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fic: each peach, 1/2 [Pete/Patrick/Ashlee, NC-17]
each peach
Pete/Patrick/Ashlee, Pear Liberal Studies.
15323 words, NC-17
not real! never happened! don't google yourself or those you love!
FACT: this story was sparked when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lordessrenegade and I were talking about Pete/Patrick/Ashlee threesomes and how badly we wanted to read some. FACT: this story actually got going when ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
loveyouallwrong IMed me one night and told me to tell her a story. FACT: this story would have been lost forever at least twice, except that angelsaves had chatlogs and saved my sorry ass.
FACT: all three of these wonderful ladies made this story happen, mostly by letting me write it at them a few hundred words at a time and then hounding me until I wrote more. &enablers;
FACT:impertinence read it over once it was all finished and assured me that it actually made sense to somebody who hadn't been reading along as I wrote it. ♥
FACT:longtime_lurker was kind enough to braindump a lot of Pete&Ashlee canon on me. All mistakes and fabrications are mine and not hers!
FACT: This was written forquettaser in a holiday fic exchange. UM. I hope this is what you were looking for? It kind of got away from me somewhere in the middle. /o\
*
It starts with Patrick punching Cash.
He doesn't mean to—well, no. He doesn't intend to, doesn't walk into AK Chicago and think, hey, Cash is here, I should go punch him. In fact, before that night, Patrick would even have said that he liked Cash.
(Plenty of people get turned off by the shitty tattoos and the general being-an-asshole thing, but Patrick realized a long time ago that if he wasn't going to be friends with assholes, he would have to find himself a whole new set of friends, and possibly lock Pete Wentz in a cage.)
But in the second when Cash's arm is resting on his shoulder and Cash's voice is low in his ear—in that second, there's nothing that Patrick would rather do than beat the everloving shit out of Cash Colligan.
"Jesus Christ, Stump," Pete says, grabbing his arm. "What the fuck were you—slow down, asshole, will you?"
Patrick stops dead. His breath clouds in front of him, little explosions of white that whirl and drift upwards, fading as they go. He counts them, one two three four five six seven eight nine ten, and then turns to Pete.
"Sorry I punched him," he says, and Pete laughs.
"Fuck that," he says. "Do you know how many times a week that kid gets beaten up? He's got a jaw made of rubber, I swear." He leans back against the wall. "If anything, you should apologize for making me run out of there after you." He takes a deep breath, tipping his head back and staring at the sky.
("It's so fucked up," Pete had told him once, back when they were younger and dumber. "Like, stars are supposed to be romantic and shit, but they're just fire that's too far away to be useful." They'd been sprawled on the grass in Grant Park, early spring night that was really too cold to make it a good idea.
Patrick had said something, some question about stars not being anything special, and Pete had rolled his shoulders in a slow horizontal shrug.
"I don't know," he'd said, "I mean, they're still something, you know?" A pause. "Not romantic, but they're something."
Lately, he stares up at the sky a lot; Patrick can't ever see a star, but Pete's sure looking at something.)
"Pete?" Patrick says, when they go a full minute without saying anything. "Yo, Wentz, you still with me?"
Pete shakes himself, blinking. "Let me tell you, Trick," he says, "this fatherhood gig is fucking exhausting." And amazing, he doesn't say, but it's there in the line of his shoulders, the steadiness of his hands and his eyes.
It's in his voice, too, and if Patrick could sing like that, they'd sell a million records a day.
Pete rubs his hands together, pushing off the wall. "You ready to head out? It's fucking freezing out here, and I told Ash I'd be back early." His teeth gleam. "You should come back—we'll serenade the girls again, it'll be great."
Patrick thinks about Cash's grin, and about the way he'd looked, afterward: like he'd just been hit by something he really should have seen coming.
Which one of you is the father, really?
Patrick knows the feeling. "Yeah, sure," he says. "I'll meet you there."
*
The thing is, as much as Pete jokes about it (and he jokes about it a lot; it averages out at about three times per relationship, for a pretty generous definition of "relationship"), Patrick's never had a threesome with Pete and his girlfriend-at-the time.
"Man, you're making it sound all—all tawdry," Pete says whenever the subject comes up. "It's just, you know. I trust your judgment, dude." He stares at Patrick accusingly. "You should be honored, motherfucker."
"I can be honored without whipping it out, Wentz," he says, but. Well. It's actually kind of sweet, in a typically Pete way.
The thing is, Patrick doesn't generally like Pete's girlfriends. He doesn't hate them—they're not engaged in feuds, no matter what the internet thinks—but he doesn't especially like them, either. They're not who he'd want to date. Which is fine: that's why Pete is dating them, and Patrick isn't.
The thing is, never once has Patrick looked at a girl Pete was dating and been even the slightest bit jealous.
The thing is, Ashlee is the exception, not the rule.
*
The first time Patrick meets Ashlee, Pete's girlfriend (as opposed to Ashlee, that girl Pete's stalking) comes about a month after she and Pete start dating. Patrick's met her in passing before—Pete invites her to a lot of shows, and sometimes she comes, and then there are all the award shows—but it's the first time they're actually in the same spot at the same time for long enough to have a conversation, or maybe just the first time Pete lets them be.
And it's—nice. Patrick likes her, and she doesn't smack him upside the head when he talks about mixing for a full ten minutes with no pauses. They don't suddenly discover that they're long lost soulmates or anything like that, but Ashlee is quietly, sharply funny, telling stories about a life that, Patrick realizes, is even further removed from reality than theirs can be.
During dessert, she leans into Pete's side easily, without trying to hide herself or stake some kind of a claim. She rolls her eyes when Pete's being a douche, but so does Patrick, and they grin at each other in a moment of recognition, a split second of why am i dating this idiot again?
Not that Patrick is dating Pete, of course, but. Well. At this point, it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference.
After, Pete orders them all coffee, but Ashlee folds her napkin on the table and shakes her head.
"Early interview tomorrow, babe," she says, and Pete nods.
"Text me after?" She kisses him on the side of the head, quick and gentle, then bends down a little more to kiss him on the mouth. Patrick looks down at his napkin, folding the slightly stained side in and smoothing it over his lap. The restaurant's quiet in a very Hollywood way, the kind of place that's been specially engineered to prevent overhearing even though everybody and their cousin can stare at you; still, he's probably imagining the sounds their mouths make together.
"Love you," Ashlee says, straightening up. Pete grins up at her, open and helplessly happy, and she rests an elegant hand on his shoulder, then looks up and nods at Patrick. "See you soon?" Her smile is wide but friendly; fabricated, not fake.
He nods. "Anytime," he says, and means it. Ashlee's smile widens just a bit, and she leans over and brushes a carefully-perfumed kiss across his cheek before drifting out.
Patrick doesn't see anybody staring as she leaves, but he knows they are.
"So?"
Patrick rolls his eyes.
"So what, Pete?" The waiter comes by with their coffee, and despite his reputation Pete's not completely devoid of social graces; he makes faces at Patrick and tries to balance the tiny spoon on his index finger, but he doesn't say anything while their coffee is poured.
"I like her, Pete," he says, because sometimes it's just easier if he answers before Pete asks. "I approve, okay? You have my—my blessing, whatever."
Pete rolls his eyes. "Because suddenly we're in a Jane Austen novel?"
"Well, what do you want me to say, then?" Pete shrugs, stirring his coffee and taking a slow slurping sip. Patrick sighs. "I like her, Pete," he says again. "I'm not just saying that because she seems to put up with you, okay?" He shrugs, tapping out the bass line for the takeover on the little plate under his coffee cup. "She seems—I don't know, really normal."
Pete nods. "She's—like, on the one hand she's totally been shaped by the bullshit culture of celebrity out here, but she has this thing where she just—she fucking owns it, you know? She makes it part of her." He runs his finger around the rim of his coffee cup like he's trying to make it sing. "I'm glad you like her, though."
Patrick shrugs. "I just hope she likes me, you know?"
"Well," Pete says, "duh," like it's just that easy.
*
And that is that. Now that Patrick has given his approval, he sees more and more of Ashlee—first dinners out, followed by dinners at the kitchen counter at Pete's house, where she munches pizza with the rest of them and kicks Pete's ankle when he argues about the mix some more.
"Not during dinner, asshole," she says. "Not unless you're going to play it so that I can listen and have an actual opinion, instead of just being bored." She rolls her eyes. "Or you could pay me to sit and look like I care," she says, "but frankly, babe, I don't think you can afford it."
"Maybe my rich girlfriend will loan me the cash," Pete says, and then, "ow, fuck you!" when Patrick kicks him in the ankle.
After a while, Ashlee starts turning up backstage before shows more regularly, dressed in jeans and sneakers, hoodie pulled close around her face.
"I'm incognito!" she says, jumping over the arm of the couch to land with her head in Pete's lap.
