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lierdumoaTitle: As You Like It -or- If Shakespeare Can Be Too Lazy to Come Up with a Title, So Can I
Fandom: Fall Out Boy
Pairing: Pete/Patrick
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The making of Bedussey. 4,156 words.
A/N: This story probably won't make much sense if you haven't seen Bedussey. view: on youtube, on buzznet
Credits: My thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ficbyzee and kosher_pareve for taking time out of their extremely busy schedules to clean up my language and save me from some rather heinous chronological errors. Y'all are made of awesome.
Disclaimer: Patrick is not psychic.
It's a regular Tuesday night, or regular enough for three in the morning. Andy and Joe are probably safely to beddie-bye, out of town doing Andy and Joe things. Patrick is over on the couch, crashing. They're always crashing somewhere—the thought is almost deep at this hour of the morning. Pete, of course, is lying on a warn cheap futon on the floor, excruciatingly awake.
Times like this he misses tour. Misses having a reason to be up at this hour, anyway. Misses the company, not that the company now isn't great just. He needs a distraction. Or a sedative. Something.
He's staring again. Patrick knows he's staring, even though he's facing the couch cushions, because Patrick's psychic like that. Has been known to awaken out of a dead sleep under the power of Pete's silent, focused attention.
"Pete," he says. "What is it?"
"Nothing," Pete says, and manages to pour enough pleading into his tone that Patrick takes pity on him and doesn't continue the line of questioning
Instead, Patrick veers off into more neutral territory with, "You should get some sleep, man."
That's partly why he's staring. He hasn't slept in three days and it's like he's on drugs. The kind that make you fixate on things. The really good kind. Patrick is inexplicably the most arresting vision he's ever laid eyes on, curled up in a bright orange t-shirt, wrinkled with wear and curving around each contour of Patrick's pale skin. He can't tear his eyes away. The ever present cap has fallen off onto the floor and Patrick's hair is glinting red and pale yellow, haloed around his head and in this moment he is a golden god and Pete wants nothing more than to crawl over there on his hands and knees and worship.
Yeah, there's the other part of why he's staring. Sometimes he wishes his brain would shut the hell up and let him forget he's hopelessly in love with his nubile young lead vocalist for five whole seconds.
Okay, so probably not all that nubile. Pete bets he looks really, ridiculously young right now though, face slack with exhaustion, mouth open, breathing like a baby, lips butter, butter soft. Patrick grunts and shifts onto his back, pulling his nose out of the couch cushions and Pete now has a pretty clear view of Patrick's face in profile, cheeks rosy as a kid's in a Christmas movie, just as he imagined.
Only he wasn't imagining it in profile, so he forgot to include the sideburns. They're not as noticeable straight on. From the side, Patrick's sideburns are epic.
They're, like, epic.
They're beyond regular human chronology. They don't belong in the present-day. Pete's brain is assaulted with the sudden image of Patrick sprawled out across that same couch wearing nothing but skimpy underwear and no goddamn hat for once, just slicked back hair and those fucking epic sideburns, like a genuine slice of 70's porno.
That shouldn't be getting him hard. He hasn't slept in three days. His body shouldn't be capable of getting hard right now. The picture is getting sharper and sharper in his mind, little details filtering in, a fucking soundtrack even. It's easy to picture. Patrick sliding his hand down his stomach, grabbing his dick and pulling, slow and easy, eyes glazed and far away and—
Fuck, he can't jerk off. Patrick would kill him. He'd have to clean up. He'd have to move and he's, shit, he's so tired he kind of wants to cry.
This is what screwed feels like. He's so screwed it's actually funny. His brain just loves to self-sabotage. Fucker must think it's cute. He closes his eyes, just squeezes them shut and thinks, 'for real this time,' because if he doesn't lose consciousness and soon he's going to turn completely fucking manic, Patrick's going to have to call an intervention, Andy and Joe are going to fucking murder him and his mom is going to go back to calling once a day.
It works, racking up consequences in his head. Or something works, anyway. He finally starts to feel sleepy, as opposed to just hideously exhausted, his body going slow and quiet, limb by limb. He breathes out a little in relief. The image of Patrick stays, though. Prints itself obligingly along the back of his eyelids. His hard-on stays too, and he hopes to god, golden or otherwise, he doesn't come in his sleep, since he's not wearing underwear and his jeans need to last him at least two more days and frankly, he's just too old for that shit.
Feels kind of nice though, in that awkward teenaged way.
He murmurs, 'sweet dreams' to himself, and maybe because he's just masochistic like that, he drifts off with a smile on his face.
In the morning the image is still with Pete. More importantly it's still getting him hard, which Pete decides must be because it's awesome. Not just 'I'm sleep deprived to the point that everything is awesome' awesome, but actually empirically awesome. So awesome, in fact, that Pete decides he needs to see it in real life.
Those sideburns have a destiny.
Times like this Pete really wishes he and Patrick were an item. And that's not just the blue balls of death talking; he bets if they were an item he could ask Patrick and Patrick would just do stuff like strip down and pose for him because Patrick would be that whipped.
Pete turns that little hypothetical over in his mind as he heads to the bathroom to beat off.
