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each peach, 2/2
"Fuck you," Darren says. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you in the ear."
Patrick just shakes his head. "I'm sorry, but having sex isn't going to change the fact that you're still wrong."
In the corner, Chris and Greta and Bob are curled up on the couch, watching with wide eyes. When Patrick turns his back on them, he hears a giggle, but he ignores it. The important thing here is that Darren is wrong.
Once the argument draws to a standstill (Darren is maybe not completely wrong, but Patrick isn't giving it up just yet) there's the rest of the song to go through, and the sky is dark blue and gleaming with streetlight and stars by the time Patrick hugs them all and heads for the door.
"Hey, Stumph, wait up," he hears in the parking lot, and he turn around, keys hanging from his fingers.
"Greta, hey," he says, leaning back against his car. "Darren admitted the error of his ways?"
Greta grins. "Nope, but he found your phone," she says, holding it up. "You're lucky it was him and not one of the interns."
Patrick hesitates, reaching out to grab the phone. "And Darren found it for me out of the goodness of his heart?"
"Nah," she says, "he still thinks you're wrong and stupid." She shrugs. "He lost his last week, and one of the boys out front found it." Her giggle is more than a little evil. "He's had to empty his voicemail twice since Thursday; I think he's going to wind up changing his number."
"You've come a long way, baby," Patrick sings, laughing, and takes the phone from Greta's outstretched fingers. "Just make sure he gives me the new one, when he changes it; I want to be able to tell him how wrong he is some more."
"Fair enough," Greta says, leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. "See you tomorrow!"
ONE MISSED CALL, the phone tells him when he flips it open. It's from Pete, but instead of his usual "Patrick isn't answering his phone but I need to talk to him" text message, there's just the little icon showing that he has a voice mail. Patrick shrugs and dials his mailbox, turning on the car and pulling out of the parking lot while he punches in his password. The Hushies are climbing into Bob's mother's van, and he waves at them as he pulls past them.
"Hey," Pete's voice says in his ear, rough and whispery. "Hey, Trick, I've got something for you to hear—" For a second, Patrick can't understand what he's hearing, but then the mess of sound resolves itself into Pete's low groan and Ashlee's gasping, aching moans.
He listens all the way home, hand clenched around the phone and eyes carefully on the road, then pulls into his driveway and listens to the last few minutes. He rests his free hand on his thigh, digging his fingers in against the taut muscle. Ashlee gets louder, but Pete gets quieter, so that all Patrick can hear in the end is her voice, the half-whispered profanities and the way she whimpers in the back of her throat.
"Fuck," Pete says. "God, fuck, Patrick, why the fuck—" There's a long pause, the noisy silence of Pete catching his breath, and then the empty static of the call cutting off.
"To erase this message," the automated voice begins, and Patrick presses nine, snaps the phone closed, and leans back, shaking the cramp out of his hand.
He's not going to jerk off in his car. He has a bed inside—two beds, actually, not to mention a couch and an armchair and a fucking shower. He even has bar stools in his kitchen, if he wants, although the kitchen windows face the street and don't have curtains, so probably not. He's not going to jerk off in his car, even if it is dark enough that nobody could see what he was doing without being pressed up against his window (in which case he would notice and could punch them). He's not going to jerk off in his car, in his driveway, thinking about his best friend and his best friend's girlfriend having sex for him to listen to—although, really, it probably wasn't exclusively for his benefit, at least not judging by the sounds Ashlee was making—
—Patrick slides his hand down his dick again, and, yes, okay, he's totally jerking off in his car in his driveway thinking about his best friend and his best friend's girlfriend having sex for him to listen to, but in his defense, he's not doing it very much. Even once he undoes his seat belt, there's not really enough room for him to move his hand or his hips, so he's basically just grabbing onto his dick and thinking about Pete's hands on Ashlee's hips, his mouth on Ashlee's neck, his dick inside her.
Fortunately, it's dark enough that Patrick wiping his hand off on the grass probably just looks like him picking up a bit of trash, if any of his nosy neighbors are even looking. He doesn't turn any lights on inside, just navigates by reflected streetlight as he drops his keys on the counter and makes his way to the bedroom.
He takes his phone with him, but it's too dark for anybody else to see.
*
Three months later, Pete wakes him up in Antarctica.
"Pete," Patrick says, (slowly and patiently, because dealing with Pete late at night is a lot like dealing with a very small child) "Pete, it's three in the fucking morning."
"It's two forty-seven," Pete says, chin digging in to Patrick's sternum.
"Fuck you," Patrick says, "that doesn't make it better." He rolls his eyes, even though he knows Pete can't see it.
"Fuck you, don't fucking roll your eyes at me," Pete says, poking Patrick in the shoulder. "Thirteen minutes is nothing to sneeze at." His hands are braced next to Patrick's head, and he's straddling Patrick's hips, holding him down into the bed. Patrick wonders sleepily if this is some kind of sex thing.
"Is this some kind of sex thing?" he asks, and Pete's restless twitching goes suddenly still. "Pete?"
"I mean, no," Pete says, "except that yes, but—" he takes a deep breath and lets it out, quick and shaking. "Ashlee's pregnant." He sounds nervous and confused and terrified. He sounds really fucking happy.
Patrick blinks, once and then again, and then sits up; Pete scrambles backwards, starting apologies and then cutting himself off, but Patrick catches him by the wrist and pulls him in tight, wrapping his arms around Pete's bony back.
"Shut up, you idiot," he says, hands in Pete's hair. "It's going to be fine, it's going to be great."
And it is, and it is. Pete is scattershot and even more vibrantly ridiculous than usual, talking a mile a minute and thinking even faster, but he's so stupidly happy it's hard to get too annoyed. He writes almost constantly, drinks too much Red Bull, and stares at a million pictures of tiny baby clothes, all with that same disbelieving grin.
They get back to the states and Ashlee comes out to visit, red haired and glowing, and practically flies into Pete's arms, giggling and whispering. They're all in New York, visiting old friends and doing press, and normally—for values of normal that allow for Patrick having sex with his hot almost-married friends—Patrick would join them, maybe to shoot the shit but probably for something more. Now, though, it feels awkward and inappropriate, so he takes his key and his double bed in a room with Andy and doesn't complain.
Around ten that night, Pete comes in, hair floppy and eyes gleaming.
"Hey, Hurley," he says, throwing himself across Andy's bed. "Can we borrow your video camera?"
"That depends," Andy says, not looking up from his computer. "Are you going to use it for good or for evil?"
Pete grins, sprawled out on his back. "Oh, evil, definitely," he says.
Andy raises his eyebrows, but still doesn't look at Pete. "By evil, do you mean porn?"
"No," Pete says. "Dude, she's pregnant, of course not." He pauses, staring at the ceiling. "Although I guess there's good money in that..." Andy kicks him in the shoulder, still focused on whatever he's reading. "Dude, of course not," Pete says. "We're just going to fuck with people on the internet."
"Go for it," Andy says. Pete rolls over and kisses Andy's ankle, then flings himself off of the bed and drops onto Andy's suitcase, where he rummages noisily until he digs out the battered camcorder Andy's had since their first or second tour.
"Thanks," he says again, holding it aloft. "Your generosity will not be forgotten!" Andy just flips him off, and Pete grins and turns to go.
His hand brushes against Patrick's shoulder when he climbs over Patrick's bed—of course it does. Fucking Pete, can't ever resist the urge to go in a straight line and make a nuisance of himself.
The video hits the internet two days later. Patrick has to admit that it's actually pretty funny; he also has to smack Pete upside the head for using good headphones. They're not his good headphones, of course—he knows better than to let Pete near those—but it's the principle of the thing.
The next week, Patrick sends him a playlist of songs the baby should hear—old standards, mostly, quiet and soothing and full of love. It's possible that he's undermining his own position, here.
Ashlee scales her touring schedule back some, after the wedding—not a lot, and not right away, because, as she puts it, "I'm pregnant, Pete, not dead"—but enough that she can come out and visit more often. As the months go by, Ashlee is pretty much grounded, and Pete stays close, hovering over her, bringing movies and treats and a million and one pregnancy books, trying to get Patrick to sing to the baby bump. (Ashlee shrugs her shoulders and laughs awkwardly, and Patrick punches Pete in the shoulder on her behalf) They're nesting, and it's really pretty damn adorable
Patrick tries to back off, ignoring Pete's texts and finding reasons to stay away when Pete gets fed up with 160 characters of harassment at a time.
"Seriously, Pete," he says, when Pete invites him over to play Mariokart for the second day running. "Don't you have better things to do?"
"Well, your mom's busy, so no, not really," Pete says, and Patrick rolls his eyes and hangs up on him.
Half an hour later, his phone rings again, same ringtone.
"Pete, no," Patrick says. "Seriously, go jerk off if you're that bored."
Ashlee's voice is low and throaty; she's been getting over a cold, mainlining orange juice and sleeping most of the day. "God, I wish that were the problem," she says. "He's just bored, I think, but—"
"—but a bored Pete is a danger to himself and others," Patrick finishes for her.
"Not to mention fucking obnoxious," Ashlee agrees. "Come over and entertain him, please?"
"That bad already?"
Ashlee sighs. "He's ordering baby furniture online, which wouldn't be so bad except he wants to put it together by himself," she says. "Call me crazy, but I don't want power tools in this house until the kid is old enough to use them himself."
"Good point," Patrick says. "I'll be over in half an hour."
"Make it twenty minutes and I'll blow you," Ashlee says, and laughs awkwardly. When she hangs up, Patrick stares at his phone, the display blinking 2:18 at him again and again. When it goes dark, he flips it shut and grabs his laptop.
He and Pete waste the afternoon sprawled on the living room floor, lazy in the warm sun. Patrick grabs the acoustic he keeps at Pete's place and fucks around, trying out snatches of melodies, slow and easy, but eventually he gives up on pretending and just plays their lullaby over and over.
The words are inked on Pete's arm, but Patrick doesn't need to look at them to remember.
"We should put that on the album," Pete says, staring at the ceiling. "A hidden track, maybe."
"You think?" Patrick says, fingers flat and still across the strings.
On the couch, Ashlee turns her head. "You should, yeah," she says. "It's a good song."
"Hey, babe," Pete says, sitting up and smiling. "I didn't think you were awake." He leans in to kiss her, quick and uncomplicated, and Patrick looks down at his fingers, watching his chords.
"Only a little," Ashlee says. "I like that one, though."
"Well, there you have it," Pete says, and there's another soft wet noise. "Hey, how's baby doing?"
