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Patrick always said he wouldn’t give up and become a music teacher until he’d exhausted every possible alternative career path.
And he hasn’t! He moved out to Los Angeles a decade ago with a demo tape and a dream of rock superstardom and he’s taken every job in the music biz in an effort to make that dream come true. He’s worked as a lounge singer and a club promoter and a freelance journalist for an indie music startup. He’s worked the sound desk at a tiny recording studio and stuffed envelopes at a huge, sleek corporate music factory. He tended bar in a club that hosted excellent bands, and a terrible dive that hosted awful bands. He’s maintained his dream, or something close to it. It was all worth it. Every step, he told himself, every step was a step closer to making it all come true.
Now, he’s a singing telegram, which is exactly as horrible as it sounds. Travelling from address to address with his battered acoustic guitar, singing top 40 dreck for people who didn’t ask to hear it. He winces when he says it out loud to his friends and family back home in Chicago. He feels incredibly stupid. He regrets writing “Later, losers,” as his yearbook quote.
Patrick is the biggest fucking loser of all, that much is obvious.
It’s embarrassing. He’s embarrassed. When he wasted time dreaming about his future, he didn’t imagine he’d spend it singing cheesy pop-rock love songs to strangers. This is not the life he wanted, not the life he deserves. There are, like, notably fewer platinum albums, for a start. But his job pays the bills, or it pays enough of the bills that he hasn’t applied for music teacher training school… yet.
In the meantime, he gets to go out and meet people, which his mom says is nice, even if it’s not. Then he sings for them and sometimes they’re sweet and kind and tip well which is nice, generally. Other times, they’re assholes about it. Usually, they’re just confused and no one really knows where to look, or what to do with their hands and everything is awkward and there are flames, flames on the side of his face. Still, he hasn’t given up on the hope that, one day, Rick Rubin will open the door and all Patrick will be discovered and all his rock star dreams will come true.
So far, he hasn’t sung for Rick Rubin. So far, he’s sung for fast food chain managers, business execs, housewives and a district attorney. The only reason he wouldn’t describe them as the polar opposite of Rick Rubin is because Rick Rubin is not, as far as he knows, magnetic. He lives in hope, though. Well, he lives in a tiny one bedroom apartment in Ktown that he shares with a short order fry cook and an unsuccessful social media influencer. There is no laundry, no parking, and his spot on the sofa bed under the tiny window always smells of Korean barbecue he can’t afford to eat. But you’ve gotta have aspirations.
The GPS beeps, telling him he’s reached his destination. Dressed in a red polyester shirt studded with tiny pink hearts, Patrick hopes it doesn’t mean in the cosmic sense.
He studies the email on his phone and frowns, nervous. The song he’s about to sing—Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word—isn’t something that springs to mind when Patrick thinks of Valentine’s Day; the most romantic of the standard, candy-centric holidays. If someone sang it to him, he’d like to say he’d be annoyed, but honestly, Patrick’s been single for so long at this point that he can’t actually remember what it’s like to be in a relationship. Maybe he’d be thrilled. Hopefully, the guy Patrick’s about to sing to—Pete, no last name—is super into anti-romance.
Patrick flicks his fingers through his hair in the rear-view mirror and climbs out of the car.
It’s a nice house. The nicest house Patrick’s been to since he started this job. The villa’s stone is honey-coloured and warmed by the sun. The billiard green rolling lawn really draws attention to the magnitude of shittiness of Patrick’s old-enough-to-legally-drink Daewoo. Even the driveway out front looks cleaner than the countertops in his sticky kitchenette. Patrick looks around for security guards. He wipes the city grime from the soles of his sneakers onto the legs of his jeans.
Patrick checks the address on his phone and slips on the leather biker jacket and sunglasses that he hopes make him look like a young George Michael. He’s gone for a French tuck with the shirt, something he saw on Queer Eye and thinks he vaguely understood. At the double-height door, he knocks, waits. The door swings open and Patrick’s fingers move to the frets.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Patrick says, in this cool, James Dean voice he’s been practicing on the drive over.
Then, he glances up, double takes dramatically, and looses a big, terminally uncool shock-scream.
The man in front of Patrick is blond, with a tan, if Patrick may be permitted to quote Tim Curry. There’s… a lot of tattoos. And muscle. And they all snake up this guy’s arms and around his throat like a pornographic dot-to-dot. He’s dressed in a tattered Iron Maiden tee that shows off his shoulders, and slouchy workout pants that show off his ass. His jaw is rough with dark, dark stubble that would, objectively, look killer against Patrick’s pale, pale thighs and, like, is it Patrick or is it unseasonably hot out all of a sudden?
