to make Patrick whine. “Thought about you, every fucking day.” 

Patrick grins, digging at Jonny’s ankles. “Tell me more.” 

Jonny’s face blooms with fond irritation and Patrick thinks Jonny might hit him. Please .

“Let me suck your dick, Jonny,” he whispers. Jonny’s grip on his hair is loose enough that Patrick can drop a kiss to his thigh, right where the skin is still damp. “Please.” He kisses higher, lips at the hem of his shorts. “Please, Jonny.” He mouths at the material, memorising the feel of it. “I want you to—” he stops himself, bumping his nose almost at Jonny’s dick, before he forces himself to look up. 

Jonny’s eyes are wide and deep and Patrick could forget what colour they are in this moment; all he sees is black.

“Jonny, I want you to fuck my face.” 

If Patrick were to blink, he’d miss it. He’d miss the way the colour on Jonny’s cheeks darkens, a deep and gorgeous crimson, like Patrick is killing him and saving him, all at once; it’s heat, reverence, caught in the disbelief that Patrick kneeling before him is something that’s real. 

And maybe that’s all in Patrick’s head. Perhaps the flash of Jonny’s eyes means nothing, nothing but want, but Patrick knows that flicker to be something he craves; Jonny’s looking at him like Patrick is someone he wants to keep. 

“Okay,” Jonny says, too calm, as if he doesn’t want to eat Patrick alive. He does, so clearly, and satisfaction pools warm in Patrick’s belly. 

“Okay,” he says again, slipping his fingers from Patrick’s hair to brush down the side of his neck. His touch stays gentle, kind, dipping over the curve of Patrick’s shoulders and causing Patrick to shiver when he hits the tight muscle of his biceps. Big hands wrap around his forearms, dragging down to settle at his wrists and the angle of it dips Jonny forward, face so close to Patrick’s own and all he wants to taste is lemon. 

“Remember what I said?” Jonny asks. 

Patrick’s staring at the scar below Jonny’s lip, fingers going lax from around Jonny’s ankles when he pulls Patrick’s hands toward him. They settle at Jonny’s hips, Jonny’s grip over his own in an almost caress; it’s an imitation of holding hands, something more exploratory, more undefined. 

“Patrick, do you remember what I said?”

No, Patrick thinks. How can Jonny expect him to remember anything?

“If you want to stop, we stop. If you’re unsure, you tell me. If you—”

“Oh,” Patrick interrupts, smirk small. “Your colours, how could I forget?”

Jonny’s eyes roll upward and Patrick likes that. It feels nice. Normal. Like they can do this and be this and still be—them. Just them. 

( “So, if you want to stop, it’s ‘red’, amber means slow down, green is—”

“I’m not sure if you’re aware, Jonathan, but I’m not actually in pre-school so I have a fairly good grip on how traffic lights work.” )

“Patrick,” Jonny threatens, dark with it and shooting straight to Patrick’s chest. “You have to tell me if—”

Patrick silences him by dropping a kiss to the side of his knee. The angle is tough, difficult with the way his arms rest over Jonny’s thighs but if feels important to manage it, all the same. He bumps his nose there, right against the bone and he smiles against the golden-warm skin when he feels Jonny’s hands squeeze his own. 

“Yes,” he says finally. He kisses Jonny again, because he can, because he wants to. “I trust you.” He lifts his head, finds Jonny’s eyes with his own and squeezes his hands right back. “I trust you, Jonny.”

Jonny leans forward to kiss him, like he can’t help himself and Patrick takes him gladly. It’s quick, feels like an assurance more than anything else, but Patrick sighs when Jonny bites at his lip all the same. 

“And,” Patrick whispers, Jonny’s mouth still almost pressed to his own, “if there’s anything you’re doing I don’t like, trust me, you’ll be the first to know.”

Jonny’s smiling when he kisses him again. “I don’t doubt it.”

The last brush of Jonny’s lips against his jaw feels like an end, like a beautiful beginning and an assurance, all wrapped into one soft, drag of skin on skin and Patrick feels the shiver of it move down to his toes. 

Jonny’s voice is low when he speaks again, the colour of it different and thrilling. It’s the tone Patrick knows to associate with oncoming pleasure, an almost pavlovian response that draws him closer to Jonny, if only to bask in him, just for a while. 

“I’m going to fuck your throat, baby,” he says. It’s so shockingly simple and said like a fact; Patrick feels a flush of heat spark down his neck at the promise. 

Jonny’s fingers curl around his own tighter, almost twining them and Patrick doesn’t hesitate to follow; their thumbs hook in the band of Jonny’s shorts, sure and tight and Patrick’s mouth dries when Jonny lifts his hips up off the couch. Patrick’s fingers graze against bare skin when their hands draw Jonny’s shorts down his legs, over his glorious ass; Patrick wants to touch. 

The material pools at his ankles, Jonny kicks them off a second later and all Patrick can focus on is Jonny’s cock. It slapped against his belly the moment the band had passed it, hard and thick and rosy-wet at the head. 

Patrick stares, tongue involuntarily wetting his lips and he feels—powerful. 

Shit, he feels so fucking powerful because he did that. He did that; Jonny’s hard, turned on and visibly needy and Patrick fucking did that. 

Jonny hums, almost a murmur. “See what you did, by being good?” 

Patrick can’t help it, he grins. 

“Or,” Jonny amends slowly, mouth matching Patrick’s, “not so good.” 

“You like it.” 

Jonny smirks, dark and beautiful and his hand grabs Patrick’s jaw, fingers digging and angling his gaze sharply upward. “Yeah baby, I like it.” 

Jonny’s thumb presses at his bottom lip, almost reverent in his touch as he traces the curve of it. “Your mouth,” he says, awed. “You’re gonna kill me with that mouth.” 

Let me try.

Patrick parts his lips wider, inviting Jonny deeper. He lets his tongue swipe at the pad of his thumb, tasting the salt of him and doesn’t let himself blink. Jonny’s staring, almost fierce with it and Patrick wants to push him; he wants to see how far he can fall.

Jonny’s thumb drops and Patrick whines, startling himself when he does but Jonny grins, pleased at the reaction. He replaces the touch with his index and middle finger, pressing them against Patrick’s bottom lip, more insistent, more there than his thumb had been. 