"Oh, you know," Ashlee says, but she lets Pete lean in to listen anyways. Pete is endlessly fascinated with her stomach, even though she's not really showing yet, and spends lots of time with his head in her lap, ear pressed against her "just in case".
"You know you're not going to be able to actually feel anything for a few months, right?" Patrick asks one afternoon. The internet says not until 21 weeks, in fact, but sometimes it's not good to give Pete all of the available information. Besides, it's not like he can't google it for himself—he probably already has.
"Shut up, Stump," Pete says, kicking his feet off the edge of the couch. "You're ruining my special moment."
"Where by 'special moment', you mean 'staring at my tits', right?" Ashlee says. "No, don't get up," she adds when Pete goes wide-eyed and mock-shocked. "Whatever, you know I don't mind." She looks up at Patrick and grins, rueful and accepting. "I figure, hey, they're here, somebody might as well enjoy looking at them."
She shrugs, and Patrick has a lot of sympathy for Pete. Ashlee's breasts have always been really nice, in clothes and out, but somehow now they're even nicer.
Not that he's been seeing them up close and personal much, not since the pregnancy. Which is completely reasonable, and, honestly, even as hot as Ashlee is right now, even as hot as Pete pretty much always is—even with that, Patrick can't really see himself having hot threesome sex. Not right now, and maybe not ever again. They're having a baby; they're going to be parents. They have bigger things on their minds, serious things—things that most definitely don't involve threesomes. It'd be weird, and not in the "awkward yet surprisingly hot" way that things used to be. It was nice, and now it's done, and that's okay.
Plus, Patrick's never had a pregnancy kink, and as time goes by, Ashlee starts looking really very pregnant. Call him a prude, but Patrick would feel more than a little weird sticking his dick up next to a tiny person.
"Dude, gross," Pete says, when the subject inevitably comes up. "You have a sick mind, Stump." He rolls his eyes. "It's not, like, next to the baby or anything," he adds. "There's a mucous plug and stuff, it's really pretty awesome."
"I hate you," Patrick says, reaching for his computer. "I'm going to google that now, and I know it's going to be gross but I'm going to have to look anyways." He looks; it's gross. "Second of all," he adds, "I know you're not actually, like, jizzing on your kid." He shrugs. "That doesn't make it not weird."
"For you, maybe," Pete says, and he has a point. If age and relationship status and sexuality and basic self-preservation haven't stopped him yet, there's no reason to think that a weird mental image would do the trick. And clearly it doesn't, because Pete and Ashlee are having a lot of sex. Patrick isn't even trying to notice, isn't pining for them or fantasizing about it or being creepy like that. Pete just has a lot of hickies, all of a sudden, in all the same places Patrick used to like to bite, and once or twice he comes down to breakfast with what looks a lot like ropeburn on his wrists.
Plus, he and Ashlee have a habit of sneaking off to the bedroom to "nap" while Patrick is over, and they're really just not as quiet as they think they are. Patrick maybe sometimes takes some "naps" of his own, but only when they're not around to notice, and, well. Well. It's not his fault that they're hot, awesome, and pretty much perpetually horny.
It's not weird, though. In fact, it's surprisingly un-weird, given that Patrick's spending most of his free time these days with his best friend and his best friend's extremely pregnant wife, and given that they used to sometimes all have sex together.
*
Things are slow and lazy, Ashlee getting rounder and rounder, more and more inclined to waste the day sitting on the couch with her head in Patrick's lap, pretending to watch daytime television.
"Sometimes I worry about exposing her to Make Me A Supermodel in the womb," Ashlee says, eyes closed, "but I figure she might as well get used to it early, you know?"
Patrick combs his fingers through her hair and nudges the volume down a little more, until it's so low they can barely hear it, tiny crazy people miming tiny crazy lives.
They paint the second bedroom for the baby—Pete comes up with increasingly ridiculous names, but Ashlee keeps insisting that they wait until they meet her, so for now she's just the baby—and have to do it four times before they hit the right color of pale yellow. Ashlee is practically spherical, pausing for breath every few minutes, but she attacks the walls with a paintbrush and a determined grin, singing along to Patrick's oldies playlist and smacking Pete upside the head when he tugs on the long red braid hanging down her back.
(She forgets to put the paintbrush down first, of course, so Pete gets a faceful of Goldenrod Daydream. Patrick winds up sending them both off to shower with one wall still unpainted. He's most of the way done before they get back, damp and flushed; in that time, the water goes on, turns off, and then goes on again.)
Patrick sings lullabies, late at night over crackling cell phone lines, and he's not sure which of the three he's supposed to be soothing.
They make a video, they fight with the label, they go back on tour, and somehow Patrick goes from singing over the phone to the baby bump from the back room of a tiny club one day to staring at crappy cell phone pictures of Pete and Ashlee and a reddish blob with tufts of dark hair.
welcome pear elizabeth, the text message says. best thing that ever happened to me.
congratulations, Patrick types back, but how does Ashlee feel about being 2nd best? He sets the phone aside, but a few seconds later it buzzes again. The display says Ashlee-personal, the line that most people don't have.
I'm pretty ok with it, the message reads. maybe i can get some sleep now. And isn't it just like Pete and Ashlee to both be texting as soon as humanly possible after the birth of the firstborn.
put the phones down and give your daughter a hug, he sends to both of them, and sets his phone aside, smiling.
It doesn't buzz again for the rest of the night.
When Patrick meets her, a few days later, Pear—"Seriously, Pete, Pear?" "Shut the fuck up, you're going to give her a complex." "Pete, I'm pretty sure she can't understand anything yet."—turns out to have a scrunched face, patchy dark hair, a surprisingly strong grip, and good taste in music.
"Oh, and now who's exaggerating her comprehension skills?" Pete's sprawled on the couch with Pear cradled carefully against his chest, and Patrick is sitting on the floor next to them, picking out quiet riffs for Pear to listen to. Ashlee is in the recliner, magazine across her chest, eyes shut and snoring slightly.
"She totally smiled," Patrick says, playing the riff from gold standard again. Pear beams fuzzily at him, mouth wide, eyes squinched shut. "There, look, see?" He knows it's probably really gas, but he doesn't say it, and neither does Pete.
Things are surprisingly easy—even with the press appearances, all the hundred things that need their attention, Pete and Ashlee do a good job of being there for Pear, holding her and feeding her and generally treating her like she's the most precious thing in the entire world. Which, Patrick guesses, she pretty much is.
*
And then Patrick punches Cash, and it kind of all goes to shit. He wonders how he managed not to notice for so long—for nine months, fuck; he's always known he could be dense, but there's dense and then there's fucking impenetrable—but now that he's figured it out, there's no way not to think about it. He misses Pete and Ashlee, misses the feeling of Ashlee's skin against his; misses Pete's stupid sex faces; misses the way Pete looks, spread out on the bed and watching Patrick fuck Ashlee; misses the way Ashlee tastes when Pete's fucked her. He misses falling asleep with the two of them, warm skin and slow, deep breaths to either side of him.
He even misses Pete's stupid horsey laugh, which is dumb, because it's not like he doesn't still hear it twenty times a day. Maybe more, now, even though whatever-they-had is now done, because Pete keeps finding reasons to invite Patrick over to the house, and Patrick keeps not being able to say no.
"Pete," he says, "seriously, Pete, I was there—" he checks his watch "—less than eight hours ago." He'd gotten home, jerked off, and fallen asleep for seven hours; he'd just been thinking about jerking off again when Pete called.
(There was a time when he'd have done it anyways, jerked off as quietly as he could manage while Pete rambled, waited to see how long it took before Pete noticed, yelled at him, and joined in. Sometimes he'd put it on speakerphone so that Patrick could hear Ashlee, too.
Things change, though, and Patrick keeps his hands settled carefully on his stomach.)
"Yeah," Pete says, "but the little lady was awake for six of those eight hours, and you know that baby-hours count double." This is true, according to the table that's stuck up on the fridge. They'd worked it out on the back of an envelope in magic marker, late one evening when they were sprawled across the living room and trying to figure out whose job it was going to be to feed Pear when she woke up. One hour with a conscious baby is worth two hours without; one hour with a screaming baby counts triple.
One hour with a baby and Joe Simpson is six times the going rate, because Ashlee is a miserable cheater. Whenever they try to call her on it, though, she lifts up her shirt to show off her stretch marks, and they have to shut up.
(In Patrick's case, it's at least half because he's staring at her (still very awesome, even in a nursing bra) breasts, but, well. Some things you don't need to share.)
"Come on, Patrick," Pete says. "Come on, please?" And Patrick thinks about all the reasons he shouldn't go, and all the things he can't have, and then he sighs and tells Pete he'll be there in half an hour, once he's showered and found clean clothes. "You can shower here," Pete says, leering over the phone. "And who needs clothes at all?"
It's just Pete being Pete, Patrick knows. The only thing to do is to hang up on him and try not to think about it too much.
He thinks—he hopes, for a few futile weeks—that things will get easier when they go back on tour. Asia and Australia and Europe, almost two straight months of motion and activity, and maybe he'll be able to forget about this, when he's not in their house all the time. Ashlee talks about coming out with them, but winds up deciding to stay in L.A.
"I mean, she's going to come out on tour with us eventually, you know?" she says, and Patrick nods. They're sitting on the couch, feet meeting in the middle, listening idly to the sounds of Pete doing something in the kitchen. Pear is curled small and sweet in Patrick's arms, drowsing softly against his chest, and every so often Ashlee pokes her with the big toe of her left foot.
"There's no reason to put her through that right now, though," he says, wrapping his free hand around Ashlee's ankle. "Like you said, she'll get it eventually, and right now she's so little that it's not like she'll understand or remember it."
"Yeah," Ashlee says, smiling, eyes down. "Yeah, I know, exactly. Just—" She shrugs, then settles back against the arm of the couch. "I don't know."
Patrick squeezes her ankle, and she wiggles her foot, brushing her toes against his wrist. "We're going to miss you, too," he says. "You know we will."
It's not a lie, is the problem. He is going to miss her, and not even in the way he already does. He's going to miss her sharp sense of humor and her silly, awkward dancing; he's going to miss the way she looks in the morning, sleepy-eyed and fuzzy; he's going to miss watching her with Pear, careful and awestruck and gloriously happy.
He already misses her, though, misses them, every single second he spends in this house. Going away from her, away from the life that isn't his—that will make things easier, maybe.