He is arrestingly, unfairly, aggressively gorgeous.
He is also Pete fucking Wentz, and last year, his label curated 35.6% of the Billboard 100.
This whole time, Patrick’s been operating on the universal principle that his job could not get any more humiliating. Like, the time he showed up to a gig at Sprinkles dressed as a giant cupcake? And some kid knocked him onto his back and Patrick couldn’t get back up? And everyone laughed at him and someone posted it on YouTube and TikTok? And Patrick’s grandma commented with a string of laugh-cry emojis? Patrick assumed that was the pinnacle of workplace mortification. He figured that even if things weren’t getting better, then at least they couldn’t get worse.
Patrick was wrong. It turns out, he’s misjudged the situation entirely.
“Um, hi,” says Pete Wentz. He looks over Patrick’s shoulder and frowns. “How did you open my gate?”
Pete brushes a hand through his bleached hair and showcases an anatomically perfect valley between bicep and tricep. Patrick stares at Pete’s underarm, frozen. He is a stalactite of his own crushing horror, his mouth hanging open. “Hnngh,” says Patrick, swamping the pits of his shirt with sudden-onset horn-sweat.
“Can I… help you?” Pete goes on. “With, like, anything at all?”
Patrick, rendered mute in the face of Pete’s gorgeousness, makes a mousey little squeak of distress. It’s occurring to him—painfully—that he’s going to have to sing in front of this magnificent creature. This talented business mind. This career-forging human. The mortification heats his blood like phosphorus. He forgets every word of the English language, including the lyrics to Pete’s singing telegram. He is a quivering flesh sack of human suffering dressed in a polyblend novelty Valentine’s shirt.
Or, maybe he doesn’t. He could run away. His car is sprinting distance from the door, after all. He could be back in Ktown in, like, an hour. Two, allowing for freeway traffic. But Patrick can’t move, he is hypnotised by that crease of muscle and sinew, salivating like a fucking deviant.
“Are you lost?” Pete tries, sounding kind and not creeped out. Given the way Patrick is staring at his armpit, Pete would have every right to feel creeped out. If Patrick were Pete, he would phone the police without even thinking about it.
“Um,” says Patrick, gripping the neck of his guitar with bruising force.
Pete stops looking kind and starts looking concerned. “Maybe I should—”
“I have a song for you!” Patrick blurts out, before Pete can call the police.
Pete’s preschool teacher smile twists into a frown. The frown is stern, sexy. It makes him look irked and lawyerly and that evokes a very particular sexual fantasy that Patrick had no idea he had until, like, right now.
“Oh. That’s... nice,” says Pete, like he’s thinking whatever the fuck you’re doing here, could you possibly not. “At Decaydance we really like to keep things personal, I’m sure you’ve read that somewhere. This is definitely the personal touch and I admire that. I admire that almost as much as I am... creeped out by it, actually. But demos really ought to go through—”
“Telegram!” Patrick shrieks, tripping forward, guitar-first. Pete widens his eyes and takes a big, startled step back. “Singing! I sing telegrams! You have a singing telegram and it’s me. I sing. For you. On behalf of someone else. It’s… I sing a song that they picked for you.”
Pete relaxes at that, deciding in an instant that Patrick’s not a threat, but a regular, retrograde loser.
“I know how singing telegrams work,” Pete says, the barest edge of a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. The mouth Patrick cannot stop staring at. God, he’s a perv, or a stalker, or worse.
Patrick bites his lip and nods. He doesn’t start playing, though. That’s the deal. He’s supposed to tell Pete who sent him and play the song they asked him to play and leave, but his brain feels like cotton candy and the only song he remembers is Wonderwall.
“Um, do you?” Pete prompts.
Patrick boggles at him. “Er…?”
“Understand how singing telegrams work?” Pete asks, nodding to the guitar clutched in Patrick’s sweaty, white-knuckled paws. “Like, shouldn’t you be singing by now?”
“I’m getting to that part,” Patrick says. “Don’t rush me.”
