HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEA!
Today is the birthday of one of my favourite people on the planet. loveyouallwrong turns 21 today, which means she can finally taste the sweet taste of alcohol for the first time ever, right Lea? I bet you're excited about that. Since I can't take her out and get her drunk I figured I'd make her something. And, sure, Pete made her the best possible birthday present ever, right? (And omg, I'm gonna be !!!! about that at some point when I can form coherent sentences about it). But I hope you enjoy this too Lea! (It's not sociopath!Greta/Gabe I'm afraid, but it is Pete! Hopefully being Pete-ish!)
ILU LEA! ♥ I'm so glad bandom brought us together. You've made the past year really awesome.
Title: This Fic Will Be Enjoyable To Your Brainvoice
Pairing: Pete/Ashlee, Pete/pretty much everyone except not
Disclaimer: Not true.
Summary: Pregnancy has put Ashlee off sex, so she sends Pete off to get his kicks elsewhere.
A/N: Written for loveyouallwrong on the occasion of her celebration of birth. Wonderfully quick and dirty beta done by mintyfiend, all mistakes are mine. This is ridiculous. I apologise in advance. Title belongs to Lea.
“Ash,” Pete says, wrapping his arms around her from behind, resting his palms against her swollen belly. “Hey Ashlee, whatcha doin’?”
Ashlee glances at the piece of bread in one hand and the knife in the other.
“Well,” she says slowly, “considering I’m about to put some of that chocolate spread onto my ham sandwich, I think ‘slowly losing my mind’ is the best answer. I’d say losing my taste, but I think I did that when I married you.”
“Ha ha,” Pete says and watches as she puts the chocolate spread on it anyways, and takes a huge bite, twisting her head to smile at Pete, chocolate smeared across her teeth and a bit of partially chewed bread showing in her part open mouth.
“Hot,” Pete says, and actually means it. He moves one hand down lower, and slides the other up to cup one of her breasts, weighing it in his palm.
“Pete,” Ashlee sighs, and wriggles out of his grasp.
Pete frowns. “So, I was thinking…you, me, naked in our massive bed upstairs. You can bring the sandwich with, if you want.”
“Nah,” Ashlee says. “I have stuff to do.”
“Like what?” Pete asks. “What could be more important to do than your husband? Your husband who is really, really horny and wants to have lots and lots of semi-energetic sex. Right now. Right here, if you can’t be bothered going upstairs.”
Ashlee makes a face. “My hormones don’t seem to want me to have sex with you at the moment,” she says, and Pete wishes he’d burnt that pregnancy book that was all ‘Let nature, and your hormones, guide you through your pregnancy’. Fucking Hurley.
“How about later?” Pete asks hopefully, and Ashlee turns around.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she says, and Pete tries not to frown pre-emptively, even though she only ever says that when she’s about to say something he doesn’t want to hear, like ‘no, seriously, there is such a thing as too tight pants’ or ‘the baby kicks really hard when you sing at it and not in a good way’ or ‘black eyeliner yes, green eyeliner no’.
“I don’t really want to see your dick,” she says. “I think it might be I’ve overdosed on pickles and peanut butter in the last month.”
“Hey!” Pete exclaims, wrinkling his nose. “My dick reminds you of pickles?”
Ashlee shrugs. “I guess. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not just your dick. Maybe it’s all dicks. It just makes me feel nauseous.”
Pete nods. “Hey,” he says, after a moment. “Looks or taste?”
“Both?” Ashlee says, and Pete decides that’s a hint that it’s about time he took a shower.
The water is hot and it’s making him clean, but he supposes he should have a cold one instead. He’s tried jerking off but it’s not the same, doesn’t satisfying him the way it used to way back when, back in his youth. He wants sex, that connection with another person, even if it’s just for the briefest of moments. He likes that feeling, of being unguarded around another person, naked and open, when he usually spends so much time shielding himself, wearing different masks.
“The thing is,” he says, and Ashlee puts down the magazine she’s reading to give him her best ‘I am listening’ face, “is that I’m really horny. And I’d kinda like to get off and it doesn’t work on my own. Are you sure you-”
Ashlee looks a little green and that’s one kink Pete certainly doesn’t have. He sighs.
“Never mind,” Pete says, resigned and Ashlee gives him a considering look.
“Just because I don’t want sex, doesn’t mean you can’t have it,” she says.
Pete stares at her, horrified. “Okay, I realise the dressing in animal costumes and that incident with the peeing probably makes me sound like a pervert, but I would never have sex with you when you were, like, asleep or unconscious or anything.”