Somehow, though, it doesn't seem to work out that way. Instead, Patrick gets email after email, detailing the things Pear's been doing on the other side of the world, complete with photos of her round, curious face. Her favorite activities seem to be sleeping, sticking her feet in her mouth, and looking cute; Patrick saves all of the pictures. Ashlee calls, too, usually when Pete's off doing an interview or otherwise occupied, but sometimes not—sometimes when Pete is in the same room, even. He doesn't seem to mind, just waves at the phone and goes back to what he's doing, but Patrick feels weird, somehow, like he's doing something he shouldn't even though Ashlee was the one to call him.
And when Patrick's not keeping in touch with the home front, there's always Pete. Pete likes to take pictures of interesting things to send back to his family, so at least twice a day he drags Patrick off the bus to look at a monument or a museum or an ecologically responsible house.
"It's passively heated," he says, and Patrick nods.
"Germany, though?" he says, and Pete just shrugs and smiles.
They bus around Europe, rambling slow and noisy through unfamiliar countryside, and Pete spends at least half of their travel time with his head in Patrick's lap, staring at the ceiling and smiling vaguely.
(The rest of the time he splits between the internet and stupid pranks. He's still Pete Wentz, after all.)
The shows are good, the crowds electric, shouting Pete's words back at Patrick—but he's just as glad to get on a plane and rest his head against the window, watching the Atlantic draw by underneath them.
Pete is supposed to be flying on to LA to meet up with his family, but somehow it doesn't surprise Patrick at all when Ashlee and Pear are waiting for them at the airport gate, grinning wide excited (and, in Pear's case, toothlessly) at him.
"Hi," Ashlee says, handing Pear off to her father and pulling Patrick into a tight hug. "Surprised?"
"Not really, somehow," Patrick says, shrugging and patting her back. "Pete's been acting weird since Berlin."
"Pete's always acting weird," Ashlee points out, mouth brushing his neck. Pete is communing with Pear, holding her up so he can press their foreheads together and stare into her unfocused eyes; he flips them the bird without looking up. "Anyway," Ashlee says, "we wanted her to get used to Chicago, and you've got some time free, so we figured we'd come and visit." She pulls back, but leaves her left arm wrapped around him, pressing against him from shoulder to hip. "We can still get a hotel," she says, looking up at him from under the brim of her hat—one of Pete's, actually, and Patrick's before that.
"Don't even think about it," he tells her, pulling her a little closer. "Of course you can stay with me."
At this point he's pretty much doomed, anyways.
*
"Okay," Ashlee says, a week later. "Okay, fuck this." She stands up, balancing Pear deftly against her shoulder. "Here," she says, handing Patrick a blanket-wrapped ball of drooling baby, "you hold her."
"Um," Patrick say, settling Pear in his arms; she grizzles a little, but settles down when he gives her his fingers to play with. "Not that I'm complaining, but why?"
"Because I am sick of fucking sweatpants," Ashlee says. "And I want a fucking shower." Which is only fair, really: Ashlee's made a few press appearances since Pear was born, mostly morning shows, but Patrick doesn't think she's been out just for herself since maybe August, apart from New Year's. While they were gone, she mostly stayed home with Pear—understandable, but it makes sense that she'd be feeling twitchy by now.
"Okay," he says. "You want me to come with?"
She nods. "Pete's mom can take Pear for the night," she says. "We'll make Pete take us out for dinner, it'll be great." She pauses. "Somewhere snazzy." Another pause.
"Sounds great," Patrick says, finally. Ashlee seems to take that as permission, because she grins at him and blows a kiss at Pear and disappears upstairs.
It doesn't sound great at all, actually. It sounds like two hours of watching Pete and Ashlee be stupidly, gorgeously in love with each other, like two hours of being awkward and jealous and uncomfortably turned on. It sounds like another night where he'll drink their wine and laugh at their jokes and then go jerk off in their guest bedroom, thinking about the sex they'll certainly be having.
"Not that that's different from any other night," he tells Pear, who burbles at him. Patrick's not sure if that's agreement or just indigestion, and either way he's pretty sure he shouldn't be telling a four month old baby how much he misses having sex with her parents. "Fine, okay," he says. "Let's see what's on TV."
"Oh, classy," Ashlee says, twenty minutes later. "What, you couldn't find cartoons?"
"It was all superhero shit," Patrick says. "Plus, it was reruns." Plus, Pear really likes Project Runway, for some reason, although when Patrick glances down, he sees that she's sacked out in his arms. He straightens up and turns around, preparing to hand her back over—and stops dead, because holy shit.
"What?" Ashlee leans back against the doorframe, frowning. She doesn't cross her arms across her chest, but her wrists twitch a little, and Patrick can tell that she wants to. Which would be a shame, really: she's wearing a slinky black dress, something that bunches up just under her breasts and floats around her hips. Her breasts look amazing, all smooth pale skin and dramatic cleavage; she's lost a lot of the baby weight, but not all of it, and what there is left of it is sticking in all of the right places, apparently.
She looks gorgeous, and Patrick is so very screwed.
"What?" Ashlee says again. "Is it too—" She raises her hands, gestures vaguely, and lets them fall.
Patrick shakes his head, immediate denial. "No," he says, "no, it's—you look great," he says. "Pear's asleep, that's all." Ashlee's face clears and she steps forward, lifting her daughter carefully out of Patrick's arms. She holds her close for a long moment, the two of them silhouetted dramatically against the late sunshine, and Patrick can't help staring—it's so much of what he wants, what isn't his to have.
Then Ashlee settles Pear carefully in her crib—the Chicago scene has been falling over itself to provide them with baby supplies, which means that in addition to everything they have in LA, they have a crib for Pear in Patrick's guest bedroom and one in the living room—and plops herself down on Patrick's lap, straddling his legs. The skirt rides up her legs, and Patrick tries not to stare, really he does, but then Ashlee wobbles slightly and he reaches up to steady her, hands on her thighs, sliding up and back until he's pretty much groping her ass.
Ashlee smiles, quick and bright and nervous and determined, and scoots forward until, yeah, Patrick's definitely groping her ass. The tips of his fingers are just barely brushing against soft cotton, stretchy and thin and warm from her skin; it probably says strange things about Patrick's life that he can tell without looking that Ashlee's wearing her favorite pair of blue underwear.
"Hi," she says, leaning in and pressing a kiss against his cheek. "You know what's funny?"
Patrick is sure that there are a lot of things about this situation that could—potentially, at some point, maybe in several million years and on a different planet, or possibly in his next life—be funny. Somehow, though, he can't think of any of them quite at present. His mouth is dry, his palms are damp, and he feels like his brain is a TV test screen, all meaningless useless static.
"Um," he says articulately. It must be the right response, though, because Ashlee leans in again, and Patrick shouldn't kiss her—he shouldn't, he shouldn't, she's his best friend's wife and babymomma and she is so off-limits she's practically the Pope—but she's insistent, and she's actually pretty strong, and she holds him against the couch and kisses him on the mouth, slow and sweet and careful, licking gently into his mouth and then back out.
"I miss you," she says, pulling back, like this whole conversation makes sense from her side. "I miss you," she says again, "even though I see you pretty much every day."
"Um," Patrick says again. "I'm sorry?" It comes out as a question, and Ashlee rolls her eyes instead of answering, leans in and kisses him again, longer and slower and dirtier, and Patrick knows better but he also knows that he misses her too, misses her most of all when she's curled against his side during a mid-morning movie marathon.
"Come on," Ashlee says, "come on, let's do this thing." There's no way she means what it sounds like, Patrick knows, no way at all, she's not—except for how apparently she is suggesting what it sounds like, going by the way her hands are fumbling between their bodies, undoing his jeans and reaching into his boxers.
"Fuck," she says, kissing the side of his head. "Fuck, yeah, I missed this." Her hand wraps around his dick, stroking gently, and this is probably a bad idea—no, scratch that, definitely a bad idea—but Ashlee is warm and tastes like mints and he has missed her, too.
And really, there's no reason Pete should be the only one who gets to make bad decisions.
Pete comes home half an hour later and finds the two of them on the couch, watching some cooking show. Pear is awake again, and nursing; Pete swoops over and presses a gentle kiss to the crown of her head. Patrick focuses on the alarmingly angular woman greasing a glass pan and not on how he's pretty sure that, if Ashlee's shirt dips half an inch lower, the hickies on her breasts will be completely visible.
Pete kisses Ashlee, gently and lingeringly, then flings himself onto the couch between them, squirming around until his head is in Patrick's lap. He bats his eyelashes and flicks Patrick's hat, but doesn't move in for a kiss, which is probably for the best. Patrick rinsed, after, but he can still taste Ashlee at the corners of his lips and on the back of his tongue.
"So, hey," Pete says, beaming and kicking his feet until Ashlee swats him. "Where are we going for dinner?"
*
They wind up at some place that Pete "heard about last week, it's supposed to be really awesome." Usually, Pete "hears" about these things from Scimeca, but this place seems pretty classy, all low lighting and sleek furniture, so maybe not. Then again, maybe; it's hard to tell, with Nick.
The waitress very carefully doesn't bat an eyelash at Ashlee and Pete, hand-in-hand and grinning, which says a lot about the kind of restaurant it is. She smiles a little at Patrick, too, warm and kind of secretive, which says a lot about the kind of kid she is. She gives them their menus and disappears, and Pete immediately launches into an insanely detailed story about his latest exploits at the label. It's stupidly engaging, in the way that so many of Pete's stories are, and it carries them through the appetizers and most of the way through their main dishes.
"So finally I get the guy alone," Pete says, "and we talk, and it turns out that all he fucking wants is for us to pay for him to move his cats up from Louisiana!" Of course that's not all—it never is, when Pete's involved—but Patrick relaxes as Pete explains exactly how difficult it is to move a pair of Siamese cats from Baton Rouge to Chicago. "Harder than you would fucking think, dude," Pete says, and explains why, and Patrick leans back into the booth and sips his beer.
At the end of the story, Ashlee is leaning against Patrick's shoulder, shaking with helpless giggles, and Pete is beaming, sparkling in the way he always does when he has a good story and a good audience.
"But, hey," he says, snagging the bottle out of Patrick's hand and drinking the last drops. "I'm being an asshole—"
"—shocker," Patrick mutters, mostly for the pleasure of feeling Ashlee laugh against his neck.
"—fuck you," Pete adds, smoothly. "What did you two do all day today?"
Patrick shrugs, carefully casual. "Oh, you know," he says. "Watched TV, hung out with Pear, robbed a few banks." Pete grins, flipping his fork back and forth over his fingers.
"Yeah," Ashlee says, "and also, Patrick fucked me on the couch." The fork clatters onto the plate.
