Not a Big Deal (1/1)
Title: Not a Big Deal
Summary: Yeah, we're psychic. So what?
Author:
lovelypoet
Rating: NC-17
Notes: Partially inspired by a quote from the most recent interview in Kerrang and in response to a request for telepathy fic. Unbetaed... proofread repeatedly, errors certainly remain.
It's not a big deal anymore, it's really not.
****
The first time it happens is kind of strange. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere Indiana, the middle of the night, not even half way to where they are going. Everyone is so quiet that Patrick's not sure who's awake or who's asleep anymore, though he really hopes Andy is awake since he's the one driving. The radio is off, and Patrick can't help but sing an endless litany of "bored, bored, bored bored bored" to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat inside his own head. It's not even really a complaint, just a bad habit left over from 8th grade music class.
"Jesus Christ, Patrick, we're all bored, shut the fuck up about it already." Pete snaps and Patrick simply apologizes and starts mentally replaying the night's show instead.
It isn't until the next morning, over a plate of hash browns that he is half certain are going to earn him his place in the Dead Young Rock Star Hall of Fame (because really, who needs heroin and hookers when you've got partially hydrogenated fats?), that Patrick really thinks about it.
"Did you bitch me out for my internal monologue last night?" He asks Pete, who stares glumly at his bowl of cornflakes. Thinks, and if he wanted pancakes, why didn't he order them?
"I thought I wanted cereal." Pete says without moving his lips, then looks up and everything is synched again. "Fuck you, internal monologues don't wake me up at three in the morning and get the stupidest tune in the world lodged in my head."
"Huh." Patrick says... and thinks.
****
At first, it's like a radio with shitty reception or the old television his parents had in the basement that could barely get a signal on the rabbit-ears under all the concrete. If he stands still in just the right place, he might be able to snag a sentence or two, broadcast a tiny piece of melody, but only when they're in the same room.
He's pretty sure Pete still hasn't noticed.
"You've noticed we're psychic, right?" Pete says, idly plunking out a few notes on his bass during a break at practice. Of course, it's always possible Patrick's wrong.
"Um. Yeah?" Patrick says. "I was starting to think maybe there might be something like that going on."
"No," Pete says, narrowing his eyes. "You were starting to think about mentally humming I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. If you value your life at all, don't go any further with that thought."
Instead, Patrick thinks The Song That Doesn't End for a few minutes and Pete's twitching by the end of practice.
"Seriously not cool," Pete says after Andy and Joe have left.
"Sorry?" Patrick says, only he already knows that Pete knows he's not. "What are we going to do?"
"About what? Your awful taste in kids' TV?" Pete shudders. "If you're ok with watching a woman with her hand up a lamb's ass, who am I to make judgments?"
Patrick rolls his eyes. He's pretty sure the waves of exasperation wouldn't actually require an explanation even if they weren't apparently getting direct transmissions from each other's brains. He says, "I was more thinking about the psychic thing."
"Just let it be." Pete finishes packing away his stuff, shrugs. "Either it'll fade out or it'll stay the same... or it'll get stronger until our brains explode. We'll see."
Patrick thinks about how reassuring that isn't, but Pete's already out of the room, so it doesn't do any good.
The never really talk about it again. At least, not out loud.
****
It gets stronger, but nobody's brain explodes. From different rooms, from Patrick's house to Pete's, Chicago to LA. Some days it's just like background music he barely notices, others it's a near constant hum of distraction that he just can't tune out.
Patrick's always known that necessity is the mother of invention, but he never really thought about what the phrase means. He understands when he spontaneously manages to block all signals about five seconds after Pete's awed "way to go, super-stud!" breaks into his mind while he's bringing Anna off with his tongue for the second time in five minutes.
"Sorry about that," Pete's voice is soft, a little embarrassed (and a little impressed) in his head later when the channel's open again. "And hey, how'd you do that?"
"I'm not giving you sex tips," Patrick thinks back at him as loud as he can.
"No, hey, no." Oh, cool, Pete's blushing. "No help needed there. The part where you hit the off switch, though? Really, that's handy."
It only takes them about a week after that to get it down to a science. Patrick's thrilled to be able to give up the awkward attempts to hum Battle Hymn of The Republic while jerking off. He always got the verses mixed up.