"You're a superspy," he agrees, pulling her hood back and running his hand through her hair. She's not, really; her security—a thousand times more serious than anything the band has ever had to use—is subtle in a way that just makes it clear how utterly they could take somebody out without even blinking. Still, if Patrick ignores the two beefy guys outside the door and the two more at either end of the hall, it's almost like she's just Ashlee, just a normal girl.
"Oh my god, I know," she says. "Like, when I was playing in Vegas—" Like a normal girl, except for how she's really not, which is probably for the best. Pete probably wouldn't know what to do with a normal girl.
Ashlee doesn't really come out on the road with them as such. Their schedules conflict too much, with her always doing the late-night shows in LA while they're playing the Eastern seaboard, and them always stuck in the Midwest when she flies out to Florida. Still, when she has a few days free, she'll sometimes join the tour, riding along with them for a few days before they drop her off at another airport to fly home.
And what the hell is their life, Patrick sometimes wonders, that this seems like a completely reasonable plan?
The first time, it's a surprise thing, and Pete and Ashlee pretty much don't leave the back bedroom for the entire three and a half days she's there. The second time, Joe doesn't even realize she's there, and walks around the bus with his hands over his eyes for the next week.
"The bruises are worth it, dude," he says. "Seriously." After that, they institute a warning policy: Pete has to give the rest of them at least a day's warning before Ashlee shows up, so that at the very least they can get whatever crap they've stashed in the big bedroom before it becomes a no-fly zone.
The third time, Pete gives them three days, and Patrick winds up staring at Andy.
"Should we, like, clean?" he says, drinking his coffee and leaning back in his seat. "Or something?"
Andy shrugs. "I figure she's dating Pete, so probably not," he says. "Plus, remember what she did with that bell pepper?"
Patrick makes a face. It was pretty memorably vile, because apparently ballerinas are not nearly as polite or cultured as he would have thought. In the end, he gets distracted by the new stuff that The Cab are sending him, which means that the bus is even more of a pit than usual.
So of course he's alone on the bus when Ashlee gets there.
"Oh, hi," he says, after the third time she says his name. "Hey, great to see you!" He gets up to give her a hug, trips over an empty box of crackers, and winds up nearly tackling her to the couch when he over balances. For a long moment, they stare at each other, and then crack up laughing.
"So, hi," he says, sliding off the couch and settling on the floor. "Good to see you; sorry the place is a shithole; I think the guys are out on the waterfront?" They're somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, Maryland or one of the Carolinas, and Joe had expressed a deep-seated desire to throw stuff at the waves.
"Dude, you should see my bus," she says. "What are you working on?"
The next night, Patrick has sex with her.
They've got a show outside of DC the next night, but that night there's nothing more pressing than taking showers and watching a lot of crap on cable.
Andy has some friends he wants to visit, so Patrick is in with Joe, leaving Pete and Ashlee the other room. Joe snags first shower, and Patrick drags out his laptop and settles in on the right-hand bed. He checks his email from the bus or from venues, but it's nice to be able to read things on a screen bigger than the palm of his hand.
Predictably, there's an email from Pete; Patrick's phone rings just as he clicks on it.
"Fuck you," he says, instead of hello. "Not everybody is surgically attached to the internet."
Instead of Pete's horsey laugh, though, he gets a low, hoarse chuckle.
"Oh, shit," he says, "Sorry, Ash."
"Don't worry about it, babe," she says. "I know how he gets, trust me." She laughs again. "Once he texted me—then emailed to see if I'd gotten his text—then called to see if I'd gotten the email—and then called my fucking security to see why the call hadn't gotten through." An indistinct yell comes over the phone; the call of the wild Pete Wentz. "I was in a fucking photoshoot, babe," she says, "Dianne was dicking with you; she likes you, I swear." Her voice gets a little louder, a little clearer. "She really does love him," Ashlee says. "I think she thinks he's a good influence or something."
"My mom thinks the same thing," Patrick says, which is true: Patrick's mom is, against all evidence, convinced that Pete is a Nice Young Man.
"Awesome," Ashlee says. "So, hey, I was calling you to ask if you and Joe wanted to come with us tonight." Patrick glances down at the computer, which says goin out to cruise the dc scene with my luvly lady; want to come with? tell trohman to wear his dancin shoes. More or less the same thing, really.
"I'm in, yeah," Patrick says. "Joe's still in the shower, hang on." He settles the laptop on the bed next to him, then stands up and crosses the room to hammer on the bathroom door, phone pressed against his shoulder. "Trohman, you want to come out with us tonight?" The water shuts off, and Patrick hears the tell-tale rustling noises of Joe wrapping a towel around his hair and scrubbing.
"Enh," Joe says, opening the door. "Think I'm gonna go chill with the guys in Cute, but I might join you later?"
"Put some fucking pants on," Patrick says. When he lifts the phone back to his ear, Ashlee is giggling. "Joe might come out later," he says.
"Yeah, well, make sure he knows about DC public decency laws," she says. "I hear they're pretty strict about that shit."
Over the phone, he hears Pete say something about politicians. "Pete says—"
"I've heard it," Patrick tells her. "Tell him that he has no room to talk."
"Tell him to go fuck himself," he hears Pete say, and then, "Ow!"
"Tonight you can tell each other whatever you want," Ashlee says. "Hanging up now."
*
They go to a bar that Pete knows about.
"Karaoke Thursday - everybody welcome," Patrick reads. Ashlee raises an immaculate eyebrow; beside her, Pete grins wide and guilty. "Fuck you," Patrick says. "You're not getting me up there."
"Uh huh," Pete says. "Sure thing."
"Fuck you," Patrick says again, but in they go.
Sure enough, Patrick winds up onstage, steadying himself on the mic stand and singing along to an over-synthesized version of Joe Cocker. Pete and Ashlee are in a corner booth, leaning into each other and laughing; he can see their teeth from the stage.
"You can leeeeeeave your hat on," he sings, "Thank you, good night, I'm just gonna—" The stage is tiny, and the edge comes sooner than Patrick expects.
"Careful there, buddy," Ashlee says as he stumbles into the booth. "Watch your step."
"Don't want you to break your pretty face," Pete says. Patrick rolls his eyes.
"I could break your pretty face," he offers, but Pete just giggles.
"Omigod," he says, breathy and high-pitched. "Did you hear that, Ash? He thinks I'm pretty!"
Ashlee laughs and puts her arm around Patrick's shoulders, letting him lean against her. "Of course he does, dear," she says, and he hears the soft sound of a kiss, somewhere up and to the right.
"We should probably go," Pete says. "They're about to wind down."
(Used to be, Pete would stay all night at a club, long after everybody but the bartenders had left, and sometimes even after that. Ashlee's security gets twitchy when they try that, though, so mostly Pete ducks out early, these days.
"Plus," he'd said, "I have better things to do with my time now."
Patrick had rolled his eyes. "Thank you, Pete," he'd said. "I'm sure Ashlee likes being a thing you do."
"Not always," Pete had said, smirking. "Sometimes I let her do me."
There had been nothing to say to that, so Patrick had just shoved Pete into a snowbank and called it a day.)
Ashlee grabs her purse and they head outside the club, hurrying past the crowds of artfully-posed smokers leaning against the wall. Patrick sees the cab first and waves it over, but Pete grabs the door and pushes him in first.
"You get the middle seat," he hears, "you're tiny." He's still trying to sort himself out—possibly he's had more to drink than he realized—when Ashlee comes tumbling into the cab, scooting across the seat with a squeak and fetching up against Patrick's side. Beyond her, Pete is launching himself into the cab and slamming the door behind him, rattling off the name of the hotel for the driver.
"Hi," Ashlee says, leaning back against Patrick. Her face is pale, illuminated in flashes by the streetlights. "You sounded great." Patrick rolls his eyes and she flicks his nose, grinning upside-down at him. "No, really," she says. "Really."
"Thanks," Patrick says, and leans back against the window, cool and slightly greasy against the side of his face. Ashlee says something to Pete, and Pete laughs softly, and Patrick watches the buildings pass.
It isn't until Ashlee giggles and squirms against him that Patrick realizes that he's singing again, the same song over: you give me reason to live.
"Sorry," he says, but Ashlee shakes her head.
"It just startled me," she says, leaning back against him again. "I could feel it, and it startled me."
"Yeah, Trick does that," Pete says. He's leaning against the other window, one leg up on the seat, staring at the two of them, all bright teeth and dark eyes. "I always liked it, though."
"Oh, I wasn't complaining," Ashlee says. When Patrick doesn't do or say anything, she elbows him gently in the side. "Keep going," she says. "It was nice."
"Yeah, I know what love is", Patrick sings, because it's the only thing to do. His eyes slip closed, but he keeps going.
"It's kind of hot, really," Ashlee says after a while, and Pete laughs.