"Oh," Pete says, and Patrick can't read his voice and he can't look at his face. "Oh." He takes a deep, shivery breath. Patrick shifts a little in his seat, but Ashlee's arm is around his shoulders, holding him in place. "Is this—" Pete breaks off, slides his fingers around the lip of Patrick's beer bottle, takes another breath. "Is this—I mean, are we doing this?" Patrick waits, but the silence is too much, and he has to look up, has to see Pete watching him, eyes wide and expectant. Ashlee's hand brushes the back of his neck, slow and gentle.
And there's not even—there's no chance at all, no choices, only one way for this to go. Patrick nods, his mouth dry, because he's never been able to say no to Pete, and because—because he wants this. Wants them, for however long he gets to have them.
"Well, okay," Pete says, tight and nervous and anticipatory. "I guess we'd better skip dessert."
"Yes," Ashlee says. "Fuck me, yes."
Pete grins. "Greedy," he says, affectionately, and waves for the check.
*
They tumble into the house together at barely 6:30, giggling and exuberant, a tangle of arms and legs and Ashlee's long red hair. At the top of the stairs, Pete heads for Patrick's bedroom, dragging Ashlee along behind him, but Patrick catches them both by the shoulders and pulls them back.
"My room is a pit, and," he adds, "the guest bed is bigger." Pete nods, objection abandoned, and Ashlee grins and gestures to Patrick to lead the way.
Inside, Pete trips over his pants and goes flying, cackling with glee; Ashlee wobbles in her heels and rebounds off of the bedpost, flopping down onto the blankets with a whoosh of breath and a wide smile. They roll together on the bed, easy and habitual, and press their foreheads together, trading secret glances and lazy kisses.
Patrick stands back for a second and watches them both, their contrasts and their similarities, and loves them both, fiercely and unavoidably and impossibly. They turn as one to stare at him, Ashlee's smile wide and secretive, Pete's a challenge and an invitation.
And he toes off his shoes and he goes to them, because he is theirs—has always, he thinks, been theirs.
Pete tastes like his stupid aftershave and Ashlee more like baby powder, but underneath they both taste like sweat, and Patrick moves from one to the other, licking their skin and watching them both shiver. Their hands are on him, touching slowly and surely, holding him against them, nails digging in when he bites down just enough.
(Sometimes it's Ashlee's nails on his shoulder and Pete's skin under his mouth. Ashlee really does like the bruises, as it turns out.)
After a while, Pete rolls away, across the bed; Patrick notices the empty air along his side, but doesn't really mind. He's got his mouth pressed against Ashlee's collarbone, resting his cheek against her breasts, and her hands are stroking restlessly along his shoulders, tugging him infinitesimally closer. Every so often, he drags his thumbnail across her nipple, enjoying the difference in textures and the way she arches up underneath him, breath catching.
"Mmm," Ashlee says again, "oh, yeah, that's nice." Before Patrick can ask what, specifically, he feels it: Pete's knee between his legs, shoving them wider; Pete's breath on the back of his neck, soft and damp; Pete's slick hand slipping down past his tailbone. He shivers, closing his eyes and lifting his hips, and Ashlee strokes his hair, murmuring quietly while Pete fucks him.
"Fuck," Pete says, "Fuck, Patrick."
"Yeah, babe," Ashlee says, pressing her fingers against the back of Patrick's neck, "I'm pretty sure that's the plan."
Pete's laughter is rough but his fingers are steady and smooth, moving in and then out, curling and twisting until Patrick is arching his back, biting Ashlee's breasts just to have something between his teeth. Ashlee gasps, and Pete's fingers pull out, damp against Patrick's hip when Pete holds him still.
"Are you—can I—" Pete says, and Patrick is nodding yes before he's even finished his sentence, practically before he's even started talking, but Ashlee sits up, shaking her head.
"Wait," she says, holding up her hands until they stop moving and stare at her. "Wait, hang on—we need to reorganize." When neither of them move, still frozen and waiting, she rolls her eyes. "I mean, this is nice and all," she says, pushing gently on Patrick's shoulders, "but it isn't doing much for me."
"Oh," Patrick says, "oh." He scoots back, ignoring Pete's complaints and the swat he aims at Patrick's hip, and lets Ashlee wiggle around until she's sitting up, leaning back against the mountain of pillows at the head of the bed.
"Oh!" says Pete when Patrick lowers his head between Ashlee's thighs, and Patrick is smiling as he licks Ashlee's clit. Ashlee's giggle turns into a gasp, and he licks down again, scraping his teeth carefully across delicate skin.
"Fuck you both," Pete says, leaning forward across Patrick's back to reach for the night table. His dick bumps against the inside of Patrick's thighs, leaving damp spots that cool quickly; his hand scrabbles uncoordinatedly a few inches from the drawer. "Fuck," he says again, "babe, can you—" Ashlee's hand leaves Patrick's shoulder and she yanks the drawer open, pulling out a condom and slapping it into Pete's hand before pushing Patrick's head back between her legs.
Pete laughs again, clearly audible even over the sounds of him wrestling with the condom wrapper, but Patrick just shrugs and works his arm around under his body so that he can slide two fingers inside of Ashlee. She moans, and Patrick smirks a little, but then Pete slides his dick into Patrick, and he gives up the high ground in favor of groaning.
Of course Pete won't last long—he never does, really—but Patrick doesn't need much. Between Ashlee (the smell of her; the way she bucks down against his hand whenever it gets good and arches up into his mouth whenever he teases; the delicate tremors in her thighs as she gets closer) and Pete (gasping and grunting and swearing against Patrick's back; holding his hips and fucking him with long, slow strokes) and the endless anticipation, he's already close. Pete nudges his thighs that much further apart, and Ashlee slides her hand down the side of his face, and that's it, that's all, he's coming against their sheets and Ashlee's calves, Pete's dick still moving in his ass.
"Oh," Pete says again, and then, "oh, fuck," and then he's coming, too, snapping his hips against Patrick hard and fast and desperate.
"Ow," Patrick says, as Pete collapses bonelessly against his back, "fucker, I'm going to have ass bruises from your stupid hipbones. Ow," he says again, when Ashlee punches him on the shoulder, but he obediently goes back down again, curling his fingers up and licking until Ashlee's legs are spread wide, feet braced against the bed as she fucks herself on Patrick's fingers and his face. She moans softly, but it cuts off when Pete scoots up the bed. In the end, all Patrick can hear are the soft sounds of them kissing, the wet noises his fingers make inside of her, the quiet creak of the bedsprings and the loud hush of his own breathing.
When she sags back against the sheets, they rustle just a bit, almost but not quite muffling the sounds of Pete and Ashlee whispering to each other. Patrick wipes his mouth and rests his head against Ashlee's thigh; after a moment, their hands come down to rest on his shoulders, one on each side.
The phone rings, and they all jump. On the second ring, Ashlee shifts slightly, but it's Pete who rolls out of bed and digs through the tangle of clothes on the floor until he finds his jeans.
"Hey," he says, and then "yeah, okay, great." He takes a deep breath, then reaches down again, sorting one-handed through the tangle of clothes. "Yeah, great, thanks—just ring the bell, we'll come down." He snaps the phone shut and tosses it onto the bed, shimmying into his boxers. "My mom," he says. "She's going to swing by, bring the little lady home for the night."
"Okay, cool," Ashlee says, sitting up and cracking her back; Patrick would lean forward and kiss one of the small red marks on her breasts, but he knows that it's time for him to go. He rolls out of bed and grabs his own jeans, throwing them over his arm and hunting around for his shirt.
"Hey, no, wait," Pete says; "you don't have to get up, dude."
"Yeah, but," Patrick shrugs. "I should go, you know?" Pete opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again, but he steps away from the door, gesturing Patrick past him.
"Wait," Ashlee says, "wait, what?"
"Ash," Pete says, but Patrick hears her get out of bed, and before he can make the hallway her hand is on his shoulder, dragging him back into the room.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" she asks.
"Ash, let him go," Pete says, sliding his arm around her naked waist. "Babe, he's—just let him go, okay?"
"But he's being an idiot," she says. Ashlee shakes her hair back, and her face is pale and determined. "Just—just, why?"
Patrick sighs. Of all the things he didn't want to do today—"I have to," he says. "You know I have to."
"But why?"
Patrick gestures at the bassinet. "Because your daughter's coming home in fifteen minutes, in case you forgot."
"Yeah, and so?" Ashlee rolls her eyes. "Our daughter fucking adores you, in case you hadn't noticed."
"It's just—"
"It is not gas, you complete tool." Ashlee stares at him for a moment, but then her shoulders drop. "Is it—I mean, is it just too weird? Because I can't do anything about him," she elbows Pete in the stomach, but he doesn't move, just stares at Patrick with wide, scared eyes, "but—"
"No," Patrick says, cutting her off. "No, it's just—you're a family," he says, finally. "And I'm—"
"Also family," Pete says, breaking his stop-motion and stepping forward, grabbing Patrick by the upper arm, painfully tight. "Patrick, you're family."
"Yeah," Ashlee adds. "Dickwad."
"Yeah, sure," Patrick says, and tries to pull away. Pete just pulls him closer, though, close enough that Ashlee can grab him by the other shoulder. "I'm the uncle with all of the instruments and the hats and—"
"You're ours," Pete says, like somehow that makes it okay. "You're ours," which Patrick knew, "and we're yours," which—which maybe he didn't.
"Oh," Patrick says. "Oh."
"Dipshit," Pete says, and pulls him into a three-way hug, twice as warm and twice as close as anything else in the world.
*
Dale rings the bell seventeen minutes later, but Pete and Ashlee are still hogging his shower; Patrick, by virtue of being the only one dressed, gets to get the door. She hands Pear over to him without any kind of surprise or suspicion, which suggests that maybe Pete and Ashlee are right, and he did accidentally marry into the Wentz (-Simpson) clan without realizing it.
"It's kind of lame," he says, after Dale leaves. "I mean, I should at least get a certificate or something, you know?"
Ashlee laughs. "Yeah, like—like a merit badge, you know?"
"Like a ring?" Pete adds, and for a while they all sit there and beam quietly at each other, passing Pear between them when she fusses.
It's not quite that easy, and Patrick knows both of them—and, to be fair, knows himself—too well to think that it will ever be that easy. Still, for now he can hold their sleeping daughter against his chest, with Pete's head in his lap and Ashlee's arm around his shoulder, and somehow life doesn't seem so insurmountable.
"Man," Pete says, after a moment, "you do realize that this means you have to apologize to Cash, right?" He tries to keep a straight face, but winds up laughing so hard he almost can't get the question out. On Patrick's other side, Ashlee is just as bad, although at least she has the decency to muffle her giggles against his shoulder.
"Fuck you," Patrick says. "Fuck you both."
