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"Doctor Hurley!" The department administrative assistant burst into Andy Hurley's office with fire in her eyes, which normally would have leveled cities, if that fire could be seen over the enormous poinsettia plant she held before her. The fire still would have been dimmer than the glaze of glitter over the plant's leaves and the battery-operated lights flashing from the string wound around the stems. The crackling fire of Death Glare Donna's patented Focus of Fury would have gone unheard over the obnoxious sound of Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" from tinny speakers buried somewhere in the foil-covered pot beneath.
Andy sighed. "Put it over there with the others, please. And thank you for delivering it." He would have offered to take the plant from her, but his hands were currently occupied balancing a precarious stack of term papers, one of which was scented--scented--and all of which were sub-standard. He set the stack down on his side credenza, vowing to find and possibly incinerate the scented one with extreme prejudice.
Donna huffed, ruffling the poinsettia leaves, and thumped the plant down among the other dozen creeping from the corner of the overstuffed, cramped office and out in front of the bookshelves (which were also overstuffed). "I swear, they're getting worse every year. Doctor Hurley, you need to stop teaching that 'Ethical Alternatives to Monogamy" audit course for incoming freshmen! It's a terrible use of your time and it gives them such ideas--"
"HURLEY!" Professor Borshofsky stormed into the office, knocking Donna head first into the plant life via a rear-ending that would make its way into departmental legend thanks to a passing graduate student who crossed in front of the doorway just in time to witness Borshofsky plow into the bent-over Donna and professor, admin, and poinsettia collapse in a domino effect that left dirt all over Hurley's floor and put a "wawa" stutter into the tinny little Mariah trapped in the cheap speakers.
"Great Scott!" Borshofsky exclaimed, overriding Donna's indignant shriek. He stumbled forward, trying to avoid Donna's hips, but got his feet caught in a stack of forty years' worth of peer-reviewed articles bound in a series of thick post-binders stacked knee-high next to Hurley's desk. Borshofsky ended up sprawled across Andy's desk like he'd done a headfirst slide into Cooperstown.
Andy, never one to miss a droll aside, spread his arms out wide. "Safe!"
Borshofsky struggled to his feet while Andy was assisting Donna out of a pair of tinsel-sprinkled Norfolk Island Pines adorned with mini jingle bells and little kiss-shaped ornaments from one Molly Andrews. "Mind you, you've got to keep those things moist or else they'll dry up and become a downright fire hazard, Dr. Hurley."
"Thank you, Donna. I'll be sure to water them during the break."
With an indignant tug on the scratchy-looking wool sweater underneath his ill-fitting tweed coat, Borshofsky straightened. "You've cheated me out of my publication credit for the last time, Hurley! This nonsense of continuing to indulge your fixation on indigenous matrilineal traditions in South Asian isolationist cultures is nothing more than--than academic favoritism!"
Andy brushed tinsel off Donna's shoulders as she departed with a sniff in Barshofsky's direction. When she'd left the room, Andy afforded Barshofsky a single, brief glance. "The world's hardly in need of yet another rant on the breakdown of traditional gender roles as a driving factor in economic downturns among capitalist societies, Vasily. Everything you could say is being said by cable news pundits during the opinion hour and regurgitated in bite-sized chunks on social media next to dancing cartoon frogs. You've got to advance with the times."
"Hah!" Barshofsky huffed, his weathered face growing redder. "You think you're the great star of this department! They only awarded you tenure because of age discrimination!"
"The sheepskin on my wall and the credits after my name suggest there were other factors, too," Andy retorted mildly. He snapped off the little green-domed light over his desk and gave up the idea that he'd get any more work done tonight. The smell of fruity-mango-passion body spray was giving him a headache, and Donna's tutting over silly-headed undergrads wasn't anything he hadn't heard before. "You can either complain about being robbed of a 'rightful' place which was never guaranteed you in the first place, or you can up your academic game and study something culturally relevant for once."
Andy Hurley had neither the time nor the fucks to give for professors like Barshofsky, who'd entered academia in order to rest on laurels well established by generations and centuries of colonialism, sexism, and Eurocentrism built on foundations of social engineering that ran counter to the natural survival instincts of humanity in both physical and spiritual spheres. Andy Hurley wanted to Use his Powers for Good, dammit, and the best Good his extensive education had exposed him to was the idea of Radical Intimacy and he would be damned if lazy thinkers like Barshofsky would continue to gather accolades for pushing the status quo.
He stuffed the last batch of essays--this one from grad students with the sense not to scent their papers, except he could have sworn he caught a whiff of Axe body spray among them--into his oversized messenger bag. He crowded Barshofsky out of his office, closing the door behind him. He made a little shooing motion for the other professor to precede him down the narrow hallway towards the exit of the Humanities wing.
Andy shrugged on his coat and wound the scarf around his neck, temporarily covering the silver-streaked ginger beard whose texture, unknown to him, was the subject of many a late-night discussion in the undergraduate dorms, especially in relation to theoretical severity of the chafing of undergraduate thighs resulting from application of said beard to said thighs.
Barshofsky stomped past him. "You sleep with your students!"
"I do not," Andy retorted. "I enjoy mutually-beneficial intimate relationships with a select few of my colleagues in departments with which I have neither influence nor conflict of interest, and I do so in defiance of externally-imposed societal norms incompatible with anthropologically-sound progressions towards societal, political, and cultural equalities!"
"So you're sleeping with the Ethics committee!"
Andy rolled his eyes as they emerged into the reception area, where Donna was gathering her coat and purse.
He turned to the admin, meeting her brown eyes with his own summer-sky blue ones. "Thank you for your invaluable assistance, Donna. I hope you have a happy holiday break. I've left you a little something in the envelope on your desk. My best wishes to you and your family."
"I--" Donna suddenly pinkened. "Why thank you, Dr. Hurley. You be sure and have a Merry Christmas and a happy, er, any other indigenous, uh--"
"Solstice-based ritual to mark the astronomical calendar points," Andy finished for her, not unkindly. "Thank you, Donna. May I walk you to your car?"
"Oh." Donna turned even pinker under Andy's soft-spoken offer. "Thank you, but no. My daughter's coming by and we're going to the Nutcracker at the Student Arts Center tonight."
"Then have a lovely evening." Andy fitted his knit cap over his ears, then turned to Barshofsky. "You as well, Vasily."
He left a blushing Donna and a red-faced Barshofsky and his sexy-fruit-salad scented office and his undergrads with so little imagination that in his "Create your own Solstice ritual for extra credit" assignment the creative ones were merely ripoffs of the "Seinfeld" episode about Festivus, and took his sorry, tenured ass towards the pub. It was half-price finger-food Tuesday and they made fried zucchini roses that made his vegan heart beat double-time. Plus, it was open mic night which meant that Joe would be there to support his TA and if enough beers were in him, maybe even take a turn at the mic with his own guitar.
In the pub's parking lot, Andy left his messenger bag in the car in favor of the case for his large bongo drum in his trunk. In case Joe needed a beat. Andy was, after all, something of a mentor to the younger professor in the modern literature and media department. And lord knew Joe would need support himself when he supported his TA. After all, Joe had been supporting the poetry grad student in more ways than one for half a decade.
But that's what one did when one loved--and occasionally slept with in anarcho-romantic relationships in defiance of limiting external societal constructs intended to oppress--one's friends. One supported them. Even if it involved an occasional emergency extraction from the back attic window of a sorority house or a well-placed bongo drum in a bar.
**
Pete Wentz was fond of letters. He loved them like ex-lovers who'd parted on good speaking terms and occasionally provided relationship counseling for current literary engagements. Thus far, the specific ones under the term "ABD on that PhD" have served him well, allowing him to float in the liminal space between senior faculty and student body with enough wiggle room that he enjoyed both staff and student bodies without sliding too far into the charcoal shades of the ethical gray areas.
And it prevented him from having to seek out gainful employment (aka an adjunct professorship) which would decrease his living expenses by almost half, since adjunct professors were little more than glorified TAs (which he already was) who had to develop their own course materials (which he currently did not, as a lowly TA) and did not receive money from their families for schooling when they were teachers and not students. As long as he met with his mentor--Joe--every week--at the pub--and "demonstrated progress"--in the form of taking the mic for slam poetry--he was "furthering his education" in the eyes of the university, the family, and the family lawyers who were responsible for maintaining his bank account.
It was a crime against humanity that neither those letters nor his golden tongue could excuse Pete from attending the endowment luncheon with the University Provosts and alumni association. As his family's representative (delivery boy), Pete was required to Do the Necessary and accept the thanks of the provosts for another generous endowment to the Fine Arts college. The very college whose attempts to force him to defend his dissertation he desperately dodged as the semesters piled up one behind the other.
Pete spent the afternoon in the company of the provosts and the university's patrons--all of whom were three times his age at least, and some of whom looked as if they might actually be legally deceased, but just hadn't yet gotten around to lying down and making it official. But he stuttered through the prepared statement--resisting with all his might the urge to shuffle around the content into terza rima stanzas--awarding the University with an obscene amount of money and expressing his family's eternal gratitude for the U's educational influence (and continued tolerance of his presence, Pete thought privately).
The university president himself had thanked Pete personally with a speech to all and sundry that went on and on about how the endowment allowed them to add two more full-time positions to the Fine Arts college and Pete tuned him out because fuck the details they'd gotten their money.
His wife was not so kind, being an alumna of Zeta House, and still deeply involved in the sorority's politics, including its recent "decorum violation" when the enthusiastic young ladies had volunteered for an "artistic bacchanal" involving bubbles, a slip'n'slide lubricated with beer foam and KY Jelly, and Pete screaming emo poetry in the backyard of their long and storied residence house. The idea of which may or may not have originated in the weed-smoke haze of a room in which a naked Pete had once lounged with two recent Zeta alumni and the recently-installed--and very youthful--house "mother" (or "house MILF" as Pete had called her).
Pete remained polite throughout the woman's screed about the decay of modern education, and how his family had better not think they were buying away his responsibility for the black mark on Zeta House's (not terribly) pristine record. He kept his carefully boyish smile and a ducked, "aw shucks" head until the very end.
"Mr. Wentz, your family name is the only thing preventing you from a life of mediocre ignominy, and the single saving grace of your barely-tolerated presence is that its ransom money will be put to good use to hire someone with real talent in our Fine Arts program. Apparently, money can buy talent, but not breed it or teach it. It's a shame your family wasn't more generous. We wouldn't have had to cut the modern literature budget to expand our music program."
Dread squirreled itself in Pete's stomach then, but he ignored it like he suppressed the snakes of doubt that sometimes crawled through his brain until the pot or the sex or the liquor kicked in and instead responded to the woman with a charming smile and a dirty limerick.
"Madam the university enriches
With each undoing of my britches
This is what you get
When matters collegiate
Whore out to my filthy riches."
The old bat had gasped, but Pete already slipped through the crowd, loosening his tie. He stripped to his boxer briefs in the Arts Center's freezing parking lot, stuffing the suit into the trunk of his car in favor for the jeans, ripped band tee, flannel shirt, and leather jacket of his normal uniform. He shoved his feet into battered Doc Marten's and left them unlaced as he drove the short distance to the pub, where he already knew the words he wanted to slam into the microphone and into the crowd and out of his brain and heart to carry the poison of his existence to a fresh batch of carriers.
But the words were lost to him as he faced the pub manager, Chris, and attempted to express himself in the form of red-faced indignance at the interruption to his educational progress in the form of a gaping jaw and words that sounded like, "arglebargle."
"Sorry, Pete." Chris shrugged. "The owner wants the mic kept open for musical acts."
"But--but--I always slam on Tuesdays! I'm a fuckin' hit!" Pete flung an arm out towards the underwhelming crowd scattered at the tables.
Chris followed his gesture. "Dude. Not exactly making your case, here."
"It's a fuckin' holiday, asshole." He peeked out. "Look! There's Joe, and--and--" He spotted a cluster of undergrad girls wearing matching Delta house sweatshirts in cute pastel colors over turtlenecks in contrasting colors that matched their--good choice, ladies--short and flirty skirts over tights and boots. They wore matching Santa hats with their names scrawled on in glitter-glue. "There! I've got groupies! I bring you business, Chris. You can't just shut me out."
Chris scrunched up his lips. "Sorry bro. Look--maybe when this new guy finishes a set, you can work in a poem or a rap or something."
Pete snarled. "I don't need a pity-fuck. You paying this guy? This--whoever he is?"
Chris shrugged. "The owner worked something out. And you might want to make nice."
The owner? The owner? If Chris knew--"Why, so some hard-luck boho slob can ride my coat-tails on open mic night?" Never mind that Pete, himself, could easily be classified as "boho slob" most of the time. Never mind that the words were tumbling all over themselves to crawl up his throat and infect the crowd with his own rage in meter and rhyme.
Now Chris was telling him his mic was unavailable to him? His audience quarantined from his transmission?
"What's this loser-wannabe got that I haven't got?" he demanded.
The sound of a clearing throat interrupted him. Chris's expression turned to a wince. A voice from behind Pete--behind and a few inches down, to be precise--answered his question. "A guitar."
**
Dr. Patrick Stumph hadn't fought for every inch of academic respect and a successfully-defended doctoral dissertation to play an acoustic set to a weak and indifferent audience at an open-mic gig in a university big enough to have its own zip code (okay, to be fair, the zip code was strictly for ease of mail-routing purposes and not because the university sprawl took over so much territory that it required a tram and its own bus system, but still...). He hadn't written papers on music theory and composed seven-part rock operas and delivered countless lessons to young musicians in almost every instrument in a full concert band--including the triangle--just to sing folk songs in front of an indifferent bar crowd.