Forty-five minutes, two orgasms and a cup of coffee later the rest of Pete's brain kicks in and he remembers that Patrick is already pretty much whipped, just from being bestfriendswith and Pete could so totally get him near naked and hatless on their couch under the right flimsy pretext, the only real difference being that best friends aren't entitled to near naked touching. Which almost makes the whole idea not worth realizing.
Almost.
Then again, he could probably get away with at least two good gropes. Maybe four on the outside.
He paces around the kitchen brainstorming, his entire body on overdrive and perhaps a little bit of an adrenaline high, trying to think of a solution. He could say it's for a project except, no, that's a little too seventh grader trying to get permission for a concert.
Unless....
He heads back to the room where Patrick's still sleeping, shirt riding up his belly. The sight is both hilarious and irresistable and Pete grins goofily, then approaches the couch, placing an open palm on the bare patch of skin and leaning down to breathe, hot and heavy, into Patrick's ear until Patrick's eyes snap open with a sharp inhale and he shoves Pete away. He levels an irritated scowl at Pete the moment he's gotten Pete out of his personal space. He's blushing. Pete follows the blotches of red down to the collar of Patrick's shirt, then drops his gaze further.
He likes what he sees. He always does. Patrick just assumes he's doing it in jest. Patrick has too little self-confidence. This is actually a good thing, for Pete anyway, since it means Pete can get away with eyeing him up and down without Patrick ever screaming sexual harassment. Not that Patrick would. He'd probably just want to sit Pete down and have a talk.
Right. That's why he's here. To talk. "Get up. I have an idea I want to tell you about."
Patrick raises an eyebrow at him. "Oh?"
"We're going to make a movie."
"What?"
"A short film, really."
Something in Pete's eyes must be giving him away. Probably the leering, because the next thing Patrick does is grab a pillow up off the couch and throw it at him. "I'm not helping you make porn."
"Shut up, it's not porn."
Patrick gives him a skeptical look. "Is there going to be sex in it?"
"No."
"Are you going to be naked?"
"No!"
"Oh." Patrick sighs and kind of melts back into the couch cushion with relief. "Okay. Do you have a script?"
"See that? That is why I love you. Not yet, I'm writing it today. It's a period piece. About your sideburns. Those things are epic, man. We're going to immortalize them."
Patrick blinks. "Wait, wait—am I going to be naked?"
Pete clears his throat and tries not to look shifty. "... no."
"Are you insane?! No one wants to see my penis, you lunatic."
Pete bites his lip very, very hard.
"So we're crackheads."
"Cocaine," Pete replies, grinning. "Way higher class. And you're a dealer."
"Bad twin?"
"You're like, suffering from dissociative disorder. The narcotics have exacerbated your condition."
"Huh."
Pete scuffs his sneakers against the kitchen tile.
"Yeah, okay. I'm in."
He gets a camera crew together for the weekend comprised of a directorslashcameraman, a lighting guy, a sound guy and Dirty, who says he's there for the heavy lifting, but is pretty much only around to make lewd comments and laugh like a fucking hyena whenever Pete is trying to keep a straight face.
Pete doesn't tell Patrick about the whole hatless bit, just kind of springs it on him after he gets Patrick into costume, walking in on him in the bathroom, fingers glistening with hair gel, arms outstretched like a zombie, complete with theatrical slack jawed moaning. Patrick slaps playfully at his forearms then, ever the good sport, stands there with a vaguely constipated look, occasionally letting out a nervous giggle as Pete cards his fingers through Patrick's fine, fine hair.
"What the hell does Bedussey mean anyway?" Patrick asks when they leave the bathroom, heading outside to where the crew is setting up for the first scene, gently patting his fingers over his carefully slicked back hair.
"All my favorite things rolled into one. Just like you, Patrick." Pete grins disarmingly.
Patrick is appropriately disarmed. He gives Pete an embarrassed smile while Pete grabs the ancient cellphone he managed to dig up as a prop.
Two hours later, because Pete could not stop cracking up through the first seven takes and then everyone decided they wanted a lunch break, they start setting up for scene two. Another forty-five minutes and they start shooting. It goes off without a hitch, mainly because Patrick has the good sense to exile Dirty and his raucous, infections cackling from the room. Pete follows all the steps in his script like clockwork. Patrick asks to borrow somebody's laptop—"You know we're rich now. You could just get your own"—to check his e-mail and spends the entire time lounging in a chair off to the side, supposedly doing just that.
"There's no 'e' at the end," he says, after the cut. "It's b-e-d-u-s-s-y."
"What? Yes there is."
Patrick doesn't even look up, just spins the laptop around to show Pete the screen—an Urban Dictionary page in an open Safari window.
"Well there is now," Pete says. He's the writer after all. He went to college and everything. Urban Dictionary can blow him.
Patrick snorts.
"Quit belittling my internal monologue, Stump. We ready to shoot the dialogue or what?"
"They're still setting up. I can sit here for five more minutes. Go ... run in circles or something."
Pete opts for door No. 2, sliding himself in next to Patrick on the couch and resting a chin on his shoulder until Patrick finishes checking his e-mail, at which point it's practically time to start shooting.
Patrick delivers dialogue like it's music. Pitch perfect intonation and enunciation that's very nearly incomprehensible.
They get through the slapping scene in one take. Pete always thought Patrick hit like a girl, but it's kind a nice to have the photographic evidence. They manage to get through most of the dialogue by the time seven o'clock rolls around and everyone's starving again.