God, he loves them so fucking much.
Patrick just shakes his head. "I'm sorry, but having sex isn't going to change the fact that you're still wrong."
In the corner, Chris and Greta and Bob are curled up on the couch, watching with wide eyes. When Patrick turns his back on them, he hears a giggle, but he ignores it. The important thing here is that Darren is wrong.
Once the argument draws to a standstill (Darren is maybe not completely wrong, but Patrick isn't giving it up just yet) there's the rest of the song to go through, and the sky is dark blue and gleaming with streetlight and stars by the time Patrick hugs them all and heads for the door.
"Hey, Stumph, wait up," he hears in the parking lot, and he turn around, keys hanging from his fingers.
"Greta, hey," he says, leaning back against his car. "Darren admitted the error of his ways?"
Greta grins. "Nope, but he found your phone," she says, holding it up. "You're lucky it was him and not one of the interns."
Patrick hesitates, reaching out to grab the phone. "And Darren found it for me out of the goodness of his heart?"
"Nah," she says, "he still thinks you're wrong and stupid." She shrugs. "He lost his last week, and one of the boys out front found it." Her giggle is more than a little evil. "He's had to empty his voicemail twice since Thursday; I think he's going to wind up changing his number."
"You've come a long way, baby," Patrick sings, laughing, and takes the phone from Greta's outstretched fingers. "Just make sure he gives me the new one, when he changes it; I want to be able to tell him how wrong he is some more."
"Fair enough," Greta says, leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. "See you tomorrow!"
ONE MISSED CALL, the phone tells him when he flips it open. It's from Pete, but instead of his usual "Patrick isn't answering his phone but I need to talk to him" text message, there's just the little icon showing that he has a voice mail. Patrick shrugs and dials his mailbox, turning on the car and pulling out of the parking lot while he punches in his password. The Hushies are climbing into Bob's mother's van, and he waves at them as he pulls past them.
"Hey," Pete's voice says in his ear, rough and whispery. "Hey, Trick, I've got something for you to hear—" For a second, Patrick can't understand what he's hearing, but then the mess of sound resolves itself into Pete's low groan and Ashlee's gasping, aching moans.
He listens all the way home, hand clenched around the phone and eyes carefully on the road, then pulls into his driveway and listens to the last few minutes. He rests his free hand on his thigh, digging his fingers in against the taut muscle. Ashlee gets louder, but Pete gets quieter, so that all Patrick can hear in the end is her voice, the half-whispered profanities and the way she whimpers in the back of her throat.
"Fuck," Pete says. "God, fuck, Patrick, why the fuck—" There's a long pause, the noisy silence of Pete catching his breath, and then the empty static of the call cutting off.
"To erase this message," the automated voice begins, and Patrick presses nine, snaps the phone closed, and leans back, shaking the cramp out of his hand.
He's not going to jerk off in his car. He has a bed inside—two beds, actually, not to mention a couch and an armchair and a fucking shower. He even has bar stools in his kitchen, if he wants, although the kitchen windows face the street and don't have curtains, so probably not. He's not going to jerk off in his car, even if it is dark enough that nobody could see what he was doing without being pressed up against his window (in which case he would notice and could punch them). He's not going to jerk off in his car, in his driveway, thinking about his best friend and his best friend's girlfriend having sex for him to listen to—although, really, it probably wasn't exclusively for his benefit, at least not judging by the sounds Ashlee was making—
—Patrick slides his hand down his dick again, and, yes, okay, he's totally jerking off in his car in his driveway thinking about his best friend and his best friend's girlfriend having sex for him to listen to, but in his defense, he's not doing it very much. Even once he undoes his seat belt, there's not really enough room for him to move his hand or his hips, so he's basically just grabbing onto his dick and thinking about Pete's hands on Ashlee's hips, his mouth on Ashlee's neck, his dick inside her.
Fortunately, it's dark enough that Patrick wiping his hand off on the grass probably just looks like him picking up a bit of trash, if any of his nosy neighbors are even looking. He doesn't turn any lights on inside, just navigates by reflected streetlight as he drops his keys on the counter and makes his way to the bedroom.
He takes his phone with him, but it's too dark for anybody else to see.
*
Three months later, Pete wakes him up in Antarctica.
"Pete," Patrick says, (slowly and patiently, because dealing with Pete late at night is a lot like dealing with a very small child) "Pete, it's three in the fucking morning."
"It's two forty-seven," Pete says, chin digging in to Patrick's sternum.
"Fuck you," Patrick says, "that doesn't make it better." He rolls his eyes, even though he knows Pete can't see it.
"Fuck you, don't fucking roll your eyes at me," Pete says, poking Patrick in the shoulder. "Thirteen minutes is nothing to sneeze at." His hands are braced next to Patrick's head, and he's straddling Patrick's hips, holding him down into the bed. Patrick wonders sleepily if this is some kind of sex thing.
"Is this some kind of sex thing?" he asks, and Pete's restless twitching goes suddenly still. "Pete?"
"I mean, no," Pete says, "except that yes, but—" he takes a deep breath and lets it out, quick and shaking. "Ashlee's pregnant." He sounds nervous and confused and terrified. He sounds really fucking happy.
Patrick blinks, once and then again, and then sits up; Pete scrambles backwards, starting apologies and then cutting himself off, but Patrick catches him by the wrist and pulls him in tight, wrapping his arms around Pete's bony back.
"Shut up, you idiot," he says, hands in Pete's hair. "It's going to be fine, it's going to be great."
And it is, and it is. Pete is scattershot and even more vibrantly ridiculous than usual, talking a mile a minute and thinking even faster, but he's so stupidly happy it's hard to get too annoyed. He writes almost constantly, drinks too much Red Bull, and stares at a million pictures of tiny baby clothes, all with that same disbelieving grin.
They get back to the states and Ashlee comes out to visit, red haired and glowing, and practically flies into Pete's arms, giggling and whispering. They're all in New York, visiting old friends and doing press, and normally—for values of normal that allow for Patrick having sex with his hot almost-married friends—Patrick would join them, maybe to shoot the shit but probably for something more. Now, though, it feels awkward and inappropriate, so he takes his key and his double bed in a room with Andy and doesn't complain.
Around ten that night, Pete comes in, hair floppy and eyes gleaming.
"Hey, Hurley," he says, throwing himself across Andy's bed. "Can we borrow your video camera?"
"That depends," Andy says, not looking up from his computer. "Are you going to use it for good or for evil?"
Pete grins, sprawled out on his back. "Oh, evil, definitely," he says.
Andy raises his eyebrows, but still doesn't look at Pete. "By evil, do you mean porn?"
"No," Pete says. "Dude, she's pregnant, of course not." He pauses, staring at the ceiling. "Although I guess there's good money in that..." Andy kicks him in the shoulder, still focused on whatever he's reading. "Dude, of course not," Pete says. "We're just going to fuck with people on the internet."
"Go for it," Andy says. Pete rolls over and kisses Andy's ankle, then flings himself off of the bed and drops onto Andy's suitcase, where he rummages noisily until he digs out the battered camcorder Andy's had since their first or second tour.
"Thanks," he says again, holding it aloft. "Your generosity will not be forgotten!" Andy just flips him off, and Pete grins and turns to go.
His hand brushes against Patrick's shoulder when he climbs over Patrick's bed—of course it does. Fucking Pete, can't ever resist the urge to go in a straight line and make a nuisance of himself.
The video hits the internet two days later. Patrick has to admit that it's actually pretty funny; he also has to smack Pete upside the head for using good headphones. They're not his good headphones, of course—he knows better than to let Pete near those—but it's the principle of the thing.
The next week, Patrick sends him a playlist of songs the baby should hear—old standards, mostly, quiet and soothing and full of love. It's possible that he's undermining his own position, here.
Ashlee scales her touring schedule back some, after the wedding—not a lot, and not right away, because, as she puts it, "I'm pregnant, Pete, not dead"—but enough that she can come out and visit more often. As the months go by, Ashlee is pretty much grounded, and Pete stays close, hovering over her, bringing movies and treats and a million and one pregnancy books, trying to get Patrick to sing to the baby bump. (Ashlee shrugs her shoulders and laughs awkwardly, and Patrick punches Pete in the shoulder on her behalf) They're nesting, and it's really pretty damn adorable
Patrick tries to back off, ignoring Pete's texts and finding reasons to stay away when Pete gets fed up with 160 characters of harassment at a time.
"Seriously, Pete," he says, when Pete invites him over to play Mariokart for the second day running. "Don't you have better things to do?"
"Well, your mom's busy, so no, not really," Pete says, and Patrick rolls his eyes and hangs up on him.
Half an hour later, his phone rings again, same ringtone.
"Pete, no," Patrick says. "Seriously, go jerk off if you're that bored."
Ashlee's voice is low and throaty; she's been getting over a cold, mainlining orange juice and sleeping most of the day. "God, I wish that were the problem," she says. "He's just bored, I think, but—"
"—but a bored Pete is a danger to himself and others," Patrick finishes for her.
"Not to mention fucking obnoxious," Ashlee agrees. "Come over and entertain him, please?"
"That bad already?"
Ashlee sighs. "He's ordering baby furniture online, which wouldn't be so bad except he wants to put it together by himself," she says. "Call me crazy, but I don't want power tools in this house until the kid is old enough to use them himself."
"Good point," Patrick says. "I'll be over in half an hour."
"Make it twenty minutes and I'll blow you," Ashlee says, and laughs awkwardly. When she hangs up, Patrick stares at his phone, the display blinking 2:18 at him again and again. When it goes dark, he flips it shut and grabs his laptop.
He and Pete waste the afternoon sprawled on the living room floor, lazy in the warm sun. Patrick grabs the acoustic he keeps at Pete's place and fucks around, trying out snatches of melodies, slow and easy, but eventually he gives up on pretending and just plays their lullaby over and over.
The words are inked on Pete's arm, but Patrick doesn't need to look at them to remember.
"We should put that on the album," Pete says, staring at the ceiling. "A hidden track, maybe."
"You think?" Patrick says, fingers flat and still across the strings.
On the couch, Ashlee turns her head. "You should, yeah," she says. "It's a good song."
"Hey, babe," Pete says, sitting up and smiling. "I didn't think you were awake." He leans in to kiss her, quick and uncomplicated, and Patrick looks down at his fingers, watching his chords.
"Only a little," Ashlee says. "I like that one, though."
"Well, there you have it," Pete says, and there's another soft wet noise. "Hey, how's baby doing?"
"Oh, you know," Ashlee says, but she lets Pete lean in to listen anyways. Pete is endlessly fascinated with her stomach, even though she's not really showing yet, and spends lots of time with his head in her lap, ear pressed against her "just in case".