No, he did it for the associate professorship with a fast-track to tenure and the chance to become assistant department head in five years. The acoustic set was more of a goodwill thing to introduce himself to the community. It was already going swimmingly as he stepped around the manager and the asshole who apparently believed "open mic" was his personal headlining show.
Patrick's retort came out of the side of him that knew from experience that youth and shortness nearly always came with the assumption of weakness and, as one of his undergrad advisors had told him, the trick to surviving in academia is to treat the Ivory Tower like the Greybar Hotel--find the biggest sonofabitch in the yard and take him down your first day. This might not be the yard per se, but it was the first of what Patrick was certain would be many tests for the university's luminaries to make him their bitch.
Patrick could bottom like a champ when he was in the mood, but never let it be said he wasn't a goddamn Power Bottom with capitals intact.
He caught the complainer by the shoulder as he shoved past him and looked at the pub manager. "Is the mic ready?" When Chris nodded, Patrick nodded back, offering a small smile. "I just need a single spot. Nothing fancy. We'll keep it intimate tonight."
"Sure thing, man," Chris replied.
Patrick would have taken down the biggest sonofabitch in this particular three-man yard in a single-round KO if he hadn't made a critical, tactical error and glanced at the man who'd been throwing a tantrum about his groupies a moment before.
Hot whiskey eyes, lit with hostile embers, burned into his and for a moment, Patrick forgot about everything but a sudden melody he would give his right nut to chase down right fucking now. Something with low, moody strings and mellow, buttery horns on the lower scales.
The guy was a few inches taller than him, but not by much. A torn Metallica garment that had begun life as a t-shirt--and Patrick would swear it had begun that life right around the time the band released the album identified by the graphic, which made it vintage and fucking bona-fide--hung off tanned shoulders covered in ink that chased its way down his arms. More ink peeked out of the stretched-out collar. A plaid flannel shirt was knotted around slim hips, crimson and black hatching clinging to an ass made for biting before dangling down black jeans to brush at the tops of well-worn Doc Marten's.
A mouth--made for the exact kind of sin that kept Patrick so deep in the closet at his tiny Jesuit college that he carried dual citizenship in Narnia--curved up into a sneer. Patrick felt his teeth clamp down over his bottom lip and knew there'd be trouble in the yard. He made a strategic decision and fled the scene for the stool to hide in the spotlight out front.
**
Pete didn't often let words get the better of him. A well-placed remark or an excellently-timed quip in the right mouth--namely his--got him into and out of situations that would have shriveled the testicles of lesser men (or men of lesser arrogance). Most of those places, he needed those testicles. But for that witty, one-word mic-drop to target him was unforgivable. And worse--to have it delivered from the bastard child of an elf and an angel wearing a fedora that might as well be a halo and a slouchy jacket oversized enough to hide wings? Apocalyptic.
Enough so that Pete's mouth went slack. Just enough for his lips to part and go soft instead of forming sharp edges around a comeback he knew he had somewhere in him. Something about talent and working the room and how the audience was his, dammit. Instead, he met riptide eyes through horn-rimmed glass lenses and forgot his name.
Up to that moment, to say that Pete had a "type" would be to suggest that a jackal might be picky about making sure its carcasses were ethically-sourced from organic apex predators. Past that moment, when those stormy-lake eyes pulled away from his only to travel down his body and back up to his mouth, Pete had a type, and his type was This Fucking Guy. Or Fucking This Guy. One of those was happening tonight.
The musical attention-thief ducked away to the stage in a cloud of cedar and vanilla. Pete spun in the other direction--reeled, he would never admit--and stalked out to the main dining area. On the way to the half-moon booth where Joe and Andy held court, Pete flicked loose some of the pins holding up the holiday evergreen garland along the edge of the bar. It'd serve Chris right. And whoever thought it was a good idea to pin the fake mistletoe balls above the tables in the back ought to be dragged into University square and publicly flogged. Pete collected himself by the time he wedged into the half-moon booth next to Joe and Andy and stole Joe's beer (the stealing of Joe's beer had a lot to do with collecting himself).
"Dude?" Joe let the word encompass a world of questions.
Pete scowled. "He fuckin' stole my mic." He pointed the bottom of the beer bottle up towards the small stage, where the elf-angel-thief was adjusting the mic stand and shifting his guitar around his shoulder. "Made a deal with the owner for priority."
"Shut the front door." Joe's eyes, under his mess of Bohemian curls, widened.
"Doesn't your family own this bar?" Andy muttered. "And like, the whole block?"
Pete narrowed his eyes. "That," he said, "is beside the point in the same way the moon is 'beside' the earth." His brows lowered and he avoided any further discussion about his family's possession of a prodigious amount of real estate in the college town their eldest son had specifically chosen because of the lack of their presence. "He--" Pete stabbed a french fry pilfered from Joe's plate, "--usurped my throne."
Andy crunched thoughtfully at the Thai salad cup in front of him. "It sounds to me as if you really do want your family to put your name on a little brass plaque above the spotlight. Is that what you want?" Pete clamped his mouth shut and shook his head. Andy continued. "Then how about you watch his performance and learn to share that spotlight and let me eat in peace."
Pete settled into the booth, nudging Joe. "You're not helping?"
Joe grinned and stole his beer back. "Get your own," he muttered before answering. "I'm your academic adviser. That mic, like your dissertation, requires defending. I get why you don't want to defend the latter, but the former? You've never had to. So take some academic advice--"
"I'm six years older than you."
"And yet the maturity fairy, like the puberty fairy, visited me first and likes me best." Joe tucked his curly hair behind his ears, stroked his artfully luxuriant chin-scruff, and turned to stare fully at Pete. "My academic advice, as your academic adviser, is to get to know your opposition, then defend your position with a well-researched attack."
"You just want to hear the musician play instead of listening to me lay down critical truths about the human condition in iambic pentameter."
"You rap rhymes about your man-feelings," Joe said. "They're good rhymes--"
"And your feelings are fully valid," Andy interjected.
"But he has a guitar." Joe finished and leaned back, shoving his plate towards Pete. "Stuff some of these in your face so I can listen."
The fucking guitar. Pete slumped down in the booth and picked at the fries. The waitress came by and he ordered a rum and coke, sotto voce. Sure, he had a guitar in his loft, although he was better at beating out a rhythm on the bass, because basslines were much easier to remember and while every girl went crazy over the guitarist or lead singer of every shitty college band ever, there was a certain type who eschewed the competitive races for the easy pickings and no-strings fun from the rhythm section. But Pete dealt in words. He could follow along with a guitar pick, but put a pen in his hand and he drove the goddamn bus.
The sound of a throat clearing and an unassuming "Hey" cleared Pete's ruminations like a tattooed arm sweeping across a table full of stemware. Pete sat back up, barely acknowledging the waitress who set his rum and coke down in front of him.
The musician stood alone on the little stage in front of the ship-lap and exposed-brick wall. Chris--or more likely the waitresses he'd bullied--had tacked up tiny white fairy lights on the wall and the single spot illuminated the stool and mic on the stripped-down stage. The mic that was Pete's by divine right of kings of the cutting insult or some shit. The guitarist's fingers caressed the strings of the acoustic in a little arpeggio. "So, uh, I'm Patrick Stumph. Thanks to the Wentz Endowment, I'll be teaching some of you Music Theory next semester, but for now, I'm just here to play you some songs."
He plucked out a melodic intro, but Pete barely made out the intro notes over the sudden white noise between his ears at the sound of his last name. The fucking Wentz Endowment? Heat crept up his face as he recalled the wife of the U president and her disapproval. Your family name is the only thing preventing you from a life of mediocre ignominy. The single saving grace of your barely-tolerated presence is that its ransom money will be put to good use to hire someone with real talent in our Fine Arts program. Someone with real talent.
Real talent. The fuck did this--this kid--know about real talent?
"My heart ticks in beat with these kids that I grew up with, Living like life's going out of style. And you came to watch me play like a "Big shot talent" But at the end of the day you know Where I come from And where I call home." The clear tones of the guitarist's--Stumph's--voice rang out in counterpoint to the musical notes. He started the song in a soft acoustic, with gentle strings, but then he repeated the verse with a more aggressive take that had Joe and Andy both nodding along like the traitors they were.
Even though Stumph sang the song like an acoustic, and then a more enthusiastic light rock, Pete could hear the layers and the whispers of what it was supposed to be--a punk-rock anthem played in a shitty, gritty basement club. Not a chipper, acoustic folk-rock nostalgia piece played in an exposed-brick walled hipster bar with patrons who could afford craft beers and knew what anarcho-socialism was (and had opinions on its viability as a social structure). But somehow, Stumph fucking made it work and Pete saw red. Especially when the song ended and the patrons clapped and his voice came out over the speakers with a modest, "Thank you" as if he hadn't pulled off a complete genre-shift and created a transformative work from his own damn musical evolution.
The little fucker did have talent.
The old hag is right, an insidious little voice that lived in the wormy parts of his brain taunted. Pete chugged his beer to drown the worm and thought about adding some tequila, because worm. But then Stumph started another song. A capella. "Where is your boy tonight? I hope he is a gentleman..."
And something happened to the insides of Pete.
The song didn't stay a capella, but neither did Stumph--Patrick--turn it from a punk anthem into something tame enough for the domesticated spaces. This one stayed raw--restrained in its longing and encapsulating everything about an awkward, secret crush and frustration and resentment and too much hope hung on the idea of said crush and not the reality.
The audience loved him.
Pete loved him. He was singing along by the time the song ended--along with the girls from the sorority and a handful of people from the college of business and the Bursar's office who'd come in to drown their sorrows over the persistent disorganization in student loan distributions and end of semester late fees.
Patrick played a cover after that--Elvis's "Blue Christmas" and a soulful rendition of Wham!'s "Last Christmas" while Pete stewed and Joe motioned the waitress over and told her to take an iced tea up to the singer. "Tell him it's from his new patron."
"Wait just a minute," Pete said as the girl left. "What do you think you're doing, Trohman?"
"Doctor Trohman. I didn't spend eight years in Evil Literature School to just be 'Mister,' you know. Mister Wentz." Joe raised an eyebrow. "He's going to be a colleague. We should make him feel welcome. Staff gotta stick together in this place, which you'd know if you'd ever defend your damn dissertation. Besides, he's going to have to meet you sooner or later."
Pete wanted to make Patrick feel many things, but welcome was not one of them. Fucked out and wrecked were considerably higher on his priority list. "He doesn't need to meet Pete Wentz." Not Pete Wentz the indolent scion of the family that poured its money into education in exchange for influence on thousands of minds. Not Pete Wentz who'd been given everything he'd ever wanted and bought whatever he wasn't given and made doubly sure that anything he couldn't charm or buy was something he most assuredly did not want.
Andy raised an eyebrow. "This is an accident looking for a place to happen, I can see it already. So who is he going to meet?"
Pete didn't yet have an answer for that, but he didn't doubt his ability to generate one just as soon as he ciphered the musician beyond that incredibly fuckable mouth and the elfin-angel package.
Joe squinted at Pete. "He's the recipient of your family's generosity. That's gonna cause some friction."
Fuck, I hope so. Pete was, of course, thinking about the delicious idea of putting the musician firmly in his place. And not thinking about the friction of other sorts. The kind that might be felt in jeans, with bodies pressed between walls and other bodies. "Don't tell him my last name, Joe." Pete begged his mentor, who used to be his mentee until he surpassed Pete in the academic achievement race of accumulating letters after his name (sure, it was a lot easier to claim a doctorate in literature, for fuck's sake, when rhyme was optional instead of mandatory and when symbolism could occasionally say, "the curtains were just fucking blue, already, let it go you assholes" instead of always having to mean Existential Dread or some shit).
"He stole your spotlight, my dude. He should know who you think you are." Joe's tone failed to even approach convincing as he chomped on a fry soaked in ketchup and dripping with cheese and bacon bits. "Besides, if we drop your name, then we can, like, meet him. Maybe he'll want to hang out." Joe got that gleam in his eye which meant what he really wanted to say was "Maybe he'll be interested in theories of 'mutually-beneficial intimate relationships with a select few colleagues in defiance of externally-imposed societal norms.'"
Pete could already see Andy sizing up the potential to add another convert to his campus-wide sexual revolution, and while Pete was a zealous convert and an enthusiastic recruiter..."This one is mine."
Andy reached across him for a fried zucchini strip rolled into a rosebud shape and dipped it into spicy baba ghannouj before popping it into his mouth. "Ethically--" he began around a mouthful.
"Fuck ethics," Pete growled, a hint of savagery in his tone. "The U bought that bitch on my dime, and he stole my mic, too. This isn't the kind of thing I'm just letting go with a temporary embarrassment. I want revenge."
Patrick launched into another song, this one a bluesy, reggae-hinted of Akon's "Don't Matter" and for a moment, Pete's train of thought derailed in the mountains and would later be found with a handful of survivors that had turned cannibal, become survivor-celebrities, gone on lecture tours about overcoming adversity for six months, then discovered in the final incident report that that supplies had been in plentiful supply a mere two cars down, leading them to an existential crisis that left 85% of them believing they had been cannibals all along and only needed an excuse to start eating themselves and each other in an orgy of self-destructive counter-survival instincts. "Nobody wanna see us together but it don't matter, no..."
Andy and Joe, arguing the ethics of whether or not to tell Patrick that his benefactor was, in fact, right before him to accept his thanks, faded into the background pulse of Pete's systems forgetting how to function, then re-learning again but only to the tune of Patrick's voice and--ye gods and little fishes! "Because we gon' fight for our right to love, yeah!"
The Delta House undergrads were going crazy over the song, lifting their pink drinks with names like "flirtini" and "melon-rita" in the air and singing along to the hook-up anthem and damned if Pete didn't feel like doing the same.