"I've been telling him that for years, Ash," he says. "It doesn't seem to stick." Patrick doesn't open his eyes, doesn't do anything but keep singing, head against the window, Ashlee warm and snug against his side.
The cab spits them out at the hotel and they head inside; out of the corner of his eye, Patrick sees Ashlee's security pull up in dark SUVs.
Pete fumbles the keycard and shoves the door open; Patrick leans against the opposite wall and ducks his head.
"Well, see you—" he starts, but Pete grabs his wrist.
"Come on, Trick," he says. "Don't be a wet duck." He tugs on Patrick's arm, pulling him slightly away from the wall and then letting him drop back.
"Whatever, I'm going in," Ashlee says. "You guys can sort yourselves out." She presses a kiss against Pete's hair and sweeps into the room, and Patrick laughs and lets Pete tug him along behind her.
"A wet duck, Pete?"
Pete shrugs. "Whatever, you knew what I meant." And Patrick did, so there's that. "More importantly," Pete says, shrugging out of his hoodie and tossing it on the bed, "more importantly, Patrick, you like my girlfriend." He turns around, leaning against the edge of the bed, arms crossed across his chest.
"Well," Patrick says, "well, yeah," because he does like Ashlee, thinks she's good for Pete and Pete is maybe even good for her (which is altogether rarer, on the whole). Patrick flips the deadbolt and leans back against the door. "She's cool." From the bathroom, he hears the sound of the tap flipping on, the quiet noises of Ashlee just out of sight.
"No, I mean, you—" Pete takes a deep breath, tilts his head back, lets it out through his nose. "You like her." He takes a step forward, another, another.
And—and the thing is, he's not wrong. Ashlee is beautiful and elegant, but Patrick gets the impression that she's a lot more normal than her image would suggest. She's got an edge to her smile and a tendency not to wear bras, but she giggles at Pete's stupid puns and kicks off her shoes when she's on the bus.
Plus, she's hot, but, whatever, Patrick is very definitely not thinking about that. Not at all. Or, well—now he is, because Pete's being a douche and bringing it up, but as soon as he gets out of here he is going to go right back to his very busy schedule of not ever thinking about Pete's girlfriend naked.
"I—I should go," Patrick says, shaking his head, but Pete is suddenly there, up close, hands braced on the door on either side of Patrick's head.
"No," he says. "No, tell me." Patrick shakes his head again, trying to express what he'd really rather not have to say; his hair brushes against Pete's bare arm and they both freeze.
Patrick's known Pete for years now, has slept in his bed and on his couch and in the same corner of the van, but it feels like they've never been this close before.
"Tell me," Pete says again, and Patrick takes a breath, one last breath before—
"Tell you what?" The water's still running, but the bathroom door is open and Ashlee's standing there, leaning against the doorframe. The skin at her wrists glistens damply, and the top button of her jeans is undone.
Pete breathes in again, glances over his shoulder and grins sharp and dangerous.
"Our boy here was just telling me how fine you are," he says, bringing his hips forward to grind against Patrick, but somehow all of the energy, all the spark is gone. This, Patrick can deal with: this is just Pete, just Patrick's best friend being a jackass because that's what he does when he doesn't know how else to get a reaction. Sure, that's Pete's dick, and sure, he's slightly better than half-hard, but Pete can and has gotten erections from desk chairs and teddy bears.
"Actually," Patrick says, "your boyfriend's just being an asshole again." He rests his hand on the back of Pete's neck, reassurance and absolution, and feels Pete relax against him, letting their bodies lean together.
"Well, fortunately for him, I tend to go for assholes," Ashlee says, and that must be some kind of codeword for them, because Pete is suddenly tense in Patrick's arms, pressing a quick kiss against Patrick's neck and then looking back at Ashlee.
"You think so?" he says, which makes no sense to Patrick at all, and Ashlee shrugs.
"Depends what you're suggesting, babe," she says, and that is officially it, Patrick can feel Pete's dick against his thigh and he is so totally out of here. Their friendship has limits, after all—not many of them, but a crucial few—and deliberate boners are one of them.
"Um," he says again. "I should probably go."
"No," Pete says, leaning heavily against Patrick, holding him against the door. "No, don't."
"Is he telling the truth, Patrick?" Ashlee comes quickly across the room and leans against Pete's back, adding her weight to his, the two of them pressing him into the door until it feels like he can't breathe. She hooks her chin over Pete's shoulder and smiles at him, slow and luxurious.
Patrick has been Pete's friend for years; he knows a dare when he sees one.
He takes a deep breath. "Yeah," he says, shifting his shoulders against the door. "I think you're pretty hot. Good job on that."
*
Patrick wakes up the next morning with his hand tucked under his face, staring at Pete's alarm clock. He knows it's Pete's alarm clock because of the jagged dent in the side, a battle scar from the time Pete spent the night before they left on tour out with Travis and Bill Beckett, and Patrick had to come get him before Andy got fed up and left without them. Pete could afford a new alarm or three, but he hasn't replaced the old one.
As he watches, the minutes click from :59 to :00. The clock makes a dull click, and the ALARM SET light in the lower right-hand corner flickers.
"—at two minutes after the hour, this is NPR, national public radio," it tells him. "Weather today for Chicago is—"
"—nngh." The arm across his back shifts slightly. "Gragh."
Patrick turns his head slowly, scrubbing his face against the pillow. Ashlee smiles at him lazily, drums her fingers against his back, and lets her eyes fall shut again; Pete presses his face against her neck, his hair falling across his face.
"In Washington this morning," the clock continues, and Patrick reaches back and slaps at it until it shuts off.
"Turn off the alarm," Pete says, muffled against Ashlee's skin. "Otherwise it's just going to start again in seven minutes." The sheets are twisted around their waists, a tangle of dark blue against pale skin, and they shift slightly in rhythm with the motion of Pete's arm, with the slow sigh of Ashlee's breathing. She shifts her hips and digs her nails into Patrick's back.
Patrick fumbles blindly with the switch—left side, at the back, ALARM ON, ALARM SET, ALARM OFF—and slides it down to the bottom notch without looking.
"Thanks," Ashlee says. "Now get over here and—oh." Pete's pulling her leg back, over his hips, and she turns onto her back and arches into it. The sheets aren't slipping down, but it's impossible not to know exactly what's going on, impossible to miss the exact moment that Pete slides into her, the little gasp and the shiver that goes through her.
(The memory, after all, is vivid: Ashlee above him, hands on her own breasts, sinking carefully down over him; Pete's hand on her thigh, smoothing over the tense muscle; Ashlee's high little moan and the way her hips rocked forward as their hipbones brushed; Pete's teeth on his neck, his warm heavy breath, his voice.)
Pete's hands are the same color as Ashlee's nipples, almost, although her skin is much smoother; Patrick remembers the taste and feel of both. She jerks when Pete tugs on them, interrupting her own rhythm, and Pete smirks against her neck.
"Fuck you," she says, and it's not clear who she's talking to: her right hand is digging into Pete's thigh, leaving pale skins and tiny indentations; her left hand is pulling the sheet down. Patrick takes a deep breath and follows it, tracing its revelations: the angles of Ashlee's hips, shadowed by blankets and the curve of Pete's side; the delicate skin of her thighs; the awkward ankle of Pete's knees. The slow slide of Pete's dick as he rocks into Ashlee, lifting her up a little with every thrust.
The base of Pete's dick, when Patrick can see it, is glistening in the little bit of light that comes through the crappy hotel blinds. Patrick braces his hands on Ashlee's thighs and licks, tasting salt and sweat and Ashlee and Pete, all the flavors and smells of last night but concentrated by sleep. Pete's hips jerk, predictably enough, and Ashlee's hand slides through his hair.
He knows it's Ashlee, because she doesn't pull.
She does dig her fingernails into his scalp, but that's only later, when Patrick's licking across her clit again and again and Pete is fucking her with fast shallow strokes.
"God, fuck," Ashlee says, and something that sounds vaguely like Pete's name. Her heels dig into Patrick's back, holding him still, and he keeps his head down and scrapes his teeth over her, swallowing while she moans.
"Come on," Pete says, "Come on, fuck, yeah, just—" Ashlee bucks up, then grinds back down, letting out her breath in one long sigh; Pete thrusts up two more times, three, and then clutches her hips and groans.
Patrick rests his forehead against Ashlee's thigh and rolls to one side, reaching down until he can touch his dick, eyes closed, breathing deeply.
Afterwards, he wipes his mouth and his hand on the sheets. Pete makes a face at him, but Patrick just rolls his eyes.
"Oh, shut up," Ashlee says, leaning back against Pete's chest; he's scooted them back so that they're propped against the headboard, Ashlee between his thighs, lazy and sated. "Like you're not way grosser."