Ashlee laughs. She laughs long and hard enough that Pete thinks she’s maybe going to go into labour at any minute. He glances towards the chair where he keeps the overnight bag he packed for her months and months ago, and wonders whether it’d be quicker to call an ambulance or drive, and how likely they are to get into an accident if he chooses the latter.
“Stop laughing,” he tells her, which only makes her laugh more.
“I meant,” she says, wiping tears from her eyes, “that you could still have sex. With someone else. I mean, not all the time. Just for now. And you’d have to be safe.”
Pete stares at her.
“Are you telling me to go out and cheat on you?”
“Does it count as cheating if your other half knows about it?” Ashlee muses. “And no. I mean, go out, get off, get it out of your system and do whatever it is you need to do and come back. And then, when the idea of sex doesn’t make me want to hurl, you should tell me all about it, okay?”
Pete narrows his eyes. “Is this a trick?” he asks, warily, and Ashlee gives him the look. It’s the look she saves for special occasions, the one that says ‘shut up and do what I say’. Pete maybe really likes that look. It maybe really gets him hot.
He squirms a little.
“Seriously Pete,” Ashlee says, and nudges him. “Phone up one of your boys. Or girls. I don’t care.”
“Are you sure we can’t just maybe,” Pete makes a suggestive hand gesture and Ashlee claps her hand over her mouth and rushes off to the bathroom.
Pete goes to offer to hold her hair back but she points at the door.
“Go,” she says, retching into the toilet. “Take as long as you need.”
Pete stands and stares at his wife in dismay, wanting to comfort her, to make her feel better.
“Pete,” Ashlee says warningly.
Pete goes.
~~~
“Hey Ryan,” Pete says casually into his phone, and then starts pacing impatiently while Ryan enthusiastically tells him about the song he’s currently writing, or possibly about a new scarf he just bought. Pete’s not sure. He’s not really listening.
“It’s really long and has these intertwining threads of-“ Ryan is saying when Pete interrupts him.
“Hey,” Pete says. “Remember that time when I came to Vegas to see you play and you said you’d do anything if I signed you guys?”
There’s a pause. “Yeah?” Ryan says, warily.
“Remember how you offered to blow me in the bathroom of Del Taco?”
Ryan doesn’t say anything, but Pete’s pretty sure he remembers.
“And remember how I laughed and said no, that’s not how things were done around here? Well, I was thinking. I’ve maybe changed my mind.”
“You,” Ryan says, and then stops, sounding confused. “Are you saying I owe you a blow job, because you signed us?”
Pete grins. He’s always loved how quick Ryan is to catch onto things.
“Is that a yes?” Pete asks.
“Ryan?” he asks a moment later, then realises he’s speaking to a dial tone.
Pete dials Brendon.
“Don’t even fucking think about it,” Spencer’s voice says, before Pete can even say anything. It’s got that low, dangerous tone to it that Pete’s maybe a little bit scared of.
He strikes Brendon off his list, and opens his mouth to proposition Spencer but quickly changes his mind.
“Oops, wrong number,” he says instead, and hangs up.
He considers phoning Jon, but thinks better of it.
~~~
Pete gets in his car and drives up to Andy’s commune. House. Whatever. Pete’s pretty sure it’s a commune, and that means free love. Everyone knows that. He’s pretty sure Andy’s told him that before, but Pete loses interest when the words ‘anarchy’ and ‘social insurrection’ come into the conversation, so it’s possible Pete wasn’t listening, but he’s sure it sounds like something Andy would say.
Matt is sitting in the kitchen, looking completely unsurprised to see Pete when he strolls in.
“Matt,” Pete says happily, because Matt is kind of awesome. “Just the person. Are you busy?”
“Terribly,” Matt says. “I don’t know if I can interrupt my busy schedule of reading the newspaper to even acknowledge your presence.”
“Oh,” Pete says. “How about to have sex?”
Matt blinks at him. “Sex?” he repeats and Pete smiles.
“Yes please,” he says. “Er, not here though. There’s too much soy in here. I hear that messes with your…” he waves his hand down towards his dick, smiling when Matt follows the gesture with his eyes.
“Er,” Matt says, and stands up. Pete’s suddenly aware how gigantic Matt is and he hopes he’s gentle.
“So, upstairs?” Pete asks, and Andy chooses that moment to come through the door.
“Hey Pete,” Andy says, “What’re you doing?”
“Taking Matt upstairs to have sex,” Pete tells him and Andy narrows his eyes and cocks his hip in a warning manner.
“No,” he says.