****
So really, it's so very not a big deal that they never bother to tell Andy or Joe. But there's a difference between not being a big deal and not being a pain in the ass. Sometimes it's the mental equivalent Pete standing there poking him until he pays attention, and Patrick can't tune him out just because it's annoying.
They have an unspoken rule about blocking each other unless sex and bodily functions are involved. They've got a lot of unspoken rules now, many of them developed in transatlantic broadcasts full of apologies and worry.
****
Selected Excerpts from the Pete and Patrick Communications Commission Rules:
1. Don't answer out loud in public. Really.
2. Patrick is not to psychically earworm Pete with horrible songs, with "horrible" defined as anything Pete would get beat up for if he started humming it aloud. ("So, no New Kids On the Block?" "Not unless you want to die.")
7. Radio silence required during sex, masturbation, in-depth fantasizing, and bathroom trips. ("Prude." "Freak.")
10. Pete cannot just "beam" lyrics into Patrick's head without also providing them in some sort of written form. ("But it would save time!" "No. It really wouldn't.")
15. No shutting down the signal for more than eight hours at a time. ("Eight hours?" "Eight hours." "I'm not going to do it again, Patrick." "Just check in. I will too.")
20. Patrick is allowed to ask if Pete's taking his medication if the messages start getting significantly weirder than usual, but only once a week.
21. Pete is allowed to tell Patrick to leave the studio and go get some fucking sleep, but only if he hasn't made any progress in hours, is looping through the same few notes endlessly and it's after midnight.
26. Try not to pay attention to the weird dreams that slip through sometimes ("Seriously, a matador, Pete?" "Fuck off, you're not supposed to be looking at that stuff." "Yeah, but... MATADOR?")
32. No waking each other up on purpose out of boredom. Ever.
****
The signal's coming in from LA, strong as the same room. Pete's been bitching for over an hour about some solo photo shoot he got talked into doing, constant insults spiraling in intensity and explicitness. Patrick's not sure the last idea Pete had for the production assistant is physically possible. Even if it is, it's definitely illegal.
"Busy now," Patrick says and he is, trying to pound out some rough spots in the chorus harmonies of a new song. "Seriously, on a deadline here, Pete."
At least he's finally learned only to respond out loud when he's alone.
He hears the heavy sigh inside his head of Pete giving in, and things fade down to a reasonable level. The general aura of discontent and frustration still there, but streams of words gone, quiet enough that he can go back to work.
"Thanks," he says, muddling back into the song, trying to keep his volume down too until Pete nudges him and tells him to turn it up, drown out the idiots around him. Patrick does.
Pete doesn't kill anyone, and Patrick fixes the harmonies. He feels the glow of approval and joy from Pete when he runs through the finished song one last time. It's good. Really good. And Patrick loves the sound of their laughter inside him.
****
Pete's horny. Patrick knows he should be trying to tune it out, the sympathetic buzz at the back of his brain, the slow curl of warmth in his stomach. But Pete's broadcasting it loud and clear, open on all channels. It doesn't make any sense. Pete's usually good about turning it down. Since they figured it out Patrick's only been in the loop for two of Pete's early morning orgasms. It's not like Pete could tell Mikey that wake-up blowjobs were off the table since they would get Patrick hot and bothered through their Vulcan mind meld. And Pete apologized both times, going blank as soon as he was actually fully conscious.
Pete's not rising out of sleep, unaware. Late in Los Angeles and even later in Chicago, he's wide awake (and so is Patrick, now), lying on his back in his bed (just like Patrick). He's hard, wants to be touching himself but isn't. Nervous.
Nervous? Scared.
"Pete? You gonna turn it down?" Patrick asks, hands flexing, brushing his fingers against his thighs.
"Do you want me to?" Pete asks, voice breathy even though Patrick can't actually hear him breathing. "You can stay. I want you to stay."
"Pete?"
"You should stay," Pete says.
Patrick's breathing faster, his skin sensitized. Everything that touches him - his clothes, the sheets, the pillow under his head - feels like someone's hands.
"Not 'someone's'" Pete says. "Don't."
Not someone's, Patrick admits. Pete's.
"Yeah," Pete says, hand wrapping around his cock finally. Patrick suddenly realizes he's hard too, not sure when it happened, the transition from awareness of Pete's arousal to making it his own. He's thrusting up into a phantom grip, his own hands clenching at the sheets.
"Pete, fuck," Patrick thinks. Aloud it's just a moan, low and long.