"Whatever, like you're not," Pete says, leaning down to kiss her. Patrick's boxers are next to the overstuffed chair on the other side of the room; he rolls off the bed and grabs them, trying to decide whether it's worth it to put them back on for the trek back to his room. His jeans are—
"—hey, dude," Pete says, careful and casual. "Trick, hey." Patrick picks up his jeans from under the coffee table and pats the pockets, checking for his key, his ID, his change from the bar last night. One of his socks is tucked between his shoes, but he can't find the other one.
"Check inside your jeans," Ashlee suggests; Patrick shakes his jeans, and sure enough, the missing sock falls out, crumpled into a ball. He kicks it onto his shoes and tugs his jeans on; might as well go commando when all he has to do is walk down a hallway.
"Patrick," Pete says again, and Patrick looks up, blinking.
"Yeah?" Pete's running his fingers through Ashlee's hair, one arm around her waist. The room is still mostly dark.
"Tell Trohman he missed out," Pete says finally. His teeth pick up the light that creeps in around the heavy hotel blinds.
"Sure thing," Patrick says, and lets himself out.
*
So that happens, and it's—whatever it is. Joe gives Patrick shit for coming back with his underwear in his hand, but he accepts it as the natural result of a night out on the town with Pete. Ashlee smiles at Patrick on the bus the next day, easy and normal, and then kicks his sorry ass at Wii tennis; she kisses his cheek in Cincinnati when she's leaving for her flight.
Pete gives him a wet willie and a half-hour backrub, and Patrick figures that things are back to normal.
A month and a half later, Patrick is sitting on the couch, reading AP (which is normal). Pete comes out from the back room, where he's been taking a mid-morning nap (also normal, for given values of Pete Wentz), talking on the phone with Ashlee (very normal, these days).
"Patrick," he says, "come here, man, I've got something to show you." This is also normal: Pete and Ashlee's phone conversations tend to include at least as much time where they're talking to somebody else as time when they're talking to each other.
Patrick follows Pete back to the back bedroom, where Pete pushes him down onto the bed, sets the phone on the pillow beside him, and begins to grope him through his jeans.
This is—not normal.
Not that Patrick is complaining, not when "not normal" means Pete's hand on his inseam, Pete's breath warm and damp against his thigh, Pete's hair under his fingers. Pete's fingers tucked into his jeans, first a little and then a lot, popping the button and sliding the zipper down.
"Hi," Ashlee says in his ear. "What's up?"
This is really, really weird.
"Um," Patrick says, mouth dry. "Ashlee?" Pete bites his hip and grins up at him.
"Yeah," Ashlee says. "How're you doing, babe?" Her voice is soft and warm and Patrick kind of suspects that she's laughing at him, but he can't find the energy to care much about it when Pete's got his boxers around his knees and is rubbing his face against Patrick's dick.
"Not bad," Patrick says. Pete hasn't shaved in a few days, and it's almost too much, but almost switches over to just-right when Pete presses his lips against the head of Patrick's dick and slides slowly down. "I think your boyfriend's growing a beard, though," he says.
Ashlee tsks. "Really?" Patrick hmms, and then so does Pete, the sound and vibration making Patrick shiver. "How bad is it?" Ashlee asks. "Like, is it really ugly?" She sighs. "Because, like, I'd probably still love him if he had a really ugly beard, but it wouldn't be easy."
Pete's mouth is warm and wet, and it's not like this is the first time Patrick's been the recipient of Pete's sporadic affection for fellatio, or even the second, but somehow it's different here and now, with Pete's hands warm on his hips and Pete's girlfriend smirking down the phone at him.
"It's pretty bad," Patrick tells her. "You should maybe think about withholding sex."
"Really?" Ashlee asks, like they're actually talking about Pete's awful facial hair.
"Ngha," Patrick assures her. He would go on, but apparently Pete takes insults to his patchy sketchy beard as an invitation to suck Patrick's brain out through his dick. "I—" he tries again, but winds up coming down Pete's throat instead.
"Patrick?" Pete stands up, grinning close-mouthed at Patrick, and walks to the bus bathroom. "You're breaking up, what did you say?"
"It's maybe not actually that bad," Patrick says, low and quick, "but don't tell him I said that, because then he'll keep going and it'll get worse."
It is totally that bad, actually, but somehow that doesn't matter.
*
Things go on, time passes. They finish the tour; they go back to their apartments for a few weeks and ignore the rest of the world entirely; they get tired of that and go back to harassing each other on a daily basis. Pete and Ashlee continue to be disgustingly cute; Patrick continues to occasionally have sex with them.
It's really not so bad, on the whole. Patrick is starting to get a handle on how this thing works: basically, he's being used as a human sex toy by his best friend and his best friend's hot girlfriend. Which is maybe creepy, and definitely more than a little weird, but, really, whatever. Patrick has lived a lot of weird things, and seen a lot of even weirder things. On the whole, he's pretty sure that there are worse things in the world than occasionally having really great sex with people he likes.
He winds up in their hotel room a few more times, before the tour ends, and sometimes Ashlee calls him up and talks to him while Pete blows him. (Sometimes she calls to talk about other things, too: mix choices for the album; Pete's terrible hair; whether or not Mrs. Wentz is going to hate her.
"Dude, shut up, you'll be fine," Patrick tells her. "She's Pete's mom; she's not going to care if you wear too much eyeliner."
"Fuck you," Ashlee says, but he can tell she's smiling.)
One afternoon, Pete corners him in the back lounge, locking the door behind himself and leaning against it. He's got his seductive face on, which isn't anywhere near as hot as the faces he makes when he forgets to make a face, but Patrick's willing to go with it if it means he'll get laid.
"Patrick?" Pete says hopefully, and Patrick saves his work and closes his computer.
"Yeah, sure," he says, holding out his hand for the phone. When he gets Pete's hand instead, it throws him, and he stands there staring at it.
"She's on a plane," Pete says, which, right, that makes sense.
"What," Patrick says, "and you couldn't wait three hours?" He pulls Pete in until he's close enough to kiss, warm and soft and friendly. "Asshole."
"Fuck you," Pete says, "if you're not interested, I'll just go talk to Joe." He squirms a bit, half-serious; he's also half-hard, pressing against the front of his jeans. Patrick runs his fingers over the bulge, firm and quick, and Pete shivers.
"I didn't say that," Patrick says, tightening his hand around Pete's wrist and stroking him through his pants again. "I mean, you know, whatever; you're already here, so I might as well go with it."
"That's good, Trick," Pete says. "Taking whatever you can get; I respect that." Pete's basically straddling his thighs, thrusting lazily into his hand. When Patrick looks up from his dick, Pete's grinning at him, that same cocky jerk grin that gets him punched and kissed in pretty much equal measure. It's easy to lean up and press his face against Pete's neck, and even easier to bite down, tasting sweat and hair product and Pete.
Pete arches forward and makes a choked noise. Patrick pauses, licking the side of Pete's neck idly, and then bites again.
"Is that what we're doing?" He says it against Pete's skin, his lips moving slickly, and Pete shivers.
"Careful, fucker," he says. "Don't fucking give me a hickie." He's breathing heavily, though, and he doesn't resist when Patrick shoves him to his feet and steers them towards the bed.
"Whatever," he says, pushing Pete down on his back. "You know you love it." He pulls Pete's shirt up over his shoulders, leaving it tangled around his hands. When Pete squirms, Patrick bites down on the inside of his arm, hard and messy with spit and sweat. Pete thrusts up, almost knocking Patrick off-balance, but Patrick just rides it out and leaves his mouth where it is, toying with the skin and sucking. When he pulls back, there's a mottled red mark that Pete twists his head around to see.
"You like it," Patrick says again, and Pete shakes his head, not really negation or agreement, just movement, uncontrolled and unconscious. "You know," Patrick adds, between tiny bites to Pete's collarbone, "Ashlee's going to see these." Pete arches up again, pressing himself against Patrick's mouth, his hands, and Patrick does his part and holds him back down, biting harder.
"She's going to ask you," he says, setting his teeth against Pete's shoulder, "what the hell you were doing," his ribs, bumping bones and Pete's hoarse sighs, "to get so," his stomach, biting gently until Pete giggles and then harder until he moans, "messed up like this."
Patrick pulls Pete's already-low jeans down a little further and bites a bruise against his hipbone; Pete stiffens under him, groaning, and comes against Patrick's neck in a messy splash.
"Fuck," Pete says, "fuck, Patrick." He sounds drunk and dazed, and his hands are grabbing aimlessly at the blanket. Patrick would wait, let Pete jerk him off—Pete has nice hands, for some things—but Pete seems pretty out of it, and there's no real reason for Pete to be involved. Instead, Patrick bites him again, easy and friendly, and slides one hand down into his own pants, jerking himself tight and quick. "Fuck, are you—fuck," Pete says again, sounding a little amazed.
Patrick just lets it all wash over him: Pete's hands in his hair, the smell of Pete's sheets, Pete's voice washing over him. Pete's totally not involved, not at all.