Pete frowns. “But this is a house of free love! Love your fellow man, all that shit.”
“Not Matt,” Andy says. “Love anyone else here you want. Just not Matt.”
Pete glances between the two of them until it dawns on him. “Oh!” he says. “Oh. Seriously? You could probably do better,” he says to Matt, rubbing at his arm when Andy punches him.
“Okay, okay, so Matt’s off limits,” Pete agrees. “How about you, Hurley?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows at him. “Just think, you, me, all those years of tension between us, thinly disguised as annoyance when really it was UST.”
Andy narrows his eyes again. “Yeah, no, mostly it was annoyance.”
“So what you’re saying,” Pete says slowly. “That despite this band- this band that I started making you successful enough to buy this…this house of ill repute, you won’t sleep with me?”
“Actually,” Andy says, walking over to the door and holding it open. “Joe started the band. Why don’t you go and ask him?”
Pete stomps outside. “Fine,” he says. “Fine, I will. Enjoy your tofu burgers and lentil soup and hot male lover, Hurley. We’ll see who laughs last.”
But Andy’s already closed the door, and Pete glares at it for a moment or two before heading back to Chicago and Joe.
~~~
“You know how you love me?” Pete asks.
“Yep,” Joe says.
“You know how you really, really love me?” Pete asks.
“Uh huh,” Joe says. “Sure.”
“Good,” Pete says. “So you’ll have sex with me then?”
“What, right now?” Joe asks, and Pete shrugs.
“We can wait until after this game,” Pete suggests magnanimously, gesturing at the TV with his Xbox controller.
“Awesome,” Joe says, not having taken his eyes off the screen the entire conversation, and proceeds to kick Pete’s ass.
“So,” Pete says, when the game’s over. “Sex now?”
Joe huffs a sigh and leans his head back against the arm of the sofa. “Do I have to move? I’d kinda like to not have to move. I’m beat. But you know, you get on with it if you like,” he adds, gesturing lazily in the direction of his groin.
Pete pouts. “Well, if you’re not going to make any effort…”
He stands up and stomps to the front door.
“Pete,” Joe calls after him. “Don’t be like that!”
Pete can hear him laughing as he slams the door.
~~~
“Did you happen to read clause 17, section 45 of your contract?” Pete asks by way of greeting.
“Uh,” Cash says. “I can most definitely say I did not read a single thing in the contract. But I figured if Alex signed it, it was kosher.”
Pete doesn’t know which Alex he’s talking about, but it doesn’t really matter.
“That’s a shame,” he says. “Because it states very clearly that you have to sleep with the person who gave you your big break.”
“Oh,” Cash says. “Spencer? Yeah, I’ve already fulfilled that part of the contract then.”
Pete feels his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. He wants to know details, but there are more important things to deal with here.
“No,” he says. “Not Spencer. Ha! I meant me. You have to sleep with me.”
“Oh,” Cash says again. “Really? Well, okay then. All of us, or just me?”
Pete thinks for a moment, wondering how greedy he can be. “Just you,” he says eventually. “And that Alex with the Ken doll hair.”
“Marshall?” Cash questions, and Pete shrugs.
“Probably,” he says. “Look, you’re in Vegas, right? I’ll fly out in the morning. We’ll hang, we’ll have sex, it’ll be awesome.”
“Awesizzle,” Cash agrees. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon then, PWizzle.”
Pete hangs up and wonders if Cash’ll let him gag him during sex.
~~~
“Johnson says I don’t have to,” Cash says, not meeting Pete’s eyes.
Pete looks around the room, trying to figure out which one Johnson is. He guesses he’s the one who’s glaring at Pete with his arms crossed across his chest.
“Is Johnson the boss of you?” Pete asks Cash, and tries not to laugh when Cash darts a look at Johnson, before staring back down at his sneakers.
“Why do you want to sleep with Cash?” Singer asks (Pete remembers him, because he’d been horrified at the sticker on the back of the van Pete had given them and it had made Pete laugh and laugh and laugh until he was almost sick). Pete chooses to hear the ‘and not me?’ part in that question, whether it’s really there or not.
“It doesn’t have to be Cash,” he says, meaningfully, and gives Singer a wide smile. “What’re you doing later?”
Singer blushes.
“Nothing,” he says, sounding a little breathless.
“Yes he is,” Ian says firmly. “He’s very busy.”
“I-I am?” Singer asks, and Ian nods, and a silent conversation seems to flit between them, something Pete can’t understand.
“Um,” Singer says, the tops of his ears turning pink. “I. Sorry Pete,” he says, not sounding as sorry as he should.