It comes out haughtier than he intended. Like he can cover the extreme scope of his awkwardness with a creamy ice cream slathering of fake cool. He arranges his clumsy sausage fingers on the fretboard and bites his lip, concentrating. He attempts an airy hum, like he’s warming up his voice, but all that comes out is a weird, huffing squeak. He’s the worst singing telegram in Los Angeles, America, the whole fucking world, most likely.
“No need to rush,” Pete says, waving a hand. “Take your time. I’m not busy.”
“You know, I’d play a lot better if you weren’t staring at me,” says a voice a lot like Patrick’s.
“You’re not playing at all, sweetie.” Pete lounges, his weight on one thigh. It’s like, now he knows Patrick’s getting paid to be here, he’s allowing himself to toy with him. “You’re just standing on my front porch looking kind of sexy in a very eighties way. Are all singing telegrams like this sexy?”
“Not generally,” Patrick grits out between clenched teeth. Now his shock has given way to common-or-garden embarrassment, he’s starting to feel a little bit pissed. Who is this guy? He can’t believe he’s intimidated by him.
“Are you going to strip for me?”
Patrick scowls. “Um… no?”
“So far,” Pete says, leaning against the doorframe, “you are the worst singing telegram I’ve ever had.”
In spite of everything, Patrick’s eyebrows rise and his temper with them. “And how many singing telegrams—how many exactly— have you had?”
“You’re my first.” Pete’s smile stretches a little wider. He winks at Patrick. “My first and definitely my worst. You should work harder, if you want to satisfy me.”
Patrick takes a deep breath. Is Pete Wentz flirting with him? If he is, is Patrick supposed to flirt back? On the cusp of the best moment of his life, or the biggest misunderstanding, he has no choice but to act like a bitch: “Technically? I’m also the best you’ve ever had.”
“Oh, lunchbox,” Pete drawls in the affectatious tones of a Southern belle. He fans himself with the hem of his shirt, showing off abs and hair and more confounded ink. A bat this time, or something like it, low on his groin and begging to be licked. Patrick’s pulse stutters, unsure if it should heat his face or fill his dick. “I do declare, kind sir,” Pete goes on, “if you keep sayin’ things like that, you’re gonna make me blush…” It all tunes into white noise at this point because all Patrick can hear is his own blood humming in his ears like a boiling tea kettle. At least, until Pete clears his throat and says, “Hey, creeper. My eyes are up here, thanks.”
Caught out, Patrick forces his eyes up, blushing furiously. In this job, he’s sung for more people than he can count and he hasn’t been accused of creeping on a single one of them until now. It’s just, Pete is gorgeous and influential and... laughing at him, apparently. Patrick’s never imagined standing this close to someone like that and having them laugh at him. Or he has, but he’s told himself the fear was irrational and yet, here it is, happening. He prays for death. He prays for a sinkhole to open up and swallow him, and his guitar, and his shitty Daewoo because Pete’s probably laughing at that, too. It doesn’t seem like a big ask. This is Southern California, after all; if it’s not on fire, it’s coming apart at the seams.
“Sorry,” Patrick mutters, to the neck of his guitar. “It, uh, the tattoo? It, um… draws the eye, you know?”
Pete grins a silly little grin, his canines slipping over his lower lip as his eyes don’t move from Patrick’s. “Uhuh,” he says. “Just the tattoo. Well, bard. Impress me.”
Good luck, Patrick thinks, his eyes tracking Pete’s mouth as he slips out his tongue and wets his lips. Patrick swears he feels his own mouth prickle in response, imagining that velvet plush. He feels stupid-horny. He feels eighteen again and full of inappropriate nerve endings.
“This is, uh, hold on.” Patrick fumbles his phone out of his pocket, slips, and almost throws it at Pete’s left nipple. He catches it, unlocks it on the third try, his thumbprint unrecognisable under the greasy film of panic sweat. “This is from Mikey,” Patrick says. “Mikey says—”
“Mikey?” Pete interrupts. He doesn’t sound terribly thrilled about it. His face has slipped from that happy, knowing little grin and into something restless, something unhappy. “Mikey fucking Way?”
Patrick stares at his phone to avoid staring at Pete, his face growing sticky and hot. This is an emotional rollercoaster, except he’s static, so it’s more like an emotional yo-yo. Just as Patrick’s getting to the fun, spinning freefall part, something yanks him the fuck back up into the sweaty fist of social awkwardness. “Would it make you feel better,” he tries carefully, “if I told you it’s not Mikey fucking Way? We can pretend it’s a different Mikey, if it helps. Or, if you’d prefer, we can pretend I said Spikey. Spikey says—”
Pete scruffs a hand over five solid days of beard growth and looks at Patrick and looses a big, hiccupy sob-sigh. “No,” he says, waving a hand. “Go on. What does Mikey have to say for himself?”