"You know you're not going to be able to actually feel anything for a few months, right?" Patrick asks one afternoon. The internet says not until 21 weeks, in fact, but sometimes it's not good to give Pete all of the available information. Besides, it's not like he can't google it for himself—he probably already has.
"Shut up, Stump," Pete says, kicking his feet off the edge of the couch. "You're ruining my special moment."
"Where by 'special moment', you mean 'staring at my tits', right?" Ashlee says. "No, don't get up," she adds when Pete goes wide-eyed and mock-shocked. "Whatever, you know I don't mind." She looks up at Patrick and grins, rueful and accepting. "I figure, hey, they're here, somebody might as well enjoy looking at them."
She shrugs, and Patrick has a lot of sympathy for Pete. Ashlee's breasts have always been really nice, in clothes and out, but somehow now they're even nicer.
Not that he's been seeing them up close and personal much, not since the pregnancy. Which is completely reasonable, and, honestly, even as hot as Ashlee is right now, even as hot as Pete pretty much always is—even with that, Patrick can't really see himself having hot threesome sex. Not right now, and maybe not ever again. They're having a baby; they're going to be parents. They have bigger things on their minds, serious things—things that most definitely don't involve threesomes. It'd be weird, and not in the "awkward yet surprisingly hot" way that things used to be. It was nice, and now it's done, and that's okay.
Plus, Patrick's never had a pregnancy kink, and as time goes by, Ashlee starts looking really very pregnant. Call him a prude, but Patrick would feel more than a little weird sticking his dick up next to a tiny person.
"Dude, gross," Pete says, when the subject inevitably comes up. "You have a sick mind, Stump." He rolls his eyes. "It's not, like, next to the baby or anything," he adds. "There's a mucous plug and stuff, it's really pretty awesome."
"I hate you," Patrick says, reaching for his computer. "I'm going to google that now, and I know it's going to be gross but I'm going to have to look anyways." He looks; it's gross. "Second of all," he adds, "I know you're not actually, like, jizzing on your kid." He shrugs. "That doesn't make it not weird."
"For you, maybe," Pete says, and he has a point. If age and relationship status and sexuality and basic self-preservation haven't stopped him yet, there's no reason to think that a weird mental image would do the trick. And clearly it doesn't, because Pete and Ashlee are having a lot of sex. Patrick isn't even trying to notice, isn't pining for them or fantasizing about it or being creepy like that. Pete just has a lot of hickies, all of a sudden, in all the same places Patrick used to like to bite, and once or twice he comes down to breakfast with what looks a lot like ropeburn on his wrists.
Plus, he and Ashlee have a habit of sneaking off to the bedroom to "nap" while Patrick is over, and they're really just not as quiet as they think they are. Patrick maybe sometimes takes some "naps" of his own, but only when they're not around to notice, and, well. Well. It's not his fault that they're hot, awesome, and pretty much perpetually horny.
It's not weird, though. In fact, it's surprisingly un-weird, given that Patrick's spending most of his free time these days with his best friend and his best friend's extremely pregnant wife, and given that they used to sometimes all have sex together.
*
Things are slow and lazy, Ashlee getting rounder and rounder, more and more inclined to waste the day sitting on the couch with her head in Patrick's lap, pretending to watch daytime television.
"Sometimes I worry about exposing her to Make Me A Supermodel in the womb," Ashlee says, eyes closed, "but I figure she might as well get used to it early, you know?"
Patrick combs his fingers through her hair and nudges the volume down a little more, until it's so low they can barely hear it, tiny crazy people miming tiny crazy lives.
They paint the second bedroom for the baby—Pete comes up with increasingly ridiculous names, but Ashlee keeps insisting that they wait until they meet her, so for now she's just the baby—and have to do it four times before they hit the right color of pale yellow. Ashlee is practically spherical, pausing for breath every few minutes, but she attacks the walls with a paintbrush and a determined grin, singing along to Patrick's oldies playlist and smacking Pete upside the head when he tugs on the long red braid hanging down her back.
(She forgets to put the paintbrush down first, of course, so Pete gets a faceful of Goldenrod Daydream. Patrick winds up sending them both off to shower with one wall still unpainted. He's most of the way done before they get back, damp and flushed; in that time, the water goes on, turns off, and then goes on again.)
Patrick sings lullabies, late at night over crackling cell phone lines, and he's not sure which of the three he's supposed to be soothing.
They make a video, they fight with the label, they go back on tour, and somehow Patrick goes from singing over the phone to the baby bump from the back room of a tiny club one day to staring at crappy cell phone pictures of Pete and Ashlee and a reddish blob with tufts of dark hair.
welcome pear elizabeth, the text message says. best thing that ever happened to me.
congratulations, Patrick types back, but how does Ashlee feel about being 2nd best? He sets the phone aside, but a few seconds later it buzzes again. The display says Ashlee-personal, the line that most people don't have.
I'm pretty ok with it, the message reads. maybe i can get some sleep now. And isn't it just like Pete and Ashlee to both be texting as soon as humanly possible after the birth of the firstborn.
put the phones down and give your daughter a hug, he sends to both of them, and sets his phone aside, smiling.
It doesn't buzz again for the rest of the night.
When Patrick meets her, a few days later, Pear—"Seriously, Pete, Pear?" "Shut the fuck up, you're going to give her a complex." "Pete, I'm pretty sure she can't understand anything yet."—turns out to have a scrunched face, patchy dark hair, a surprisingly strong grip, and good taste in music.
"Oh, and now who's exaggerating her comprehension skills?" Pete's sprawled on the couch with Pear cradled carefully against his chest, and Patrick is sitting on the floor next to them, picking out quiet riffs for Pear to listen to. Ashlee is in the recliner, magazine across her chest, eyes shut and snoring slightly.
"She totally smiled," Patrick says, playing the riff from gold standard again. Pear beams fuzzily at him, mouth wide, eyes squinched shut. "There, look, see?" He knows it's probably really gas, but he doesn't say it, and neither does Pete.
Things are surprisingly easy—even with the press appearances, all the hundred things that need their attention, Pete and Ashlee do a good job of being there for Pear, holding her and feeding her and generally treating her like she's the most precious thing in the entire world. Which, Patrick guesses, she pretty much is.
*
And then Patrick punches Cash, and it kind of all goes to shit. He wonders how he managed not to notice for so long—for nine months, fuck; he's always known he could be dense, but there's dense and then there's fucking impenetrable—but now that he's figured it out, there's no way not to think about it. He misses Pete and Ashlee, misses the feeling of Ashlee's skin against his; misses Pete's stupid sex faces; misses the way Pete looks, spread out on the bed and watching Patrick fuck Ashlee; misses the way Ashlee tastes when Pete's fucked her. He misses falling asleep with the two of them, warm skin and slow, deep breaths to either side of him.
He even misses Pete's stupid horsey laugh, which is dumb, because it's not like he doesn't still hear it twenty times a day. Maybe more, now, even though whatever-they-had is now done, because Pete keeps finding reasons to invite Patrick over to the house, and Patrick keeps not being able to say no.
"Pete," he says, "seriously, Pete, I was there—" he checks his watch "—less than eight hours ago." He'd gotten home, jerked off, and fallen asleep for seven hours; he'd just been thinking about jerking off again when Pete called.
(There was a time when he'd have done it anyways, jerked off as quietly as he could manage while Pete rambled, waited to see how long it took before Pete noticed, yelled at him, and joined in. Sometimes he'd put it on speakerphone so that Patrick could hear Ashlee, too.
Things change, though, and Patrick keeps his hands settled carefully on his stomach.)
"Yeah," Pete says, "but the little lady was awake for six of those eight hours, and you know that baby-hours count double." This is true, according to the table that's stuck up on the fridge. They'd worked it out on the back of an envelope in magic marker, late one evening when they were sprawled across the living room and trying to figure out whose job it was going to be to feed Pear when she woke up. One hour with a conscious baby is worth two hours without; one hour with a screaming baby counts triple.
One hour with a baby and Joe Simpson is six times the going rate, because Ashlee is a miserable cheater. Whenever they try to call her on it, though, she lifts up her shirt to show off her stretch marks, and they have to shut up.
(In Patrick's case, it's at least half because he's staring at her (still very awesome, even in a nursing bra) breasts, but, well. Some things you don't need to share.)
"Come on, Patrick," Pete says. "Come on, please?" And Patrick thinks about all the reasons he shouldn't go, and all the things he can't have, and then he sighs and tells Pete he'll be there in half an hour, once he's showered and found clean clothes. "You can shower here," Pete says, leering over the phone. "And who needs clothes at all?"
It's just Pete being Pete, Patrick knows. The only thing to do is to hang up on him and try not to think about it too much.
He thinks—he hopes, for a few futile weeks—that things will get easier when they go back on tour. Asia and Australia and Europe, almost two straight months of motion and activity, and maybe he'll be able to forget about this, when he's not in their house all the time. Ashlee talks about coming out with them, but winds up deciding to stay in L.A.
"I mean, she's going to come out on tour with us eventually, you know?" she says, and Patrick nods. They're sitting on the couch, feet meeting in the middle, listening idly to the sounds of Pete doing something in the kitchen. Pear is curled small and sweet in Patrick's arms, drowsing softly against his chest, and every so often Ashlee pokes her with the big toe of her left foot.
"There's no reason to put her through that right now, though," he says, wrapping his free hand around Ashlee's ankle. "Like you said, she'll get it eventually, and right now she's so little that it's not like she'll understand or remember it."
"Yeah," Ashlee says, smiling, eyes down. "Yeah, I know, exactly. Just—" She shrugs, then settles back against the arm of the couch. "I don't know."
Patrick squeezes her ankle, and she wiggles her foot, brushing her toes against his wrist. "We're going to miss you, too," he says. "You know we will."
It's not a lie, is the problem. He is going to miss her, and not even in the way he already does. He's going to miss her sharp sense of humor and her silly, awkward dancing; he's going to miss the way she looks in the morning, sleepy-eyed and fuzzy; he's going to miss watching her with Pear, careful and awestruck and gloriously happy.
He already misses her, though, misses them, every single second he spends in this house. Going away from her, away from the life that isn't his—that will make things easier, maybe.
Somehow, though, it doesn't seem to work out that way. Instead, Patrick gets email after email, detailing the things Pear's been doing on the other side of the world, complete with photos of her round, curious face. Her favorite activities seem to be sleeping, sticking her feet in her mouth, and looking cute; Patrick saves all of the pictures. Ashlee calls, too, usually when Pete's off doing an interview or otherwise occupied, but sometimes not—sometimes when Pete is in the same room, even. He doesn't seem to mind, just waves at the phone and goes back to what he's doing, but Patrick feels weird, somehow, like he's doing something he shouldn't even though Ashlee was the one to call him.