"Fuck," Pete says, and Patrick totally agrees.
Continued here
Pete/Patrick/Ashlee, Pear Liberal Studies.
15323 words, NC-17
not real! never happened! don't google yourself or those you love!
FACT: this story was sparked when
lordessrenegade and I were talking about Pete/Patrick/Ashlee threesomes and how badly we wanted to read some. FACT: this story actually got going when loveyouallwrong IMed me one night and told me to tell her a story. FACT: this story would have been lost forever at least twice, except that angelsaves had chatlogs and saved my sorry ass. FACT: all three of these wonderful ladies made this story happen, mostly by letting me write it at them a few hundred words at a time and then hounding me until I wrote more. &enablers;
FACT:
impertinence read it over once it was all finished and assured me that it actually made sense to somebody who hadn't been reading along as I wrote it. ♥FACT:
longtime_lurker was kind enough to braindump a lot of Pete&Ashlee canon on me. All mistakes and fabrications are mine and not hers!FACT: This was written for
quettaser in a holiday fic exchange. UM. I hope this is what you were looking for? It kind of got away from me somewhere in the middle. /o\*
It starts with Patrick punching Cash.
He doesn't mean to—well, no. He doesn't intend to, doesn't walk into AK Chicago and think, hey, Cash is here, I should go punch him. In fact, before that night, Patrick would even have said that he liked Cash.
(Plenty of people get turned off by the shitty tattoos and the general being-an-asshole thing, but Patrick realized a long time ago that if he wasn't going to be friends with assholes, he would have to find himself a whole new set of friends, and possibly lock Pete Wentz in a cage.)
But in the second when Cash's arm is resting on his shoulder and Cash's voice is low in his ear—in that second, there's nothing that Patrick would rather do than beat the everloving shit out of Cash Colligan.
"Jesus Christ, Stump," Pete says, grabbing his arm. "What the fuck were you—slow down, asshole, will you?"
Patrick stops dead. His breath clouds in front of him, little explosions of white that whirl and drift upwards, fading as they go. He counts them, one two three four five six seven eight nine ten, and then turns to Pete.
"Sorry I punched him," he says, and Pete laughs.
"Fuck that," he says. "Do you know how many times a week that kid gets beaten up? He's got a jaw made of rubber, I swear." He leans back against the wall. "If anything, you should apologize for making me run out of there after you." He takes a deep breath, tipping his head back and staring at the sky.
("It's so fucked up," Pete had told him once, back when they were younger and dumber. "Like, stars are supposed to be romantic and shit, but they're just fire that's too far away to be useful." They'd been sprawled on the grass in Grant Park, early spring night that was really too cold to make it a good idea.
Patrick had said something, some question about stars not being anything special, and Pete had rolled his shoulders in a slow horizontal shrug.
"I don't know," he'd said, "I mean, they're still something, you know?" A pause. "Not romantic, but they're something."
Lately, he stares up at the sky a lot; Patrick can't ever see a star, but Pete's sure looking at something.)
"Pete?" Patrick says, when they go a full minute without saying anything. "Yo, Wentz, you still with me?"
Pete shakes himself, blinking. "Let me tell you, Trick," he says, "this fatherhood gig is fucking exhausting." And amazing, he doesn't say, but it's there in the line of his shoulders, the steadiness of his hands and his eyes.
It's in his voice, too, and if Patrick could sing like that, they'd sell a million records a day.
Pete rubs his hands together, pushing off the wall. "You ready to head out? It's fucking freezing out here, and I told Ash I'd be back early." His teeth gleam. "You should come back—we'll serenade the girls again, it'll be great."
Patrick thinks about Cash's grin, and about the way he'd looked, afterward: like he'd just been hit by something he really should have seen coming.
Which one of you is the father, really?
Patrick knows the feeling. "Yeah, sure," he says. "I'll meet you there."
*
The thing is, as much as Pete jokes about it (and he jokes about it a lot; it averages out at about three times per relationship, for a pretty generous definition of "relationship"), Patrick's never had a threesome with Pete and his girlfriend-at-the time.
"Man, you're making it sound all—all tawdry," Pete says whenever the subject comes up. "It's just, you know. I trust your judgment, dude." He stares at Patrick accusingly. "You should be honored, motherfucker."
"I can be honored without whipping it out, Wentz," he says, but. Well. It's actually kind of sweet, in a typically Pete way.
The thing is, Patrick doesn't generally like Pete's girlfriends. He doesn't hate them—they're not engaged in feuds, no matter what the internet thinks—but he doesn't especially like them, either. They're not who he'd want to date. Which is fine: that's why Pete is dating them, and Patrick isn't.
The thing is, never once has Patrick looked at a girl Pete was dating and been even the slightest bit jealous.
The thing is, Ashlee is the exception, not the rule.
*
The first time Patrick meets Ashlee, Pete's girlfriend (as opposed to Ashlee, that girl Pete's stalking) comes about a month after she and Pete start dating. Patrick's met her in passing before—Pete invites her to a lot of shows, and sometimes she comes, and then there are all the award shows—but it's the first time they're actually in the same spot at the same time for long enough to have a conversation, or maybe just the first time Pete lets them be.
And it's—nice. Patrick likes her, and she doesn't smack him upside the head when he talks about mixing for a full ten minutes with no pauses. They don't suddenly discover that they're long lost soulmates or anything like that, but Ashlee is quietly, sharply funny, telling stories about a life that, Patrick realizes, is even further removed from reality than theirs can be.
During dessert, she leans into Pete's side easily, without trying to hide herself or stake some kind of a claim. She rolls her eyes when Pete's being a douche, but so does Patrick, and they grin at each other in a moment of recognition, a split second of why am i dating this idiot again?
Not that Patrick is dating Pete, of course, but. Well. At this point, it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference.
After, Pete orders them all coffee, but Ashlee folds her napkin on the table and shakes her head.
"Early interview tomorrow, babe," she says, and Pete nods.
"Text me after?" She kisses him on the side of the head, quick and gentle, then bends down a little more to kiss him on the mouth. Patrick looks down at his napkin, folding the slightly stained side in and smoothing it over his lap. The restaurant's quiet in a very Hollywood way, the kind of place that's been specially engineered to prevent overhearing even though everybody and their cousin can stare at you; still, he's probably imagining the sounds their mouths make together.
"Love you," Ashlee says, straightening up. Pete grins up at her, open and helplessly happy, and she rests an elegant hand on his shoulder, then looks up and nods at Patrick. "See you soon?" Her smile is wide but friendly; fabricated, not fake.
He nods. "Anytime," he says, and means it. Ashlee's smile widens just a bit, and she leans over and brushes a carefully-perfumed kiss across his cheek before drifting out.
Patrick doesn't see anybody staring as she leaves, but he knows they are.
"So?"
Patrick rolls his eyes.
"So what, Pete?" The waiter comes by with their coffee, and despite his reputation Pete's not completely devoid of social graces; he makes faces at Patrick and tries to balance the tiny spoon on his index finger, but he doesn't say anything while their coffee is poured.
"I like her, Pete," he says, because sometimes it's just easier if he answers before Pete asks. "I approve, okay? You have my—my blessing, whatever."
Pete rolls his eyes. "Because suddenly we're in a Jane Austen novel?"
"Well, what do you want me to say, then?" Pete shrugs, stirring his coffee and taking a slow slurping sip. Patrick sighs. "I like her, Pete," he says again. "I'm not just saying that because she seems to put up with you, okay?" He shrugs, tapping out the bass line for the takeover on the little plate under his coffee cup. "She seems—I don't know, really normal."
Pete nods. "She's—like, on the one hand she's totally been shaped by the bullshit culture of celebrity out here, but she has this thing where she just—she fucking owns it, you know? She makes it part of her." He runs his finger around the rim of his coffee cup like he's trying to make it sing. "I'm glad you like her, though."
Patrick shrugs. "I just hope she likes me, you know?"
"Well," Pete says, "duh," like it's just that easy.
*
And that is that. Now that Patrick has given his approval, he sees more and more of Ashlee—first dinners out, followed by dinners at the kitchen counter at Pete's house, where she munches pizza with the rest of them and kicks Pete's ankle when he argues about the mix some more.
"Not during dinner, asshole," she says. "Not unless you're going to play it so that I can listen and have an actual opinion, instead of just being bored." She rolls her eyes. "Or you could pay me to sit and look like I care," she says, "but frankly, babe, I don't think you can afford it."
"Maybe my rich girlfriend will loan me the cash," Pete says, and then, "ow, fuck you!" when Patrick kicks him in the ankle.
After a while, Ashlee starts turning up backstage before shows more regularly, dressed in jeans and sneakers, hoodie pulled close around her face.
"I'm incognito!" she says, jumping over the arm of the couch to land with her head in Pete's lap.