"Think about it so much," and Pete proves it by showing him. Against the back of his eyelids, Patrick's watching them in a hundred full color fantasies.
In the dark, Pete on his stomach, Patrick pressing down over him, into him, tasting the sweat at the base of Pete's neck, and Pete bucks up underneath him, whimpering for it harder and faster.
Patrick's mouth wet and soft, tongue tracing over and behind Pete's balls as they draw up tight, hand fisted tight around his cock, whispering for him to "hold on, not yet..."
Morning light and Patrick's sitting on the edge of the bed, legs wide and Pete on his knees, their hands tangled and braced against Patrick's thighs while Pete takes his cock deeper than he can in real life.
Pete pushing him onto the bed and watching him shift and settle on his back. Knees bent, feet against the mattress and muscles working so hard that the rest of him is arched up as Pete works two fingers into him, stroking against his prostate. The high keening noise he'll make is one Pete's only heard once before across the miles but never forgot.
Pete crawling up his body, biting kisses into his skin the whole way, sucking and marking, mouths meeting. They swallow each other's gasps as Pete reaches down and positions his cock, slips in and the stretch and fullness.... explodes behind Patrick's eyes and down his spine, every muscle trembling as he comes against his own stomach, alone in the bed, hands still fisted at his sides.
Pete's still there in his head, incoherent but open, and it hurts. Patrick wants to come down, wants to breathe but Pete's still hard, stroking his cock with one hand, sucking on his own fingers. Patrick can't see him anymore, but it's still there as Pete slips his fingers from his mouth and shifts to press against his own ass. Patrick makes up his mind.
"I'm coming to LA," he thinks, and shudders again, eyes closing. Every thing tenses again, Pete's orgasm ripping through like fire. The signal dies and Patrick's cell phone rings. He doesn't want to move, answers it anyway.
"When?" Pete says, voice tinny and distant like it never is from inside. They haven't talked on the phone in months.
"You could have asked inside," Patrick says, still a little breathless and more than a little confused. He reaches out but there's nothing there, Pete's only on the phone, not in his mind.
"No," Pete says, "I need to know. Out loud."
"Tomorrow," Patrick says. "I'll fly out tomorrow."
"Are we going to have to have 'a talk' about this?" Pete asks, and he's there again, just a little, just enough that Patrick knows the right answer.
"No."
****
Pete talks to him through the entire flight, switching rapidly between promises of what he's going to do once he's got Patrick in his house and pointless chatter about anything he can think of. It's obvious he's trying to keep it all on the surface, but Patrick can feel the nerves underneath, the 'Danger, Will Robinson' sirens that Pete doesn't want him to hear. So Patrick pretends that he doesn't. Everything's going to be awesome, he thinks until Pete's right there with him, believing it.
****
Patrick understands feedback, knows how to balance it on stage, in the studio, walk the line between an awesome effect and purely painful noise. This is different. He thought it would be like last night. Overwhelming he was ready for, but this, there's nothing but sensation. Everything looping back infinitely. He feels Pete's hand brush his leg and he feels Pete feeling him feel Pete's hand. There isn't a grammar made to explain it and he couldn't use it right now anyway, even if it existed.
"Oh, fuck." Pete groans, snatching his hand away from Patrick's denim clad thigh. "Fuck." And it's voiced and unvoiced and everywhere at once. They haven't even kissed yet, awkward and trembling, hard as they've ever been, perched on Pete's bed.
"No, don't," Patrick reaches for him, and their hands twist together, and even that is almost too much.
"We touch all the time," Pete says, eyes closed.
"Not like this," Patrick says and he's not even sure if they're speaking or thinking it at each other anymore (neither is Pete). "It's..."
"Different," Pete fills in for him. "Louder."
And that's it exactly. Patrick never noticed before, but it's always quietest when they are actually together.
"Shut it down?" Patrick suggests and the violence of Pete's response shocks him, the raging scream. "Just for a little while."
"No. Not shut down." Pete's still staring at their hands, and Patrick can feel the counterpoint thrumming of their pulses. "Maybe just..."
Patrick feels it getting softer, not gone but subdued. Pete squeezes his hand and smiles, and he still knows what Pete's thinking. The same thing he's thinking, a perfect unison chorus of "kiss me, touch me, fuck me."
It's lips and tongue and teeth, Pete biting his lower lip, telling him how much he's wanted to taste it, him licking his way into Pete's mouth, already knowing how Pete likes it.