Patrick's mouth wrapped around the words and his eyes locked on Pete's and Jesus Christ, if the guy had wafted a pink silk hankie in Pete's direction with his phone number and favorite flavor of lube on it, Pete couldn't have gotten the message any more quickly. Stumph's eyelids dipped to half-mast and opened again, meeting Pete's gaze for a moment before sliding away to mesmerize the group of sorority girls--who were supposed to be Pete's groupies, dammit! Stumph's mouth quirked up and Pete's eyes narrowed and Pete's brain had a Eureka! moment and he knew just how he was going to take back the mic and the hearts and minds of his adoring fans so totally and completely that nobody would ever doubt his dominance again.
The next time Patrick's eyes slid back to Pete's, those obscene lips were rounding around words about rollin' that body, but it was Pete who'd already formed a plan and no, thank you very much, he'd be damned if the body wouldn't be Patrick's and the one doing the rolling would damn well be Pete. Pete lifted the rum and coke and wrapped his mouth around the straw, giving Patrick the patented Pete Wentz Look up from the tops of his eyes.
Stumph, that son of a bitch, didn't let the rapid-fire lyrics get in the way of a quick flick of his tongue over his bottom lip or fuck me sideways, Pete thought, did he just swivel his hips at me? Heat flooded through him and it wasn't from Joe's french fries. "Whatever you do," he growled at Joe and Andy, "Do not let him find out who I am."
"You're not exactly a secret, Pete." Andy munched another zucchini rose.
"Just indulge me."
"For how long?" Joe asked. "As your mentor, this is an ill-advised direction your research is taking you and you'd be better--"
Pete shoved a hand in Joe's face, mashing the fries halfway to his mouth all the way in. "Keep that mouth full, Trohman."
Andy rolled his eyes. "He's right. How long?"
Pete let a grin slide across his face as the song ended and he clapped his hands together with enthusiasm. He leaned towards Joe and Andy over the sound of applause, eyes gleaming in the bar's low light. "Just until I own him."
Andy shared a look with Joe over Pete's statement. Neither of them bothered to tell Pete that this was not going to end the way he thought it would. Joe hid his smile from Pete because as a literature professor, he found nothing more entertaining than the fictions real people told themselves...and the surprise plot twists at the end that they never saw coming. And as for Andy...he was still intent on changing the world through Radical Intimacy, and you didn't get any more radical that Pete on a tear...and you didn't get any more intimate than Pete when he thought his shields were impenetrable.
**
"So we maybe got off to a bad start," Pete said by way of introduction after Stumph's set was over.
"So I heard." Patrick glanced towards the backstage area where Pete had read Chris the riot act before. "There's still an audience out there, you know." Patrick unslung his guitar and packed it into the case to the side of the stage.
Pete's mouth curved up. "Yeah. But are you gonna be in it?"
Patrick paused before answering Pete at the arrival of two of Pete's groupies who held out cash. Patrick exchanged the cash for a pair of download cards. Pete couldn't help but curl his lip up. Selling out on the internet one song at a time. How quaint.
When the girls departed in a puff of nervous feminine laughter, Stumph answered him. "I guess it's only fair. I stole your audience out from under you." He hefted the guitar case onto his shoulder and gave Pete the once-over. "Let's see if you can get it back."
Oh, it is on, motherfucker, Pete thought. He mentally shuffled his setlist from earlier. His earlier scorn over Art as Whore wouldn't ever burn itself out, but it banked in favor of a facet of his major and his life's work he'd long ago thought he'd worn out. He slipped backstage and glared at Chris. "I'm taking the mic. Try and stop me."
Chris shrugged. "Not like the bar could get any emptier, dude. Knock yourself out. Maybe lighten it up a little from your usual?"
Pete flipped him off, then stepped up on the stage. "Kill the spot," he growled.
Once the light had dimmed, his eyes adjusted and he searched the thin crowd. Andy and Joe were parked in their usual booth, and the sorority girls had lost a few of their number. But--there you are--the hat and spectacles gave away the musician, perched on one of the tall stools at the back, nursing a thin-looking lager in a familiar green bottle most commonly found in the hands of underage undergrads and lightweights. Pussy, Pete thought, shoving his hand in his pocket for the vintage Zippo lighter in there. He let his lips curl up into a snarl. "Drink down that gin and kerosene. Come spit off bridges with me. Just to keep us warm, light a match to leave me be." He flicked the Zippo and the flame came to life, lighting up his face with an infernal-looking flicker--which he knew from hours worth of practice in the bathroom mirror at home.
"I keep my jealousy close 'cause it's all mine and if you say it makes you happy then I'm not the only one lying. " He directed the next line to the girls because they always responded. "Can I lay in your bed all day? I'll be your best-kept secret and your biggest mistake. The hand holding this pen rewrites my failures every day." He went through the stanzas, using repeats, loops, and patterned emphasis to drive home the desperation of the bound for nowhere and too attached to the lover who was made for better things.
He knew he had them when one of them propped her chin on her hand and the thrill never failed to send an electric buzz through him. When his words finally sparked that bit of understanding in someone else. "Wear me like a locket around your throat. I'll weigh you down. I'll watch you choke. But you look so good in blue."
But he wasn't just screaming into the universe tonight. He had a point. A goal. An objective. Instead of aiming the next line to them and screaming it in barely-leashed rage, he flicked his gaze towards Stumph and lowered his voice to pillow-talk levels. "So keep quiet because nothing. Comes. As easy. As you." He flicked the zippo closed, sending the stage into darkness.
Polite applause came accompanied by a blast of cold and Pete grinned. The night just got more interesting with the addition of a big group of grad students from Theatre and a handful of frat-rats who were the most obvious closet cases Pete had ever seen. I've got just the thing. He paused long enough to snag two of the tea lights from empty tables on the side of the stage and set them on the stool, then sat with his knees pulled up to his chest with the microphone in his hand.
"She says she's no good, but I'm worse. I stutter out a joke of a romantic line stuck to my tongue."
By the time he's finished his tale of first-date, school-dance awkwardness, he'd gotten to his feet, paced the stage, sat down on the edge of it, and booped one of the girls on the nose when he said, "love," with a challenge in his voice demanding that his subject show him a little spark. The theater grads were chanting the last lines along with him and a couple started an impromptu hop when he says, "So dance! 'Cause we're falling apart to half-time and these are the lies you love to lead." Even the frat-rats are nodding along.
He rounded out the set with "XO," the perilously-close-to-accurate story of looking for love between legs, between drinks, between the front and back seats of cars, and between the pages of meaningless Bibles in anonymous hotel room nightstand drawers. "I swear, I say, I swear, I say. Love never wanted me, but I took it anyway." He performed the whole piece with his eyes locked to the musician's, never once letting the blonde-haired man look away. Patrick's eyes dipped to half-mast when Pete's mouth curved around phrases like "hands between legs" and "whatever it takes" because Pete never delivered those without the full weight of promise behind them. "Love never wanted me but I took it anyway," he finished. "I'm Pete Kingston, motherfuckers, and my pen is the barrel of a gun. Which side are you on?"
As the applause died down and Pete strode off the stage, he glanced once more back at Patrick. The blonde wrapped his lips around his beer bottle and took a long pull, holding Pete's eyes and the promise he sent out came back and punched Pete in the gut. Heat washed through him like a riptide pulling low in his belly and full of predatory anticipation.
He leaned up against the bar. "Yo, B." He motioned the bartender--a theater grad responsible for the cluster of drama queens that edged Pete over the top in his little mental competition with the guitarist--away from said friends. When the skinny kid with the big eyes scooted down his way, Pete leaned in. "The singer? Get him another one of whatever he's having, from me."
Brendon's brown doe-eyes glimmered. "Yeah? Caught you giving him the death glare before. Something change your mind?"
Pete's eyes were drawn back to the singer, though he spoke to Brendon. Patrick was glancing down at his phone, thumbing casually the way people do when they've got nobody to text and a slow, dirty grin crept across Pete's face. Because Pete was looking above Patrick's head at the shadows of the ceiling above the stupid broken oar from the university rowing team from fifty years ago that was supposed to be trendy, where, likely in a fit of resentment and a desire to see Chris get arrested for encouraging sexual harassment, the waitresses tasked with decorating the joint had hung balls of mistletoe above the tiny, intimate, two-person tables. "Let's just call it the spirit of the season."
**
Patrick's back slammed against another wall of exposed brick, but this one belonged to Pete's loft. Hands tangled in the lapels of the poet's leather jacket, Patrick pulled him in as roughly as he'd pushed, crushing their mouths together with enough force to loosen mortar. Thrills and shivers piled up beneath his skin. This is happening, he thought. And nobody's getting the ax for it.
Pete had come up to him at his back table right after the waiter dropped off the beer for him from Pete. Without preamble, Pete had taken his chin in one long-fingered hand. With the other, he pointed upward. "Mistletoe."
Patrick had frozen, his self-protective instincts darting his gaze around the room to see disapproving stares. When nobody batted an eyelash, he met Pete's eyes. The other man, his hold on Patrick's jaw firm but not punishing, hovered motionless, his expression one of patient challenge. "I guess I'm fair game," he said, his voice only a little muffled from Pete's hold and a lot muffled from the catch in his throat that happened when he breathed in Pete--leather, spice, rum, burnt sugar, and something indefinable.
One toe-curling kiss later, Pete murmured against his lips. "Let's get out of here. My place is just off University Circle."
Two blocks to hot skin and lips of sin? Patrick sucked in his tingling bottom lip. "Y-yeah."
Patrick wouldn't say they speed-walked, but Pete strode with a very definitive purpose, Patrick's hand tangled in his. Openly, Patrick realized with a thrill that seized him so fiercely that at the corner, he pulled up hard, jerking Pete's hand back so that his body had no choice but to follow. Pete's startled look made Patrick grin and he shoved Pete up against the side of the building and crashed their lips together right in front of a passing couple--who said not a goddamn thing.
Pete grinned against Patrick's lips. "Someone's impatient. One more block, dude."
Patrick was impatient. Most of his battle for academic respect had been fought on the battlefields of the small Jesuit university where he earned his first academic teaching position, and prior to that, the private religious schools that were the only ones who'd hire a short, self-taught music teacher who socked every last penny away and cobbled together piecemeal the education he so desperately wanted, and every step of the way carefully spent hiding who he was and whom he loved all-too-briefly, being unable to risk relationships in small towns with many eyes and wagging tongues. The U and the Wentz Endowment had changed all that. A progressive, non-religiously affiliated institution with deep pockets for the arts and a large, diverse campus with aggressive non-discrimination policies? He would have sold that soul his old college worked so diligently to assure him needed protecting from his own heart, should this U or this Wentz Endowment request it. "I've got some time to make up for," he'd muttered, dragging Pete in what he hoped was the right direction.
Pete pulled him up short at the doorway of a tall, narrow brownstone that looked like it came straight from Architectural Digest under the heading of "dream academic residence." Patrick shifted from foot to foot. Just when he was starting to doubt--starting to wonder if he was alone in his breathless enthusiasm, Pete fumbled the key and muttered a small curse. As he crouched to retrieve it, he looked up at Patrick with eyes dark and luminous from the glow of the street lamp and Patrick felt his world narrow down to Pete Kingston on his knees in front of me. His teeth clamped down so hard on his bottom lip that he thought he bit through it.
Pete rose. "Hey, no. Let me do that." He pushed Patrick into the shadow of the doorway, lock temporarily forgotten and hands at Patrick's waist, pulling their hips together as Pete took his bottom lip and sucked on it in a move that arrowed straight to his groin and left his toes numb to boot.
When he started grinding against Patrick, Patrick's last brain cells vacated, but not before firing one last moment of clarity. "Inside," he muttered around Pete's lips against his, Pete's tongue teasing between his teeth. Patrick slid his arms around Pete's waist and splayed his hands over Pete's back, delighting in the trim lines there. When a shudder passed through the taller man, Patrick felt a swell of power travel through him. This is me, doing this to him, not hiding, not stealing it from the shadows. Being who I am and it feels fucking great.
"Yeah." Pete pulled away and rested his forehead against Patrick's, knocking his hat askew but Patrick didn't care. Pete fumbled with the lock again, this time striking the key home. They tumbled into the doorway like a pair of drunken sailors, staggered up the stairs like a pair of teenagers fighting to see who'd make it first and while Patrick was not fond of three-story walk-ups, he couldn't say he didn't float halfway up the flights because he didn't remember the landings and he was already breathless by the second step. His raging hard-on took care of the blood and nerves that would have made his legs object--or work properly--so he must have floated.
One more door and another key and they were inside and here he was, the rough brickwork scratching against the back of his shirt because Pete wasted no time in shoving his jacket off his shoulders while devouring him from the mouth out to his jaw to down the column of his throat. And with no prying eyes, no threats of dismissal or rejection or repudiation, Patrick was finally free to give as good as he got.
Pete's heavy jacket dropped to the floor with a whump punctuated by metallic tings from the buckles and straps. The band tee under his jacket put up a fight, being secured by the knotted flannel around his waist, but Patrick knew how to fight dirty with recalcitrant clothing and did so, tearing at the flannel, jerking Pete's hips against his own until the shirt sleeves loosened and slid to the floor.
Patrick didn't even realize Pete's hands were everywhere until Pete pulled them away to lift them up and help Patrick get him out of his shirt. Patrick missed his touch, but the sight before him was worth it. So worth it. An expanse of tanned golden skin traced with inked thorns around his collar, characters and patterns up and down his arms, and something Patrick couldn't quite make out beneath Pete's navel but may have been a heart or something with wings, mocking him by disappearing into Pete's low-slung jeans.