Pete turns his smile on Marshall, but Johnson glares at him even harder.
“Fine,” Pete says, throwing up his hands and heading for the door. “Just forget everything I’ve ever done for you. No, that’s fine. Who needs gratitude in the form of blowjobs anyways?”
Since he’s in town, Pete decides it won’t hurt to call Brendon just to say hi. He’s barely got his phone out of his pocket when it rings. He glances at the screen.
“Spencer!”
“Don’t even think about it,” Spencer says.
“What?” Pete asks, feigning innocence. “I wasn’t going to do anything. Say, is Jon here in Vegas?”
“Call Gabe instead,” Spencer tells him, and Pete smacks himself in the head.
“Thanks,” he says, and heads for the airport. Why he hadn’t turned to Gabe straight away, he didn’t know, but he was going to remedy that immediately.
~~~
“No can do,” Gabe says, leaning back in his chair. He stretches out, spreading his legs a little, which Pete thinks is a little unfair considering he’s just said he won’t have sex with him.
“Come on,” Pete says. “We both know you’re always up for a bit of hot, no strings attached sex.”
Gabe shrugs. “That was before, man. Look, Greta says I can’t sleep with you. So I can’t.”
“She could watch?” Pete suggests hopefully and Gabe grins.
“She said you’d probably say that. She said to say that I could watch the two of you have sex though, if you wanted.”
Pete pales a little and stands up, wiping his suddenly sweaty palms on his jeans. “Um. No. That’s okay, I think I’ll pass.”
Gabe raises an eyebrow.
Pete doesn’t want to admit he’s a bit scared of Greta. He’s sure there’s something about the way she looks at him, like she can see into his soul. He’s pretty sure she can read minds, and she gets these weird, speculative vibes about her whenever she looks at Pete, like she’s slowly plotting his downfall.
“Look,” Pete says. “Where’s the rest of your band?”
Gabe smirks and tells him.
~~~
Pete’s feeling a little disheartened and his ego is a little bruised from the way Victoria had looked him up and down, glanced at the rest of the Cobras and they’d all started laughing.
He’d left before they could give him an answer, but he’s pretty sure the answer is no.
Travis had shrugged and said “Yeah, okay,” and Pete had been on board with that until he’d realised that Travis expected Pete to bottom. And yeah. No. Pete had seen Travis naked on several occasions and while Pete was a tiny guy, Travis was pretty massive in more ways than one.
Travis was cool though- he’d shrugged when Pete had rapidly changed his mind, and said that if Pete changed his mind, he knew where to find him. He’d maybe smirked as Pete had hurried out the door, intent on making the next flight back to Chicago, so Pete wasn’t quite sure if Travis was messing with him or not.
Back in Chicago, Pete considers calling William. Or Nick. Or Tom. But he really can’t face being laughed at again. So he goes to see the person he maybe should have gone to in the first place.
~~~
“Patrick?” Pete asks, having let himself in to Patrick’s place.
Patrick stops messing with his macbook and looks up.
“Hey Pete,” he says, grinning. “What’s up?”
“I’ve come to ask a favour,” Pete says, and Patrick pushes the laptop away slightly, reaches up to knock the cap of his hat up a little so he can see Pete better.
“Shoot,” Patrick says.
Pete opens his mouth, then closes it again. He studies Patrick for a moment, his best friend in the whole world, someone he loves almost more than anything.
“Patrick,” Pete says. “Will you…” and the question dies on his lips.
“Um,” Pete coughs and shakes his head. “Sorry. Uh. Will you promise to never stop being awesome?”
Patrick gives him that look that he keeps just for Pete, the ‘god, you’re a dork but I love you’ look, the ‘I don’t know why you hold me up like this’ look, the ‘I’ll say yes because you asked’ look.
“Sure,” Patrick says. “Now, listen to this. I think it’d work really well with those lyrics you gave me…”
~~~
“Hey,” Pete says, kicking off his sneakers and crawling across the bed. Ashlee is lying on her side, one hand resting idly on her belly as she peruses a magazine.
“Have fun?” she asks without looking at him. Pete tries to search for an edge to her voice, something to imply she hadn’t really wanted him to go out and sleep with other people, but she sounds the same as always.
“No,” Pete says. “Turns out no one wants to have sex with me.”
He heaves a massive sigh and Ashlee rolls over onto her back and grins up at him.
“Poor thing,” she says, and reaches up to push his hair out of his eyes.
Pete shrugs. “That’s okay,” he says, resting his cheek against her belly button. “Turns out I didn’t really want to have sex with anyone else either.”