“Let me in,” he whispers. His other hand grips at the back of Patrick’s neck, fingers tangling in his hair where it’s thickest; his thumb presses at the tight, knotted tendons of his neck. “Let me in,” he says again. He’s not asking, but he’s giving Patrick an out. 

Patrick’s never been so in.

He opens around Jonny’s fingers, tipping his head forward to take them, to accept them, giving Jonny the invitation he needs. Jonny takes it, takes it so beautifully when he slides his fingers in, in, down to the first knuckle. Patrick’s lips close around them. 

More , he thinks, I can take more; he pleads it with his eyes. 

Jonny pushes them deeper, quick and smooth before he draws them out to the tip; Patrick doesn’t let them go. He keeps it up, once, twice, fucking his fingers in before he draws them out and the drag of it is wet, almost dirty. 

But Patrick wants more. It’s a craving, a want turning to a need and Patrick—Patrick needs. 

“That’s it,” Jonny murmurs, grip on Patrick’s neck tight. “There is where I’m going to be.” His fingers go deeper, fucking in until his knuckles press at Patrick’s lips. His fingers are long, thick and heavy and the tips of them brush at the back of Patrick’s throat. He swallows—he tries . It brings Jonny impossibly closer. 

Jonny leans in, eyes almost fierce. “This is where my cock’s going to be.” His voice is quiet, Patrick can feel the breath of it against his cheek. “Right here, Pat.” 

Patrick chokes, the sound a hint of a gag and Jonny smiles. It shouldn’t feel good—Patrick doesn’t know why it does—but it does . It feels good and it leaves him feeling loose and whole. Jonny’s pulling at the thread of him, the one that’s existed in his chest from the moment he saw Jonny on his knees in the back room of the club and Patrick’s unravelling; he’s unspooled in Jonny’s hands. 

He curls his fingers around Jonny’s wrist, delighted when he taps his thumb against the vein, pressing hard enough to feel the pulse of it. It’s erratic. Patrick wonders if his pulse would match. 

Grip tight, he pulls Jonny closer. The sound Jonny makes is intoxicating, something shocked and deep and Patrick’s never felt so wanted. 

“Shit, baby,” Jonny breathes, pulling at his hair. “You got something to prove, eh?”

Patrick bites his teeth into Jonny’s fingers when he grins, light but hard enough to leave the mark of them on his skin. Jonny tilts his head back further, exposing the line of his throat and Patrick coughs when he pulls his fingers free. His breath is hard, almost heavy and Jonny’s clutching at his jaw. 

“Where we at, baby?”

“Green,” Patrick answers on an exhale, mouth in a lazy smile. 

He doesn’t need to think. Doesn’t question himself. All Jonny did was put his fingers in his mouth and Patrick slipped, beginning the fall into himself, the place he’s craved to be from the moment Jonny’s hands touched his throat at the club. 

“Good,” Jonny nods, dripping in heat and pride and Patrick flushes warm. 

Jonny takes his hands from Patrick to pull his shirt over his head, leaving him completely bare once it’s tossed aside. Patrick draws his eyes over the lines of Jonny’s chest, his stomach; he wants his mouth there. He wants his mouth everywhere. Jonny’s so—hard. All of him hard lines and soft edges, it’s beautiful. 

It makes Patrick conscious of the material against his own skin, still completely clothed in the shadow of Jonny’s own nakedness. He wants to be stripped bare, to feel the heat of Jonny’s skin against him, on him; his chest, his thighs, his cock.

The earlier low thrum of arousal he’d felt when kneeling has shifted into something heavier, more insistent, begging to be touched and to touch in return. His hips move at the thought, rolling slightly from the way he’s sat and Jonny doesn’t fail to notice. 

Jonny stands, pulling Patrick up with him by his wrists and Patrick feels weightless when he follows. He’s light on his feet, dizzy and rocking forward into Jonny’s hold. Jonny grins when he pulls him in closer, tight against his bare chest and Patrick resists the urge to glare. 

“C’mon,” he says instead, getting his hands at Jonny’s waist. He’s warm, so fucking warm and Patrick’s fingers dig. “C’mon, Jonny.” He aims his mouth forward, closing over Jonny’s collarbone, right where the bone juts hardest and he feels the breath Jonny laughs on his exhale. 

Jonny squeezes rough at his wrist, dragging Patrick’s hand down his skin. Patrick revels in the feel of it, fingers flexing and breath quickening almost embarrassingly when Jonny closes his hand over his cock. 

“Shit. ”

Patrick doesn't know if he’s groaned that or Jonny has; he’s too focused on the weight of Jonny’s cock in his palm to notice. Patrick’s touched dick, sucked it plenty, but something about the feel of Jonny is so intoxicating, almost heady and he wants to give Jonny pleasure, even just from this. He grips tight, encouraged by the way Jonny's chest heaves and strokes him down to the base. He circles the head loose in his fist on the upstroke, running his thumb through the sticky mess; he brings his thumb to his mouth, Jonny’s hand still curled mindlessly around his wrist and presses it to the flat of his tongue. 

“Fuck, the—” Jonny tries, almost shaking his head, “—the things I want to do to you.”

Patrick takes his thumb from his mouth and brushes it across Jonny’s shocked, parted lips. “So, do them.”

Jonny growls when he smashes his mouth to Patrick’s, arms snaking around his waist in a punishing grip and liftting him, right off the fucking floor. 

“Fuck,” Patrick grins, letting himself be kissed. His hands are at Jonny’s shoulders, nails digging. “Gonna fucking carry me to bed, baby?”

Jonny’s answering laugh is dripping in languorous mirth. “Should make you crawl.”

Patrick starts, mouth going slack and Jonny’s laugh thickens. He presses in tighter, Patrick’s cock hard, right against his middle and he keeps it there, keeps Patrick impossibly close. “One day I’m going to,” he whispers, getting a hand to the back of Patrick’s thigh, hitching it up until it sits at his waist. Patrick is weak in the face of Jonny’s strength. “Going to put you on your knees and not let you up off the floor. All fucking day.”

Patrick licks his tongue over Jonny’s lips, legs squeezing tight at his middle. “Promises, promises, Jonathan,” he muses. 

“Fuck me,” Jonny breathes, surprised. He draws back enough to look at Patrick properly. “Where did you come from, Patrick Kane?” The amazement in his voice doesn’t go unnoticed. 