And when Patrick's not keeping in touch with the home front, there's always Pete. Pete likes to take pictures of interesting things to send back to his family, so at least twice a day he drags Patrick off the bus to look at a monument or a museum or an ecologically responsible house.
"It's passively heated," he says, and Patrick nods.
"Germany, though?" he says, and Pete just shrugs and smiles.
They bus around Europe, rambling slow and noisy through unfamiliar countryside, and Pete spends at least half of their travel time with his head in Patrick's lap, staring at the ceiling and smiling vaguely.
(The rest of the time he splits between the internet and stupid pranks. He's still Pete Wentz, after all.)
The shows are good, the crowds electric, shouting Pete's words back at Patrick—but he's just as glad to get on a plane and rest his head against the window, watching the Atlantic draw by underneath them.
Pete is supposed to be flying on to LA to meet up with his family, but somehow it doesn't surprise Patrick at all when Ashlee and Pear are waiting for them at the airport gate, grinning wide excited (and, in Pear's case, toothlessly) at him.
"Hi," Ashlee says, handing Pear off to her father and pulling Patrick into a tight hug. "Surprised?"
"Not really, somehow," Patrick says, shrugging and patting her back. "Pete's been acting weird since Berlin."
"Pete's always acting weird," Ashlee points out, mouth brushing his neck. Pete is communing with Pear, holding her up so he can press their foreheads together and stare into her unfocused eyes; he flips them the bird without looking up. "Anyway," Ashlee says, "we wanted her to get used to Chicago, and you've got some time free, so we figured we'd come and visit." She pulls back, but leaves her left arm wrapped around him, pressing against him from shoulder to hip. "We can still get a hotel," she says, looking up at him from under the brim of her hat—one of Pete's, actually, and Patrick's before that.
"Don't even think about it," he tells her, pulling her a little closer. "Of course you can stay with me."
At this point he's pretty much doomed, anyways.
*
"Okay," Ashlee says, a week later. "Okay, fuck this." She stands up, balancing Pear deftly against her shoulder. "Here," she says, handing Patrick a blanket-wrapped ball of drooling baby, "you hold her."
"Um," Patrick say, settling Pear in his arms; she grizzles a little, but settles down when he gives her his fingers to play with. "Not that I'm complaining, but why?"
"Because I am sick of fucking sweatpants," Ashlee says. "And I want a fucking shower." Which is only fair, really: Ashlee's made a few press appearances since Pear was born, mostly morning shows, but Patrick doesn't think she's been out just for herself since maybe August, apart from New Year's. While they were gone, she mostly stayed home with Pear—understandable, but it makes sense that she'd be feeling twitchy by now.
"Okay," he says. "You want me to come with?"
She nods. "Pete's mom can take Pear for the night," she says. "We'll make Pete take us out for dinner, it'll be great." She pauses. "Somewhere snazzy." Another pause.
"Sounds great," Patrick says, finally. Ashlee seems to take that as permission, because she grins at him and blows a kiss at Pear and disappears upstairs.
It doesn't sound great at all, actually. It sounds like two hours of watching Pete and Ashlee be stupidly, gorgeously in love with each other, like two hours of being awkward and jealous and uncomfortably turned on. It sounds like another night where he'll drink their wine and laugh at their jokes and then go jerk off in their guest bedroom, thinking about the sex they'll certainly be having.
"Not that that's different from any other night," he tells Pear, who burbles at him. Patrick's not sure if that's agreement or just indigestion, and either way he's pretty sure he shouldn't be telling a four month old baby how much he misses having sex with her parents. "Fine, okay," he says. "Let's see what's on TV."
"Oh, classy," Ashlee says, twenty minutes later. "What, you couldn't find cartoons?"
"It was all superhero shit," Patrick says. "Plus, it was reruns." Plus, Pear really likes Project Runway, for some reason, although when Patrick glances down, he sees that she's sacked out in his arms. He straightens up and turns around, preparing to hand her back over—and stops dead, because holy shit.
"What?" Ashlee leans back against the doorframe, frowning. She doesn't cross her arms across her chest, but her wrists twitch a little, and Patrick can tell that she wants to. Which would be a shame, really: she's wearing a slinky black dress, something that bunches up just under her breasts and floats around her hips. Her breasts look amazing, all smooth pale skin and dramatic cleavage; she's lost a lot of the baby weight, but not all of it, and what there is left of it is sticking in all of the right places, apparently.
She looks gorgeous, and Patrick is so very screwed.
"What?" Ashlee says again. "Is it too—" She raises her hands, gestures vaguely, and lets them fall.
Patrick shakes his head, immediate denial. "No," he says, "no, it's—you look great," he says. "Pear's asleep, that's all." Ashlee's face clears and she steps forward, lifting her daughter carefully out of Patrick's arms. She holds her close for a long moment, the two of them silhouetted dramatically against the late sunshine, and Patrick can't help staring—it's so much of what he wants, what isn't his to have.
Then Ashlee settles Pear carefully in her crib—the Chicago scene has been falling over itself to provide them with baby supplies, which means that in addition to everything they have in LA, they have a crib for Pear in Patrick's guest bedroom and one in the living room—and plops herself down on Patrick's lap, straddling his legs. The skirt rides up her legs, and Patrick tries not to stare, really he does, but then Ashlee wobbles slightly and he reaches up to steady her, hands on her thighs, sliding up and back until he's pretty much groping her ass.
Ashlee smiles, quick and bright and nervous and determined, and scoots forward until, yeah, Patrick's definitely groping her ass. The tips of his fingers are just barely brushing against soft cotton, stretchy and thin and warm from her skin; it probably says strange things about Patrick's life that he can tell without looking that Ashlee's wearing her favorite pair of blue underwear.
"Hi," she says, leaning in and pressing a kiss against his cheek. "You know what's funny?"
Patrick is sure that there are a lot of things about this situation that could—potentially, at some point, maybe in several million years and on a different planet, or possibly in his next life—be funny. Somehow, though, he can't think of any of them quite at present. His mouth is dry, his palms are damp, and he feels like his brain is a TV test screen, all meaningless useless static.
"Um," he says articulately. It must be the right response, though, because Ashlee leans in again, and Patrick shouldn't kiss her—he shouldn't, he shouldn't, she's his best friend's wife and babymomma and she is so off-limits she's practically the Pope—but she's insistent, and she's actually pretty strong, and she holds him against the couch and kisses him on the mouth, slow and sweet and careful, licking gently into his mouth and then back out.
"I miss you," she says, pulling back, like this whole conversation makes sense from her side. "I miss you," she says again, "even though I see you pretty much every day."
"Um," Patrick says again. "I'm sorry?" It comes out as a question, and Ashlee rolls her eyes instead of answering, leans in and kisses him again, longer and slower and dirtier, and Patrick knows better but he also knows that he misses her too, misses her most of all when she's curled against his side during a mid-morning movie marathon.
"Come on," Ashlee says, "come on, let's do this thing." There's no way she means what it sounds like, Patrick knows, no way at all, she's not—except for how apparently she is suggesting what it sounds like, going by the way her hands are fumbling between their bodies, undoing his jeans and reaching into his boxers.
"Fuck," she says, kissing the side of his head. "Fuck, yeah, I missed this." Her hand wraps around his dick, stroking gently, and this is probably a bad idea—no, scratch that, definitely a bad idea—but Ashlee is warm and tastes like mints and he has missed her, too.
And really, there's no reason Pete should be the only one who gets to make bad decisions.
Pete comes home half an hour later and finds the two of them on the couch, watching some cooking show. Pear is awake again, and nursing; Pete swoops over and presses a gentle kiss to the crown of her head. Patrick focuses on the alarmingly angular woman greasing a glass pan and not on how he's pretty sure that, if Ashlee's shirt dips half an inch lower, the hickies on her breasts will be completely visible.
Pete kisses Ashlee, gently and lingeringly, then flings himself onto the couch between them, squirming around until his head is in Patrick's lap. He bats his eyelashes and flicks Patrick's hat, but doesn't move in for a kiss, which is probably for the best. Patrick rinsed, after, but he can still taste Ashlee at the corners of his lips and on the back of his tongue.
"So, hey," Pete says, beaming and kicking his feet until Ashlee swats him. "Where are we going for dinner?"
*
They wind up at some place that Pete "heard about last week, it's supposed to be really awesome." Usually, Pete "hears" about these things from Scimeca, but this place seems pretty classy, all low lighting and sleek furniture, so maybe not. Then again, maybe; it's hard to tell, with Nick.
The waitress very carefully doesn't bat an eyelash at Ashlee and Pete, hand-in-hand and grinning, which says a lot about the kind of restaurant it is. She smiles a little at Patrick, too, warm and kind of secretive, which says a lot about the kind of kid she is. She gives them their menus and disappears, and Pete immediately launches into an insanely detailed story about his latest exploits at the label. It's stupidly engaging, in the way that so many of Pete's stories are, and it carries them through the appetizers and most of the way through their main dishes.
"So finally I get the guy alone," Pete says, "and we talk, and it turns out that all he fucking wants is for us to pay for him to move his cats up from Louisiana!" Of course that's not all—it never is, when Pete's involved—but Patrick relaxes as Pete explains exactly how difficult it is to move a pair of Siamese cats from Baton Rouge to Chicago. "Harder than you would fucking think, dude," Pete says, and explains why, and Patrick leans back into the booth and sips his beer.
At the end of the story, Ashlee is leaning against Patrick's shoulder, shaking with helpless giggles, and Pete is beaming, sparkling in the way he always does when he has a good story and a good audience.
"But, hey," he says, snagging the bottle out of Patrick's hand and drinking the last drops. "I'm being an asshole—"
"—shocker," Patrick mutters, mostly for the pleasure of feeling Ashlee laugh against his neck.
"—fuck you," Pete adds, smoothly. "What did you two do all day today?"
Patrick shrugs, carefully casual. "Oh, you know," he says. "Watched TV, hung out with Pear, robbed a few banks." Pete grins, flipping his fork back and forth over his fingers.
"Yeah," Ashlee says, "and also, Patrick fucked me on the couch." The fork clatters onto the plate.