They lie in silence for awhile.
“But when you’re feeling up to it, let me know, yeah?” Pete asks, and Ashlee chuckles, reaching down to rest her hand on the back of Pete’s neck, her touch soothing and enough, for now.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll definitely let you know.”
ILU LEA! ♥ I'm so glad bandom brought us together. You've made the past year really awesome.
Title: This Fic Will Be Enjoyable To Your Brainvoice
Pairing: Pete/Ashlee, Pete/pretty much everyone except not
Disclaimer: Not true.
Summary: Pregnancy has put Ashlee off sex, so she sends Pete off to get his kicks elsewhere.
A/N: Written for loveyouallwrong on the occasion of her celebration of birth. Wonderfully quick and dirty beta done by mintyfiend, all mistakes are mine. This is ridiculous. I apologise in advance. Title belongs to Lea.
“Ash,” Pete says, wrapping his arms around her from behind, resting his palms against her swollen belly. “Hey Ashlee, whatcha doin’?”
Ashlee glances at the piece of bread in one hand and the knife in the other.
“Well,” she says slowly, “considering I’m about to put some of that chocolate spread onto my ham sandwich, I think ‘slowly losing my mind’ is the best answer. I’d say losing my taste, but I think I did that when I married you.”
“Ha ha,” Pete says and watches as she puts the chocolate spread on it anyways, and takes a huge bite, twisting her head to smile at Pete, chocolate smeared across her teeth and a bit of partially chewed bread showing in her part open mouth.
“Hot,” Pete says, and actually means it. He moves one hand down lower, and slides the other up to cup one of her breasts, weighing it in his palm.
“Pete,” Ashlee sighs, and wriggles out of his grasp.
Pete frowns. “So, I was thinking…you, me, naked in our massive bed upstairs. You can bring the sandwich with, if you want.”
“Nah,” Ashlee says. “I have stuff to do.”
“Like what?” Pete asks. “What could be more important to do than your husband? Your husband who is really, really horny and wants to have lots and lots of semi-energetic sex. Right now. Right here, if you can’t be bothered going upstairs.”
Ashlee makes a face. “My hormones don’t seem to want me to have sex with you at the moment,” she says, and Pete wishes he’d burnt that pregnancy book that was all ‘Let nature, and your hormones, guide you through your pregnancy’. Fucking Hurley.
“How about later?” Pete asks hopefully, and Ashlee turns around.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she says, and Pete tries not to frown pre-emptively, even though she only ever says that when she’s about to say something he doesn’t want to hear, like ‘no, seriously, there is such a thing as too tight pants’ or ‘the baby kicks really hard when you sing at it and not in a good way’ or ‘black eyeliner yes, green eyeliner no’.
“I don’t really want to see your dick,” she says. “I think it might be I’ve overdosed on pickles and peanut butter in the last month.”
“Hey!” Pete exclaims, wrinkling his nose. “My dick reminds you of pickles?”
Ashlee shrugs. “I guess. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not just your dick. Maybe it’s all dicks. It just makes me feel nauseous.”
Pete nods. “Hey,” he says, after a moment. “Looks or taste?”
“Both?” Ashlee says, and Pete decides that’s a hint that it’s about time he took a shower.
The water is hot and it’s making him clean, but he supposes he should have a cold one instead. He’s tried jerking off but it’s not the same, doesn’t satisfying him the way it used to way back when, back in his youth. He wants sex, that connection with another person, even if it’s just for the briefest of moments. He likes that feeling, of being unguarded around another person, naked and open, when he usually spends so much time shielding himself, wearing different masks.
“The thing is,” he says, and Ashlee puts down the magazine she’s reading to give him her best ‘I am listening’ face, “is that I’m really horny. And I’d kinda like to get off and it doesn’t work on my own. Are you sure you-”
Ashlee looks a little green and that’s one kink Pete certainly doesn’t have. He sighs.
“Never mind,” Pete says, resigned and Ashlee gives him a considering look.
“Just because I don’t want sex, doesn’t mean you can’t have it,” she says.
Pete stares at her, horrified. “Okay, I realise the dressing in animal costumes and that incident with the peeing probably makes me sound like a pervert, but I would never have sex with you when you were, like, asleep or unconscious or anything.”
Ashlee laughs. She laughs long and hard enough that Pete thinks she’s maybe going to go into labour at any minute. He glances towards the chair where he keeps the overnight bag he packed for her months and months ago, and wonders whether it’d be quicker to call an ambulance or drive, and how likely they are to get into an accident if he chooses the latter.