Patrick smiles when he kisses at the edge of Jonny’s mouth. “Shut the fuck up and carry me to bed, asshole.”

Patrick grins, delighted, when Jonny does as he’s fucking told. 

***

It’s not a surprise that Jonny all but throws him down on the bed. It’s not something Patrick’s used to, being so effortlessly manhandled, but he can't deny it’s something he likes. It grates gently at a part of him, a small, restless part that’s accepting letting go. It’s—shit, Patrick can’t settle on the word. Difficult, perhaps. It’s difficult to give himself so completely to someone else. But it’s more than him—it’s not him—it’s his control. 

It’s difficult to realise—to know—that he likes it. 

Jonny had all but torn his clothes off, near brutal in his efficiency, as if a clothed Patrick Kane in his bedroom was a complete crime; it was, Patrick can’t help but agree.

He stretches his arms above his head, melting at the stretch in his spine, the pull of his muscles; Jonny stares from his spot at the end of the bed, gaze darting across Patrick’s body like he can’t decide where he wants to look first.

Take a picture, Patrick wants to say. It would be a joke, in the way it wouldn’t be. Patrick would let Jonny take pictures of him—of them—if he asked.

“Look at you,” Jonny says softly, as if to himself. He kneels on the bed, right by Patrick’s feet and Patrick wants him closer. “So beautiful.” Jonny’s hands drop to his ankles, tight and running up to his knees, just below his thighs. Patrick jerks at the touch, cock jumping in sympathy and Patrick watches himself leak at the tip. 

Jonny’s hand smacks down against his thigh, not overtly, maybe not intentionally but it’s hard enough to shock, to sting. “Shit,” Patrick sighs, gripping the pillows above his head. 

Jonny’s grinning when he drops a kiss to Patrick’s ankle, right over the bone. He doesn’t stop, lips pressing lightly, quickly, up the length of Patrick’s legs. Patrick tenses in anticipation, in memory, too. He hasn’t forgotten what Jonny told him at the club, when he took Patrick’s wrist beneath his touch and mapped out the path his lips would follow, if given half the chance. He takes it, now, kissing the lines of Patrick’s body like it’s more than memory, like it’s something he’s never forgotten. 

He avoids Patrick’s cock, much to Patrick’s chagrin, but every press of his lips is a promise, mixed with something that feels a little like hope and want; Patrick doesn’t realise the sound of weak, breathless appreciation is falling from him until it is. 

Jonny hums, deep and pleased, right up near his neck and Patrick wants to kiss him so bad it hurts. “Fucking lovely,” Jonny sighs, teeth at Patrick’s jaw. 

Patrick thinks Jonny’s going to kiss him, something in his eyes when they meet tells him he will, but at the final second he kisses his forehead instead. It’s sweeter than Patrick could have anticipated, but he feels desperate from it all the same. 

Jonny’s thighs split over his waist, straddling him tight and Patrick feels momentarily lost just in the width of them. He looks at his cock a second later, so red with want and Patrick’s desperate for it. He moves to bring his hands down to Jonny, to get his grip on those big, gorgeous thighs, drag him closer, but he stills in shock when Jonny hits him, hard, right across the face.

Patrick—

Shit. 

“Oh fuck.” 

Patrick whines, fucking gasps from it and—

Holy fuck.

“Don’t move your hands,” Jonny says, deep. 

Patrick whines again, caught somewhere between a grunt, but he nods. His fingers clench into fists and Jonny looks pleased when he places his hands on them. He crosses Patrick’s wrists above his head a moment later. His touch is light on Patrick’s cheek, trailing along the line of his jaw and Patrick wonders if the skin is red, if it’s already tinged pink. The thought of it makes him hum, the echo of a moan. 

“That’s good, baby. So good,” Jonny praises and it only serves the sound Patrick makes to deepen. 

Patrick keeps still when Jonny moves up the bed, thighs straining as he keeps them either side of Patrick’s body. He stops at his shoulders, knees knocking against his stretched arms and his dick is so close, so there, that Patrick has to stop his neck from arching forward. He wants it on his tongue, right in his mouth, at the back of his fucking throat, just as promised. 

“Green,” Patrick whispers, in case it’s in question. “Fucking green, Jonny.”

Jonny’s looking down at him like he’s a revelation and it sparks at Patrick’s belly, hips wanting to rise off the bed and grind at nothing, but he stays still. It’s difficult, almost impossible, but Patrick wants to be—shit. He wants to be good . 

“Glad to hear it,” Jonny grins, fisting his cock in his hand before tapping the head against Patrick’s bottom lip. 

Patrick moans when the first burst of precome blooms on his tongue, salty-sweet and wet. Jonny feeds him his cock, gentle, almost controlled and Patrick clenches his fingers tight. 

It’s slow, agonisingly gentle and heady and Patrick loses himself in it, completely. His eyes fall shut, mouth soft as Jonny fucks in, so deeply in; he’s gone, floating at the edge of his own pleasure and so utterly lost in Jonny’s. It’s satisfying to hear the way Jonny grunts, low and rough as his hands card through Patrick’s hair. He pulls, like he can’t help himself and Patrick moans around him in encouragement. Jonny takes it. 

“That’s it, just like that, baby,” Jonny’s murmuring, sweet. The snap of his hips is anything but, quick and sharp when he fucks deeper into Patrick’s mouth. 

Jonny’s cock pushes at the back of his throat and he chokes. He can’t help it, doesn’t really want to help it, not when the sound Jonny rewards him with is one of pure, unfiltered heat. He fucks in, just like that, pulling Patrick in closer by the grip on his hair. 

It’s good, it’s too fucking good. 

Patrick can’t count time, can’t measure anything beyond the heavy, pressured weight of Jonny’s cock on his tongue and he doesn’t care to. 

That’s it, he thinks. Take it, Jonny. Take me. 

“This what you thought about?” Jonny breathes, thumbs at Patrick’s temples. “When you saw me on my knees, in that room.” He grunts when his hips still, holding his cock in deep, almost as far as it can go and Patrick holds his breath. His touch is light at Patrick’s cheek, over the corner of his mouth, like he’s marvelling in the feel of his cock there. “Wanted to take it, to try it? Fuck, baby. I’d give you anything.” 