"Not that I--" Pete muttered around his mouth as Patrick darted back in to steal his breath again and again, "--object to it, but--this wall's--hard on--bare skin."
Patrick had an insane glimpse of an alternate timeline where he said, "Fuck it" and Pete fucked him against the wall and it was so real he thought he could feel the abrasions already slicing through the skin on his back, but that timeline collapsed and he was nodding breathlessly. "How's your floor?"
"Hardwood. Or flagstones in the kitchen. I'm not opposed to a little BDSM, but I've never used a floor to hurt a partner before."
Pete's breathless admission earned a laugh from Patrick. "Why don't you make me scream from some place softer, then?" Patrick said.
Pete groaned, but he grabbed Patrick's hand and pulled the shorter man to the short staircase that led up to the balconied sleeping area. "Will this do?"
The bed was gargantuan and piled high with fluffy comforters and pillows and Patrick thought he might die from the decadence of it. Instead, he gave Pete a light shove, sending the other man backwards to sink into the fluffy decadence. "Let's take it for a spin."
**
Pete's breath deserted him as soon as his back hit the bed. Not because he didn't expect Patrick to take on such an...enthusiastic role in driving things, because the bashful stage-persona of one Patrick Stumph was the side he showed the audience. One-on-one, he'd challenged Pete directly--twice. No, Pete's breath ghosted him because once he was on his back, Patrick was on him, straddling his hips and running those long guitar-player's fingers over Pete's bare chest. Pete barely had time to register the heated trails before Patrick was leaning over him, pressed chest to chest, to take his mouth again and nip toothy kisses along the curve of Pete's lips.
If his breath was gone, his hands brought it back. Patrick's button-down shirt parted under his fingers and Pete's breath came back with his laugh when he discovered the undershirt beneath the dress shirt. "Got another one on under this one?" He asked around Patrick's kisses.
Patrick moved his lips to the scruff along Pete's jawline and Pete forgot sarcasm. "Mmm." Patrick's hum did funny things to the nerves along the skin of Pete's neck. "Didn't expect to be undressing for an audience."
Pete laughed as Patrick found the ticklish spot beneath his ear. "Might wanna change that expectation." Patrick hadn't yet been formally introduced to Andy Hurley and anarcho-sexual revolutionary philosophy. "We're a pretty liberal campus."
"I noticed." Patrick's voice vibrated against Pete's collarbone, sending shivers racing through the poet. But his hands had been busy and Pete's jeans were now unfastened, easing the pressure against his crotch somewhat.
Pete, for his part, had been busy working Patrick's button-up off and then attacking the tee underneath. The smaller man was built with delightful solidity to his shoulders and hips and a delicious lushness to his midsection that Pete never expected would be a thing for him, given his habit of turning up in the beds of relentlessly sculpted co-eds (and their relentlessly-sculpted boyfriends on a number of occasions). But as soon as his fingers felt the give of Patrick's Nordic-pale hips, his palms developed an addiction independent of the rest of him, with the need to grab and touch and hold that soft flesh in greedy handfuls and his desire for prominent hip-bones and wiry ribcages evaporated.
Patrick shifted on top of him and he answered with a shift of his hips. "Jesus, Patrick. Ah--!" He broke off when Patrick's kisses along his necklace of thorns turned into playful bites. He arched into it, his back coming off the bed under Patrick's touch.
Patrick grinned and slid down Pete's body until he knelt at the foot of the bed. "What's your pleasure, Kingston?"
Kingston? Who's Kingston? And why was his name familiar? Fuck, that's me, he finally remembered. He lifted his head and lost himself in the adorable fact that Patrick's glasses were skewed and his fedora was still perched on his head, although in a much more precarious condition. He reached up and adjusted the glasses, meeting Patrick's eyes again.
The younger man blinked owlishly but caught Pete's hand before it could drop to the bedspread. Instead, he brought Pete's fingers to his lips. Delicate flicks of his tongue, followed by swirls around the digits and finally those lips closing around Pete's two fingers and Pete couldn't take any more. He arched, head thrown back and throat exposed, a long groan working its way out. And from Patrick just sucking his fingers!
"There's more of that if you like, but you have to talk to me, Pete." Patrick's voice was low, deep, with a thrum that shot straight to Pete's already-overstimulated groin. "You have to tell me what you like."
Jesus Christ, the musician was going to fucking kill him before he even got his goddamn pants off. "Fuck, Patrick," he stammered. "Y-your mouth."
"What would you like me to do with my mouth, Pete?" Patrick leaned over him, grinding their hips together, coming just close enough to bump noses.
Pete lifted his head, trying to catch Patrick's lips in a kiss and thinking, I want you to stop talking with it, first of all.
But Patrick was having none of it. "You have to tell me," he said.
Pete groaned and sat up, wrestling his hands free of the covers to slide them up and under Patrick's layers of t-shirts. "I keep my words for the audience," he muttered. "Can't we just--go with what feels good?" He cocked his head. "I'm not gonna, like, flake out on you midway through. I want this."
Patrick surprised him by going still. His eyes, wide and dark with only a ring of gold-shot blue around the edges of pupils blown wide, searched Pete's and his blow-job mouth set in a line that wasn't supposed to make it look more sinful, but totally did anyway. "You might keep your words for the audience, but didn't your mentors ever tell you that you give your all no matter if it's an empty room or a packed auditorium? Am I not," he asked, flicking his eyes down to Pete's lips and back up to meet his eyes again, "your audience?"
Pete didn't think his hard-on would stick around when Patrick started lecturing him on performance practicum, but that single, molten flick of Patrick's eyes sent a streak of liquid fire through Pete that had him licking his lips, aching for the touch of Patrick's against his own, and in the absence of that, filling the space between them with words with the performance of a lifetime for an audience of one. "I wanna feel your mouth on my cock, Patrick. Wanna feel your bare skin against mine."
"Mm-hm." Patrick rewarded him by lowering his head and trailing that mouth along the line of his neck, over his Adam's apple, down to the hollow of his throat, lingering around the inked thorns.
Filthy words. "Wanna flip you over, get you underneath me. Wanna taste you and tease you." He lifted his head and waited until Patrick glanced up. "You like that?"
For an answer, Patrick slipped down further. His tongue traced the lines of Pete's bartskull, teasing circles around his navel, sweeping against the edge of his jeans as Patrick popped one button, then two. "You could do better." He punctuated the statement with a little nip at the flesh just above the tip of Pete's cock, still trapped in the prison of his jeans.
Pete's eyes widened. Patrick's challenge would not go unmet. He licked his lips. Patrick wanted words, he'd get fucking words. He'd get fucking words. "You think you're working me over with that mouth? I'll show you worked over when I--" He bit off the last words when he lifted his head again and saw Patrick move those lips down over the head of his cock, the sensation accompanying the visual very nearly blinding him. "God, you're so good with your mouth, Trick, but I--" He tried for coherence again. "Listen--my words--I'll talk dirty, but--I won't talk mean." He propped up on his elbows. "So if you get off on humiliation, I'm not your guy." Pete leaned on one elbow and stretched the other arm out to brush his fingers along the edge of Patrick's cheek and down his jaw. "I'd rather worship you. Lay you out and make you feel good everywhere until you're a puddle." Patrick was working Pete's jeans and boxers down over his hips and Pete stuttered words as he rolled his hips to the side to help. "I don't--have to be in the director's chair, either. I'll go to my knees to be your good boy if you want to play that way."
Between his legs, Patrick groaned. The sound sent little shivers of air over the fine hairs at the top of Pete's legs and made his balls twitch. "That's what I like to hear," Patrick purred. "But for now, put your money where your mouth is and show me what you've got."
Patrick jerked his jeans down all the way and Pete didn't need to be told twice. He kicked them the rest of the way off and leaned over Patrick, flipping his hat off with a grin and a careless flick of his wrist. "You got it, music man."
Pete kissed his way along Patrick's collarbone, sinking his teeth lightly into the soft skin of his shoulder. He moved lower, sliding his lips along the soft paleness of Patrick's chest, the ginger hair there tickling his nose as he circled one flat nipple with his tongue, then moved to the other and nipped lightly. Patrick was wonderfully responsive under his hands. Not hard like Andy or all knees and elbows like Joe used to be in his grad school days. Patrick was solid and cuddly and refreshingly real. His compact size and the give of his flesh under Pete's hands made a part of Pete want to gather him up and hide him away and snarl at anyone who came too close. A dangerous part of Pete that should not be allowed to run the rest of Pete.
Pete made his way down Patrick's chest with licks and bites and nips until he reached the copper thatch and a cock of such lush pink tones that he could easily see gourmet pastries spread out at next week's President's Ball inspired by the reds and fuchsias and blood-flushed pinks of Patrick's crotch. Joe would be so proud of those metaphors if Pete could work them into something written in stanzas and dedicated to the Academic Board. He didn't realize he'd been staring until a low, melodic whimper echoed through the loft and he glanced up to see Patrick, his hair bed-mussed, staring down at him with a mesmerized glaze over his eyes that matched the wet pout of his bottom lip and the rhythmic appearance and disappearance of his tongue, flicking in a steady beat over that bottom lip.
"Sorry," he muttered breathlessly. "Has anyone told you how fucking gorgeous you are?"
Patrick's gaze flickered, losing that hypnotized sheen. "No." His voice sounded rusty and hesitant. "Where I came from--we--you--things were better if the lights stayed out."
Pete drew back, away from the musky male nest that begged for his attention, and raised an eyebrow. "You did it in the dark? You kept this--" he gestured to Patrick's body, "--out of sight from the people you slept with? What the hell for?"
Patrick's head dropped back onto the pillow. "Do we have to talk about this now?"
Pete slithered back up and while his mouth registered with the Complaints Department over being deprived of cock, the rest of him applauded any choice that allowed his skin in so many places to drag against the luminescent silkiness of Patrick's thighs and hips. And the bright shock of sensation as his own erection brushed against Patrick's. A sensation they both enjoyed, judging from the wide-eyed surprise on Patrick's face. "Yes, we're talking about this. You asked me what's my pleasure and here it is--the lights stay on and I want to see your face and every inch of this gorgeous body against mine."
"Oh dear Lord." Patrick moaned. "You have--" He gestured to the side table.
"I have." Pete leaned over Patrick, deliberately rubbing every inch he could reach against the other man, and fumbled in the bedside drawer for lube and condoms. A tremble went through Patrick at the sound of the lube cap snapping up. Pete slicked up his fingers and disappeared to points south and finally--finally!--got his lips around Patrick's red-tipped cock. Bright salt exploded on his tongue as he dragged it over the slit and his nostrils were filled with the scent of Patrick as he dipped his head. Patrick's groan was music in his ears. He bobbed his head up and down until Patrick's hips started to move in tandem, then Pete pressed a slicked finger to Patrick's pucker.
A long, dreamy sigh broke the cadence of Patrick's moans. "Pete--yeah--do it--"
Pete pressed further into the supple give and Patrick's body opened for him. He found a rhythm with lips, tongue, and fingers that had Patrick's sighs and moans piling up on top of each other as he added more fingers until the smaller man was swiveling his hips in smooth motions onto Pete's fingers.
"Pete, please, I need--"
"I've got you, Babe." Pete reached for the condoms and fumbled with the wrapper until he smoothed the latex over his own raging erection. Condom secured, he glanced up at Patrick and the sight nearly did him in. Patrick's glasses were askew, making his eyes huge and wide behind the lenses. Pupils blown to a mere ring of gold-shot blue. Patrick's mouth was partly open and the red temptation of his lips alone was enough to make Pete want to devour him.
He clamped his fingers around his base and drew a deep, steadying breath. He drizzled out more lube with shaking fingers, kneeling between Patrick's splayed thighs. "Jesus, Patrick--anybody who'd do you in the dark is a goddamn fool." He licked his lips. "You--you're--you're fucking amazing."
Patrick licked those lips of sin. "I'm fucking dying, here, Pete."
Pete, never one to take direction well, took his time among the desperate tones of Patrick's insistence to "just fucking do it, already," and "are you torturing me, here, Kingston?" The Kingston was a sharp jolt that sent a guilty streak of foreboding through him. Sure, it knocked the edge off Pete's urge to let go and drill into the musician until they both came in a messy, grunting, sweating heap of limbs and spent cocks, but it also sent a warning chime somewhere in the back of Pete's mind that told him it wasn't just Patrick's ass he was about to go balls deep into.
But he paid more attention to the shaking of his thighs as he held himself up over Patrick for a timeless, breathless instant, the head of his cock rigid against the give of Patrick's tight hole.
Pete's eyes fluttered closed against the sensory overload as the musician wrapped his arms around Pete's neck and locked his ankles around Pete's hips. "Open your eyes and look at me," Patrick growled suddenly.
His voice lit up a live wire down Pete's spine and Pete's eyes flew open. "Jesus, Patrick--your voice does things to a man." He started to move. Patrick's face became overlaid with stars shooting off behind Pete's eyes with every spark of sensation sizzling though him.
"If one of those things is fucking me, then good." The briefest of devilish grins crossed Patrick's face and Pete was lost.
He sank down, sank in, lost his head in the scent and heat and music of Patrick. "Fuck, Patrick--you--"
Patrick met him halfway with every thrust. "Yeah--s'good--I need--"
"What?" Pete slowed to shift the angle of his hips and Patrick's eyes went wide.
"God, yes!"
A thrill of satisfaction went through Pete. "That?" He didn't bother keeping the grin out of his voice as he did another slow roll of his hips and summoned another arpeggio out of Patrick's vocal cords. For one insane moment, Pete remembered how this all started and gave up his vengeance to the gods of stupid ideas and self-centered assholes. That voice deserved to be amplified. Broadcast. Beamed out into the heavens to show the celestial chorus how it was done.