Pete pokes Patrick a couple times in the side. "We ordering takeout or what?"
Patrick bats his hand away. "Not Taco Bell again."
"Of course not, Patrick," he says, cupping Patrick's face in his hands. "My princess can eat whatever she wants." He manages not to completely lose his balance when Patrick shoves him off, but ends up falling on his ass laughing anyway when Patrick gives him the finger.
Patrick finds his cell and throws it at his stomach. He fumbles with it for a moment before getting it up to his ear and finding the Chinese place on speed dial. Nothing adventurous. Fried rice, chow mein, some orange chicken. He paces around the front entryway until it arrives. Everybody gathers together for dinner, including Dirty, who lets himself in along with the delivery guy, apparently having picked up a completely ridiculous amount of Fanta during his exile. They sit crosslegged on the floor, weilding chopsticks, talking around their food.
It's so normal Pete kind of forgets what's coming next. He's got his head thrown back, trying to shake the last sticky noodles from an empty carton into his mouth when the director check's his watch and tells them they ought to start. Even with that warning it doesn't really register until Pete puts the down the carton and looks up to find Patrick giving him a sideways smile and a raised eyebrow and saying, "Guess it's time for me to slip into something more comfortable."
He chokes, a little. Egg noodles. Great for eating, but maybe not so much for the breathing. Thankfully Patrick's looked away and doesn't notice. Not that Pete couldn't probably explain this away like he does everything else. He still trying to quietly clear his throat when Patrick gets up and grabs the Macy's bag of underwear Pete picked up the other day and saunters off to the bathroom, hips sliding back and forth with exaggerated grace.
Pete can practically hear the porno track in his head as he watches, the deep bass line twanging out 70's funk. His hands twitch, and he's not sure if it's for his bass or for Patrick. He just knows that he wants—Patrick's skin, the strings, either, both, everything straining, volatile under Pete's fingertips. He wants the sound of his name, rising up out of Patrick's throat like music.
Patrick changes. Pete waits.
Pete's mouth goes a little dry when Patrick comes out of the bathroom, but he manages to pull an appropriately lascivious grin. Patrick just shakes his head, and then, as if all the embarassment's been burned out of him over the course of the day, his lips slowly curl into a smile of their own. Sly, like he's getting away with something. Ironic really, since just looking at that smile makes Pete feel like he got away with murder.
"They're ready for you, Mr. Stump," he says in his best timid production assistant voice.
Patrick shakes his head at that, adds an eye roll for good measure, then walks past Pete, down the hall toward the couch. Pete watches him as he goes, the curve of his ass, the flex of his thighs. They compromised on the underwear. Boxers, not briefs at Patrick's insistence, but Pete got to pick them out. Leopard print. A little on the short side, and worth every fucking penny.
Patrick flops ungracefully onto his side, affecting a vague, wandering expression. He always was the better actor. But for this, the look isn't quite right. Close, but not. Not.
"Raise your knee, just. Yeah, like that and your arm." Pete finds himself standing not two feet away from Patrick, without really remembering when his legs started moving. He grabs a pillow off the floor with one hand, then grabs Patrick's arm by the other, sliding his fingers up the inside of his forearm, then curling his palm around the elbow to lift. A hand to the shoulder, urging him up for a second. Pete steps back.
He tilts his head, considering.
And then he's moving again, a hand to the knee, bending it out just a little farther. He pulls back, only to reach forward again, hand to angle, dragging it up the arm rest. Patrick raises an eyebrow, then obligingly lets his legs fall open. Pete sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. Blinks. Steps back again.
"Could you—" He drums his fingers against his mouth. Not quite.
Not quite.
Patrick just looks at him, nose flared a little, watchful, patient. Quietly obedient to the point that it's a little bizarre. Pete registers in a detached sort of way that he's at half mast, and though his shorts are baggy enough to hide it, he should probably wrap this up before he gets any harder. He always did like skating the edge of danger, though—feels kind of like Jack Dawson ordering Rose DeWitt-Bukater into position in that one scene from Titanic. Only, you know. Really, really not.
He wants to reach forward, flick open the slit of Patrick's boxers, just enough to be a tease for the camera. Can't forget the camera. Can't forget the four other people in the room, watching him. Watching him watch Patrick. A shiver runs up his spine. He reaches instead for Patrick's chin, tilting his head a few degrees towards the ceiling, brushing a thumb along Patrick's lip like an accident. Just like an accident.
He's going in for grope No. 5 when Patrick snaps, "Stop molesting me and take the shot already, Jesus," and then he's practically stumbling back away from the couch, out of the scene, behind the cameras. He finds a place to lean against the far wall. Breathes.
Breathes.
The shot is filmed between one heartbeat and the next. Over. The director throws him a weirded out look. Pete just grins back at him. He'll get the video later. Fuck, this was the best idea in the history of ever. He strongly considers sabotaging the footage just so he has an excuse to do it all over again next weekend.
Christ, he could do this every day for the rest of his natural life.
Some heretofore unknown self-preservation instinct makes an appearance and points out that there's no way even his luck will stretch that far. Even if Patrick did agree, Pete'd never be able to hide the erection. He slides down the wall to the floor, exhausted suddenly, watches as Patrick climbs off the couch and makes his way back to the bathroom, as everything is packed up, put away. It's ten o'clock at night.