The struggle to keep it turned down is harder than Patrick expected, before it was always about not letting Pete listen in. Now he wants him to know, wants to tell, wants to feel everything as much as he can. What he's doing right, what Pete wants next, and he knows Pete feels the same way.
"We'll get there," Pete whispers in his ear. Inside his head Patrick hears, "you know what I want."
Mid-afternoon, and the the sun through the windows is bright and warm. Patrick stands in a puddle of light and sheds his clothes like skin, nothing to hide. Pete grins and silently hums his pleasure, does the same. He wraps his hand around Patrick's shoulder, pushes him until his knees hit the bed.
"Sit down. And remember, I've got a gag reflex in real life," he says, and that's Patrick's only real warning before Pete's dropping to his knees and wrapping his lips around the head of Patrick's cock, tonguing at the slit.
Patrick begs for more, and Pete gives it to him. One hand wrapped around the base of his cock, the other holding his hip, not keeping him from thrusting, just a reminder.
"Show me," Pete says from inside. Patrick feels the narrow channel between them widen just a little, breath and heart catching as he realizes that the taste in his mouth is himself. Pete says it again.
Patrick looks down. Pete's looking up at him, head bobbing lower every time, Patrick can feel the ache in his own jaw and the amazing heat wrapped around his cock, and he wants Pete to feel it all. He drops a hand to Pete's hair, not gripping, but needing another point of contact. Blinks, tears his eyes away from Pete's and opens up. Pete releases his hip, drops his hand to his own cock, and it's like Patrick can feel everything twice over again. Not the infinity of earlier, but close, close, close enough and everything except his body and Pete's ceases to exist. Pete feels it happening, all of it in sympathy and by proxy. He comes into his own hand just as he gets the first taste of Patrick's in his mouth.
"Pete," Patrick says, finally, when his breath is back and he remembers that words exist. His throat is raw, the moans and cries weren't just inside.
"Yeah." It's every answer to every question, breathed against the crease of Patrick's hip.
"Ok." Patrick says, pulling Pete up off the floor and into the bed. The sun's warm enough that they don't worry about covers, just basking naked and sweaty and perfect "Ok."
****
It's not a big deal anymore, it's really not. Except for when it is.
Summary: Yeah, we're psychic. So what?
Author:
lovelypoetRating: NC-17
Notes: Partially inspired by a quote from the most recent interview in Kerrang and in response to a request for telepathy fic. Unbetaed... proofread repeatedly, errors certainly remain.
It's not a big deal anymore, it's really not.
****
The first time it happens is kind of strange. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere Indiana, the middle of the night, not even half way to where they are going. Everyone is so quiet that Patrick's not sure who's awake or who's asleep anymore, though he really hopes Andy is awake since he's the one driving. The radio is off, and Patrick can't help but sing an endless litany of "bored, bored, bored bored bored" to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat inside his own head. It's not even really a complaint, just a bad habit left over from 8th grade music class.
"Jesus Christ, Patrick, we're all bored, shut the fuck up about it already." Pete snaps and Patrick simply apologizes and starts mentally replaying the night's show instead.
It isn't until the next morning, over a plate of hash browns that he is half certain are going to earn him his place in the Dead Young Rock Star Hall of Fame (because really, who needs heroin and hookers when you've got partially hydrogenated fats?), that Patrick really thinks about it.
"Did you bitch me out for my internal monologue last night?" He asks Pete, who stares glumly at his bowl of cornflakes. Thinks, and if he wanted pancakes, why didn't he order them?
"I thought I wanted cereal." Pete says without moving his lips, then looks up and everything is synched again. "Fuck you, internal monologues don't wake me up at three in the morning and get the stupidest tune in the world lodged in my head."
"Huh." Patrick says... and thinks.
****
At first, it's like a radio with shitty reception or the old television his parents had in the basement that could barely get a signal on the rabbit-ears under all the concrete. If he stands still in just the right place, he might be able to snag a sentence or two, broadcast a tiny piece of melody, but only when they're in the same room.
He's pretty sure Pete still hasn't noticed.
"You've noticed we're psychic, right?" Pete says, idly plunking out a few notes on his bass during a break at practice. Of course, it's always possible Patrick's wrong.
"Um. Yeah?" Patrick says. "I was starting to think maybe there might be something like that going on."