Patrick can’t answer, couldn’t even if he was able; he can’t breathe, can’t think. 

Patrick doesn’t realise how desperately he needs air until Jonny lets him have it; he’s heaving, chest heavy and tongue trying to grab at the oxygen around him. It tastes sweet, like a relief and Patrick still doesn’t like it as much as the taste of Jonny’s cock. 

“Shit, baby. Open your eyes for me.” 

Patrick tries, slowly, lashes weighted wet like sand. Jonny’s thumb brushes beneath them, smearing the moisture that had leaked from them so unknowingly. 

Jonny’s smiling, fingers spread and wide against Patrick’s cheek in a gentle hold. Spit pools at Patrick’s chin and Jonny runs his touch through it. 

“Perfect,” he says and Patrick turns his face to press it to Jonny’s inner thigh. 

It’s burning-hot, Patrick’s nose filling with musk and Jonny and he bites him there, right where the skin’s softest. 

“Shit,” Jonny gasps, voice weak and Patrick can feel it when Jonny’s cock jerks. Interesting. “ Ow, ” Jonny says a second later, completely unnecessarily and Patrick grins loosely. 

He presses his tongue there, lapping at salt-sweat skin and soothing the mark he’s made with his teeth. “You like it.” Fuck. His voice is rough, almost impossibly. He wants to cough against the feel of it. 

Jonny doesn’t answer, which Patrick will take as an affirmation, but he doesn’t get a chance to say much of anything either when Jonny grabs him by the jaw. “You’re—” Jonny starts, that familiar awe creeping in. 

Patrick loves it. Loves everything. 

Jonny doesn’t continue, but his eyes brush over Patrick’s face, something heavy in them. 

“Come on,” Patrick breathes. His tongue plays over his lips, revelling in the swell of them. “Don’t stop.” 

Jonny’s thumb taps at his jaw. “No, baby. Don’t want to give you my come yet.” 

Patrick shivers at that, something that twitches up to his crossed wrists and Jonny’s mouth is smugly pleased. Bastard. Why does Patrick like it ?

Jonny sits back, moving further down the bed but keeping his body close. His cock drags down Patrick’s chest, over his belly and Patrick watches the wet, mouthwatering line it leaves behind. When he’s over Patrick’s waist, Patrick watches that instead, helplessly anxious and needily excited in the anticipation of what’s next. 

Patrick knows Jonny has a plan, loosely. Or, ‘ vaguely’ as he’d put when Patrick had asked over the phone. Patrick assured he liked the thrill of a good surprise, and Jonny had laughed when he said, “I’m not a birthday present, Patrick.”

“You sure?”

Patrick groans in surprise when Jonny takes his dick in his big, calloused hand. He drops his head back on the pillow, trying to remind himself that coming just from this would be highly embarrassing. 

It might be impossible not to, when Jonny presses Patrick’s cock up against his ass. 

“Shit, Jon,” he scrambles, eyes wide when he looks at Jonny. 

Jonny’s smirking, because of course he is. “I like to ride, when I get fucked,” he says, almost fucking conversationally. “I like being cuffed when I do it.” 

Patrick groans, fingers fisting in the pillows above his head. Jonny’s headboard is flat, a soft, muted natural-wood that’s great to look at, but gives Patrick nothing to hold on to for purchase. 

“You’re killing me,” Patrick says honestly, biting into his red, swollen lip. 

“Don’t die, baby.” 

Jonny’s terrible, so fucking terrible and Patrick thinks he might be a little in—

“Please, Jonny,” he breathes. “I want—come on, Jonny. Please.” 

Jonny stares, eyebrows raised like he has all the time in the world for Patrick to explain; as if his dick isn’t rock-hard and dripping dirty-wet with Patrick’s spit. 

“I want you, Jonny. Please. I need you to—fuck.” 

Jonny lets go of his cock and Patrick whines when he does. He presses his hands to Patrick’s sternum, pushing. He’s up on his knees, weight resting almost entirely on Patrick’s chest and it steals the breath right from Patrick’s lungs. That’s good. Shit, that’s good. 

“What do you need?” Jonny asks, voice dropping low.

Patrick takes a breath, mind going blank at the push of Jonny’s hands. Once his mouth opens he spills, words coming uncontrollable and heavy, like he’s waited a lifetime to say them. “Fuck me. Take me,” he says. “Choke me again. I’ve tried, tried to do it the way you did. It’s not the same, Jonny. It’s not the same. Need you. Only you.” He’s babbling, he knows he is, but he can’t stop. “Wanna come—need it—come on. Make me yours, Jonny.” 

I already am. 

Jonny’s looking at him in a way Patrick thinks means, you already are. 

His hands run up Patrick’s chest, thumbs pressing gently over his nipples and Patrick keens. His hips are kept flat to the bed only by Jonny, but they search for friction all the same. 

“What else?” Jonny asks, ducking forward to kiss at Patrick’s bottom lip. 

Patrick’s fingers tighten. “ Everything .” 

Jonny’s breath hits his mouth in a rush, like he was holding it and Patrick doesn’t know what that means, but he takes it. He wants to draw Jonny closer, feel those lips, that mouth, take that breath right from his lungs and into his own. 

“Hit me,” Patrick says, right into Jonny’s skin. “Hit me again.” 

Jonny bites Patrick’s jaw with a grunt, pressing his palms to Patrick’s clavicles. “Where, Pat?” He asks, fingers dancing at his neck. He pushes. “Where?” 

Patrick can’t answer. His spine arches under Jonny’s touch, wanting to melt into the mattress. He can’t answer. He can’t.

Jonny gets a hand at his side, curving behind him to grip at the back of his thigh; Patrick bends his knee, getting Jonny closer. He jumps at the touch, too, a needy sound triggered from the back of his throat and it only serves to grow, when Jonny’s touch settles at the curve of his ass.

“Here?” he whispers, squeezing. His other hand cups Patrick’s face, thumb right at the line of his cheekbone. “Or here?” 

Patrick swallows, eyes closed. “Anywhere,” he sighs, helpless. “Anywhere you want.” 

Patrick relaxes when Jonny kisses him. It’s light, quick and it centres Patrick. It hits him right where he lives. 