Patrick comes back to the door and waits for Pete to get up and join him and they walk to the kitchen to scrape the bottom of the takeout boxes. Pete breaks out with the mac n' cheese. Everyone else heads home for Christmas.
It's weird, it being just the two of them again. Pete wonders what Andy and Joe are up to. Off being productive members of society or something, those fuckers.
"Think Joe said they'd be back Tuesday," Patrick offers from the other side of the counter. Pete narrows his eyes. He knows he didn't say anything out loud that time. Patrick just looks at him like he's nuts, which is pretty much par for the course.
They're getting up bright and early tomorrow. Breaking out the steadycam. Chase scenes all day long. Glamour shot of the bald spot, of course. Pete's never one to miss that kind of opportunity. Clothes washing to shore and a carpet clump of hair in nylon blonde, because it's only right that Pete be naked, at least in spirit.
"Why the wig?" people will ask later.
"Because blonds have more fun," Pete won't bother answering, since it's such a dumb fucking question he can't even dignify it and it's not like he should be answering anyway. The wig was Patrick's idea.
Because Patrick's a motherfucking genius.
It's not a Hollywood production or anything. There's no official release of each day's footage. Pete's good at getting what he wants though. It's not long before he has the scene burned to dvd, and then it's just a matter of waiting a few days so he can get the place to himself.
That fucking couch. Right across from the tv. All the ambiance Pete could ask for. Patrick's been crashing on this thing for weeks, and the cushions still smell like him.
He puts the disk in, finds the shot, presses pause and it's like it's happening. Like he's back there, standing in front of Patrick, itching to run his hands up the inside of Patrick's thighs. He slides his zipper open, already leaking, wishing he'd remembered to snag some hand lotion from the bathroom, but fuck it. Fuck it.
He's getting into a rhythm when he hears a noise off to the side. Not now.
Jesus, not now.
He glances over to find Patrick—of course Patrick—standing on the other side of the door with a pissed off look. "Dude, what the hell? Not on the couch, we agreed."
Pete just stares up at him, like a masturbating deer in headlights.
"You said you were going out," he replies after a long, tense pause, realizing once the words have left his mouth that it's probably not the best response he could have come up with.
"I had this weird feeling you were up to something." Goddamn Patrick and his goddamn psychic powers. Patrick cranes his head around the door to look at the television set. "Is that—?"
...yeah.
Pete doesn't really have an excuse for this one.
Patrick takes two halting steps into the room towards the tv, like he doesn't want to believe his eyes and he's hoping if he gets closer the image will resolve itself into something different, something that makes more sense. No such luck. Within seconds he's pivoting toward the couch, and then his eyes are boring into Pete's and he's wearing that conflicted look he sometimes gets. The one that goes, 'I want to kill you, but I want to go to heaven, but I really, really want to kill you.'
Pete cringes.
Patrick explodes. "You told me this wasn't going to be porn!"
"It's not!"
Patrick gives him a pointed look.
It occurs to Pete that he should take his hand off his dick. "Hey, I seriously doubt anyone will be looking at this quite the same way I am."
Patrick growls. Which sounds kind of hilarious because it's Patrick, growling. Only Pete's pretty sure if he starts snickering right now Patrick's going to forget all his heavenly aspirations and beat Pete to death with his bare hands.
So it's kind of a surprise when Patrick stalks over to the couch, yanks Pete up by the collar of his shirt and kisses him. Full on, open mouthed, God, with tongue. Pete lets out a pathetic whimperslashmoan and has to reach down and grab his cock to stop from coming because Jesus fuck, he was already close by the time Patrick walked in the door.
Patrick laughs against his mouth. It's not a very nice laugh.
But it's a very, very nice hand that reaches down and palms Pete, sliding fingers between Pete's fingers and jerking him in a rhythm that's just this side of too rough.
Pete fists his fingers in Patrick's collar, feeling like he's holding on for dear life and then Patrick presses his other palm against Pete's stomach, right where the too-short girl's tee is riding up over his tattoo, leans in and just breathes in Pete's ear and Pete loses it, bucking up into Patrick's fist, just coming and coming and coming, moaning Patrick's name like it's the only word he knows.
He stands there for a while after, panting, willing his legs not to give out, trying to work up the will to pry his fingers from the shoulder of Patrick's shirt. Patrick leans back to look at him, sees the undone look on Pete's face and grins like he just won something. Like he just won Pete's soul.
"So, this was all your really messed up way of telling me you like like me?"
Pete takes another moment to catch his breath, then lets out a short self-depreciating laugh. "No, this was my way of languishing in unrequited ... whatever." He glances down at himself. Shudders a little when Patrick strokes a thumb idly over the head of his dick. "I think if I'd wanted you to know I'd have done it with a little more dignity."
Patrick snorts, which is totally unnecessary. "Right. You were trying to hide your irrepressible lust for me." He looks pointedly over at the tv, then back at Pete. "Subtle, Wentz."
"Fuck you."
Patrick leans in to press their lips together, softly this time, so sweet it makes Pete's teeth ache. And then he smiles, wide and warm and heartbreaking and says—
"Yeah, okay."