Patrick locked his ankles around Pete's hips and did something that had Pete seeing stars and wiped the smirk right off his face. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Move, Kingston."
Amidst the curls of pleasure tightening at the base of Pete's spine, another, dissonant note twisted behind his tongue. "Just Pete," he murmured, dipping his head to bite at Patrick's lush lower lip. "Call me Pete." You'll have to tell him sooner or later. Have to let him know.
Just...not right now.
Patrick licked his bottom lip and nodded. "Yeah...yeah, Pete." His face was flushed and Pete thought it might be the sexiest damn thing he'd ever seen on anyone while inside them.
Pete dove back into the sensitive skin on Patrick's neck. He bit the smaller man's earlobe. "Touch yourself for me? Wanna see you come, lose myself in you." His breath was coming faster now, in time with Patrick's. Patrick's hand slipped between them and Pete pushed up higher to see his lover's face.
"God--Pete--your words--" Patrick trailed off as his knuckles brushed Pete's stomach with accelerating rhythm Pete was only too eager to match. "Gonna make me--"
"Yeah?"
Patrick ended in one long, guttural groan as his body tightened around Pete's cock and he painted the space between them with thick streaks. Pete didn't need instructions, but Patrick grabbed him by both ears anyway and growled, "Fuck me through it," and Pete was powerless to refuse. His hips pistoned and those noises must be coming from his throat because Patrick's moans sounded like angels coming and not lowly, earthbound mortals like Pete who buried his face in Patrick's neck and rocked himself through a release that turned him inside out and spent him like publication credits at tenure time.
He had to have left his body because how else did one return to oneself without having left in the first place. Patrick batted his shoulder half-heartedly and Pete rolled away, sparing one hand to secure the condom. He pushed himself up, ready to play the good host, but Patrick was already up and on his way to the bathroom. Pete took care of the condom and dropped back down on the bed, already succumbing to the lassitude spreading through his limbs.
**
Patrick moved as silently as possible after cleaning up. He had every intention of pulling on his clothes and slinking out the door and keeping things on the down-low until he sat on the bed to pull on his jeans and two vinelike, inked-up arms snaked around him and pulled him under the covers like the monster from the black lagoon. "Where do you think you're going, Stumph?"
"I didn't want to impose--"
"Shush. I'm keeping you for a little longer." Pete pulled him further under the covers against his still-naked body.
"Is that how this is going?" He shifted his weight just enough to get his half-buttoned pants all the way off again.
"Mmm...yeah. Wanna find out if you're morning coffee, tea, or blowjob."
Patrick waited awhile before he spoke. "I...didn't come here from a very...open academic environment." Pete's fingers threaded through his and Patrick realized that being the little spoon was quite nice. He owed Pete a little more explanation, though. "If the faculty even suspected I was--if I even stopped dating women for longer than a few weeks--there'd be talk. Last night I was...a little high off the fumes of thinking I'm free of all that."
Pete buried his nose in the back of Patrick's neck and pressed his lips to the sensitive skin there. "You should be."
Patrick's body might be melting into a puddle of goo but his mind still operated with auxiliary power. "As long as that Wentz Endowment representative doesn't get wind of anything objectionable about me."
"Don't worry about the Wentz rep. They don't work like that."
Patrick shrugged. It felt nice to have another body meet his in resistance to it. "They all work like that. Before my old college, I made it through on scholarships, patronages, and sufferance and every single time, that sword of whatsisname hung over my head. If I stepped too far out of line, whether it was my choice in study subjects, my choice in friends, or my choice in extracurricular activities, I paid the price."
"Damocles," Pete muttered sleepily.
"What?"
"The sword. Of Damocles. From Cicero."
Patrick huffed out a sleepy laugh. "Lit nerd," he said, with affection and a yawn. "Sooner or later, though, they're all like that. The generosity comes with a leash and you live your life waiting for the tug, hoping you can find the end before you strangle yourself."
"Where do you think," Pete asked as he slid his hand around Patrick's waist and into his boxers, "the Wentz Endowment will tug?" He punctuated the question with a tug of his own.
"Certainly not there, I should hope," Patrick retorted. "I have no intention of letting the Wentz Endowment think it's got any right to that."
Pete laughed into the back of Patrick's neck, causing him to squirm with little shocks of heat that were driving away his sleepy contentment. Patrick sighed. "I just--I'm tired of hiding who I am. You might have noticed I give off a pretty strong twink vibe in certain situations. Last time I trusted the wrong person, the college decided I was the wrong kind of people to benefit from their generosity. No matter that I'd put them on the map with more original compositions out of that department than the past three decades, or that I was recognized within the community for spearheading the revitalization of musical culture through the entire region. I slept with the wrong guy. He recognized me and was so afraid I'd out him that he opened his mouth and outed me. And I was out. Out of the closet, out of a job, and out of any mention in the course materials in the space of Thanksgiving break."
"Jesus, Patrick. They were fools," Pete said, sounding more awake. "If they heard you sing, heard you play, and thought that who you fuck matters more than what you create, then they don't deserve you." Pete tugged him over onto his back and rolled on top of him to grind his cock against Patrick's hip.
Patrick's earlier thought of sneaking out evaporated along with his boxers and he flung a leg over Pete's hip to pull him closer so he could return the grind. "The rep hasn't met me yet, so at least the Wentz Endowment can't come between us right away."
Little did Patrick know that their lazy friction, helped along with spit-slicked hands and sloppy kisses, ensured that the Wentz Endowment did, in fact, come between them just as Patrick arched against Pete and followed right after.
**
Patrick straightened his tie one last time before leaving his car. The event at the Wentz Recital Hall would be the first of many he was required to attend, and he'd better get used to it. Ever since leaving Pete's, he'd been half expecting a shoe to drop--a summons to the Provost's, a letter delivered by courier informing him that his morals weren't in keeping with the university's reputation, any number of weak excuses to dismiss him before he'd even begun because someone, somewhere, had seen and spoken about things that should not be seen, nor spoken about. But all that happened was that a courier had arrived with an embossed invitation to a luncheon with the music department and a request for an intimate performance for the small gathering of patrons invited by the Wentz family.
He met the department head just inside the Conservatory. "Dr. Armstrong?"
The man in question gave him a blinding grin. "Ah, Dr. Stumph! So glad to finally meet you." He pumped Patrick's hand enthusiastically. "Call me Billie Joe if you want to get my attention--I've been ignoring calls of 'Dr. Armstrong' from grad students all day because I am done with discussing last-minute stupidity surrounding orchestral performances and I'm past the edge of caring about yet another disaster with the choir robes unless they're on fire, and in that case, it had better be three-alarm or larger."
Patrick couldn't help but smile back at the energetic man who'd be his boss. "So...where do I set up?"
Dr. Armstrong glanced at the guitar case. "Guitar man. Nice. Last year we had to endure yet another performance with the harp and glockenspiel, which have their place don't get me wrong, but not at a luncheon where we have to keep the venerable ones from falling asleep in their soup."
Patrick just nodded along and waited for a break. "Ah, is the, uh, Wentz representative here? I've never gotten to meet them in person and I should thank them for their generosity."
Dr. Armstrong waved a hand. "The Wentzes will be in and out of these things. There's a full-time representative on-campus who's supposed to be the token appearance, but he's...not as devoted to the family money as the rest of the family. You're better off just not sweating it--when a Wentz wants you, you'll know it and you'll come."
Patrick did his best to "schmooze" and introduce himself to the other faculty and patrons whose names were on the brass tags affixed to the boxes in the main auditorium and the flagstones on the walkway outside. A lot of very elderly hands with very high dollar amounts of jewelry dripping from them pressed against his own slightly sweaty one until it was time for him to play. Through it all, the little paper placard with the name "Wentz" at one of the place settings remained unclaimed, the wassail glass full and untouched.
When he sat in the chair with his guitar, a single spotlight shone on him, blinding him to the audience waiting expectantly for the stripped-down, folksy holiday carols he was happy to sing, and the classical Spanish guitar interlude that occupied his fingers while his voice rested. As he began the last song, he saw a backlit figure sliding into the vacant seat for a few moments. The set of the shoulders reminded him of someone, but the impression slipped away and his focus returned to the melody of the carol and its accompaniment.
He finished the set and turned back to see who occupied the place setting. The wassail glass was half-drained, but the seat was once again empty.
**
"True intimacy," Hurley said, "Is a defiance against almost every social structure and boundary we place on each other, even to the point of what we think is our own self. Real, honest intimacy?" The russet-bearded man's kindly blue eyes gleamed and Patrick forgot for a minute that he was sitting in on an academic lecture by a theoretical sociologist. He thought he was back in the freezing basement of an anarchist bookshop and age sixteen again, waiting for the sweaty punk rock band to start playing an anthem for Burning Shit Down and feeling the raw, incandescent fire running wild through his veins and arteries until the music and the scene made him feel like he was finally, truly alive, even for just an hour.
"Real honest intimacy is the stripping away of barriers between the self and everything. It's a radical expression of rebellion against the boundaries and limitations of social groups and cultural embattlements. It strips away assumptions encoded within our cultural milieu and leaves us with nothing but our own true self, facing the true self of another person, and realizing that we are one." Hurley concluded his lecture in a hushed voice. And every ear in the room, including Patrick's, craved more.
That was when his Jesuit education crept back in, and Patrick realized that Andrew Hurley was quite likely the devil with a Ph.D. But Patrick, along with the rest of the lecture hall, leaned forward and thought, who needs a soul anyway? while Hurley spun his spell and wove his web of a world where people connected on intellectual, emotional, and spiritual levels so great that every breath could be like sex.
The lights came up gradually as if waking the entire audience from its hypnotic trance. As soon as the lights illuminated fully, several people rushed the podium. No, Patrick amended silently, not exactly "rushed," unless one viewed it in slow motion. People rose from their seats and floated--Patrick would swear they floated!--towards Dr. Hurley wearing blissed-out expressions and stars in their eyes. And Patrick? Caught himself rising, too.
Feeling like he floated in a cloud of warmth and well-being, Patrick drifted towards the front of the lecture hall. Hurley was spending his time with each of the other guests who'd approached him, warm and twinkling blue eyes fixed on each person as if they were the only two people in the world for as long as it took for him to sign his book, or shake their hand. When Patrick's turn came, he just offered his hand. "That was...really...eye-opening."
Hurley clasped Patrick's hand in his own. "I'm so glad it resonated. I can tell by your eyes that you really understand what it's like to deny intimacy. That you're aware of how damaging that can be." He began packing his lecture notes into his messenger bag and Patrick helped him. "You know, so many people are looking for a home, and they rarely find it. Often, they use controlled substances to replace that open connection between people, or they attempt it through less-than-meaningful encounters that are mere ghosts of the kinds of relationships they truly want."
Patrick nodded. "I came from a place where the small, closed-in atmosphere was supposed to foster close relationships, and it just ended up being everyone watching for someone else's infractions against the culture. Not fun at all." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "It was hard to show anyone even a glimpse of your true self, much less--" He made an awkward sort of "merging" gesture with his hands, "--connecting with them."
"True intimacy is one of the bravest things you can share with anyone else." Andy closed his messenger bag with a snap. "Even someone who's known you all your life doesn't see all the parts of you--or even the important parts of you--unless you decide to show them."
Patrick followed him out of the lecture hall and down the corridor towards the lobby. The daytime lights of the Humanities building had been dimmed in the glass-fronted foyer, leaving the intermittent glimmer of the Festival of Lights display--a series of light-up bells flashing on and off in time to 'Carol of the Bells' if you tuned your radio to the Festival's FM frequency or let the University mobile app play to your location. Patrick couldn't wait to try his own hand at contributing to the app's next event in January for a Founder's Day display. "In your lecture, you warned against leaping into radical intimacy too soon. But you're getting more than a handful of converts to your way of thinking out of tonight's talk, I can tell."
Dr. Hurley's lips turned up in a small, wry smile. "Radical intimacy, in the wrong hands, can leave a trail of devastation." His smile faded. "If you don't know how to show someone your true self, you'll always miss that connection."
They emerged into the holiday-themed front entrance and the lights from the parking lot bounced off the criss-crossed garlands hanging from the second-story stairwell above their heads. Patrick sighed. "I'm probably in need of remedial help, then, because I can barely remember the last time I could show my true self."
Dr. Hurley put a gentle hand on Patrick's shoulder. "One thing I don't teach in my introductory lectures is that once in a great while, you do meet someone with whom you share an instant, intimate connection. In those rare cases, you and the other person are halfway to radical intimacy already, often without realizing it right away. Sometimes, you show someone else your true self and neither one of you is aware of it until the masks are consciously stripped away, and you realize you've seen each other's souls all along."
Patrick wouldn't say he was overly romantic, but when Andy Hurley leaned forward and pressed his bearded lips against Patrick's in a chaste kiss, Patrick's foot might have kicked up behind him. Andy pulled back and glanced up. "Mistletoe," he said. "Happy Solstice."
He stepped out the door, leaving Patrick with a bemused smile, tingling lips, and the tiniest man-crush.
**
The Wentz Endowment had its expectations, as the letter outlined. He had yet to meet the representative from the Endowment and felt a little bad about it--he confessed to Pete and Joe that he was getting kind of nervous about the anonymity of his patron when they met up at the bar.
"My old college, everyone lived out of each other's pockets," he said. He was enjoying the all-too-easy camaraderie of the company and the open frankness with which Pete and Joe treated each other. To his surprise, he didn't feel as if he should be jealous of their relationship, even if Joe put his arm around Pete or Pete casually rested his hand on Joe's knee.