“Oh, fuck,” Patrick says. “Are you crying?”
Pete scowls. “No! Please, continue. I want you to sing.”
Instead of singing, Patrick says, “Um. Are you okay?”
Pete’s eyes dart up, prey animal quick. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“Well, you’re, like, standing in front of your house, crying at—”
“I’m not crying!”
“Okay, but—”
“Ugh, fucking Mikey!” Pete throws his hands up and stomps into the house.
Compelled by either unstoppable force or catastrophic lack of self-preservation, Patrick bobs along behind, a schooner caught in a storm current. It must be insanity; there’s no other explanation. Patrick is an insane person engaging in insane models of behaviour. Pete could be a psychopath, or a serial killer, or a Limp Bizkit fan and Patrick doesn’t care, because Pete looks sad and Patrick wants to cheer him up .
So, Patrick follows Pete. Patrick follows Pete, because he gets the sense that people don’t tend to follow Pete, and sometimes, Pete, like all people, needs to be followed. He follows Pete through the doors that are double his height and into the house. He blinks, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the sudden change in light. Inside his very first LA mansion, Patrick looks around, eyes wide, biting his lip to hold in the gasp.
It is beautiful. There’s a domed glass ceiling, like a cathedral, that stretches up to touch the Los Angeles blue, blue sky. The glass, unlike the windshield of Patrick’s Daewoo, is unmarred by dust or grey-green bird shit, like even the mafia-esque Malibu seagulls know better than to crap on the houses this high in the hills. There are no apparent rooms, no walls or doors, just open concept living space and yet more floor-to-ceiling glass that folds out onto the sunken lagoon pool. There’s an angular leather sofa the same length as Patrick’s whole apartment in front of a TV bigger than his living room wall. There’s art on the walls that Patrick’s sure he’s seen at the Getty. Patrick sinks his fingernails into the neck of his guitar and hopes his elderly Vans aren’t devaluing the porcelain floors.
“Um, Pete?”
“Over here.”
Pete stands at the marble kitchen island, pouring bourbon with intent.
“Are you okay?” Patrick asks, again. It’s a moot question. Pete is clearly not okay. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” Pete snaps.
“Oh,” Patrick says, heading for the door. This was a ridiculous idea. “Well, okay, I’ll just—”
“The thing about Mikey,” Pete says, pausing to toss back the bourbon. Suffering from emotional whiplash, Patrick stops moving toward the door and stares at his shoes. “The thing you need to know about Mikey fucking Way, is that he fixes life issues by pointing his dick at them.”
Patrick suspects Pete’s leaving a pause for him to say something reassuring. “Yes,” he says, nodding. “Fucking… boyfriends. Am I right?”
“Husbands,” Pete corrects. “Ex husbands.”
Patrick nods again. “Bummer.”
“So, he cheats on me,” Pete goes on, draining his glass again. Patrick’s wince reaches levels of nuclear threat but Pete keeps talking, undeterred. “Which, like, okay, a lot of people have cheated on me over the years, so, whatever. The cheating part isn’t a shock. But then he sends me a fucking singing telegram? And my singing telegram looks like, like, you? That’s a fucking shock. What the fuck?”
“Um, I’m sorry I look like… this,” Patrick says earnestly. “Blame my parents.”
“Oh, please. You look great. Your face is attractive,” Pete says, sounding deeply unhappy about it.
“Thank… you? I grew it myself.” Patrick’s glad he’s holding a guitar. It gives him something to do with his hands that is not pulling out his tongue.
“Fucking Mikey fucking Way.” Pete looks at the ceiling and then back at Patrick. “Okay. What song did he pick?”
And, okay, with Pete going for glass number three of bourbon and all that open water a drunken stumble away, Patrick’s not even going there. He seizes his courage in one hand and the tumbler in the other and tosses it back with a wince. Then he tips the last of the bottle into the glass, pours it so full that the only thing holding the liquid in place is surface tension, and cradles it with the devotion of a new parent.
Pete stares at him. “You — Did you just steal my bourbon?”