"Oh," Pete says, and Patrick can't read his voice and he can't look at his face. "Oh." He takes a deep, shivery breath. Patrick shifts a little in his seat, but Ashlee's arm is around his shoulders, holding him in place. "Is this—" Pete breaks off, slides his fingers around the lip of Patrick's beer bottle, takes another breath. "Is this—I mean, are we doing this?" Patrick waits, but the silence is too much, and he has to look up, has to see Pete watching him, eyes wide and expectant. Ashlee's hand brushes the back of his neck, slow and gentle.
And there's not even—there's no chance at all, no choices, only one way for this to go. Patrick nods, his mouth dry, because he's never been able to say no to Pete, and because—because he wants this. Wants them, for however long he gets to have them.
"Well, okay," Pete says, tight and nervous and anticipatory. "I guess we'd better skip dessert."
"Yes," Ashlee says. "Fuck me, yes."
Pete grins. "Greedy," he says, affectionately, and waves for the check.
*
They tumble into the house together at barely 6:30, giggling and exuberant, a tangle of arms and legs and Ashlee's long red hair. At the top of the stairs, Pete heads for Patrick's bedroom, dragging Ashlee along behind him, but Patrick catches them both by the shoulders and pulls them back.
"My room is a pit, and," he adds, "the guest bed is bigger." Pete nods, objection abandoned, and Ashlee grins and gestures to Patrick to lead the way.
Inside, Pete trips over his pants and goes flying, cackling with glee; Ashlee wobbles in her heels and rebounds off of the bedpost, flopping down onto the blankets with a whoosh of breath and a wide smile. They roll together on the bed, easy and habitual, and press their foreheads together, trading secret glances and lazy kisses.
Patrick stands back for a second and watches them both, their contrasts and their similarities, and loves them both, fiercely and unavoidably and impossibly. They turn as one to stare at him, Ashlee's smile wide and secretive, Pete's a challenge and an invitation.
And he toes off his shoes and he goes to them, because he is theirs—has always, he thinks, been theirs.
Pete tastes like his stupid aftershave and Ashlee more like baby powder, but underneath they both taste like sweat, and Patrick moves from one to the other, licking their skin and watching them both shiver. Their hands are on him, touching slowly and surely, holding him against them, nails digging in when he bites down just enough.
(Sometimes it's Ashlee's nails on his shoulder and Pete's skin under his mouth. Ashlee really does like the bruises, as it turns out.)
After a while, Pete rolls away, across the bed; Patrick notices the empty air along his side, but doesn't really mind. He's got his mouth pressed against Ashlee's collarbone, resting his cheek against her breasts, and her hands are stroking restlessly along his shoulders, tugging him infinitesimally closer. Every so often, he drags his thumbnail across her nipple, enjoying the difference in textures and the way she arches up underneath him, breath catching.
"Mmm," Ashlee says again, "oh, yeah, that's nice." Before Patrick can ask what, specifically, he feels it: Pete's knee between his legs, shoving them wider; Pete's breath on the back of his neck, soft and damp; Pete's slick hand slipping down past his tailbone. He shivers, closing his eyes and lifting his hips, and Ashlee strokes his hair, murmuring quietly while Pete fucks him.
"Fuck," Pete says, "Fuck, Patrick."
"Yeah, babe," Ashlee says, pressing her fingers against the back of Patrick's neck, "I'm pretty sure that's the plan."
Pete's laughter is rough but his fingers are steady and smooth, moving in and then out, curling and twisting until Patrick is arching his back, biting Ashlee's breasts just to have something between his teeth. Ashlee gasps, and Pete's fingers pull out, damp against Patrick's hip when Pete holds him still.
"Are you—can I—" Pete says, and Patrick is nodding yes before he's even finished his sentence, practically before he's even started talking, but Ashlee sits up, shaking her head.
"Wait," she says, holding up her hands until they stop moving and stare at her. "Wait, hang on—we need to reorganize." When neither of them move, still frozen and waiting, she rolls her eyes. "I mean, this is nice and all," she says, pushing gently on Patrick's shoulders, "but it isn't doing much for me."
"Oh," Patrick says, "oh." He scoots back, ignoring Pete's complaints and the swat he aims at Patrick's hip, and lets Ashlee wiggle around until she's sitting up, leaning back against the mountain of pillows at the head of the bed.
"Oh!" says Pete when Patrick lowers his head between Ashlee's thighs, and Patrick is smiling as he licks Ashlee's clit. Ashlee's giggle turns into a gasp, and he licks down again, scraping his teeth carefully across delicate skin.
"Fuck you both," Pete says, leaning forward across Patrick's back to reach for the night table. His dick bumps against the inside of Patrick's thighs, leaving damp spots that cool quickly; his hand scrabbles uncoordinatedly a few inches from the drawer. "Fuck," he says again, "babe, can you—" Ashlee's hand leaves Patrick's shoulder and she yanks the drawer open, pulling out a condom and slapping it into Pete's hand before pushing Patrick's head back between her legs.
Pete laughs again, clearly audible even over the sounds of him wrestling with the condom wrapper, but Patrick just shrugs and works his arm around under his body so that he can slide two fingers inside of Ashlee. She moans, and Patrick smirks a little, but then Pete slides his dick into Patrick, and he gives up the high ground in favor of groaning.
Of course Pete won't last long—he never does, really—but Patrick doesn't need much. Between Ashlee (the smell of her; the way she bucks down against his hand whenever it gets good and arches up into his mouth whenever he teases; the delicate tremors in her thighs as she gets closer) and Pete (gasping and grunting and swearing against Patrick's back; holding his hips and fucking him with long, slow strokes) and the endless anticipation, he's already close. Pete nudges his thighs that much further apart, and Ashlee slides her hand down the side of his face, and that's it, that's all, he's coming against their sheets and Ashlee's calves, Pete's dick still moving in his ass.
"Oh," Pete says again, and then, "oh, fuck," and then he's coming, too, snapping his hips against Patrick hard and fast and desperate.
"Ow," Patrick says, as Pete collapses bonelessly against his back, "fucker, I'm going to have ass bruises from your stupid hipbones. Ow," he says again, when Ashlee punches him on the shoulder, but he obediently goes back down again, curling his fingers up and licking until Ashlee's legs are spread wide, feet braced against the bed as she fucks herself on Patrick's fingers and his face. She moans softly, but it cuts off when Pete scoots up the bed. In the end, all Patrick can hear are the soft sounds of them kissing, the wet noises his fingers make inside of her, the quiet creak of the bedsprings and the loud hush of his own breathing.
When she sags back against the sheets, they rustle just a bit, almost but not quite muffling the sounds of Pete and Ashlee whispering to each other. Patrick wipes his mouth and rests his head against Ashlee's thigh; after a moment, their hands come down to rest on his shoulders, one on each side.
The phone rings, and they all jump. On the second ring, Ashlee shifts slightly, but it's Pete who rolls out of bed and digs through the tangle of clothes on the floor until he finds his jeans.
"Hey," he says, and then "yeah, okay, great." He takes a deep breath, then reaches down again, sorting one-handed through the tangle of clothes. "Yeah, great, thanks—just ring the bell, we'll come down." He snaps the phone shut and tosses it onto the bed, shimmying into his boxers. "My mom," he says. "She's going to swing by, bring the little lady home for the night."
"Okay, cool," Ashlee says, sitting up and cracking her back; Patrick would lean forward and kiss one of the small red marks on her breasts, but he knows that it's time for him to go. He rolls out of bed and grabs his own jeans, throwing them over his arm and hunting around for his shirt.
"Hey, no, wait," Pete says; "you don't have to get up, dude."
"Yeah, but," Patrick shrugs. "I should go, you know?" Pete opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again, but he steps away from the door, gesturing Patrick past him.
"Wait," Ashlee says, "wait, what?"
"Ash," Pete says, but Patrick hears her get out of bed, and before he can make the hallway her hand is on his shoulder, dragging him back into the room.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" she asks.
"Ash, let him go," Pete says, sliding his arm around her naked waist. "Babe, he's—just let him go, okay?"
"But he's being an idiot," she says. Ashlee shakes her hair back, and her face is pale and determined. "Just—just, why?"
Patrick sighs. Of all the things he didn't want to do today—"I have to," he says. "You know I have to."
"But why?"
Patrick gestures at the bassinet. "Because your daughter's coming home in fifteen minutes, in case you forgot."
"Yeah, and so?" Ashlee rolls her eyes. "Our daughter fucking adores you, in case you hadn't noticed."
"It's just—"
"It is not gas, you complete tool." Ashlee stares at him for a moment, but then her shoulders drop. "Is it—I mean, is it just too weird? Because I can't do anything about him," she elbows Pete in the stomach, but he doesn't move, just stares at Patrick with wide, scared eyes, "but—"
"No," Patrick says, cutting her off. "No, it's just—you're a family," he says, finally. "And I'm—"
"Also family," Pete says, breaking his stop-motion and stepping forward, grabbing Patrick by the upper arm, painfully tight. "Patrick, you're family."
"Yeah," Ashlee adds. "Dickwad."
"Yeah, sure," Patrick says, and tries to pull away. Pete just pulls him closer, though, close enough that Ashlee can grab him by the other shoulder. "I'm the uncle with all of the instruments and the hats and—"
"You're ours," Pete says, like somehow that makes it okay. "You're ours," which Patrick knew, "and we're yours," which—which maybe he didn't.
"Oh," Patrick says. "Oh."
"Dipshit," Pete says, and pulls him into a three-way hug, twice as warm and twice as close as anything else in the world.
*
Dale rings the bell seventeen minutes later, but Pete and Ashlee are still hogging his shower; Patrick, by virtue of being the only one dressed, gets to get the door. She hands Pear over to him without any kind of surprise or suspicion, which suggests that maybe Pete and Ashlee are right, and he did accidentally marry into the Wentz (-Simpson) clan without realizing it.
"It's kind of lame," he says, after Dale leaves. "I mean, I should at least get a certificate or something, you know?"
Ashlee laughs. "Yeah, like—like a merit badge, you know?"
"Like a ring?" Pete adds, and for a while they all sit there and beam quietly at each other, passing Pear between them when she fusses.
It's not quite that easy, and Patrick knows both of them—and, to be fair, knows himself—too well to think that it will ever be that easy. Still, for now he can hold their sleeping daughter against his chest, with Pete's head in his lap and Ashlee's arm around his shoulder, and somehow life doesn't seem so insurmountable.
"Man," Pete says, after a moment, "you do realize that this means you have to apologize to Cash, right?" He tries to keep a straight face, but winds up laughing so hard he almost can't get the question out. On Patrick's other side, Ashlee is just as bad, although at least she has the decency to muffle her giggles against his shoulder.
"Fuck you," Patrick says. "Fuck you both."
God, he loves them so fucking much.