Dr. Andrew Hurley had gotten into him, it would seem. He was worried when he met Pete after the lecture and the older man tweaked his hat and asked him what got him blushing. "Dr. Hurley kissed me under the mistletoe and I should feel bad about it but I don't?"
To his surprise, Pete just laughed. "That's Andy's super power. The first time he kissed me was the last moment I ever spent straight. He introduced Joe to ethical polyamory and if Joe's spent a fun night with only one other person since, I'd worry that he wasn't feeling well."
Patrick was surprised that he didn't physically flail at that. "Really?"
Pete grinned. "Dude, your eyes are as big as dinner plates. It's adorable." Pete slung an arm around him and kissed him on impulse. "Joe's a cuddler. It'd be a serious loss to the planet if he didn't share his gift."
Thus far, they'd been meeting up every day in the bar for either lunch or dinner, and sometimes both. Patrick grew bolder in his set choices and once he realized Joe played music, too, he wasted no time in inviting Joe up to join him for a jam session. While Andy demurred, preferring to listen to the two guitarists battle it out, he did begin to provide a subtle drumbeat to Pete's sets.
Patrick was working up to accepting the group's level of intimacy a few days before Christmas when Joe held out a cheese-covered french fry to his lips. Patrick glanced at the other professor, startled. Joe's warm blue eyes twinkled. "Go ahead. Your face looks good with longing on it, but Pete tells me it looks better sated."
Patrick opened his mouth and Joe fed him the fry. "And now it's on fire," Patrick muttered, chewing around the salty, cheesy, fried goodness.
Joe smirked. "That'll pass. Once Hurley's philosophy gets into your bloodstream, you develop an immunity to shame. It's a much better way of living."
Patrick's mouth quirked. "I've got a lot of shame to overcome. My old school wasn't exactly welcoming to alternative expressions of, well, anything. Getting them to include folk hymns after 1850 in the music program was a feat." Patrick glanced down at the folder containing the now-rumpled letter of introduction. "Apparently a feat great enough for the Wentz Endowment to notice me."
"Oh, I'd say the Wentz Endowment's noticed you, all right." Joe's tone dripped with as much amusement as his chicken strip dripped with hot sauce.
Patrick opened the folder again amidst a sudden shifting of Pete's legs under the table. Joe grunted and Pete's hand suddenly snapped out for his chicken strip.
"Hey!"
"I just don't feel like I'd be writing a fitting tribute to the Wentz Endowment with only a surface-level understanding of it."
Beside him, Joe choked on his beer.
Patrick flipped over another page. "I mean, it's one thing to score promotional materials--that's a professional display."
Joe finally got his breath back and Patrick glanced up to see if he was okay. The curly-haired man was red-faced, but Pete, good buddy that he is, was equally flushed and Patrick couldn't help but think of Hurley's words from the lecture series. Intimacy is the most radical rebellion ever invented by mankind. We crave, we yearn, we long for intimacy and we spend our lives seeking it out. Life has so much more meaning when we acknowledge that and embrace the sexual nature of our bodies for the defiance it embodies. Patrick glanced back down at the folder's contents, flushed with the warmth of Hurley's seductive words. In the context of Hurley's philosophy, the clear affection between Pete and Joe felt like something Patrick wanted to celebrate. And join in on.
"Trust me when I say the Wentz Endowment has been displayed before," Joe said, clearing his throat.
"Not always in the best light," mumbled Pete, going suddenly quiet.
Patrick glanced up. "Is there something--is it sensitive to scandal? Should I be aware of something embarrassing in the past?" Until he got a bead on his puppet masters, he wasn't certain he could afford to rebel, or that there was anything worth rebelling against.
"Oh, it's sensitive, all right," Joe choked out.
Patrick patted him awkwardly. "Umm, are you okay?"
"Listen," Pete said. "Don't--don't stress yourself about the Endow--the Endowment." He struggled with the word and Patrick just shook his head. Were they all now twelve?
"Whatever you do, they'll be pleased with. It's really all just a bunch of egocentric bullshit."
"Never let it be said that the Wentz Endowment doesn't enjoy a good stroking," Joe said around wheezing breaths that had Patrick concerned about his health, "of its ego. And it's mostly ego."
Patrick shook his head. "You don't understand. I owe everything to the Wentz Endowment. It's uplifted me. It saved me. You guys have no idea how badly I was suffocating at my old school. How it choked me off until I swear I was ninety-eight percent dead inside. The Wentz Endowment opened me up!"
Joe gulped his beer with the desperation of a man trapped two weeks in the desert. Red-faced, he ducked his head.
Dr. Hurley rounded the corner of the booth with mugs of hot spiced cider on a tray. "Aren't you two done flogging that limp running joke yet?" He sent a stern, yet fond gaze aimed towards Pete and Joe. To Patrick, he said, "I'm glad you decided to join us, Dr. Stumph. The university can only be enriched by your presence."
Patrick smiled up at the intense and earnest professor who'd become a friend, and blushed a little for good measure. "You're too kind, Dr. Hurley. I'm eager to get as deep as I can into the culture here at the university." He accepted a cider from Hurley and made room for the red-headed professor.
"Excellent," Dr. Hurley said. "One of the main activities of the Wentz Endowment is to plumb the depths of the talents of the faculty to encourage--" here, Andy spread his hands wide, "grand expansions in...learning experiences."
On the other side of Patrick, Joe's legs began to twitch. "You guys," he gasped out, "are fucking killing me. Killing. Me."
Pete shifted uncomfortably. "Sorry, Patrick, we're just having fun. But you really shouldn't worry about impressing the Endowment. You're...pretty impressive on your own, you know."
Pete's eyes were the warmest gold of sincere and Patrick couldn't help the warmth swelling in him at the other man's regard. Patrick looked down into the warm cider in his glass, the same color, and the same warmth. "Thanks, Pete. I just want to do my part to make the Wentz Endowment firm." His lips twitched. "Seriously, I think I would have died if I couldn't have come here. I was killing myself to hide who I was, and I can't be anything but grateful for that chance. So if the Wentz Endowment wants me to get on my knees and stroke it--" Patrick smirked as a warm spray of atomized cider from Joe's mouth gently settled over his forearms, "--well, then I'll do it with a smile."
When Patrick excused himself, Andy slid over close to Pete. "You have to tell him."
Pete shook his head. His gaze followed the younger music professor as he passed the bar. "He's not...mine yet." There was something elusive still. Something that stuck in the back of Pete's mind. "He's drunk on liberation. I can't just let him go off on his own. What if he meets someone terrible? Someone who'll hurt him?"
Andy turned his head and faced Pete directly. "What if he already has?"
**
Pete knew he could only have so many halcyon days before the bill came due. The snake entered his Eden by way of an impromptu summons from his mother. "Peter, be a dear and attend the Christmas Eve dinner party at the President's? Another one of my headaches is coming on, and your father insists on being here with me until the doctor arrives."
"Mom, you don't need a doctor. You need to cut back on the red wine and have an extra-strength Tylenol. And the doctor will tell you the same thing." Pete wasn't fond of the fact that his parents employed a private "concierge" doctor service that took one of the medical staff of the university hospital away from the hospital (where the sick people were) and devoted that staff member's time to riding around to the platinum-level alumni association members and other benefactors' places of residence and providing them with in-house dispensation of prescription-strength medications for their over-the-counter strength ailments while the U hospital's Urgent Care was always packed and Student Health enjoyed a brisk business year-round. But Endowment came with privileges, and one of those privileges was sending your indolent son off to make your excuses to the U president--and his lovely, disapproving wife--when you felt a little snappish.
"Just do it, Peter. You perform your duties little enough as it is--your father and I aren't even sure our Endowment is being managed at all some days. That music program--"
"The music program will return your investment in spades, Mom. You have no idea."
"And what of our investment in your education, sweetie? Are you ever going to become my son, the doctor?"
"Fine, I'll go to your dinner party. Bye, Mom."
"Air kisses, darling."
Pete disconnected the call. There went his night of skulking around the local watering holes, hoping to hear one of the bands not geared towards overly-bubbly undergrads play some metal or classic rock or something to thrash to while Patrick had some music department thing.
Thus far, it'd been close, the luncheon where he slipped in to see Patrick croon Christmas carols to the alums, he'd skulked in late and skulked right back out early. When the new semester started up, it would be harder to avoid the events. He'd come clean after New Year's. After Christmas Day, there wouldn't be so many social events. Just a little longer, he told himself. A little longer to not have to be Peter Wentz The Third.
He arrived at the party with a bottle of wine for the hostess and his mother's regrets. The Alumni Association board were all there and Pete avoided the biggest knot of people for as long as possible until the hostess's daughter, the undergrad choral director, achieved a target-lock from which he couldn't escape. "Mr. Wentz, there's someone you have to meet."
**
If asked, Patrick would never say he was "holding court" but that's exactly what it felt like as he answered question after question about his musical background and was genuinely surprised when the patchwork nature of it proved entertaining to most of his audience instead of something to be disdained. Dr. Armstrong's enthusiasm made the questioning feel much less like an episode of CSI. Patrick was grateful for the breather when Dr. Armstrong sat down at the piano, freeing him from the social pressure of having to do so. He was about to go hide in the kitchen when the choral director called his name.
"Dr. Stumph, it's my pleasure to finally introduce you to your benefactor. This is Mr. Peter Wentz, of the Wentz Endowment."
Patrick was halfway around, with the words already tumbling out. "Mr. Wentz, you have no idea how honored I am to make your--" Only the person standing before him wasn't Mister Peter Wentz. He was Pete, Pete Kingston, slam-poet, self-proclaimed perpetual grad student, and mister morning blowjob himself. "--a-ac-quaintance..."
Pete, for his part, stood before Patrick with an open, hesitant expression. Parted lips, his tongue darting out nervously, and a hopeful ghost of a smile. "Ah, surprise?"
"Oh, you two know each other already?" The choral director clapped her hands. "Lovely! We're such a warm and friendly campus, it's almost like a big, sprawling, extended family, isn't it?"
Patrick's face must have frozen in place and maybe the right noises came out of his mouth parts because the choral director patted his shoulder. "I'll just let you two catch up, then, shall I?"
After she moved away, Pete ducked his head, trying to catch Patrick's gaze. "Patrick?"
Patrick blinked up at him. This stranger whom he'd seen naked, been naked with. "Is this a joke?" Am I a joke?
Just then, the caterers rang the bell indicating the dinner would begin. The choral director was his dinner partner for the evening and Patrick did a passable job going through the motions with her. It helped that Pete was seated on the same side as him, several places down, keeping him from being able to shoot glares at the taller man, even though Pete kept trying to catch his eye. Patrick made a point of turning away from Mister Wentz and addressing his dinner companion with lively and engaging conversation, not a word of which he remembered, but he had always been good at hiding himself, and it turned out that here would be no different.
**
Pete caught up with him in the driveway of the house while they waited for the valet. "Patrick?"
"You." Patrick seethed. "You're the representative for the Wentz Endowment."
"Patrick, I--"
"No! Shut up!" Patrick blinked back a sudden sting behind his eyes. "I trusted you. I owe you everything! My job, my shot at tenure, a fucking symphonic arrangement! An original score to your glory and my utter and complete humiliation!" He didn't even care that his face was on fire. In fact, his whole body was on fire, painted with scarlet letters that said "World's Dumbest Twink."
"Patrick, I'm sorry!" Pete reached for him. "I never meant to--hurt you." He faltered because the words he said were not the words he meant and Patrick knew it. "I wanted my mic back that first night. I just thought I'd one-up you and we'd have a good laugh about it--"
Patrick's eyes burned. His throat burned. "This is me, laughing." He punctuated the statement with a sound so bitter it could melt glass. When he spoke again, his voice felt thin and reedy, coming from a part of his body he abandoned. "You said our first night together that you'd talk dirty, but you wouldn't talk mean. Did you have a good laugh with Andy and Joe about how naive the new meat was?" He backed away with every step forward Pete took.
"Patrick, let me explain--I didn't mean to--"
"Hurt me?" Patrick arched an eyebrow, his voice cold. "No, Pete. You didn't mean to get involved. Hurting me didn't even cross your mind because I was already bought and paid for."
**
Pete couldn't go home so he went to Andy's. "I fucked up," he said when Hurley opened the door. "I fucked up and I don't--I don't know if--"
"Come here, dumbass." Andy pulled him into a hug. Two hours later, after Pete finally went where so many had been trying to herd him without realizing that Pete was smart enough to need to be led there, he drove Pete back to his apartment.
**
If eighteen-year-old Joe Trohman had his way, he'd be paid to watch movies and talk about them with anyone who'd listen. Ten years later, he did just that, only he limited his discussions to the people who paid to listen to him, in particular. So he could state, with some authority on the subject, exactly when he'd entered into a support role for a terribly melodramatic romantic comedy with a healthy streak of cloying holiday nostalgia. It was when he'd opened the door to his townhouse and found Patrick Stumph--okay, Dr. Patrick Stumph--standing on his stoop with his fedora tipped low and his entire, tiny body shaking with barely-suppressed emotion. "Oh, Christ," Joe, who was nominally Jewish, but would have called on Odin and Osiris if they'd get him out of this situation, thought.
"You knew, didn't you?"
The cold was getting to Joe, so he stepped back and gestured Patrick inside. There was a fire going and Joe had just recently bid farewell to an associate professor of International Business and a Guest Lecturer in Macroeconomics who both subscribed to Dr. Hurley's "radical intimacy" philosophy. But it looked like the radical intimacy lessons wouldn't be over for the night. "Have a seat," Joe said.