Jonny climbs off him and Patrick misses the weight when he’s gone; he feels ready to float, right up and off the mattress. Jonny’s the only thing grounding him. He kisses at Patrick’s wrists when he lifts them off the pillows, whispering praise against his skin and Patrick hums happily. He tells Patrick to turn over, up on his knees and elbows to the bed and Patrick follows. 

It’s vulnerable, to be in this position for Jonny. For anyone. He smiles when he drops his forehead to his folded arms. He smiles when he thinks, no one but Jonny will ever see him like this. He likes that. 

He’s on display, entirely open and bared raw and he spreads his knees wider at the thought. Jonny’s moved to kneel behind him, hands quick to find his hips and Patrick feels the shiver of it ripple down his spine. Jonny runs his fingers there, gentle, soothing, taking time to trace each, fragile vertebrae. 

Jonny’s voice cuts through the fog that was beginning to curl it’s way through the edges of Patrick’s mind. “You still want to learn, baby?” 

Patrick turns his head a little to the side, humming in question.

Jonny’s lips brush against the base of his spine and Patrick wants to jerk forward. Jonny’s hands keep him still. “I like it, too,” Jonny says, breath hitting cool against his skin. “Being hit.”

Patrick groans, pressing his face into the pillows. 

“Pay attention, Pat.” Jonny’s voice is firm. “You’ll need to remember this, for when it’s your turn.” 

Patrick opens his mouth to respond, but his voice is nothing but dust when Jonny hits him—sharp, rough, mean —right on his ass, almost at the top of his thigh. He shouts, maybe. Or maybe he fucking yells. Maybe he does nothing. 

All there is, is this. 

He has to find Jonny’s voice in the otherwise rush of quiet; his head is swimming with it, the gentle hum of nothing and everything, all at once. 

“You want to keep your palm flat, a little curved at the fingers, bringing it up when you hit.” 

Jonny smacks him again, words emphasised by the display. He smooths his hand over the skin a second later, a gentle rub of his palm. 

“You can gentle the sting, if you keep your touch light in the same spot in between strikes.” 

Patrick’s moaning, mouth open and lax against the pillows. He’s pulled tight, body almost vibrating in torturous anticipation. More, he thinks, shouting it into the echoed silence of his mind. 

“I like it when it’s quick and sharp, hitting the same spot, almost relentlessly. It maximises the pain, heightens the pleasure.” 

Jonny’s palm strikes. One. Two. Three. Four. Patrick counts them, thinks maybe he shouts alongside them; a harsh harmony, a beautiful one, too. 

“ Fuck, Jonny,” he gasps, rolling his hips at nothing. 

“Yeah, baby,” Jonny says quietly, running his hands gently over Patrick’s ass. The sting of it burns and Patrick has a wild, impulsive curiosity to feel it. He wants to feel the heat of it, if the skin has raised; he wants to press his palm where Jonny's been, he wants to memorise the feel of him there. 

Jonny hits him again, and again, and again and again—

Stars spark behind Patrick’s eyes, swimming in his vision until it’s all he can see, all he can feel. He feels weak with it, like he can’t remember what colour felt like before this; he can’t remember the world being anything other than bright, burning gold. 

He can’t remember anything but Jonny. 

He’s vaguely conscious of the pillow beneath him turning damp, pooled with spit and the bite of his teeth. He’s panting, fucking panting and Jonny’s not touched his dick, not even touched it once and Patrick realises—he’s going to fucking come. 

It licks at the base of his spine like a flame, curling somewhere in his middle, wrapping and twisting in his veins and he—he wants it, he wants the burn of it to consume him. It is consuming him—holy fucking it is and Patrick— 

“Stop,” he gasps out, “stop, Jonny—fuck—” 

Jonny does, withdrawing so instantly it’s like whiplash but his touch is there a second later, soothing up Patrick’s spine like water. It floods him, tampers the burn and settles, cool and easy in his skin. He breathes, for what feels like the first time in a long time, breathing through the arousal. He takes a minute—fuck he can’t count it—to align himself to something more settled. 

“Pat, baby,” Jonny almost hushes, kissing at his shoulder. “Where are we?” 

Patrick laughs, dry and oddly loud. He turns his head to the side. “Green, you fucking dick.” 

Patrick feels Jonny’s hands still in their movement, the pause of them questioning. Patrick’s breathless, when he laughs again. “Fucking green, but—shit, Jonny. I was going to fucking come.” 

Jonny drops his forehead to the space between Patrick’s shoulder blades, resting there. Patrick can feel him breathing, can feel the grip of his hands tight at his sides and it takes a second, maybe two, before Jonny’s laughing, too. 

It’s a disbelieving sound, a little breathless and he kisses suddenly at the back of Patrick’s neck. “Jesus, baby.” 

Patrick hums in return, soothed by the cadence of Jonny’s lips against his spine. “Jonny,” he murmurs. Jonny doesn’t answer, his mouth gentle and mindless on Patrick’s skin. “Jonny,” Patrick says again, finding his voice. “I need you to—shit, Jon. Fuck me. ” 

Jonny makes a soft sound into Patrick’s hair, bumping his nose there before pulling back and away from the bed. Patrick watches him, vision a little hazy, maybe a little rose-tinted, when he finds himself caught in how—how beautiful Jonny is. He grabs lube from the nightstand, a flash of foil in his fingers too and he chucks them both on the bed by Patrick’s knee. It’s a menial task, completely boring and quick but Patrick thinks he’s the most beautiful person he’s ever seen.

Maybe Jonny smacked his fucking brain right out of him. 

Patrick sighs into the stretch when Jonny’s thumbs dig at the muscles of his lower back. It’s nice, oddly comforting and gentle. “You’re tight here,” he comments, like an afterthought. “Relax.”

Patrick hums in response. “Let me come, and I might.”

Jonny smacks him on the back of his thigh, just once and sharp in warning and Patrick buries his smile into his forearms. 

The press of Jonny’s lips over the flame-red skin offers soft relief, but Patrick jumps from the anticipation all the same. Jonny’s murmuring behind him, not speaking, not quite, but the sound is reverent when he gets his hands right where he wants them; they’re wide over where the sting burns deepest, parting Patrick’s cheeks. The burn crawls somewhere up in his neck, too, when he confronts the conscious part of him that feels embarrassment from the exposure. 