“Thirsty,” Patrick gasps, wiping his mouth on the back of his wrist. “Plus, it’s liquid courage. Playing for an actual musician is a lot more nerve wracking than you’d think. My, um, nerves are wracked. So, bourbon.”
“That is so rude,” Pete says, staring at his empty bottle in an advanced stage of mourning. “You’re so rude. People are never rude to me these days, not even when I deserve it. Well, aside from Mikey.”
Neither of them says anything else for a long time. Or, it feels like a long time to Patrick, standing in a strange music mogul’s house, a glass of bourbon so expensive it probably equates his monthly rent hugged to his chest. This is not the kind of situation singing telegrams are trained to deal with. They’re not trained to deal with situations at all. The lagoon pool has a fake waterfall, so they listen to the trickle of that and the distant sound of the perpetual traffic on the 101.
“For what it’s worth,” Patrick says quietly, when enough time has passed that things phase from ‘slight’ to ‘unbearable’ on the scale of awkwardness he’s had to invent for this very fucking situation, “I think Mikey is an asshole. Cheating is shitty even if you’re unhappy, even if your partner isn’t the best. Not that I’m saying you were a shitty husband! I’m sure you were awesome.”
“I had my moments,” Pete grits out.
“Like, I don’t claim to be an expert, but it’s pretty much Relationship 101: if things aren’t working out, get the hell out before you start a new project, right? If I had a guy as amazing as you…”
Patrick trails off. He wills those words back into his mouth with a fierceness akin to religion. Pete is looking at him, curious and sad.
“I mean,” Patrick tries, his voice strangled. “You’re okay, I guess. Fine, even. You have a nice house and your face is… not terrible.”
Pete laughs. It rattles in his chest like a broken carburetor. “Right. You seem like a nice guy, uh…?”
“Patrick,” Patrick says, holding out a hand for Pete to shake. Pete gives his hand an odd look, like he’s never encountered this perfectly standard gesture in the wild before. Patrick retracts his hand and tucks it into his hip pocket. They could name a crayola after the rich, raspberry jam shade of his blush.
“Patrick.” Pete rolls it around in his mouth like melted chocolate. He nods, as if pleased with the taste it leaves on his tongue. “Someone like you, Patrick, doesn’t want someone like me. Read the tabloids about me, watch them nail their grievances to the front door of the fucking church. I’m bad news.”
It sounds so dramatic, Patrick wants to throw back his head and laugh. Until he looks at Pete, who looks like he wants to cry. He looks smaller than he did when he answered the door, all folded in on himself, like emotional origami. It’s hard to imagine what complex theorem of sadness makes a man with everything believe he’s worth nothing. Probably, Patrick shouldn’t care. Probably, Pete’s another spoiled, rich asshole throwing a temper tantrum because he didn’t get his own (Mikey) way. Patrick thinks that’s not the case, though. Patrick feels a… connection with Pete, an intuitive circuit that loops between the two of them, an invisible wire that strings one to the other, like a pair of broken marionettes.
Patrick clears the rocks from his throat and says, “Well. I think you’re pretty awesome, and my mom says I’m an excellent judge of character. Everyone knows you can’t argue with moms, and I definitely can’t argue with mine , so. Here’s to you, Mr. Awesome.”
Pete opens his mouth, as if to object, to list all the reasons he’s decided he’s unlovable, all the things other people have told him, that he’s internalised, scars he wears on the inside. Patrick cannot fucking stand to hear it. There’s only one thing Patrick can do to stop Pete from talking and if he dwells on it, he’s going to freak out. So, Patrick closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and initiates positive reinforcement.
Patrick kisses Pete, right on the mouth.
The kiss is soft, unsure, and for a moment Pete doesn’t kiss back and Patrick doesn’t think he could possibly feel any more embarrassed until Pete pulls away and stares at Patrick from eyes half-wild and frightened, until he wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist and stares at Patrick’s lips.
“Oh,” Pete says, and touches his thumb to Patrick’s lower lip. Patrick’s chest heaves, his cheeks blooming with so much blood it’s a wonder he remains upright. “Patrick,” Pete says. “You’re…”
Then he leans in and crushes his mouth back to Patrick’s.