"You're a superspy," he agrees, pulling her hood back and running his hand through her hair. She's not, really; her security—a thousand times more serious than anything the band has ever had to use—is subtle in a way that just makes it clear how utterly they could take somebody out without even blinking. Still, if Patrick ignores the two beefy guys outside the door and the two more at either end of the hall, it's almost like she's just Ashlee, just a normal girl.
"Oh my god, I know," she says. "Like, when I was playing in Vegas—" Like a normal girl, except for how she's really not, which is probably for the best. Pete probably wouldn't know what to do with a normal girl.
Ashlee doesn't really come out on the road with them as such. Their schedules conflict too much, with her always doing the late-night shows in LA while they're playing the Eastern seaboard, and them always stuck in the Midwest when she flies out to Florida. Still, when she has a few days free, she'll sometimes join the tour, riding along with them for a few days before they drop her off at another airport to fly home.
And what the hell is their life, Patrick sometimes wonders, that this seems like a completely reasonable plan?
The first time, it's a surprise thing, and Pete and Ashlee pretty much don't leave the back bedroom for the entire three and a half days she's there. The second time, Joe doesn't even realize she's there, and walks around the bus with his hands over his eyes for the next week.
"The bruises are worth it, dude," he says. "Seriously." After that, they institute a warning policy: Pete has to give the rest of them at least a day's warning before Ashlee shows up, so that at the very least they can get whatever crap they've stashed in the big bedroom before it becomes a no-fly zone.
The third time, Pete gives them three days, and Patrick winds up staring at Andy.
"Should we, like, clean?" he says, drinking his coffee and leaning back in his seat. "Or something?"
Andy shrugs. "I figure she's dating Pete, so probably not," he says. "Plus, remember what she did with that bell pepper?"
Patrick makes a face. It was pretty memorably vile, because apparently ballerinas are not nearly as polite or cultured as he would have thought. In the end, he gets distracted by the new stuff that The Cab are sending him, which means that the bus is even more of a pit than usual.
So of course he's alone on the bus when Ashlee gets there.
"Oh, hi," he says, after the third time she says his name. "Hey, great to see you!" He gets up to give her a hug, trips over an empty box of crackers, and winds up nearly tackling her to the couch when he over balances. For a long moment, they stare at each other, and then crack up laughing.
"So, hi," he says, sliding off the couch and settling on the floor. "Good to see you; sorry the place is a shithole; I think the guys are out on the waterfront?" They're somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, Maryland or one of the Carolinas, and Joe had expressed a deep-seated desire to throw stuff at the waves.
"Dude, you should see my bus," she says. "What are you working on?"
The next night, Patrick has sex with her.
They've got a show outside of DC the next night, but that night there's nothing more pressing than taking showers and watching a lot of crap on cable.
Andy has some friends he wants to visit, so Patrick is in with Joe, leaving Pete and Ashlee the other room. Joe snags first shower, and Patrick drags out his laptop and settles in on the right-hand bed. He checks his email from the bus or from venues, but it's nice to be able to read things on a screen bigger than the palm of his hand.
Predictably, there's an email from Pete; Patrick's phone rings just as he clicks on it.
"Fuck you," he says, instead of hello. "Not everybody is surgically attached to the internet."
Instead of Pete's horsey laugh, though, he gets a low, hoarse chuckle.
"Oh, shit," he says, "Sorry, Ash."
"Don't worry about it, babe," she says. "I know how he gets, trust me." She laughs again. "Once he texted me—then emailed to see if I'd gotten his text—then called to see if I'd gotten the email—and then called my fucking security to see why the call hadn't gotten through." An indistinct yell comes over the phone; the call of the wild Pete Wentz. "I was in a fucking photoshoot, babe," she says, "Dianne was dicking with you; she likes you, I swear." Her voice gets a little louder, a little clearer. "She really does love him," Ashlee says. "I think she thinks he's a good influence or something."
"My mom thinks the same thing," Patrick says, which is true: Patrick's mom is, against all evidence, convinced that Pete is a Nice Young Man.
"Awesome," Ashlee says. "So, hey, I was calling you to ask if you and Joe wanted to come with us tonight." Patrick glances down at the computer, which says goin out to cruise the dc scene with my luvly lady; want to come with? tell trohman to wear his dancin shoes. More or less the same thing, really.
"I'm in, yeah," Patrick says. "Joe's still in the shower, hang on." He settles the laptop on the bed next to him, then stands up and crosses the room to hammer on the bathroom door, phone pressed against his shoulder. "Trohman, you want to come out with us tonight?" The water shuts off, and Patrick hears the tell-tale rustling noises of Joe wrapping a towel around his hair and scrubbing.
"Enh," Joe says, opening the door. "Think I'm gonna go chill with the guys in Cute, but I might join you later?"
"Put some fucking pants on," Patrick says. When he lifts the phone back to his ear, Ashlee is giggling. "Joe might come out later," he says.
"Yeah, well, make sure he knows about DC public decency laws," she says. "I hear they're pretty strict about that shit."
Over the phone, he hears Pete say something about politicians. "Pete says—"
"I've heard it," Patrick tells her. "Tell him that he has no room to talk."
"Tell him to go fuck himself," he hears Pete say, and then, "Ow!"
"Tonight you can tell each other whatever you want," Ashlee says. "Hanging up now."
*
They go to a bar that Pete knows about.
"Karaoke Thursday - everybody welcome," Patrick reads. Ashlee raises an immaculate eyebrow; beside her, Pete grins wide and guilty. "Fuck you," Patrick says. "You're not getting me up there."
"Uh huh," Pete says. "Sure thing."
"Fuck you," Patrick says again, but in they go.
Sure enough, Patrick winds up onstage, steadying himself on the mic stand and singing along to an over-synthesized version of Joe Cocker. Pete and Ashlee are in a corner booth, leaning into each other and laughing; he can see their teeth from the stage.
"You can leeeeeeave your hat on," he sings, "Thank you, good night, I'm just gonna—" The stage is tiny, and the edge comes sooner than Patrick expects.
"Careful there, buddy," Ashlee says as he stumbles into the booth. "Watch your step."
"Don't want you to break your pretty face," Pete says. Patrick rolls his eyes.
"I could break your pretty face," he offers, but Pete just giggles.
"Omigod," he says, breathy and high-pitched. "Did you hear that, Ash? He thinks I'm pretty!"
Ashlee laughs and puts her arm around Patrick's shoulders, letting him lean against her. "Of course he does, dear," she says, and he hears the soft sound of a kiss, somewhere up and to the right.
"We should probably go," Pete says. "They're about to wind down."
(Used to be, Pete would stay all night at a club, long after everybody but the bartenders had left, and sometimes even after that. Ashlee's security gets twitchy when they try that, though, so mostly Pete ducks out early, these days.
"Plus," he'd said, "I have better things to do with my time now."
Patrick had rolled his eyes. "Thank you, Pete," he'd said. "I'm sure Ashlee likes being a thing you do."
"Not always," Pete had said, smirking. "Sometimes I let her do me."
There had been nothing to say to that, so Patrick had just shoved Pete into a snowbank and called it a day.)
Ashlee grabs her purse and they head outside the club, hurrying past the crowds of artfully-posed smokers leaning against the wall. Patrick sees the cab first and waves it over, but Pete grabs the door and pushes him in first.
"You get the middle seat," he hears, "you're tiny." He's still trying to sort himself out—possibly he's had more to drink than he realized—when Ashlee comes tumbling into the cab, scooting across the seat with a squeak and fetching up against Patrick's side. Beyond her, Pete is launching himself into the cab and slamming the door behind him, rattling off the name of the hotel for the driver.
"Hi," Ashlee says, leaning back against Patrick. Her face is pale, illuminated in flashes by the streetlights. "You sounded great." Patrick rolls his eyes and she flicks his nose, grinning upside-down at him. "No, really," she says. "Really."
"Thanks," Patrick says, and leans back against the window, cool and slightly greasy against the side of his face. Ashlee says something to Pete, and Pete laughs softly, and Patrick watches the buildings pass.
It isn't until Ashlee giggles and squirms against him that Patrick realizes that he's singing again, the same song over: you give me reason to live.
"Sorry," he says, but Ashlee shakes her head.
"It just startled me," she says, leaning back against him again. "I could feel it, and it startled me."
"Yeah, Trick does that," Pete says. He's leaning against the other window, one leg up on the seat, staring at the two of them, all bright teeth and dark eyes. "I always liked it, though."
"Oh, I wasn't complaining," Ashlee says. When Patrick doesn't do or say anything, she elbows him gently in the side. "Keep going," she says. "It was nice."
"Yeah, I know what love is", Patrick sings, because it's the only thing to do. His eyes slip closed, but he keeps going.
"It's kind of hot, really," Ashlee says after a while, and Pete laughs.
"I've been telling him that for years, Ash," he says. "It doesn't seem to stick." Patrick doesn't open his eyes, doesn't do anything but keep singing, head against the window, Ashlee warm and snug against his side.