Jonny’s staring, he has to be, thumb running feather-light at Patrick’s perineum, pressing at the back of his balls. The pressure rips at Patrick’s insides, drawing a keen out of him he doesn’t waste time feeling embarrassed for. His dick is desperate, more desperate than he can ever remember being and Patrick feels dialled up to fucking eleven. 

“You’re pretty here,” Jonny muses, finger brushing dry, barely, over his hole. Patrick breathes. 

Pretty is not a word Patrick would ever think to use, not in this context, but—something in it, something in the wonder of Jonny’s voice, has his spine dipping. 

He shouts, shocked, when Jonny spits right over his hole. 

“Fuck, Jonny,” he whines, rocking forward. Jonny stills him. 

Patrick breathes through it, when Jonny’s tongue presses flat and wet against him. He kisses his mouth there, confident with it and assured, like he wants to coax the sound Patrick’s making louder out of him. It’s fucking working. Patrick gets up further on his elbows, grunting, looking for purchase. 

When Jonny laughs against him, the feel of it shivers up through his spine. He’s pleased, Patrick doesn’t need to look at him to know he’s smug and when the hard tip of his tongue slips past his rim, Patrick almost jerks halfway up the bed. 

“Jonny,” he says again, wounded. “Please.” He rocks back into Jonny’s touch, forcing his tongue deeper, pressing right into his fucking face and Patrick’s fingers twist so painfully in the sheets his knuckles stain white. 

Jonny licks one, long and final stripe over him, right from his balls to the base of his spine and Patrick hates when his hips try to chase Jonny’s face the second he pulls away. It feels too needy, too wanton, but Patrick’s lost all control. 

“One day I’m going to eat you out properly,” Jonny says. Lube-dripping fingers replace where his mouth had been, teasing at his hole. “I want to feel you come on my tongue.” 

At the first slide of Jonny’s finger, Patrick tenses up something rough. It should feel too much, too uncomfortable, and an undeniable part of it is, but Patrick’s been too keyed up on Jonny for too long that all he knows is relief. He sighs when Jonny gets to the knuckle, clenching down on his finger rhythmically, settling into the feel of it. 

Jonny’s other hand squeezes at his hip. “That’s it, baby. Just like that.” 

Patrick loses himself in the feel of Jonny’s fingers. Two. A third. Moving in a way that feels almost shockingly efficient, like Jonny’s saving Patrick from the pleasure. It’s nice, strangely relaxing, giving Patrick a moment to centre his thoughts. It’s been hard to think much of anything at all, when all his mind echoes is Jonny. 

But this is good, this is easy; easing Patrick into something that settles warm, right in his blood. He’s never been fucked, Jonny knows he hasn’t, but he’s been so desperate to know. It feels more , has been ever since Jonny flashed his teeth as a promise and Patrick wonders how this will change him. 

Thing is, Patrick's a man of simple pleasures. A hot, wet, tight hole for him to fuck into really is one of life’s great joys. He likes getting a girl on her hands and knees, just to watch the slow, languorous sink of his cock into her pussy, or ass. Nothing fucking beats it. He could hold the tip of his cock in a wet cunt for hours, just to watch the little pink opening fluttering and begging; begging to take him in. 

It’s a power trip, no fucking doubt and he’s never fucked a guy, but the ship on that realisation that he wants to has long set sail. Bon-fucking-voyage. He wants to fuck Jonny. He wants that more than—

Well, not more than anything . Not more than this moment, right now. But it’s pretty far up there on his bucket list. He knows Jonny would let him, too. If Patrick were to stop, shove Jonny back on the bed and say he wants to fuck him instead, Jonny would probably say yes. 

Patrick likes the power of that, too. 

He wonders if this will feel better. If getting fucked will feel better. Than fucking, sure, but—everything else, too. Shit. 

Then Jonny curls his fingers. 

“ Fuck. Jonny— Jon . Fuck—”

Maybe this won’t change him. Maybe this is him. 

Jonny’s hand moves from his hips to the span of his shoulder blades, pushing him down roughly until he’s face first on the bed. He holds him there, relentlessly, fucking in with his fingers and pressing them right up against the spot that has his vision swimming black at the edges. 

Patrick can’t fucking see. 

“Jonny,” he gasps, turning enough to be heard. “Jonny, I’m going to—”

“No,” Jonny orders, getting his hand around the back of Patrick’s neck. He pushes, the stretch rippling down to Patrick’s thighs and if Jonny doesn’t stop, if he doesn’t stop, Patrick’s going to—

Jonny’s fingers slip free, pulling at the rim when he does and Patrick can only grunt. He hopes the sound means please, hope Jonny takes it as the affirmation of his bright—what must be so evident—want, because Patrick doesn’t think he could speak if he tried.

Jonny drapes himself over Patrick’s back, hand still at his neck and the other touching lightly at his forearm over his head; Jonny’s fingers are wet, which should be filthy, but it only serves the muscles in his arms to tighten. He drags Patrick’s arm down, revealing his face and gripping at his wrist and he’s firm, hard against his back, as he presses his weight in close. 

“Baby,” he whispers, lips closing over Patrick’s shoulder. “I’m going to fuck you.”

Patrick sighs, nodding nonsensically. Jonny’s thumb hooks at the corner of his mouth and Patrick likes the feel of it, likes when it lifts higher at Patrick’s smile. “That’s good,” Patrick says. It takes everything to form words on his tongue, but he smirks. “Green, by the way.”

Jonny replaces his thumb with his lips, kissing at the corner of Patrick’s mouth, sipping at the taste of him. “You’re perfect, you know that?”

Jonny puts his hand over his mouth before he can open it. “Don’t argue with me.” He’s smirking when he sits back, his lips a barely-there press down Patrick’s back; his shoulders, his traps, finding the hard line of his lats and biting there, gently. His hands follow the same path, returning to the base of Patrick’s spine, where they belong. 

Patrick hears the tear of foil and he doesn’t know why, but he reaches behind him to grab Jonny’s arm. “Don’t,” he says, consumed suddenly by the idea. “Don’t use it.”

Jonny stops. “Pat, baby—”

Patrick shakes his head, tries to. “Come on. Come in me, Jonny.”