It’s easy, then. Pete’s mouth on Patrick’s and his hands sliding up Patrick’s back. Kissing is such a natural thing. Like riding a bike, but with mouths and hands and tongues and—God—thighs, thighs. Thighs in good places. Pete kisses sure and hungry and Patrick kisses back, touch-starved and desperate. Patrick locks his fingers in Pete’s belt buckle and rides his cock the full, hard length of Pete’s thigh; Pete makes two neat fistfuls of the hair at the back of Patrick’s skull and kisses like he can lick the want from the roof of Patrick’s mouth. Patrick holds his breath and thinks startled, dizzy thoughts.
“Don’t stop,” Pete says, pulling away from Patrick’s mouth, which is tragic, but only until he attaches his mouth to Patrick’s throat. Through teeth and clever tongue, he whispers against Patrick’s quivering pulse, “Keep singing for me.”
And that’s when Patrick realises he’s making noises; soft, pink little inhales in perfect harmony with Pete’s ragged blue breaths. They correspond, a perfect fifth. Patrick lets go of every inhibition, every scrap of self-consciousness he might’ve felt about mackin’ with the most influential man in modern music. Patrick lets himself be kissed, lets himself get hard, lets himself make all the rich, melted chocolate noises he wants to make as Pete gets him out of his leather jacket, his novelty shirt.
He comes back to himself as Pete licks his nipple, sucking with just the biting threat of teeth. Their eyes meet. “I want to suck you off,” Pete says, his mouth wet and swollen pink.
Patrick makes a choppy fist of Pete’s shaggy hair and experiences the electric-heat sensation of taking a cattle prod direct to the base of his spine. They fight his too-tight skinny jeans together, the denim bunching with his boxers and snagging on his thighs, his dick popping free thick and hard and rosy with blood.
Pete sinks all the way to his knees like he’s taking communion, Patrick’s dick just-this-side-of-too-tight in his fist. He turns his head without dropping Patrick’s gaze, licks Patrick’s bare thigh then bites the wet skin, leaving a mark to come back to. “You have amazing thighs, bard-Patrick. And an exquisite dick. I like it a lot.”
Patrick, aware he hasn’t said much since Pete started kissing him, tips his head back and looks through the ceiling at the endless sky and grits out, “It seems to like you, too.”
He knows Pete is laughing as he takes him into the slick, wet heat of his mouth. He knows because he feels it shake through his chest, through the shoulders Patrick is gripping with force. He knows it because he feels Pete’s teeth dig into the soft, sensitive spot just under the dripping, straining tip of his cock. He knows it, but he can’t hear it because his ears ring with the desperate, gutsy groan that rings from his chest and Pete licks his way from tip to base and back again and Patrick is gone. Patrick is gone, gone, fucking gone.
“Pull my hair,” Pete whispers, in the beat between sliding up and slipping back down. Patrick looses a cry of pleasure synonymous with pain.
So, Patrick pulls Pete’s hair as Pete’s sucks him like he’s drawing out poison. Patrick’s never done anything like this before: this-this. He’s had sex before, obviously, but he’s never had knee-trembling, earth-stopping, brain-frying sex with a handsome client in a Hollywood mansion. He tingles, no longer a functioning construct, reduced to a tingling throb of nerves and blood, his hands fisted in Pete’s coarse hair. He thrusts his hips, feels the grounding pressure of Pete’s fingertips on his asscheeks, the sloppy-wet way Pete mouths, sucks, laps at him. There’s no way Patrick can last. Worse, there’s no way Patrick can survive the orgasm building low in his gut, knotting his insides, twisting him inside out.
They unite in momentum: Patrick palms the back of Pete’s head and Pete leans into Patrick’s groin. Patrick pushes forward with his hips and Pete slides his tongue along the fat, swollen curve of Patrick’s cock. Patrick is going to come, blow off the top of his skull, fucking die from the force of this feeling.
“Gonna,” Patrick pants. “Mind if I—”
Pete’s hungry moan is good enough for Patrick. That and the desperate way he gluts himself on Patrick’s cock, pressing down and down until his lips brush the coarse hair at Patrick’s groin. Patrick looks down, watches Pete’s dark head bobbing in his lap, his own cock sliding wet and pink into and out of that confounded fucking god-given mouth.
It’s too much, Patrick’s hips buck desperate, he groans, and comes like a hammer blow. His eyes roll back in his head, his knees locking. He slips forward, popping out of Pete’s mouth in a spill of spit and dripping come, landing on his knees in front of Pete, wrung out and thoroughly, beautifully fucked.
“Gorgeous,” Pete murmurs, admiring, kissing Patrick with his lips and tongue salty-bitter with Patrick’s taste.