“Stop laughing,” he tells her, which only makes her laugh more.
“I meant,” she says, wiping tears from her eyes, “that you could still have sex. With someone else. I mean, not all the time. Just for now. And you’d have to be safe.”
Pete stares at her.
“Are you telling me to go out and cheat on you?”
“Does it count as cheating if your other half knows about it?” Ashlee muses. “And no. I mean, go out, get off, get it out of your system and do whatever it is you need to do and come back. And then, when the idea of sex doesn’t make me want to hurl, you should tell me all about it, okay?”
Pete narrows his eyes. “Is this a trick?” he asks, warily, and Ashlee gives him the look. It’s the look she saves for special occasions, the one that says ‘shut up and do what I say’. Pete maybe really likes that look. It maybe really gets him hot.
He squirms a little.
“Seriously Pete,” Ashlee says, and nudges him. “Phone up one of your boys. Or girls. I don’t care.”
“Are you sure we can’t just maybe,” Pete makes a suggestive hand gesture and Ashlee claps her hand over her mouth and rushes off to the bathroom.
Pete goes to offer to hold her hair back but she points at the door.
“Go,” she says, retching into the toilet. “Take as long as you need.”
Pete stands and stares at his wife in dismay, wanting to comfort her, to make her feel better.
“Pete,” Ashlee says warningly.
Pete goes.
~~~
“Hey Ryan,” Pete says casually into his phone, and then starts pacing impatiently while Ryan enthusiastically tells him about the song he’s currently writing, or possibly about a new scarf he just bought. Pete’s not sure. He’s not really listening.
“It’s really long and has these intertwining threads of-“ Ryan is saying when Pete interrupts him.
“Hey,” Pete says. “Remember that time when I came to Vegas to see you play and you said you’d do anything if I signed you guys?”
There’s a pause. “Yeah?” Ryan says, warily.
“Remember how you offered to blow me in the bathroom of Del Taco?”
Ryan doesn’t say anything, but Pete’s pretty sure he remembers.
“And remember how I laughed and said no, that’s not how things were done around here? Well, I was thinking. I’ve maybe changed my mind.”
“You,” Ryan says, and then stops, sounding confused. “Are you saying I owe you a blow job, because you signed us?”
Pete grins. He’s always loved how quick Ryan is to catch onto things.
“Is that a yes?” Pete asks.
“Ryan?” he asks a moment later, then realises he’s speaking to a dial tone.
Pete dials Brendon.
“Don’t even fucking think about it,” Spencer’s voice says, before Pete can even say anything. It’s got that low, dangerous tone to it that Pete’s maybe a little bit scared of.
He strikes Brendon off his list, and opens his mouth to proposition Spencer but quickly changes his mind.
“Oops, wrong number,” he says instead, and hangs up.
He considers phoning Jon, but thinks better of it.
~~~
Pete gets in his car and drives up to Andy’s commune. House. Whatever. Pete’s pretty sure it’s a commune, and that means free love. Everyone knows that. He’s pretty sure Andy’s told him that before, but Pete loses interest when the words ‘anarchy’ and ‘social insurrection’ come into the conversation, so it’s possible Pete wasn’t listening, but he’s sure it sounds like something Andy would say.
Matt is sitting in the kitchen, looking completely unsurprised to see Pete when he strolls in.
“Matt,” Pete says happily, because Matt is kind of awesome. “Just the person. Are you busy?”
“Terribly,” Matt says. “I don’t know if I can interrupt my busy schedule of reading the newspaper to even acknowledge your presence.”
“Oh,” Pete says. “How about to have sex?”
Matt blinks at him. “Sex?” he repeats and Pete smiles.
“Yes please,” he says. “Er, not here though. There’s too much soy in here. I hear that messes with your…” he waves his hand down towards his dick, smiling when Matt follows the gesture with his eyes.
“Er,” Matt says, and stands up. Pete’s suddenly aware how gigantic Matt is and he hopes he’s gentle.
“So, upstairs?” Pete asks, and Andy chooses that moment to come through the door.
“Hey Pete,” Andy says, “What’re you doing?”
“Taking Matt upstairs to have sex,” Pete tells him and Andy narrows his eyes and cocks his hip in a warning manner.
“No,” he says.
Pete frowns. “But this is a house of free love! Love your fellow man, all that shit.”
“Not Matt,” Andy says. “Love anyone else here you want. Just not Matt.”
Pete glances between the two of them until it dawns on him. “Oh!” he says. “Oh. Seriously? You could probably do better,” he says to Matt, rubbing at his arm when Andy punches him.