Jonny groans, like he’s in pain. He drops the sound to Patrick’s back, pressing his face there. “Okay,” he says finally. “Okay.”

Maybe it’s idiotic, maybe it’s the stupidest thing Patrick could do, but he doesn’t care. He has a trust in Jonny, one he’s never held before—for anyone— and he knows Jonny wouldn’t allow this otherwise; he wouldn’t say okay, if it was anything but. And Patrick thinks, almost hysterically, that the bare, skin-on-skin drag of Jonny’s cock inside him will complete him. If he doesn’t have that, he’ll scream. It’s a wild thing to think, completely insane maybe, but Patrick isn’t ashamed of what he needs. Not now. 

Jonny’s thumb hooks in his rim and Patrick breathes, deep, trying to measure it. Jonny pulls, just a bit, an almost fascination in his touch and Patrick’s breath turns into a sound of desperation, when the head of Jonny’s cock pushes at his entrance. The sound is at the back of his throat, now, trapped there in the anxiety of it all. 

Patrick’s not worried—not about the pain, or the resistance, or anything his body needs to accept the give; he’s worried how quickly he’ll lose control, how quickly Jonny will reduce him to nothing. He’s worried at how bad he wants it. 

His rim gives, pulling Jonny in and the slide is inexorable. Jonny is slow, measured and controlled and Patrick knows Jonny’s trying not to hurt him. It helps, Patrick’s grateful, but when Jonny slides home and bottoms out, he wants to grind his teeth helplessly into the pillows. Because the pain doesn’t dull, not completely, but it twines with pleasure; it disconnects the feeling of Patrick’s brain. 

“Oh, baby,” Jonny practically chokes. He’s holding still, hands brushing up Patrick’s sides until they settle at his clavicles, almost at his neck. “ Baby.”

Patrick hums in agreement, pleased with Jonny’s pleasure. It feels good, to give him this; to give him himself. Take it , he thinks. It reminds Patrick of when Jonny’s fingers were in his mouth, his dick; take me. 

Jonny takes the roll of Patrick’s hips as invitation, drawing back until the head of cock rests maddeningly, just inside him. Patrick keens and Jonny drives back in, hard.

“Fuck, that’s it,” Jonny breathes, rocking out, back in. His pace is torturous. “That’s so good, baby. Fucking perfect.” 

Patrick’s moaning wetly into the bed, uncontrolled and muted; Jonny wants to hear it, he knows; he knows, when Jonny gets his grip under his chest. He pulls Patrick up off the sheets, like he weighs nothing, rocking him back into his arms until Patrick is pressed right to his chest. It changes the angle, drives Jonny in deeper and when he drags his cock so tight against his prostate, Patrick shouts. 

“Fuck, fuck— Jonny—” He grips at Jonny’s arms, where they’re wrapped around his chest—his middle—fingers curling around his forearm just to hold on. “Jonny—Jonny— fuck, Jonny—”

“Yeah, baby,” Jonny grunts into his ear. He bites at the side of Patrick’s neck, sinking his teeth. “You’re everything.”

Patrick is held up only by Jonny’s grip, both of them on their knees as Jonny fucks in, mercilessly. Every stroke, every thrust of his hips, tips Patrick forward into nothingness; it’s bliss, pure, bright, everything. He can’t make sense of it. Can’t begin to try. 

Patrick wants to do this forever. He wants to feel this forever. Jonny's hands, his teeth, his mouth, his cock. Fuck. Patrick wants it in him, to live like this, forever. Forever. Shit, forever’s never felt so short. 

He might be babbling a similar sentiment, he can’t be sure. He’s conscious of words like your cock and forever, unsure if they string a sentence but revelling in the way it only serves Jonny to fuck in harder. 

When Jonny gets a hand at his throat, Patrick fucks back down on Jonny—in shock, in heat, in unbridled want. “Yeah,” he gasps, gripping at Jonny harder. “Take it. ” 

Jonny moves forward so hard, so suddenly, they almost fall onto the bed. He’s moaning, harsh and deep at the back of Patrick’s neck, face almost buried in the mat of Patrick’s sweaty, tangled curls and Patrick taps his fingers to Jonny’s wrist. Jonny takes the consent for what it is, fingers tight at the tendons of his neck, palm at the base of it and squeezes.

When Patrick comes, completely untouched, he can’t breathe. 

It lasts an eternity, maybe no more than a minute, but ecstasy rolls through Patrick’s bones like wildfire; unchecked, untamed. It’s too much, it’s everything, it’s something he’s never felt and he falls; the edge he’s been on all night—forever—slips away from beneath him until he swims in black. It's weightless, it’s easy and Patrick doesn’t know who he is, beyond Jonny. 

And Jonny—fuck, Jonny—he fucks him through it; fucks him past it, over it, completely surges ahead and Patrick can’t breathe. He’s nonsensical, non-verbal, gasping at nothing, moaning weakly as he’s overwhelmed by JonnyJonnyJonny. 

Jonny has both hands at his neck now, tipping Patrick’s head back and holding on as he fucks in relentlessly. His grip doesn’t squeeze, doesn’t restrict Patrick’s air, but Patrick thinks he might be holding his breath all the same. 

Jonny kisses at the back of his hair, over the top of his spine, wherever he can reach. When he whispers at Patrick’s ear, it’s almost shockingly gentle. “It’s never felt like this.”

Jonny groans Patrick’s name, the sound echoing in the walls, settling in them, when he comes. 

Patrick thinks he’s too far gone to feel it, to really feel Jonny’s come slick him wet, but he feels Jonny . He holds in deep, punishing, grunting in breathless rapture that fills at Patrick’s seams. 

“Oh fuck,” he says finally, mouthing at Patrick’s neck. “Fuck.”

Patrick’s boneless, ready to crash and he’s almost grateful, when Jonny tips him forward gently onto his front. Patrick doesn’t even care about the wet spot. 

Jonny pulls out a second later and Patrick feels too light, too happy , to notice it much. It’s empty when he’s gone, something that makes him sigh and he can feel it, now, when Jonny’s come drips at his entrance. 

Jonny’s tongue presses there a second later and Patrick almost shouts, more responsive than he’s felt in an eternity. It’s too much, when Jonny’s licks, when he closes his mouth over Patrick’s hole, when he stays there. It’s too much, Patrick wants to get away, wants it closer; he can’t make up his mind. 