"No," Pete says, narrowing his eyes. "You were starting to think about mentally humming I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. If you value your life at all, don't go any further with that thought."
Instead, Patrick thinks The Song That Doesn't End for a few minutes and Pete's twitching by the end of practice.
"Seriously not cool," Pete says after Andy and Joe have left.
"Sorry?" Patrick says, only he already knows that Pete knows he's not. "What are we going to do?"
"About what? Your awful taste in kids' TV?" Pete shudders. "If you're ok with watching a woman with her hand up a lamb's ass, who am I to make judgments?"
Patrick rolls his eyes. He's pretty sure the waves of exasperation wouldn't actually require an explanation even if they weren't apparently getting direct transmissions from each other's brains. He says, "I was more thinking about the psychic thing."
"Just let it be." Pete finishes packing away his stuff, shrugs. "Either it'll fade out or it'll stay the same... or it'll get stronger until our brains explode. We'll see."
Patrick thinks about how reassuring that isn't, but Pete's already out of the room, so it doesn't do any good.
The never really talk about it again. At least, not out loud.
****
It gets stronger, but nobody's brain explodes. From different rooms, from Patrick's house to Pete's, Chicago to LA. Some days it's just like background music he barely notices, others it's a near constant hum of distraction that he just can't tune out.
Patrick's always known that necessity is the mother of invention, but he never really thought about what the phrase means. He understands when he spontaneously manages to block all signals about five seconds after Pete's awed "way to go, super-stud!" breaks into his mind while he's bringing Anna off with his tongue for the second time in five minutes.
"Sorry about that," Pete's voice is soft, a little embarrassed (and a little impressed) in his head later when the channel's open again. "And hey, how'd you do that?"
"I'm not giving you sex tips," Patrick thinks back at him as loud as he can.
"No, hey, no." Oh, cool, Pete's blushing. "No help needed there. The part where you hit the off switch, though? Really, that's handy."
It only takes them about a week after that to get it down to a science. Patrick's thrilled to be able to give up the awkward attempts to hum Battle Hymn of The Republic while jerking off. He always got the verses mixed up.
****
So really, it's so very not a big deal that they never bother to tell Andy or Joe. But there's a difference between not being a big deal and not being a pain in the ass. Sometimes it's the mental equivalent Pete standing there poking him until he pays attention, and Patrick can't tune him out just because it's annoying.
They have an unspoken rule about blocking each other unless sex and bodily functions are involved. They've got a lot of unspoken rules now, many of them developed in transatlantic broadcasts full of apologies and worry.
****
Selected Excerpts from the Pete and Patrick Communications Commission Rules:
1. Don't answer out loud in public. Really.
2. Patrick is not to psychically earworm Pete with horrible songs, with "horrible" defined as anything Pete would get beat up for if he started humming it aloud. ("So, no New Kids On the Block?" "Not unless you want to die.")
7. Radio silence required during sex, masturbation, in-depth fantasizing, and bathroom trips. ("Prude." "Freak.")
10. Pete cannot just "beam" lyrics into Patrick's head without also providing them in some sort of written form. ("But it would save time!" "No. It really wouldn't.")
15. No shutting down the signal for more than eight hours at a time. ("Eight hours?" "Eight hours." "I'm not going to do it again, Patrick." "Just check in. I will too.")
20. Patrick is allowed to ask if Pete's taking his medication if the messages start getting significantly weirder than usual, but only once a week.
21. Pete is allowed to tell Patrick to leave the studio and go get some fucking sleep, but only if he hasn't made any progress in hours, is looping through the same few notes endlessly and it's after midnight.
26. Try not to pay attention to the weird dreams that slip through sometimes ("Seriously, a matador, Pete?" "Fuck off, you're not supposed to be looking at that stuff." "Yeah, but... MATADOR?")
32. No waking each other up on purpose out of boredom. Ever.
****
The signal's coming in from LA, strong as the same room. Pete's been bitching for over an hour about some solo photo shoot he got talked into doing, constant insults spiraling in intensity and explicitness. Patrick's not sure the last idea Pete had for the production assistant is physically possible. Even if it is, it's definitely illegal.
"Busy now," Patrick says and he is, trying to pound out some rough spots in the chorus harmonies of a new song. "Seriously, on a deadline here, Pete."
At least he's finally learned only to respond out loud when he's alone.
He hears the heavy sigh inside his head of Pete giving in, and things fade down to a reasonable level. The general aura of discontent and frustration still there, but streams of words gone, quiet enough that he can go back to work.