“Okay, okay, so Matt’s off limits,” Pete agrees. “How about you, Hurley?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows at him. “Just think, you, me, all those years of tension between us, thinly disguised as annoyance when really it was UST.”
Andy narrows his eyes again. “Yeah, no, mostly it was annoyance.”
“So what you’re saying,” Pete says slowly. “That despite this band- this band that I started making you successful enough to buy this…this house of ill repute, you won’t sleep with me?”
“Actually,” Andy says, walking over to the door and holding it open. “Joe started the band. Why don’t you go and ask him?”
Pete stomps outside. “Fine,” he says. “Fine, I will. Enjoy your tofu burgers and lentil soup and hot male lover, Hurley. We’ll see who laughs last.”
But Andy’s already closed the door, and Pete glares at it for a moment or two before heading back to Chicago and Joe.
~~~
“You know how you love me?” Pete asks.
“Yep,” Joe says.
“You know how you really, really love me?” Pete asks.
“Uh huh,” Joe says. “Sure.”
“Good,” Pete says. “So you’ll have sex with me then?”
“What, right now?” Joe asks, and Pete shrugs.
“We can wait until after this game,” Pete suggests magnanimously, gesturing at the TV with his Xbox controller.
“Awesome,” Joe says, not having taken his eyes off the screen the entire conversation, and proceeds to kick Pete’s ass.
“So,” Pete says, when the game’s over. “Sex now?”
Joe huffs a sigh and leans his head back against the arm of the sofa. “Do I have to move? I’d kinda like to not have to move. I’m beat. But you know, you get on with it if you like,” he adds, gesturing lazily in the direction of his groin.
Pete pouts. “Well, if you’re not going to make any effort…”
He stands up and stomps to the front door.
“Pete,” Joe calls after him. “Don’t be like that!”
Pete can hear him laughing as he slams the door.
~~~
“Did you happen to read clause 17, section 45 of your contract?” Pete asks by way of greeting.
“Uh,” Cash says. “I can most definitely say I did not read a single thing in the contract. But I figured if Alex signed it, it was kosher.”
Pete doesn’t know which Alex he’s talking about, but it doesn’t really matter.
“That’s a shame,” he says. “Because it states very clearly that you have to sleep with the person who gave you your big break.”
“Oh,” Cash says. “Spencer? Yeah, I’ve already fulfilled that part of the contract then.”
Pete feels his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. He wants to know details, but there are more important things to deal with here.
“No,” he says. “Not Spencer. Ha! I meant me. You have to sleep with me.”
“Oh,” Cash says again. “Really? Well, okay then. All of us, or just me?”
Pete thinks for a moment, wondering how greedy he can be. “Just you,” he says eventually. “And that Alex with the Ken doll hair.”
“Marshall?” Cash questions, and Pete shrugs.
“Probably,” he says. “Look, you’re in Vegas, right? I’ll fly out in the morning. We’ll hang, we’ll have sex, it’ll be awesome.”
“Awesizzle,” Cash agrees. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon then, PWizzle.”
Pete hangs up and wonders if Cash’ll let him gag him during sex.
~~~
“Johnson says I don’t have to,” Cash says, not meeting Pete’s eyes.
Pete looks around the room, trying to figure out which one Johnson is. He guesses he’s the one who’s glaring at Pete with his arms crossed across his chest.
“Is Johnson the boss of you?” Pete asks Cash, and tries not to laugh when Cash darts a look at Johnson, before staring back down at his sneakers.
“Why do you want to sleep with Cash?” Singer asks (Pete remembers him, because he’d been horrified at the sticker on the back of the van Pete had given them and it had made Pete laugh and laugh and laugh until he was almost sick). Pete chooses to hear the ‘and not me?’ part in that question, whether it’s really there or not.
“It doesn’t have to be Cash,” he says, meaningfully, and gives Singer a wide smile. “What’re you doing later?”
Singer blushes.
“Nothing,” he says, sounding a little breathless.
“Yes he is,” Ian says firmly. “He’s very busy.”
“I-I am?” Singer asks, and Ian nods, and a silent conversation seems to flit between them, something Pete can’t understand.
“Um,” Singer says, the tops of his ears turning pink. “I. Sorry Pete,” he says, not sounding as sorry as he should.
Pete turns his smile on Marshall, but Johnson glares at him even harder.
“Fine,” Pete says, throwing up his hands and heading for the door. “Just forget everything I’ve ever done for you. No, that’s fine. Who needs gratitude in the form of blowjobs anyways?”