The cab spits them out at the hotel and they head inside; out of the corner of his eye, Patrick sees Ashlee's security pull up in dark SUVs.
Pete fumbles the keycard and shoves the door open; Patrick leans against the opposite wall and ducks his head.
"Well, see you—" he starts, but Pete grabs his wrist.
"Come on, Trick," he says. "Don't be a wet duck." He tugs on Patrick's arm, pulling him slightly away from the wall and then letting him drop back.
"Whatever, I'm going in," Ashlee says. "You guys can sort yourselves out." She presses a kiss against Pete's hair and sweeps into the room, and Patrick laughs and lets Pete tug him along behind her.
"A wet duck, Pete?"
Pete shrugs. "Whatever, you knew what I meant." And Patrick did, so there's that. "More importantly," Pete says, shrugging out of his hoodie and tossing it on the bed, "more importantly, Patrick, you like my girlfriend." He turns around, leaning against the edge of the bed, arms crossed across his chest.
"Well," Patrick says, "well, yeah," because he does like Ashlee, thinks she's good for Pete and Pete is maybe even good for her (which is altogether rarer, on the whole). Patrick flips the deadbolt and leans back against the door. "She's cool." From the bathroom, he hears the sound of the tap flipping on, the quiet noises of Ashlee just out of sight.
"No, I mean, you—" Pete takes a deep breath, tilts his head back, lets it out through his nose. "You like her." He takes a step forward, another, another.
And—and the thing is, he's not wrong. Ashlee is beautiful and elegant, but Patrick gets the impression that she's a lot more normal than her image would suggest. She's got an edge to her smile and a tendency not to wear bras, but she giggles at Pete's stupid puns and kicks off her shoes when she's on the bus.
Plus, she's hot, but, whatever, Patrick is very definitely not thinking about that. Not at all. Or, well—now he is, because Pete's being a douche and bringing it up, but as soon as he gets out of here he is going to go right back to his very busy schedule of not ever thinking about Pete's girlfriend naked.
"I—I should go," Patrick says, shaking his head, but Pete is suddenly there, up close, hands braced on the door on either side of Patrick's head.
"No," he says. "No, tell me." Patrick shakes his head again, trying to express what he'd really rather not have to say; his hair brushes against Pete's bare arm and they both freeze.
Patrick's known Pete for years now, has slept in his bed and on his couch and in the same corner of the van, but it feels like they've never been this close before.
"Tell me," Pete says again, and Patrick takes a breath, one last breath before—
"Tell you what?" The water's still running, but the bathroom door is open and Ashlee's standing there, leaning against the doorframe. The skin at her wrists glistens damply, and the top button of her jeans is undone.
Pete breathes in again, glances over his shoulder and grins sharp and dangerous.
"Our boy here was just telling me how fine you are," he says, bringing his hips forward to grind against Patrick, but somehow all of the energy, all the spark is gone. This, Patrick can deal with: this is just Pete, just Patrick's best friend being a jackass because that's what he does when he doesn't know how else to get a reaction. Sure, that's Pete's dick, and sure, he's slightly better than half-hard, but Pete can and has gotten erections from desk chairs and teddy bears.
"Actually," Patrick says, "your boyfriend's just being an asshole again." He rests his hand on the back of Pete's neck, reassurance and absolution, and feels Pete relax against him, letting their bodies lean together.
"Well, fortunately for him, I tend to go for assholes," Ashlee says, and that must be some kind of codeword for them, because Pete is suddenly tense in Patrick's arms, pressing a quick kiss against Patrick's neck and then looking back at Ashlee.
"You think so?" he says, which makes no sense to Patrick at all, and Ashlee shrugs.
"Depends what you're suggesting, babe," she says, and that is officially it, Patrick can feel Pete's dick against his thigh and he is so totally out of here. Their friendship has limits, after all—not many of them, but a crucial few—and deliberate boners are one of them.
"Um," he says again. "I should probably go."
"No," Pete says, leaning heavily against Patrick, holding him against the door. "No, don't."
"Is he telling the truth, Patrick?" Ashlee comes quickly across the room and leans against Pete's back, adding her weight to his, the two of them pressing him into the door until it feels like he can't breathe. She hooks her chin over Pete's shoulder and smiles at him, slow and luxurious.
Patrick has been Pete's friend for years; he knows a dare when he sees one.
He takes a deep breath. "Yeah," he says, shifting his shoulders against the door. "I think you're pretty hot. Good job on that."
*
Patrick wakes up the next morning with his hand tucked under his face, staring at Pete's alarm clock. He knows it's Pete's alarm clock because of the jagged dent in the side, a battle scar from the time Pete spent the night before they left on tour out with Travis and Bill Beckett, and Patrick had to come get him before Andy got fed up and left without them. Pete could afford a new alarm or three, but he hasn't replaced the old one.
As he watches, the minutes click from :59 to :00. The clock makes a dull click, and the ALARM SET light in the lower right-hand corner flickers.
"—at two minutes after the hour, this is NPR, national public radio," it tells him. "Weather today for Chicago is—"
"—nngh." The arm across his back shifts slightly. "Gragh."
Patrick turns his head slowly, scrubbing his face against the pillow. Ashlee smiles at him lazily, drums her fingers against his back, and lets her eyes fall shut again; Pete presses his face against her neck, his hair falling across his face.
"In Washington this morning," the clock continues, and Patrick reaches back and slaps at it until it shuts off.
"Turn off the alarm," Pete says, muffled against Ashlee's skin. "Otherwise it's just going to start again in seven minutes." The sheets are twisted around their waists, a tangle of dark blue against pale skin, and they shift slightly in rhythm with the motion of Pete's arm, with the slow sigh of Ashlee's breathing. She shifts her hips and digs her nails into Patrick's back.
Patrick fumbles blindly with the switch—left side, at the back, ALARM ON, ALARM SET, ALARM OFF—and slides it down to the bottom notch without looking.
"Thanks," Ashlee says. "Now get over here and—oh." Pete's pulling her leg back, over his hips, and she turns onto her back and arches into it. The sheets aren't slipping down, but it's impossible not to know exactly what's going on, impossible to miss the exact moment that Pete slides into her, the little gasp and the shiver that goes through her.
(The memory, after all, is vivid: Ashlee above him, hands on her own breasts, sinking carefully down over him; Pete's hand on her thigh, smoothing over the tense muscle; Ashlee's high little moan and the way her hips rocked forward as their hipbones brushed; Pete's teeth on his neck, his warm heavy breath, his voice.)
Pete's hands are the same color as Ashlee's nipples, almost, although her skin is much smoother; Patrick remembers the taste and feel of both. She jerks when Pete tugs on them, interrupting her own rhythm, and Pete smirks against her neck.
"Fuck you," she says, and it's not clear who she's talking to: her right hand is digging into Pete's thigh, leaving pale skins and tiny indentations; her left hand is pulling the sheet down. Patrick takes a deep breath and follows it, tracing its revelations: the angles of Ashlee's hips, shadowed by blankets and the curve of Pete's side; the delicate skin of her thighs; the awkward ankle of Pete's knees. The slow slide of Pete's dick as he rocks into Ashlee, lifting her up a little with every thrust.
The base of Pete's dick, when Patrick can see it, is glistening in the little bit of light that comes through the crappy hotel blinds. Patrick braces his hands on Ashlee's thighs and licks, tasting salt and sweat and Ashlee and Pete, all the flavors and smells of last night but concentrated by sleep. Pete's hips jerk, predictably enough, and Ashlee's hand slides through his hair.
He knows it's Ashlee, because she doesn't pull.
She does dig her fingernails into his scalp, but that's only later, when Patrick's licking across her clit again and again and Pete is fucking her with fast shallow strokes.
"God, fuck," Ashlee says, and something that sounds vaguely like Pete's name. Her heels dig into Patrick's back, holding him still, and he keeps his head down and scrapes his teeth over her, swallowing while she moans.
"Come on," Pete says, "Come on, fuck, yeah, just—" Ashlee bucks up, then grinds back down, letting out her breath in one long sigh; Pete thrusts up two more times, three, and then clutches her hips and groans.
Patrick rests his forehead against Ashlee's thigh and rolls to one side, reaching down until he can touch his dick, eyes closed, breathing deeply.
Afterwards, he wipes his mouth and his hand on the sheets. Pete makes a face at him, but Patrick just rolls his eyes.
"Oh, shut up," Ashlee says, leaning back against Pete's chest; he's scooted them back so that they're propped against the headboard, Ashlee between his thighs, lazy and sated. "Like you're not way grosser."