Jonny’s humming, like he’s pleased, like he’s so fucking happy, kissing at Patrick’s hole, tongue lapping one last final, brutal time, before he pulls back. 

He gets a hand on Patrick’s hip, tugging gently until Patrick gets the memo and rolls onto his back. It feels nice, more comfortable, especially when he can look up into Jonny’s wonderful, terrible, lovely face; he’s flushed such a beautiful, deep red. Patrick lifts his arm, unsure how he manages it, but pleased when the effort rewards him with a palm on Jonny’s stubble-rough cheek. Jonny smiles, mouth closed and the feel of it shifts against Patrick’s thumb. 

Jonny touches his face in return, eyelids closing gentle when Jonny brushes over them. He sighs, content. Jonny’s fingers settle at his mouth, tipping up his jaw and Patrick opens his eyes enough to watch Jonny lean down to kiss him. 

Yes, he thinks, so blissfully pleased. 

When Jonny’s tongue touches his own, Patrick moans, hand slipping to Jonny’s hair. Because fuck. Holy fuck —Jonny’s come is on his tongue, wet at his lips and he’s kissing it, licking it, right into Patrick’s mouth. Patrick takes it, the now almost familiar salt-sharp taste dripping over his taste buds, right to the back of his throat and he swallows. Jonny smiles, humming happily and kissing Patrick deeper into the sheets.

Patrick can’t think much of anything else, after that. 

***

“—so, the trick is, you want to fry off some garlic first. I know, I know, that seems crazy—because—too much garlic, right? Wrong. It makes it.”

Jonny’s talking again, because of course he is. Patrick would have missed it if he weren’t.

“I’ll make it for you. You’ll like it.”

Patrick blinks as the room comes back into focus. He wasn’t out, not completely, but everything was tinged in a blur; the muted, soft-dark hair on top of Jonny’s head becomes sharper, clearer with every second and Patrick smiles. 

Jonny’s half over him, the meat of his thigh tucked comfortingly between Patrick’s own and hands warm at his sides. He’s speaking into Patrick’s neck, lips catch softly at his skin and murmuring about his stupid culinary expertise. 

Patrick never wants to leave him. 

It feels important to touch him, Patrick thinks he’ll die if he doesn’t and he doesn’t care what that says about him. His arms feel sunken in lead, sore like going ten rounds in the ring and he wraps them around Jonny’s shoulders, letting him take the weight of them “Okay, Bobby Flay.” His voice scratches, too rough and almost inaudible, but he doesn’t mind the sensation of it. 

Jonny pulls him closer and Patrick revels in the feel of his skin, near blazing and bare against his own. “Hi,” Jonny says finally, lifting his head to level Patrick with a look that’s so—

Soft.

Patrick feels fucked out. Used. Gone. He’s a mess, barely coherent and body heavy and—good. So fucking good. 

“I wanted to hear about your bees,” Patrick says, eyes heavy with the urge to fall closed; his want to look at Jonny is stronger. 

Jonny smiles and Patrick wants to trace the shape of it. “You’ll be pleased to hear the hive is thriving.”

“Oh,” Patrick sighs happily, running his fingers through Jonny’s hair. Patrick can’t explain it, doesn’t care much for an explanation anyway, but his senses feel—charged. The feel of Jonny’s hair beneath his fingers is like silk; it’s amazing, intoxicating and Patrick can’t get enough. “That’s good. You could say I am… buzzing with excitement.”

Patrick laughs, not at his own awful (and it really was god-awful) joke, but at the expression on Jonny’s face. It’s so unamused, almost impossibly nonplussed and Patrick runs his thumbs under the fragile, almost purple skin of his eyes. 

Jonny’s eyes are wide and bright, something behind them sparking in such gentle fondness and Patrick feels the earth in them; in their colour, their warmth, in the way they feel like home. 

Jonny kisses him and maybe, Patrick thinks, he tastes like home, too.

“I’m gonna get you some more water,” Jonny says softly, keeping Patrick’s mouth close to his own, like he can’t help it. “I’ll be back.”

Patrick nods, tries not to whine when Jonny gets up off him and the bed. He misses the weight of it, the heat; he wonders what he did before Jonny. 

He watches when Jonny walks toward the door, naked and still flushed scarlet, all the way from his neck down to his glorious ass and fuck—Patrick doesn’t think luck is the right word. Maybe luck has nothing to do with it. 

“Hate to see you leave, love to watch you go,” he slurs, before promptly passing out. 

***

Patrick raises his hand to the sun. 

Colour dances across his skin, glowing almost an impossible yellow; bright, soft, wonderful. He turns his palm, catches the shadow of the barely-shut curtain, playing his fingers across it. He lies like that, just like that, the morning sun soaking through him, to his core. 

The spot beside him is empty, but the memory of the body that warmed it remains. He touches there, bringing the sun with him and running his fingers over the sheets. He wonders, brushing his hand over the pillow, if last night changed him. 

It did. He can’t deny that. But he thinks perhaps in a way he was meant to be changed. 

He feels sore, brain still figuring out how to completely come online, but he feels—

Whole.

He turns his face into the space on the sheets Jonny left behind. He breathes in, takes his lungs to their limit and holds Jonny in there with the warmth of the sun. 

He smiles, when he hears Jonny curse from the kitchen. 

No going back. 

He pads out to the kitchen on embarrassingly weak legs and a t-shirt he knows is not his, pulled a little too tight at the shoulders. At least the boxers he found were his own. Pain echoes lightly somewhere in his lower back, easy enough to ignore and non-existent when he sees Jonny, anyway. 

Jonny’s at the coffee machine, grunting angrily at it like it’s listening to his complaints and Patrick wants to take anywhere between now and forever, just to look at him. He doesn’t want to have to choose.

The shirt he wears is Patrick’s. 

“You know, Jon,” he says, trailing his fingers over the counter. “I don’t think you can will the coffee machine into submission.”

“Oh,” Jonny straightens, a smile blooming on his flushed, sun-soaked face when he looks at Patrick. Only Patrick. “Hey.”

Patrick smiles right back, unashamed in the face of his own want, not anymore. “Hi.”

If he has to choose, how long he gets to be here with Jonny, he chooses forever. 

Forever sounds alright.