It turns out Patrick's pretty nubile after all.
Fandom: Fall Out Boy
Pairing: Pete/Patrick
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The making of Bedussey. 4,156 words.
A/N: This story probably won't make much sense if you haven't seen Bedussey. view: on youtube, on buzznet
Credits: My thanks to
ficbyzee and kosher_pareve for taking time out of their extremely busy schedules to clean up my language and save me from some rather heinous chronological errors. Y'all are made of awesome.Disclaimer: Patrick is not psychic.
It's a regular Tuesday night, or regular enough for three in the morning. Andy and Joe are probably safely to beddie-bye, out of town doing Andy and Joe things. Patrick is over on the couch, crashing. They're always crashing somewhere—the thought is almost deep at this hour of the morning. Pete, of course, is lying on a warn cheap futon on the floor, excruciatingly awake.
Times like this he misses tour. Misses having a reason to be up at this hour, anyway. Misses the company, not that the company now isn't great just. He needs a distraction. Or a sedative. Something.
He's staring again. Patrick knows he's staring, even though he's facing the couch cushions, because Patrick's psychic like that. Has been known to awaken out of a dead sleep under the power of Pete's silent, focused attention.
"Pete," he says. "What is it?"
"Nothing," Pete says, and manages to pour enough pleading into his tone that Patrick takes pity on him and doesn't continue the line of questioning
Instead, Patrick veers off into more neutral territory with, "You should get some sleep, man."
That's partly why he's staring. He hasn't slept in three days and it's like he's on drugs. The kind that make you fixate on things. The really good kind. Patrick is inexplicably the most arresting vision he's ever laid eyes on, curled up in a bright orange t-shirt, wrinkled with wear and curving around each contour of Patrick's pale skin. He can't tear his eyes away. The ever present cap has fallen off onto the floor and Patrick's hair is glinting red and pale yellow, haloed around his head and in this moment he is a golden god and Pete wants nothing more than to crawl over there on his hands and knees and worship.
Yeah, there's the other part of why he's staring. Sometimes he wishes his brain would shut the hell up and let him forget he's hopelessly in love with his nubile young lead vocalist for five whole seconds.
Okay, so probably not all that nubile. Pete bets he looks really, ridiculously young right now though, face slack with exhaustion, mouth open, breathing like a baby, lips butter, butter soft. Patrick grunts and shifts onto his back, pulling his nose out of the couch cushions and Pete now has a pretty clear view of Patrick's face in profile, cheeks rosy as a kid's in a Christmas movie, just as he imagined.
Only he wasn't imagining it in profile, so he forgot to include the sideburns. They're not as noticeable straight on. From the side, Patrick's sideburns are epic.
They're, like, epic.
They're beyond regular human chronology. They don't belong in the present-day. Pete's brain is assaulted with the sudden image of Patrick sprawled out across that same couch wearing nothing but skimpy underwear and no goddamn hat for once, just slicked back hair and those fucking epic sideburns, like a genuine slice of 70's porno.
That shouldn't be getting him hard. He hasn't slept in three days. His body shouldn't be capable of getting hard right now. The picture is getting sharper and sharper in his mind, little details filtering in, a fucking soundtrack even. It's easy to picture. Patrick sliding his hand down his stomach, grabbing his dick and pulling, slow and easy, eyes glazed and far away and—
Fuck, he can't jerk off. Patrick would kill him. He'd have to clean up. He'd have to move and he's, shit, he's so tired he kind of wants to cry.
This is what screwed feels like. He's so screwed it's actually funny. His brain just loves to self-sabotage. Fucker must think it's cute. He closes his eyes, just squeezes them shut and thinks, 'for real this time,' because if he doesn't lose consciousness and soon he's going to turn completely fucking manic, Patrick's going to have to call an intervention, Andy and Joe are going to fucking murder him and his mom is going to go back to calling once a day.
It works, racking up consequences in his head. Or something works, anyway. He finally starts to feel sleepy, as opposed to just hideously exhausted, his body going slow and quiet, limb by limb. He breathes out a little in relief. The image of Patrick stays, though. Prints itself obligingly along the back of his eyelids. His hard-on stays too, and he hopes to god, golden or otherwise, he doesn't come in his sleep, since he's not wearing underwear and his jeans need to last him at least two more days and frankly, he's just too old for that shit.
Feels kind of nice though, in that awkward teenaged way.
He murmurs, 'sweet dreams' to himself, and maybe because he's just masochistic like that, he drifts off with a smile on his face.
~*~
In the morning the image is still with Pete. More importantly it's still getting him hard, which Pete decides must be because it's awesome. Not just 'I'm sleep deprived to the point that everything is awesome' awesome, but actually empirically awesome. So awesome, in fact, that Pete decides he needs to see it in real life.
Those sideburns have a destiny.
Times like this Pete really wishes he and Patrick were an item. And that's not just the blue balls of death talking; he bets if they were an item he could ask Patrick and Patrick would just do stuff like strip down and pose for him because Patrick would be that whipped.
Pete turns that little hypothetical over in his mind as he heads to the bathroom to beat off.
Forty-five minutes, two orgasms and a cup of coffee later the rest of Pete's brain kicks in and he remembers that Patrick is already pretty much whipped, just from being bestfriendswith and Pete could so totally get him near naked and hatless on their couch under the right flimsy pretext, the only real difference being that best friends aren't entitled to near naked touching. Which almost makes the whole idea not worth realizing.