Since he’s in town, Pete decides it won’t hurt to call Brendon just to say hi. He’s barely got his phone out of his pocket when it rings. He glances at the screen.
“Spencer!”
“Don’t even think about it,” Spencer says.
“What?” Pete asks, feigning innocence. “I wasn’t going to do anything. Say, is Jon here in Vegas?”
“Call Gabe instead,” Spencer tells him, and Pete smacks himself in the head.
“Thanks,” he says, and heads for the airport. Why he hadn’t turned to Gabe straight away, he didn’t know, but he was going to remedy that immediately.
~~~
“No can do,” Gabe says, leaning back in his chair. He stretches out, spreading his legs a little, which Pete thinks is a little unfair considering he’s just said he won’t have sex with him.
“Come on,” Pete says. “We both know you’re always up for a bit of hot, no strings attached sex.”
Gabe shrugs. “That was before, man. Look, Greta says I can’t sleep with you. So I can’t.”
“She could watch?” Pete suggests hopefully and Gabe grins.
“She said you’d probably say that. She said to say that I could watch the two of you have sex though, if you wanted.”
Pete pales a little and stands up, wiping his suddenly sweaty palms on his jeans. “Um. No. That’s okay, I think I’ll pass.”
Gabe raises an eyebrow.
Pete doesn’t want to admit he’s a bit scared of Greta. He’s sure there’s something about the way she looks at him, like she can see into his soul. He’s pretty sure she can read minds, and she gets these weird, speculative vibes about her whenever she looks at Pete, like she’s slowly plotting his downfall.
“Look,” Pete says. “Where’s the rest of your band?”
Gabe smirks and tells him.
~~~
Pete’s feeling a little disheartened and his ego is a little bruised from the way Victoria had looked him up and down, glanced at the rest of the Cobras and they’d all started laughing.
He’d left before they could give him an answer, but he’s pretty sure the answer is no.
Travis had shrugged and said “Yeah, okay,” and Pete had been on board with that until he’d realised that Travis expected Pete to bottom. And yeah. No. Pete had seen Travis naked on several occasions and while Pete was a tiny guy, Travis was pretty massive in more ways than one.
Travis was cool though- he’d shrugged when Pete had rapidly changed his mind, and said that if Pete changed his mind, he knew where to find him. He’d maybe smirked as Pete had hurried out the door, intent on making the next flight back to Chicago, so Pete wasn’t quite sure if Travis was messing with him or not.
Back in Chicago, Pete considers calling William. Or Nick. Or Tom. But he really can’t face being laughed at again. So he goes to see the person he maybe should have gone to in the first place.
~~~
“Patrick?” Pete asks, having let himself in to Patrick’s place.
Patrick stops messing with his macbook and looks up.
“Hey Pete,” he says, grinning. “What’s up?”
“I’ve come to ask a favour,” Pete says, and Patrick pushes the laptop away slightly, reaches up to knock the cap of his hat up a little so he can see Pete better.
“Shoot,” Patrick says.
Pete opens his mouth, then closes it again. He studies Patrick for a moment, his best friend in the whole world, someone he loves almost more than anything.
“Patrick,” Pete says. “Will you…” and the question dies on his lips.
“Um,” Pete coughs and shakes his head. “Sorry. Uh. Will you promise to never stop being awesome?”
Patrick gives him that look that he keeps just for Pete, the ‘god, you’re a dork but I love you’ look, the ‘I don’t know why you hold me up like this’ look, the ‘I’ll say yes because you asked’ look.
“Sure,” Patrick says. “Now, listen to this. I think it’d work really well with those lyrics you gave me…”
~~~
“Hey,” Pete says, kicking off his sneakers and crawling across the bed. Ashlee is lying on her side, one hand resting idly on her belly as she peruses a magazine.
“Have fun?” she asks without looking at him. Pete tries to search for an edge to her voice, something to imply she hadn’t really wanted him to go out and sleep with other people, but she sounds the same as always.
“No,” Pete says. “Turns out no one wants to have sex with me.”
He heaves a massive sigh and Ashlee rolls over onto her back and grins up at him.
“Poor thing,” she says, and reaches up to push his hair out of his eyes.
Pete shrugs. “That’s okay,” he says, resting his cheek against her belly button. “Turns out I didn’t really want to have sex with anyone else either.”
They lie in silence for awhile.
“But when you’re feeling up to it, let me know, yeah?” Pete asks, and Ashlee chuckles, reaching down to rest her hand on the back of Pete’s neck, her touch soothing and enough, for now.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll definitely let you know.”