He handed Patrick a beer a few moments later. "What you have to understand is--"
"Is that Pete Kingston--the guy I've been sleeping with--is really Peter Fucking Wentz--the guy who's technically my boss!"
"No, the University is still your boss. You get your paychecks from the U, the Wentz Endowment just, er, spurts money into the budget for your position." If asked under oath, Joe would have been forced to say he couldn't help himself. Even in the most dire of circumstances, he could not resist. "And you have to understand that Pete is not Peter."
"Oh really?" Patrick shot out of the chair. "Well, Pete wasn't Kingston, either! So who is he, and what kind of joke is this? I could lose this job before I even start!" Patrick paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, agitation sending his hands to his hat brim.
When he passed close enough, Joe shot a hand out and grabbed Patrick by the arm. The shorter man tumbled into his lap.
"What the--" Patrick struggled, but Joe wrapped his arms around him. "Radical intimacy. It's a physical thing sometimes, too, so let a friend hug you, for fuck's sake."
Patrick suddenly sagged and Joe was prepared. Lord knew he'd held Pete through enough heartbreaks. "He's an asshole," Patrick groaned out into the lapel of Joe's smoking-jacket styled bathrobe.
Yes, it was a ridiculous indulgence, but along with the old-fashioned pipe that held a fine blend of organically-grown cannabis sourced from ethical small-batch producers, it was an indulgence that the sheepskin on the wall in Joe's office said was due him. Joe patted the music teacher's shoulder. "Yes. Yes, he is. I've known him since I was an undergrad and Pete can be a spectacular asshole."
Patrick's fingers crushed the velvety lapels. "But?"
Joe waited until he felt Patrick relax a little more. Andy would be smoother with this, but Joe's instincts were telling him that Patrick didn't need smooth as much as he needed honest. "But Pete's heart is bigger than his asshole. Up to now, he's been pretty loose with both."
"You're making asshole jokes now?" Patrick muttered into his collar.
Joe grinned. The tension was draining from Patrick's body and he was noticing how cuddly the music man was. Next time Andy had a No-Barriers retreat, Joe would work on getting the musician into the right mindset to join them. But for now... "Yes. I always make asshole jokes when Pete's involved. But it's the truth as well. Pete loves very freely, but it's rarely something that--" Joe shifted Patrick to a more comfortable position in his lap so he could look at the musician. "When Pete falls in love, he dives in head first, gets a head injury, and shakes off the headache with a smile after a few beers and a good cry. Ten minutes later, he's fine again."
Patrick snuffled. "Well, I'm not fine. And I don't fall in love fast and loose, either." He leaned back to glare up at Joe. "And neither does my asshole."
Joe snorted, then rubbed his back and nodded. "Andy and I both got that in one," he said wryly. "Thing is, Pete dives headfirst into a shallow pool of love all the time. That's why the head injuries if you're still following my metaphor. You, my dear professor of music theory, are anything but shallow. Most of his exes loved him for the way he reflected them back to themselves. He has a talent for that."
"Yeah, well, I have a mirror for when I want to look at myself. I thought I was looking at someone who'd--who wouldn't ask me to hide who I was." Patrick's voice caught. "Not someone who couldn't even give me his real name."
Joe couldn't stand it anymore. If he got diabetes, it would be from stuffing his face with holiday fudge, not from sweet music professors with hopeless crushes on one of his best friends, who in turn moped around with his own crush right back. "Patrick, Pete didn't want you to know he was a Wentz because he doesn't want to be a Wentz with you. And not even he realized that right away."
Joe raised an eyebrow. "Do you know how many people would line up to use Pete for his money and his name?"
"Joe, his money already bought me!"
Joe chucked Patrick under the chin. God, he was adorable with those big eyes behind those glasses. As soon as he was in the right mindset... "Look, I'll admit he started off a little bit revenge-focused after you showed him up by being talented enough to deserve that open mic. But when he was with you, he didn't want to be Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz the Third, scion of the Wentz gazillions, whose favor makes the most dignified of University luminaries do ridiculously undignified things. He wanted to be Pete Kingston, punk beat poet." Joe peered down at Patrick. "All the things that being Pete Wentz doesn't allow him to be."
Patrick grew aware that he was curled up in another grown man's lap and trying not to cry on his shoulder about the same time he realized Joe was pretty content with it and that nobody would be reporting him to the provosts for indecency or moral corruption or any of the hundred little infractions that involved showing affection or vulnerability. "Joe, I'm just so tired of hiding. I thought--the University was outside that fishbowl where everyone watched me. I didn't have to hide here. I could be myself with you and Andy and Pete. It's been such a--this past week I've felt so light. Like something's just--right. Finally, after years of missing something, I've found the only place that feels like home, and it's made of you guys."
Joe's arms tightened around him. "Patrick, home is made of people you care about. Does it matter what they call themselves or what's on their driver's license?"
**
Pete slumped at the bar, staring at the empty stage.
"No open mic for ya tonight?" Brendon asked. "Chris said the guitarist canceled. The floor is yours."
Pete glanced over at Joe and Andy in the booth. He could only see the tops of their heads over the low wall. He hadn't joined them when he walked in--slunk in, if he were being honest--from the back entrance. Shame was a new experience for him and after his last conversation with Andy, it was becoming uncomfortably comfortable, like wet underwear that warmed to your body temperature. Sure, it'd leave your ass chapped, but at least it wasn't cold. "Do I have to be all Christmas-y?"
Brendon glanced around at the scattered patrons. There were a few student bodies--mostly locals, post-grads, and exchange students. The die-hards and the desperate-for-company. The lonely hearts of Heartbreak Row. "You know what? Fuck it. Get up there and give us your worst. Christmas cheer is mostly bullshit these days anyway. Give me the good ol' Pagan practices like Dr. Hurley talks about--blood and snow and cold and darkness. Do us all a favor and cut open your black little heart and share it with us." He flipped the bar towel over his shoulder and gestured to the empty stage. "I'll kill the spot."
"Yeah." Pete popped his collar. "I think--yeah."
Brendon dimmed the lights and killed the stage spot and Pete found his Zippo. He set up the three table candles on the stool and lit them one by one.
He didn't look at the audience this time, didn't engage. Just cut into himself and bled for whoever happened to slip their shoes into it. "You're a canary, I'm a coal mine. 'Cause sorrow is just all the rage. Take one for the team, you all know what I mean." He thumped his chest and licked his thumb and pinched one of the candles out.
A soft gasp echoed through the room, coming from the booth, which he hadn't looked at. That shame thing again. Pete's eyes were dazzled by the brightness of the candle flames so when he launched into the next stanza, spots obscured what he thought were Joe and Andy.
"And I'm so sorry but not really. Tell the boys where to find my body." His vision started to clear and his voice caught.
"New York eyes, Chicago thighs pushed up--" And those riptide eyes caught him between now and the memory of Patrick's body underneath his, the glow in his eyes as he talked about being open for the first time in forever.
"Th-the window to k-kiss..." His breath hitched. "you off."
Patrick sat in the booth next to Joe, leaning against the taller man's shoulder. Pete's protege turned mentor, who'd surpassed him in both degree and dignity if Pete were being completely honest with himself. "Do you remember the way I held your hand under the lamp post and we ran home?"
Shame weighed down his eyelids until the look he shared with Patrick snapped apart. "This way, so many times I could close my eyes." He told himself it was because he didn't want the Wentz name weighing him down, didn't want to lose himself underneath the towering expectations of being Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz The Third.
But was he really afraid of losing an asshole who didn't have much left to him besides clever turns of phrase? The same old emptiness at every new address, a closet full of punk rock clothes that were more genuinely punk-rock than his fear-polluted soul.
He dropped his gaze and mumbled the last line into the floor. "The truth hurts worse than anything I could bring myself to do to you."
He blew out the other two candles. "I'm Pete Wentz, motherfuckers. And I'm the Current Shh--" He pressed his fingers to his lips, then held them out in Patrick's direction, as if he could offer Patrick a physical manifestation of a kiss, futile as it might be, "--It Boy."
**
"Joe? It's Pete. Yeah, I know it's two AM...I know you were awake...I know...I know I should have told him but I didn't and I fucked up and we all know it. Now shut up and listen to me. I--I think I'm ready. I want to defend my dissertation." Pete opened the door to his home office, which had acted as a storage room for home exercise machines he swore would be more than clothing racks this time, and this time, and this other time. "Oh...yeah...no, I don't expect anyone'd be awake right fucking now to put it together, I'm not that much of an asshole." He paused to let Joe rant. "Two months should be plenty of time for me to grow the fuck up."
**
The reception on Christmas Day was much smaller than the luncheon and the holiday ball had been. Pete failed to make the cocktail hour beforehand and would swear it was trouble with the tie on his tux, but really, it was his shaking hands and fear that dragged his feet in shiny shoes until he entered too late to risk seeing Patrick. He ducked into the auditorium just as the doors were closing and slumped into the seat next to his father. "About time you showed up," his old man murmured. "I hear the new musician is a good investment."
Pete's fists clenched. "Don't talk about him like he's a thing, Dad. He's a person. He's talented and wonderful and deserves so much more than just making up songs about how great you are or how great this family is."
His father cocked his head. "Are you done, son?" When Pete didn't speak, his father did. "It was never a stipulation of the Endowment grant that Dr. Stumph had to compose anything specifically for the Endowment. He's always had creative license. We only asked him to perform today, we never told him requirements. He asked to dedicate this piece to the Wentz Endowment. Now your mother and I would like to enjoy some good music written by the man who's got our eldest so smitten he's actually asked to defend his dissertation after twelve years of stalling, so kindly shut your yap, if you please."
Pete went quiet, but he didn't shut his yap because his jaw hung open. I've only just decided, he thought, followed by, the man who's got our eldest smitten--they know? But then, Patrick walked onstage and sat down at the baby grand piano. Without preamble or introduction, he began to play.
The tune was at once haunting, yet soaring and plaintive, and when Patrick added his voice to it--Latin--Pete thought he might expire right then and there. He translated on the fly, his education in the Classics finally coming in handy for once.
How cruel is the golden rule when the lives we live are only golden-plated?
And I knew that the lights of the city were too heavy for me, though I carried carats for everyone to see.
And I saw God cry in the reflection of my enemies...
The last note echoed through the silent recital hall for half a heartbeat as Patrick stood and bowed to the stunned audience before turning on his heel, intent on heading off the stage.
Pete launched himself out of his seat, climbing over the backs of the empty seats in front of him to get to the stage as the rest of the room broke out into applause. "Patrick!" He jumped up onto the riser and caught Patrick's hand in his, swinging the musician back around to accept the accolades he deserved. "Patrick, wait! Don't go!" Patrick blinked once, then looked out to the audience.
Pete realized they were applauding, but also staring at him. "Dr. Patrick Stumph, ladies and gentlemen. Respected member of the University Music Department with the full-throated support of the Wentz Endowment."
Dr. Armstrong stepped up and shook Patrick's hand. "A fine welcome to the department, Dr. Stumph. Fine, indeed." Pete let him shake Patrick's hand for as long as he could stand it before pulling Patrick off into the wings.
"That was incredible," he said, dropping Patrick's wrist. He ducked his head, only now realizing that Patrick hadn't said anything. "Um. So...I'm not--my father's here, so technically he's the real representative from the Endowment right now and I'm just--me," he faltered. "Missing you." The tightness in his chest felt unbearable. Until Patrick stepped forward and Pete wrapped his arms around the smaller man, unable to believe his luck and hesitant to read anything at all into it.
"Asshole," Patrick muttered with affection into the crook of Pete's neck. "I didn't compose that aria to the charitable foundation."
"But it was amazing," Pete said. His hands were careful, reverent as they moved lightly over Patrick's back, beneath his tux jacket and over his shirt. Inside, the broken pieces of Pete were slowly melting. Lyrics had tumbled over and over in his mind, inspired by the music that seeped into the cracks of his soul and already he had the bones of a companion piece whirling around in his head. "How did you mean it, then, if not to the foundation?"
But Patrick only smiled, a small, mysterious smile that lit his face with a secret that lived inside his soul and could only be seen in the shadows it cast on the outside. He pulled away and Pete felt desperate loss. He tightened his fingers around Patrick's elbows, keeping him from abandoning Pete altogether.
"I loved it so much. It'd sound just as good in English, too," he said. Patrick bit his bottom lip. The bottom lip Pete couldn't stop thinking about every time he remembered it existed. Pete groaned. "I so want to kiss you right now," he said. "But I want to apologize even more. I never--you never had to hide from me. Or anyone else here."
"Peter! Peter, darling, can we meet him?"
Pete's face fell. Not now, he begged the universe silently. But the universe didn't care about Pete Wentz's problems and his parents wouldn't care even if the universe did. His mother sailed up to them, slicing through the unspoken tension between them. "Dr. Stumph, it's such a pleasure to finally meet you. Peter has so selfishly kept word of your talents to himself, but now I can see why he's been so reluctant. I'm sure you've been having so much more fun outside the Endowment's demands on your time and his."
A stunned Patrick shook Pete's mother's hand, then his father's. "I'm Peter the Second," Pete's father said. "My wife's right, but let me add that your performance tonight was magnificent, and even though it's not a requirement of the Endowment, we hope you'll find some time after the new year to be our guest for dinner in a more personal setting."
Patrick nodded, a bemused expression on his face. Pete's mother broke into a grin. "Wonderful. We know how reluctant Pete is to indulge his parents in a family dinner, but maybe with your influence..."
Pete had had enough and his parents might be making it worse. "Okay, that's enough," he muttered. "I'll see you two later." He practically dragged Patrick into the shadows of the backstage. "I seem to be apologizing for everything and you haven't said a word. Except 'asshole,' which I am." He lowered his head. "Don't feel you have to accept my parents' invitation. It's not a requirement and if you can't tolerate me--"
"Shut up, already. Jesus, Pete. Do you need something else to do with that mouth?"