When Patrick recalibrates and gathers up his scattered sensibilities, Pete is still hard behind the cage of the brass button and zipper of his jeans. Patrick zips him out of them, sliding his hand inside. The first touch is gentle, reverential, weighing the solid heft and length of Pete in his palm. Patrick lifts Pete’s cock out of his pants and admires it, thick and dark and already wet at the tip.
“Patrick,” Pete whispers, wincing, his dick curving up, framed by close-cropped dark hair and tight, hard balls. It is, honestly, quite the loveliest dick Patrick’s had the privilege of touching. His mouth waters, desperate for the first taste of that gorgeous thing.
Patrick lets his gaze wander over Pete’s tattoo, over his abs and chest until he meets Pete’s eyes. “Allow me,” he says, “to fucking destroy you.”
“Fuck,” Pete whimpers, his hand curling into Patrick’s hair.
It’s the last thing he says for a while.
Time passes. The sky above the glass ceiling shades to dark, soft velvet. There are no stars, because this is Los Angeles. Patrick lies on Pete’s bed, which is roughly the same size in square feet as his apartment in Ktown. His head is pillowed on Pete’s chest, his fingers drawing idle, swirling patterns around Pete’s dark nipples.
“You didn’t sing for me,” Pete says, lazily, his hand not pausing it’s lazy exploration of Patrick’s spine. “Properly, I mean. Outside of sex noises.”
“I’m probably going to get fired for that,” Patrick says, grinning. Already, he couldn’t care less about his job. Athletic, impossible, marathon sex will do that to a guy.
“You should still sing for me,” Pete says.
Patrick starts to feel embarrassed. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“You sing while I’m fucking you,” Pete says, flipping them over and settling between Patrick’s thighs. “All those gorgeous noises. God, I could turn you into a number one with a bullet, just from that. Can’t hurt to grab your guitar and do it for real, can it?”
“That’s not charming, it’s creepy,” Patrick tells him severely. Pete just grins at him, his teeth big and white and sexy until Patrick sighs, shoves him to one side and rolls to his feet with a huff. The huff becomes a sharp little inhale when his ass throbs and Pete’s grin shades wider, inordinately proud of himself and his sexual prowess, clearly.
“Nice limp,” Pete says. “Someone with an absolutely magnificent dick must’ve fucked you so hard you can’t walk straight. Bet he was handsome, too. And charming.”
“Oh, stop it,” Patrick says, not bothering to look for his boxers as he retrieves his guitar.
“You love it,” Pete calls after him.
Patrick rolls his eyes, even though Pete can’t see him. “Show off.”
When he gets back, he sits in the middle of Pete’s bed, cross-legged and unashamedly naked, his guitar in his lap. There’s no way he’s singing the song Mikey picked out but he’s not sure what else to go with. Pete rolls onto his stomach and blinks up at Patrick from those ancient amber eyes, his hand sliding along Patrick’s thigh and prickling a windbreak of goosebumps.
“What’s wrong?” Pete asks, without any sign of judgement or intent. “It’s okay if you’re actually terrible, I don’t mind—”
Patrick closes his eyes and hums slowly. The acoustics in this room are kind of fantastic, his voice echoing like a cathedral choir. When he opens his mouth, his voice is scratchy-sexy with the force of Pete’s cock, cracking in all the right places. He has not rehearsed this song. He hopes Pete doesn’t mind.
“One look from you, and I’m on that faded love…”
When Patrick opens his eyes again, Pete’s mouth hangs open. He looks astonished. “I know, it’s silly. It’s just… something I was kicking around and—”
“Patrick,” Pete says, awed. “You can sing.”
“Um, kinda, I guess?”
“Fuck, bard-Patrick, we’re going to have to talk about this in the morning, when you’re not naked and holding a guitar and singing.”
“I’m not actually singing right now—oof!” Patrick finds himself knocked to his back, the guitar shoved to one side and Pete on top of him again.
“Do you believe in Valentine’s Day magic, Patrick?” Pete asks him, kissing Patrick’s collar bone, nipping his way toward Patrick’s nipples. “Do you believe in fate and soulmates and things that were always meant to be?”
“No,” Patrick says honestly, hooking his thighs over Pete’s hips. “But I believe in coincidence, and great sex, and Valentine’s Day not being shitty for once.”
Pete looks up and grins at him, his eyes warm and happy.
“Close enough,” he says. “I think I’ll keep you.”