"Whatever, like you're not," Pete says, leaning down to kiss her. Patrick's boxers are next to the overstuffed chair on the other side of the room; he rolls off the bed and grabs them, trying to decide whether it's worth it to put them back on for the trek back to his room. His jeans are—
"—hey, dude," Pete says, careful and casual. "Trick, hey." Patrick picks up his jeans from under the coffee table and pats the pockets, checking for his key, his ID, his change from the bar last night. One of his socks is tucked between his shoes, but he can't find the other one.
"Check inside your jeans," Ashlee suggests; Patrick shakes his jeans, and sure enough, the missing sock falls out, crumpled into a ball. He kicks it onto his shoes and tugs his jeans on; might as well go commando when all he has to do is walk down a hallway.
"Patrick," Pete says again, and Patrick looks up, blinking.
"Yeah?" Pete's running his fingers through Ashlee's hair, one arm around her waist. The room is still mostly dark.
"Tell Trohman he missed out," Pete says finally. His teeth pick up the light that creeps in around the heavy hotel blinds.
"Sure thing," Patrick says, and lets himself out.
*
So that happens, and it's—whatever it is. Joe gives Patrick shit for coming back with his underwear in his hand, but he accepts it as the natural result of a night out on the town with Pete. Ashlee smiles at Patrick on the bus the next day, easy and normal, and then kicks his sorry ass at Wii tennis; she kisses his cheek in Cincinnati when she's leaving for her flight.
Pete gives him a wet willie and a half-hour backrub, and Patrick figures that things are back to normal.
A month and a half later, Patrick is sitting on the couch, reading AP (which is normal). Pete comes out from the back room, where he's been taking a mid-morning nap (also normal, for given values of Pete Wentz), talking on the phone with Ashlee (very normal, these days).
"Patrick," he says, "come here, man, I've got something to show you." This is also normal: Pete and Ashlee's phone conversations tend to include at least as much time where they're talking to somebody else as time when they're talking to each other.
Patrick follows Pete back to the back bedroom, where Pete pushes him down onto the bed, sets the phone on the pillow beside him, and begins to grope him through his jeans.
This is—not normal.
Not that Patrick is complaining, not when "not normal" means Pete's hand on his inseam, Pete's breath warm and damp against his thigh, Pete's hair under his fingers. Pete's fingers tucked into his jeans, first a little and then a lot, popping the button and sliding the zipper down.
"Hi," Ashlee says in his ear. "What's up?"
This is really, really weird.
"Um," Patrick says, mouth dry. "Ashlee?" Pete bites his hip and grins up at him.
"Yeah," Ashlee says. "How're you doing, babe?" Her voice is soft and warm and Patrick kind of suspects that she's laughing at him, but he can't find the energy to care much about it when Pete's got his boxers around his knees and is rubbing his face against Patrick's dick.
"Not bad," Patrick says. Pete hasn't shaved in a few days, and it's almost too much, but almost switches over to just-right when Pete presses his lips against the head of Patrick's dick and slides slowly down. "I think your boyfriend's growing a beard, though," he says.
Ashlee tsks. "Really?" Patrick hmms, and then so does Pete, the sound and vibration making Patrick shiver. "How bad is it?" Ashlee asks. "Like, is it really ugly?" She sighs. "Because, like, I'd probably still love him if he had a really ugly beard, but it wouldn't be easy."
Pete's mouth is warm and wet, and it's not like this is the first time Patrick's been the recipient of Pete's sporadic affection for fellatio, or even the second, but somehow it's different here and now, with Pete's hands warm on his hips and Pete's girlfriend smirking down the phone at him.
"It's pretty bad," Patrick tells her. "You should maybe think about withholding sex."
"Really?" Ashlee asks, like they're actually talking about Pete's awful facial hair.
"Ngha," Patrick assures her. He would go on, but apparently Pete takes insults to his patchy sketchy beard as an invitation to suck Patrick's brain out through his dick. "I—" he tries again, but winds up coming down Pete's throat instead.
"Patrick?" Pete stands up, grinning close-mouthed at Patrick, and walks to the bus bathroom. "You're breaking up, what did you say?"
"It's maybe not actually that bad," Patrick says, low and quick, "but don't tell him I said that, because then he'll keep going and it'll get worse."
It is totally that bad, actually, but somehow that doesn't matter.
*
Things go on, time passes. They finish the tour; they go back to their apartments for a few weeks and ignore the rest of the world entirely; they get tired of that and go back to harassing each other on a daily basis. Pete and Ashlee continue to be disgustingly cute; Patrick continues to occasionally have sex with them.
It's really not so bad, on the whole. Patrick is starting to get a handle on how this thing works: basically, he's being used as a human sex toy by his best friend and his best friend's hot girlfriend. Which is maybe creepy, and definitely more than a little weird, but, really, whatever. Patrick has lived a lot of weird things, and seen a lot of even weirder things. On the whole, he's pretty sure that there are worse things in the world than occasionally having really great sex with people he likes.
He winds up in their hotel room a few more times, before the tour ends, and sometimes Ashlee calls him up and talks to him while Pete blows him. (Sometimes she calls to talk about other things, too: mix choices for the album; Pete's terrible hair; whether or not Mrs. Wentz is going to hate her.
"Dude, shut up, you'll be fine," Patrick tells her. "She's Pete's mom; she's not going to care if you wear too much eyeliner."
"Fuck you," Ashlee says, but he can tell she's smiling.)
One afternoon, Pete corners him in the back lounge, locking the door behind himself and leaning against it. He's got his seductive face on, which isn't anywhere near as hot as the faces he makes when he forgets to make a face, but Patrick's willing to go with it if it means he'll get laid.
"Patrick?" Pete says hopefully, and Patrick saves his work and closes his computer.
"Yeah, sure," he says, holding out his hand for the phone. When he gets Pete's hand instead, it throws him, and he stands there staring at it.
"She's on a plane," Pete says, which, right, that makes sense.
"What," Patrick says, "and you couldn't wait three hours?" He pulls Pete in until he's close enough to kiss, warm and soft and friendly. "Asshole."
"Fuck you," Pete says, "if you're not interested, I'll just go talk to Joe." He squirms a bit, half-serious; he's also half-hard, pressing against the front of his jeans. Patrick runs his fingers over the bulge, firm and quick, and Pete shivers.
"I didn't say that," Patrick says, tightening his hand around Pete's wrist and stroking him through his pants again. "I mean, you know, whatever; you're already here, so I might as well go with it."
"That's good, Trick," Pete says. "Taking whatever you can get; I respect that." Pete's basically straddling his thighs, thrusting lazily into his hand. When Patrick looks up from his dick, Pete's grinning at him, that same cocky jerk grin that gets him punched and kissed in pretty much equal measure. It's easy to lean up and press his face against Pete's neck, and even easier to bite down, tasting sweat and hair product and Pete.
Pete arches forward and makes a choked noise. Patrick pauses, licking the side of Pete's neck idly, and then bites again.
"Is that what we're doing?" He says it against Pete's skin, his lips moving slickly, and Pete shivers.
"Careful, fucker," he says. "Don't fucking give me a hickie." He's breathing heavily, though, and he doesn't resist when Patrick shoves him to his feet and steers them towards the bed.
"Whatever," he says, pushing Pete down on his back. "You know you love it." He pulls Pete's shirt up over his shoulders, leaving it tangled around his hands. When Pete squirms, Patrick bites down on the inside of his arm, hard and messy with spit and sweat. Pete thrusts up, almost knocking Patrick off-balance, but Patrick just rides it out and leaves his mouth where it is, toying with the skin and sucking. When he pulls back, there's a mottled red mark that Pete twists his head around to see.
"You like it," Patrick says again, and Pete shakes his head, not really negation or agreement, just movement, uncontrolled and unconscious. "You know," Patrick adds, between tiny bites to Pete's collarbone, "Ashlee's going to see these." Pete arches up again, pressing himself against Patrick's mouth, his hands, and Patrick does his part and holds him back down, biting harder.
"She's going to ask you," he says, setting his teeth against Pete's shoulder, "what the hell you were doing," his ribs, bumping bones and Pete's hoarse sighs, "to get so," his stomach, biting gently until Pete giggles and then harder until he moans, "messed up like this."
Patrick pulls Pete's already-low jeans down a little further and bites a bruise against his hipbone; Pete stiffens under him, groaning, and comes against Patrick's neck in a messy splash.
"Fuck," Pete says, "fuck, Patrick." He sounds drunk and dazed, and his hands are grabbing aimlessly at the blanket. Patrick would wait, let Pete jerk him off—Pete has nice hands, for some things—but Pete seems pretty out of it, and there's no real reason for Pete to be involved. Instead, Patrick bites him again, easy and friendly, and slides one hand down into his own pants, jerking himself tight and quick. "Fuck, are you—fuck," Pete says again, sounding a little amazed.
Patrick just lets it all wash over him: Pete's hands in his hair, the smell of Pete's sheets, Pete's voice washing over him. Pete's totally not involved, not at all.
"Fuck," Pete says, and Patrick totally agrees.
Continued here