Almost.
Then again, he could probably get away with at least two good gropes. Maybe four on the outside.
He paces around the kitchen brainstorming, his entire body on overdrive and perhaps a little bit of an adrenaline high, trying to think of a solution. He could say it's for a project except, no, that's a little too seventh grader trying to get permission for a concert.
Unless....
He heads back to the room where Patrick's still sleeping, shirt riding up his belly. The sight is both hilarious and irresistable and Pete grins goofily, then approaches the couch, placing an open palm on the bare patch of skin and leaning down to breathe, hot and heavy, into Patrick's ear until Patrick's eyes snap open with a sharp inhale and he shoves Pete away. He levels an irritated scowl at Pete the moment he's gotten Pete out of his personal space. He's blushing. Pete follows the blotches of red down to the collar of Patrick's shirt, then drops his gaze further.
He likes what he sees. He always does. Patrick just assumes he's doing it in jest. Patrick has too little self-confidence. This is actually a good thing, for Pete anyway, since it means Pete can get away with eyeing him up and down without Patrick ever screaming sexual harassment. Not that Patrick would. He'd probably just want to sit Pete down and have a talk.
Right. That's why he's here. To talk. "Get up. I have an idea I want to tell you about."
Patrick raises an eyebrow at him. "Oh?"
"We're going to make a movie."
"What?"
"A short film, really."
Something in Pete's eyes must be giving him away. Probably the leering, because the next thing Patrick does is grab a pillow up off the couch and throw it at him. "I'm not helping you make porn."
"Shut up, it's not porn."
Patrick gives him a skeptical look. "Is there going to be sex in it?"
"No."
"Are you going to be naked?"
"No!"
"Oh." Patrick sighs and kind of melts back into the couch cushion with relief. "Okay. Do you have a script?"
"See that? That is why I love you. Not yet, I'm writing it today. It's a period piece. About your sideburns. Those things are epic, man. We're going to immortalize them."
Patrick blinks. "Wait, wait—am I going to be naked?"
Pete clears his throat and tries not to look shifty. "... no."
"Are you insane?! No one wants to see my penis, you lunatic."
Pete bites his lip very, very hard.
~*~
"So we're crackheads."
"Cocaine," Pete replies, grinning. "Way higher class. And you're a dealer."
"Bad twin?"
"You're like, suffering from dissociative disorder. The narcotics have exacerbated your condition."
"Huh."
Pete scuffs his sneakers against the kitchen tile.
"Yeah, okay. I'm in."
~*~
He gets a camera crew together for the weekend comprised of a directorslashcameraman, a lighting guy, a sound guy and Dirty, who says he's there for the heavy lifting, but is pretty much only around to make lewd comments and laugh like a fucking hyena whenever Pete is trying to keep a straight face.
Pete doesn't tell Patrick about the whole hatless bit, just kind of springs it on him after he gets Patrick into costume, walking in on him in the bathroom, fingers glistening with hair gel, arms outstretched like a zombie, complete with theatrical slack jawed moaning. Patrick slaps playfully at his forearms then, ever the good sport, stands there with a vaguely constipated look, occasionally letting out a nervous giggle as Pete cards his fingers through Patrick's fine, fine hair.
"What the hell does Bedussey mean anyway?" Patrick asks when they leave the bathroom, heading outside to where the crew is setting up for the first scene, gently patting his fingers over his carefully slicked back hair.
"All my favorite things rolled into one. Just like you, Patrick." Pete grins disarmingly.
Patrick is appropriately disarmed. He gives Pete an embarrassed smile while Pete grabs the ancient cellphone he managed to dig up as a prop.
Two hours later, because Pete could not stop cracking up through the first seven takes and then everyone decided they wanted a lunch break, they start setting up for scene two. Another forty-five minutes and they start shooting. It goes off without a hitch, mainly because Patrick has the good sense to exile Dirty and his raucous, infections cackling from the room. Pete follows all the steps in his script like clockwork. Patrick asks to borrow somebody's laptop—"You know we're rich now. You could just get your own"—to check his e-mail and spends the entire time lounging in a chair off to the side, supposedly doing just that.
"There's no 'e' at the end," he says, after the cut. "It's b-e-d-u-s-s-y."
"What? Yes there is."
Patrick doesn't even look up, just spins the laptop around to show Pete the screen—an Urban Dictionary page in an open Safari window.
"Well there is now," Pete says. He's the writer after all. He went to college and everything. Urban Dictionary can blow him.
Patrick snorts.
"Quit belittling my internal monologue, Stump. We ready to shoot the dialogue or what?"
"They're still setting up. I can sit here for five more minutes. Go ... run in circles or something."
Pete opts for door No. 2, sliding himself in next to Patrick on the couch and resting a chin on his shoulder until Patrick finishes checking his e-mail, at which point it's practically time to start shooting.
Patrick delivers dialogue like it's music. Pitch perfect intonation and enunciation that's very nearly incomprehensible.
They get through the slapping scene in one take. Pete always thought Patrick hit like a girl, but it's kind a nice to have the photographic evidence. They manage to get through most of the dialogue by the time seven o'clock rolls around and everyone's starving again.