"Thanks," he says, muddling back into the song, trying to keep his volume down too until Pete nudges him and tells him to turn it up, drown out the idiots around him. Patrick does.
Pete doesn't kill anyone, and Patrick fixes the harmonies. He feels the glow of approval and joy from Pete when he runs through the finished song one last time. It's good. Really good. And Patrick loves the sound of their laughter inside him.
****
Pete's horny. Patrick knows he should be trying to tune it out, the sympathetic buzz at the back of his brain, the slow curl of warmth in his stomach. But Pete's broadcasting it loud and clear, open on all channels. It doesn't make any sense. Pete's usually good about turning it down. Since they figured it out Patrick's only been in the loop for two of Pete's early morning orgasms. It's not like Pete could tell Mikey that wake-up blowjobs were off the table since they would get Patrick hot and bothered through their Vulcan mind meld. And Pete apologized both times, going blank as soon as he was actually fully conscious.
Pete's not rising out of sleep, unaware. Late in Los Angeles and even later in Chicago, he's wide awake (and so is Patrick, now), lying on his back in his bed (just like Patrick). He's hard, wants to be touching himself but isn't. Nervous.
Nervous? Scared.
"Pete? You gonna turn it down?" Patrick asks, hands flexing, brushing his fingers against his thighs.
"Do you want me to?" Pete asks, voice breathy even though Patrick can't actually hear him breathing. "You can stay. I want you to stay."
"Pete?"
"You should stay," Pete says.
Patrick's breathing faster, his skin sensitized. Everything that touches him - his clothes, the sheets, the pillow under his head - feels like someone's hands.
"Not 'someone's'" Pete says. "Don't."
Not someone's, Patrick admits. Pete's.
"Yeah," Pete says, hand wrapping around his cock finally. Patrick suddenly realizes he's hard too, not sure when it happened, the transition from awareness of Pete's arousal to making it his own. He's thrusting up into a phantom grip, his own hands clenching at the sheets.
"Pete, fuck," Patrick thinks. Aloud it's just a moan, low and long.
"Think about it so much," and Pete proves it by showing him. Against the back of his eyelids, Patrick's watching them in a hundred full color fantasies.
In the dark, Pete on his stomach, Patrick pressing down over him, into him, tasting the sweat at the base of Pete's neck, and Pete bucks up underneath him, whimpering for it harder and faster.
Patrick's mouth wet and soft, tongue tracing over and behind Pete's balls as they draw up tight, hand fisted tight around his cock, whispering for him to "hold on, not yet..."
Morning light and Patrick's sitting on the edge of the bed, legs wide and Pete on his knees, their hands tangled and braced against Patrick's thighs while Pete takes his cock deeper than he can in real life.
Pete pushing him onto the bed and watching him shift and settle on his back. Knees bent, feet against the mattress and muscles working so hard that the rest of him is arched up as Pete works two fingers into him, stroking against his prostate. The high keening noise he'll make is one Pete's only heard once before across the miles but never forgot.
Pete crawling up his body, biting kisses into his skin the whole way, sucking and marking, mouths meeting. They swallow each other's gasps as Pete reaches down and positions his cock, slips in and the stretch and fullness.... explodes behind Patrick's eyes and down his spine, every muscle trembling as he comes against his own stomach, alone in the bed, hands still fisted at his sides.
Pete's still there in his head, incoherent but open, and it hurts. Patrick wants to come down, wants to breathe but Pete's still hard, stroking his cock with one hand, sucking on his own fingers. Patrick can't see him anymore, but it's still there as Pete slips his fingers from his mouth and shifts to press against his own ass. Patrick makes up his mind.
"I'm coming to LA," he thinks, and shudders again, eyes closing. Every thing tenses again, Pete's orgasm ripping through like fire. The signal dies and Patrick's cell phone rings. He doesn't want to move, answers it anyway.
"When?" Pete says, voice tinny and distant like it never is from inside. They haven't talked on the phone in months.
"You could have asked inside," Patrick says, still a little breathless and more than a little confused. He reaches out but there's nothing there, Pete's only on the phone, not in his mind.
"No," Pete says, "I need to know. Out loud."
"Tomorrow," Patrick says. "I'll fly out tomorrow."
"Are we going to have to have 'a talk' about this?" Pete asks, and he's there again, just a little, just enough that Patrick knows the right answer.