A shock went through him. Did he mean--
Patrick glanced up from under the brim of his hat in a way Pete had to assume was on purpose. Nobody looked that come-hither without meaning it.
Patrick's words confirmed Pete's suspicions a moment later. "So I get this post-performance high," he said coyly. "It gets me into a very...open mood."
"Yeah?" Pete swayed towards him, not caring who stared at them in the swelling crowd milling around the backstage area. Most of the patrons were busy congratulating Pete's parents as if they'd written the damn song themselves--and performed it. But they were money people. They congratulated money well spent, not art well performed. "That, uh, could be dangerous, if the wrong sort of person comes by at the right time." The corner of his mouth turned up. "I could, maybe, help you with that?"
"That depends." Patrick's tone dropped into a cagey register. "I have a somewhat...radical...philosophy about intimacy."
"I'm listening. I love philosophy."
Patrick led him out the door of the recital hall, not caring about the patrons who attempted to stop them and speak. He'd done his performance, exposed his soul for their commercial edification and entertainment, now he wanted it back for his own purposes--and he could get it back.
The city blocks melted away under their feet as they made record-time back to Pete's brownstone. "I believe intimacy should be shared. As openly and honestly as possible."
Pete licked his lips and fumbled for his keys. "I could be down with that."
Patrick shoved him against his door. "Yeah? Then what's your name?"
"Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz. The Third. I'm the--I represent the Wentz Endowment." Pete was surprised at how much of a struggle it was to say his own name. "Please don't hate me because of it." The low pull in his belly that came from feeling Patrick's hips so close to his was a purgatory where he suffered, awaiting judgment.
"That's the name on your driver's license." Patrick buried his nose in Pete's neck and inhaled. Pete shivered as his lips moved over his skin. But then he felt teeth and cried out from the sudden, sharp sting and the knowledge that Patrick was putting his mark on his skin as much as he'd put his mark into the song and into Pete's soul. "I want to know your real name--the one you want me to use when I'm about to make you come."
Pete turned to ash. Spontaneously combusted. Went molten, hardened, cooled, and became obsidian glass on a black sand beach relentlessly pummeled by ocean tides of sparking nerve endings and overloaded sensation. "Jesus fuck, Patrick."
Patrick laughed, low and evil, against Pete's throat. "No, that's the name you'll be calling out. Tell me your true name. Show me your true self."
Pete scrabbled at the lock. Patrick's fingers closed over his and together they guided the key home and the door sprang open. Patrick pulled him up the stairs and paused to kiss him on the landing. "Gonna tell me that name?"
He ran after Patrick up the next two flights and Patrick shoved him against another door, this one leading to his loft. Pete opened for him. Whatever Patrick wanted. "Pete," he murmured around the hot flush of Patrick's lower lip. "Call me Pete. Call me baby." He fumbled with the door and it sprang open. They stumbled backwards through and up against the same brick wall as the first night only this time Pete's armor was scrubbed by the abrasions from the exposed brick. "Call me yours."
Patrick shoved Pete's suit jacket off his shoulders. His musician's fingers popped Pete's dress shirt buttons free one by one, tugged his tie loose enough to get the collar but left it on to pull him backwards and up the risers to the loft.
Clothing was shed in a flurry of starched cottons and fine weight wool and a whisper of silk from ties tangled in fumbling fingers until Patrick gave up on un-knotting Pete's and pulled him by the knot into his kiss. When Pete made to reach for it, Patrick batted his hand away. "Leave it," he growled. "Red silk suits you."
So Pete left the tie alone and Patrick let the red silk tail trail through his fingers as Pete fell backward onto the bed, pants around his ankles and boxers rucked up below the swell of his ass. Patrick followed him down and Pete got lucky enough to be able to trail his lips along the vee neck of Patrick's undershirt and taste the pale ginger-dusted skin there.
"Hands up," Patrick commanded. Pete's hands shot up like he was at a crime scene, but the only crime here was that Patrick still had his boxers on and Pete was naked.
"Trick, please," Pete whined. "Let me see you? So fucking beautiful, man. Up there, onstage at that piano, singing your heart out--Fuck, Trick, do you have any idea how badly I want to take you back there, lay you out naked on that ebony lacquer--"
Patrick loomed over him. "Shut up, Pete," he said, without rancor. "It's my turn." He reached up and curled Pete's fingers around the brass rails of the bed. "Hold them there or I'll tie 'em."
Heat streaked through Pete. "Yes, sir."
Patrick rolled his eyes. "You've been hiding behind words since we met." He began to stroke Pete's skin. Lightly, so Pete could barely feel it. Soon enough, even those light touches sent shocks racing through Pete. Every nerve ending reached for the lightest brush of Patrick's fingers as they traced his tattoos, brushed over copper-penny nipples, swirled around Pete's navel, followed his treasure line down to the trimmed thatch where his cock jutted up.
"False names and aliases and pretty turns of phrase." Patrick trailed one single finger down the crease where Pete's thigh met his hip, then swirled underneath the taut sac of his balls.
Pete groaned, the pretty words backing up behind his teeth as Patrick's finger circled his hole and stroked back up to flick, bright and sharp, against the leaking head of his cock. His lips were pressed tight together because Patrick had told him to shut it, and he'd be damned if he wouldn't do as the musician said. Patrick lifted his head and met Pete's gaze with his own steady, moody-lake one. The slow, private smile pulling at the corners of Patrick's mouth was as good as verbal praise to Pete and he shuddered with it.
"Those words are your armor, your shield. You don't get those right now, understand?" At Pete's nod, Patrick's smile grew wider and Pete felt like he was being filled with sunlight. "You can make noise, but no words." Pete nodded again. "This is about intimacy. You've heard what Hurley says about it. Intimacy is rebellion."
Pete followed Patrick's movements like a charmed snake as Patrick pulled the bottle of lube and a strip of condoms from the bedside drawer.
"Intimacy is radical." The snap of the lube cap echoed in the room. The tiny, liquid sounds of Patrick slicking up his fingers were turning Pete's limbs into equally frictionless jelly.
"Intimacy is more punk rock than all of your band shirts--" Patrick's fingers were a cold, wet surprise at his entrance, "and all my cover songs--"
The sensation wasn't unpleasant and Pete felt himself surrender to the temperature differential, his body relaxing and opening under an overload of sensation as Patrick moved from one finger to two with determined, careful strokes. "Put together and tied with the laces from those Doc Marten's."
Patrick's fingertips searched for and found that spot that turned Pete incandescent. His legs fell open on a luxuriant moan and he almost--almost, until he remembered--used pretty words to beg for more.
"Your words are a distraction, Pete." Patrick slipped a third finger in and Pete lost his ability to speak. Low tingling spread through his midsection, turning his insides to one giant knot of sensation, ebbing and flowing on the patient movement of Patrick's fingers.
The knot tightened as if every movement of Pete's wound it up instead of untangled it. There was no way, surely, that Patrick could take him apart when he was so locked up and bound, his melodies twisting on the highest registers and no good place to drop to a lower, more open octave. But then Patrick's mouth closed over his cock. Pete didn't think he had any more room for tension--or any way he could possibly grow harder--but Patrick's full lower lip dragging over the crown of his dick found a new limit for Pete.
Moans were fighting their way out of his throat, past his tongue with rhythmic regularity and on a scale that made its own music. Pete licked his lips and held onto the brass bars of his headboard for dear life, determined not to screw this up with a single word or syllable while Patrick's words and Patrick's hands flayed him open with surgical precision and Patrick's mouth erased his name, his identity, all the bullshit baggage he carried around in a messenger bag made of pretension and attitude.
Patrick stripped him down to sensation and brutal honesty with slicked-up fingers and hot wet mouth and then left him there, trembling and open on the precipice as he leaned back and studied Pete with those full red lips pursed.
With deliberate movements, Patrick removed his hat and glasses. He peeled his shirt off, then stood at the foot of the bed to shuck his boxers. All the while, his gaze moved over Pete like something tangible, and Pete held himself as still as possible. "Good, Pete," he murmured. "I see you." His soft tone and softer smile twisted Pete's hollow insides, filling him with gold. "You're beautiful like this. So fucking gorgeous."
Spread-eagled, wearing nothing but a necktie, holding onto his bed for dear life and capable of only inarticulate, strangled moans, Pete glowed under Patrick's praise.
And went supernova over his next words.
"I'm going to fuck you now, Pete." Patrick flipped the cap of the lube open and drizzled some onto his cock, slicking up with his fingers. He tore the condom foil open with his teeth and rolled the latex down over his erection with slow deliberation, following up with more lube.
Pete's entire world had narrowed down to Patrick, his luminous naked body, the jut of his cock, the timbre of his voice. Set the building on fire, drop bombs from the sky, summon volcanic activity from the earth, nothing could have dragged his attention away from Patrick or the promise radiating from him.
Patrick knelt between his legs. "Tell me you're ready or tell me no." He slid one hand up Pete's thigh and Pete's balls twitched in response. "You can say yes or no."
Pete forgot how. He nodded. Licked his lips. Tried to understand who kept making those low, guttural, needy noises and realized too belatedly that they were coming from him.
"Speak, Pete."
He panted for breath, filling his lungs with extra air as if that would unlock the verbal part of his brain. All he was able to do was produce a single, strangled "Yes."
Patrick stroked his inner thighs, pushing them inexorably apart. "Good boy, Pete."
It'd been so long since he'd bottomed, and he didn't honestly think he'd ever do it again because he liked the control too much. Liked to seduce with words. But Patrick had already seduced him with the music he wrote and the demands he made. Patrick wanted intimacy, wanted Pete's heart served up two ways and devoid of garnish, so Pete delivered the only way he knew how and surrendered.
He felt the press and give of Patrick's cock, the burn of being filled and it had been so long that fine trembling started low in his gut and moved out in waves, stealing his breath and relegating him to short, desperate pants. Patrick paused, sweat running down the side of his temple and when the droplet fell and struck Pete's abdomen, the ripple shot through him in a convulsion that shot his hips up, taking Patrick in the rest of the way in a breathless body-quake that shook them both.
"Jesus fuck, Pete." Patrick began to move. "You're--you feel--incredible."
Pete could only moan in response. His words were his shield and he didn't want anything separating him from this. Patrick increased his rhythm, sending the waves through Pete faster and faster. Pete locked his ankles around Patrick's hips and arched his back in a silent plea for touch.
And touch Patrick did. He knotted one fist in Pete's tie and trailed his silk-covered fist along Pete's jaw. "So gorgeous," he murmured. "So bare for me, yes?"
Pete nodded, his jaw slack and his lips soft under Patrick's as Patrick licked into his mouth. "So good, baby. So good for me," he murmured.
The friction between their bodies was all that Pete's dick was getting, but it was enough because for once, the words doing the seducing weren't his and he was fully under their spell.
"So good," Patrick repeated as he snapped his hips again and again and his cock bumped up against Pete's spot, sending sparks through Pete's brain. "Show me who you really are." He trailed his mouth down to Pete's ear and nipped the lobe. "Let me see you, Pete." Patrick lifted his head and met his eyes and Pete couldn't look away. "Let me know you."
And there it was. That shining golden point, the super-fade, the boomerang-snap in his head of turning inside out and surrendering it all. Pete came until he saw stars, finally pushing a word past his lips, the only word that mattered in this moment. "Patrick!"
Hot ribbons shot out of him, painting his belly with fiery streaks. He clenched around Patrick and Patrick buried his face in Pete's neck, riding him through his orgasm, murmuring sweet words of encouragement. "That's it, baby...so good...no games...no more hiding...God, Pete!" Seconds later, Patrick froze inside him except for the rhythmic pulses of his own release sending responsive aftershocks through Pete in a feedback loop of sensation and shared breathing and sweat and heartbeats finally slowed enough to bring them back from the stratosphere.
Patrick withdrew. Pete's fingers tightened on his shoulders. "Don't--"
Patrick pressed a finger to his lips. "Only for a moment, love. Let me take care of you." He returned with a warm damp towel and a glass of water and wrapped Pete in the comforter, sliding in beside him to wrap his arms around the older man and hold him until he stopped shaking.
Hours later, still wrapped in each other, Pete touched his forehead to Patrick's. "Can you forgive me?"
Patrick brought a hand to his cheek. "I was terrified when I found out who you were. My mind went to the worst places--that you'd set me up, that I'd become your dirty little secret, that you'd use who I am against me--" He pressed his fingers against Pete's lips when the older man made a sound of protest. "I know you wouldn't. My fears got in the way of my thinking. Joe sort of set me to rights again. When I wrote the song, I was thinking of you. How heavy the name is for you, and how little it is of you." He drew his fingers away and replaced them with his lips. "I know you, Pete Wentz, and you know me. No matter what name you call yourself, you showed me your soul from the first. I just needed a little help bringing it into focus."
**
Dr. Patrick Stumph became a distinguished emeritus of the university. Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz the Third successfully defended his dissertation in the cultural significance of rhyme in modern language and published a slim volume of poetry that was adopted by a respectable number of universities across the world as an example of modern free-verse with urban influences, then became Dr. Wentz and won a position teaching modern verse at the university's extension campus for non-traditional students. Dr. Andrew Hurley and Dr. Joe Trohman, along with Drs. Stumph and Wentz, can be seen performing at open mic night at the Graduate pub on University Avenue on Thursdays and Saturdays, where a significant part of their set is arguing over whether their name should be Radical Intimacy or some silly reference to a minor character from The Simpsons cartoon TV show.