Pete pokes Patrick a couple times in the side. "We ordering takeout or what?"
Patrick bats his hand away. "Not Taco Bell again."
"Of course not, Patrick," he says, cupping Patrick's face in his hands. "My princess can eat whatever she wants." He manages not to completely lose his balance when Patrick shoves him off, but ends up falling on his ass laughing anyway when Patrick gives him the finger.
Patrick finds his cell and throws it at his stomach. He fumbles with it for a moment before getting it up to his ear and finding the Chinese place on speed dial. Nothing adventurous. Fried rice, chow mein, some orange chicken. He paces around the front entryway until it arrives. Everybody gathers together for dinner, including Dirty, who lets himself in along with the delivery guy, apparently having picked up a completely ridiculous amount of Fanta during his exile. They sit crosslegged on the floor, weilding chopsticks, talking around their food.
It's so normal Pete kind of forgets what's coming next. He's got his head thrown back, trying to shake the last sticky noodles from an empty carton into his mouth when the director check's his watch and tells them they ought to start. Even with that warning it doesn't really register until Pete puts the down the carton and looks up to find Patrick giving him a sideways smile and a raised eyebrow and saying, "Guess it's time for me to slip into something more comfortable."
He chokes, a little. Egg noodles. Great for eating, but maybe not so much for the breathing. Thankfully Patrick's looked away and doesn't notice. Not that Pete couldn't probably explain this away like he does everything else. He still trying to quietly clear his throat when Patrick gets up and grabs the Macy's bag of underwear Pete picked up the other day and saunters off to the bathroom, hips sliding back and forth with exaggerated grace.
Pete can practically hear the porno track in his head as he watches, the deep bass line twanging out 70's funk. His hands twitch, and he's not sure if it's for his bass or for Patrick. He just knows that he wants—Patrick's skin, the strings, either, both, everything straining, volatile under Pete's fingertips. He wants the sound of his name, rising up out of Patrick's throat like music.
Patrick changes. Pete waits.
~*~
Pete's mouth goes a little dry when Patrick comes out of the bathroom, but he manages to pull an appropriately lascivious grin. Patrick just shakes his head, and then, as if all the embarassment's been burned out of him over the course of the day, his lips slowly curl into a smile of their own. Sly, like he's getting away with something. Ironic really, since just looking at that smile makes Pete feel like he got away with murder.
"They're ready for you, Mr. Stump," he says in his best timid production assistant voice.
Patrick shakes his head at that, adds an eye roll for good measure, then walks past Pete, down the hall toward the couch. Pete watches him as he goes, the curve of his ass, the flex of his thighs. They compromised on the underwear. Boxers, not briefs at Patrick's insistence, but Pete got to pick them out. Leopard print. A little on the short side, and worth every fucking penny.
Patrick flops ungracefully onto his side, affecting a vague, wandering expression. He always was the better actor. But for this, the look isn't quite right. Close, but not. Not.
"Raise your knee, just. Yeah, like that and your arm." Pete finds himself standing not two feet away from Patrick, without really remembering when his legs started moving. He grabs a pillow off the floor with one hand, then grabs Patrick's arm by the other, sliding his fingers up the inside of his forearm, then curling his palm around the elbow to lift. A hand to the shoulder, urging him up for a second. Pete steps back.
He tilts his head, considering.
And then he's moving again, a hand to the knee, bending it out just a little farther. He pulls back, only to reach forward again, hand to angle, dragging it up the arm rest. Patrick raises an eyebrow, then obligingly lets his legs fall open. Pete sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. Blinks. Steps back again.
"Could you—" He drums his fingers against his mouth. Not quite.
Not quite.
Patrick just looks at him, nose flared a little, watchful, patient. Quietly obedient to the point that it's a little bizarre. Pete registers in a detached sort of way that he's at half mast, and though his shorts are baggy enough to hide it, he should probably wrap this up before he gets any harder. He always did like skating the edge of danger, though—feels kind of like Jack Dawson ordering Rose DeWitt-Bukater into position in that one scene from Titanic. Only, you know. Really, really not.
He wants to reach forward, flick open the slit of Patrick's boxers, just enough to be a tease for the camera. Can't forget the camera. Can't forget the four other people in the room, watching him. Watching him watch Patrick. A shiver runs up his spine. He reaches instead for Patrick's chin, tilting his head a few degrees towards the ceiling, brushing a thumb along Patrick's lip like an accident. Just like an accident.
He's going in for grope No. 5 when Patrick snaps, "Stop molesting me and take the shot already, Jesus," and then he's practically stumbling back away from the couch, out of the scene, behind the cameras. He finds a place to lean against the far wall. Breathes.
Breathes.
The shot is filmed between one heartbeat and the next. Over. The director throws him a weirded out look. Pete just grins back at him. He'll get the video later. Fuck, this was the best idea in the history of ever. He strongly considers sabotaging the footage just so he has an excuse to do it all over again next weekend.
Christ, he could do this every day for the rest of his natural life.
Some heretofore unknown self-preservation instinct makes an appearance and points out that there's no way even his luck will stretch that far. Even if Patrick did agree, Pete'd never be able to hide the erection. He slides down the wall to the floor, exhausted suddenly, watches as Patrick climbs off the couch and makes his way back to the bathroom, as everything is packed up, put away. It's ten o'clock at night.