"No."
****
Pete talks to him through the entire flight, switching rapidly between promises of what he's going to do once he's got Patrick in his house and pointless chatter about anything he can think of. It's obvious he's trying to keep it all on the surface, but Patrick can feel the nerves underneath, the 'Danger, Will Robinson' sirens that Pete doesn't want him to hear. So Patrick pretends that he doesn't. Everything's going to be awesome, he thinks until Pete's right there with him, believing it.
****
Patrick understands feedback, knows how to balance it on stage, in the studio, walk the line between an awesome effect and purely painful noise. This is different. He thought it would be like last night. Overwhelming he was ready for, but this, there's nothing but sensation. Everything looping back infinitely. He feels Pete's hand brush his leg and he feels Pete feeling him feel Pete's hand. There isn't a grammar made to explain it and he couldn't use it right now anyway, even if it existed.
"Oh, fuck." Pete groans, snatching his hand away from Patrick's denim clad thigh. "Fuck." And it's voiced and unvoiced and everywhere at once. They haven't even kissed yet, awkward and trembling, hard as they've ever been, perched on Pete's bed.
"No, don't," Patrick reaches for him, and their hands twist together, and even that is almost too much.
"We touch all the time," Pete says, eyes closed.
"Not like this," Patrick says and he's not even sure if they're speaking or thinking it at each other anymore (neither is Pete). "It's..."
"Different," Pete fills in for him. "Louder."
And that's it exactly. Patrick never noticed before, but it's always quietest when they are actually together.
"Shut it down?" Patrick suggests and the violence of Pete's response shocks him, the raging scream. "Just for a little while."
"No. Not shut down." Pete's still staring at their hands, and Patrick can feel the counterpoint thrumming of their pulses. "Maybe just..."
Patrick feels it getting softer, not gone but subdued. Pete squeezes his hand and smiles, and he still knows what Pete's thinking. The same thing he's thinking, a perfect unison chorus of "kiss me, touch me, fuck me."
It's lips and tongue and teeth, Pete biting his lower lip, telling him how much he's wanted to taste it, him licking his way into Pete's mouth, already knowing how Pete likes it.
The struggle to keep it turned down is harder than Patrick expected, before it was always about not letting Pete listen in. Now he wants him to know, wants to tell, wants to feel everything as much as he can. What he's doing right, what Pete wants next, and he knows Pete feels the same way.
"We'll get there," Pete whispers in his ear. Inside his head Patrick hears, "you know what I want."
Mid-afternoon, and the the sun through the windows is bright and warm. Patrick stands in a puddle of light and sheds his clothes like skin, nothing to hide. Pete grins and silently hums his pleasure, does the same. He wraps his hand around Patrick's shoulder, pushes him until his knees hit the bed.
"Sit down. And remember, I've got a gag reflex in real life," he says, and that's Patrick's only real warning before Pete's dropping to his knees and wrapping his lips around the head of Patrick's cock, tonguing at the slit.
Patrick begs for more, and Pete gives it to him. One hand wrapped around the base of his cock, the other holding his hip, not keeping him from thrusting, just a reminder.
"Show me," Pete says from inside. Patrick feels the narrow channel between them widen just a little, breath and heart catching as he realizes that the taste in his mouth is himself. Pete says it again.
Patrick looks down. Pete's looking up at him, head bobbing lower every time, Patrick can feel the ache in his own jaw and the amazing heat wrapped around his cock, and he wants Pete to feel it all. He drops a hand to Pete's hair, not gripping, but needing another point of contact. Blinks, tears his eyes away from Pete's and opens up. Pete releases his hip, drops his hand to his own cock, and it's like Patrick can feel everything twice over again. Not the infinity of earlier, but close, close, close enough and everything except his body and Pete's ceases to exist. Pete feels it happening, all of it in sympathy and by proxy. He comes into his own hand just as he gets the first taste of Patrick's in his mouth.
"Pete," Patrick says, finally, when his breath is back and he remembers that words exist. His throat is raw, the moans and cries weren't just inside.
"Yeah." It's every answer to every question, breathed against the crease of Patrick's hip.
"Ok." Patrick says, pulling Pete up off the floor and into the bed. The sun's warm enough that they don't worry about covers, just basking naked and sweaty and perfect "Ok."
****
It's not a big deal anymore, it's really not. Except for when it is.