Patrick comes back to the door and waits for Pete to get up and join him and they walk to the kitchen to scrape the bottom of the takeout boxes. Pete breaks out with the mac n' cheese. Everyone else heads home for Christmas.
It's weird, it being just the two of them again. Pete wonders what Andy and Joe are up to. Off being productive members of society or something, those fuckers.
"Think Joe said they'd be back Tuesday," Patrick offers from the other side of the counter. Pete narrows his eyes. He knows he didn't say anything out loud that time. Patrick just looks at him like he's nuts, which is pretty much par for the course.
They're getting up bright and early tomorrow. Breaking out the steadycam. Chase scenes all day long. Glamour shot of the bald spot, of course. Pete's never one to miss that kind of opportunity. Clothes washing to shore and a carpet clump of hair in nylon blonde, because it's only right that Pete be naked, at least in spirit.
~*~
"Why the wig?" people will ask later.
"Because blonds have more fun," Pete won't bother answering, since it's such a dumb fucking question he can't even dignify it and it's not like he should be answering anyway. The wig was Patrick's idea.
Because Patrick's a motherfucking genius.
~*~
It's not a Hollywood production or anything. There's no official release of each day's footage. Pete's good at getting what he wants though. It's not long before he has the scene burned to dvd, and then it's just a matter of waiting a few days so he can get the place to himself.
That fucking couch. Right across from the tv. All the ambiance Pete could ask for. Patrick's been crashing on this thing for weeks, and the cushions still smell like him.
He puts the disk in, finds the shot, presses pause and it's like it's happening. Like he's back there, standing in front of Patrick, itching to run his hands up the inside of Patrick's thighs. He slides his zipper open, already leaking, wishing he'd remembered to snag some hand lotion from the bathroom, but fuck it. Fuck it.
He's getting into a rhythm when he hears a noise off to the side. Not now.
Jesus, not now.
He glances over to find Patrick—of course Patrick—standing on the other side of the door with a pissed off look. "Dude, what the hell? Not on the couch, we agreed."
Pete just stares up at him, like a masturbating deer in headlights.
"You said you were going out," he replies after a long, tense pause, realizing once the words have left his mouth that it's probably not the best response he could have come up with.
"I had this weird feeling you were up to something." Goddamn Patrick and his goddamn psychic powers. Patrick cranes his head around the door to look at the television set. "Is that—?"
...yeah.
Pete doesn't really have an excuse for this one.
Patrick takes two halting steps into the room towards the tv, like he doesn't want to believe his eyes and he's hoping if he gets closer the image will resolve itself into something different, something that makes more sense. No such luck. Within seconds he's pivoting toward the couch, and then his eyes are boring into Pete's and he's wearing that conflicted look he sometimes gets. The one that goes, 'I want to kill you, but I want to go to heaven, but I really, really want to kill you.'
Pete cringes.
Patrick explodes. "You told me this wasn't going to be porn!"
"It's not!"
Patrick gives him a pointed look.
It occurs to Pete that he should take his hand off his dick. "Hey, I seriously doubt anyone will be looking at this quite the same way I am."
Patrick growls. Which sounds kind of hilarious because it's Patrick, growling. Only Pete's pretty sure if he starts snickering right now Patrick's going to forget all his heavenly aspirations and beat Pete to death with his bare hands.
So it's kind of a surprise when Patrick stalks over to the couch, yanks Pete up by the collar of his shirt and kisses him. Full on, open mouthed, God, with tongue. Pete lets out a pathetic whimperslashmoan and has to reach down and grab his cock to stop from coming because Jesus fuck, he was already close by the time Patrick walked in the door.
Patrick laughs against his mouth. It's not a very nice laugh.
But it's a very, very nice hand that reaches down and palms Pete, sliding fingers between Pete's fingers and jerking him in a rhythm that's just this side of too rough.
Pete fists his fingers in Patrick's collar, feeling like he's holding on for dear life and then Patrick presses his other palm against Pete's stomach, right where the too-short girl's tee is riding up over his tattoo, leans in and just breathes in Pete's ear and Pete loses it, bucking up into Patrick's fist, just coming and coming and coming, moaning Patrick's name like it's the only word he knows.
He stands there for a while after, panting, willing his legs not to give out, trying to work up the will to pry his fingers from the shoulder of Patrick's shirt. Patrick leans back to look at him, sees the undone look on Pete's face and grins like he just won something. Like he just won Pete's soul.
"So, this was all your really messed up way of telling me you like like me?"
Pete takes another moment to catch his breath, then lets out a short self-depreciating laugh. "No, this was my way of languishing in unrequited ... whatever." He glances down at himself. Shudders a little when Patrick strokes a thumb idly over the head of his dick. "I think if I'd wanted you to know I'd have done it with a little more dignity."
Patrick snorts, which is totally unnecessary. "Right. You were trying to hide your irrepressible lust for me." He looks pointedly over at the tv, then back at Pete. "Subtle, Wentz."
"Fuck you."
Patrick leans in to press their lips together, softly this time, so sweet it makes Pete's teeth ache. And then he smiles, wide and warm and heartbreaking and says—
"Yeah, okay."
~*~
It turns out Patrick's pretty nubile after all.
