Fic: Amok Timing
Title: Amok Timing
Author: naotalba
Fandom: Bandom with some Star Trek, but no Star Trek knowledge necessary (this doesn't follow Star Trek canon)
Pairing: Pete/Patrick
Rating: R
Length: 6233 words
Beta: Thanks to megyal, even though I outraged her trekkie soul with this. Heavily revised since, please feel free to point out errors.
Disclaimer: These are non-profit, non-commercial works of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. These fictional stories are not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.
Summary: Pete Wentz's parents were actually aliens who crash landed to Earth in the '50s.
Snow White Bar, Hollywood, California, September 1957
Gene Roddenberry looked around the bar. There was nothing he wanted to see; the only distraction was in the form of the bar's solitary other occupant. Gene glanced over at the young man looking intent and nursing a shot, his stark black hair in a shaggy mop that came down over the tops of his ears. He didn't seem to want company.
A car went careening around outside, its headlights spilling light into the bar's windows. In the flash of light, the young man's face looked positively green, and his eyebrows seemed permanently pulled up in an inquisitive expression.
Gene's curiosity got the better of him. He wandered over to the stranger and put on his best salesman’s grin. "I'll make you a deal. I'll buy you a drink if you buy me one, I'll tell you some lies if you promise to say you believe them, and if you want to tell the truth, well, I'll pretend it's a lie if you like."
The man looked up, startled. "It isn't very logical us to purchase drinks for each other rather than our own. And alcohol does not affect me. Refined sugar, on the other hand, is widely available here, and has a much more potent psychoactive effect on my physiology." The young man abruptly stopped his rambling, changed his manner entirely. "I mean, sure, you can buy me a drink and I'll buy you one. I'm not much of a drinker, whatever you recommend. Just no sweet mixers, sugar does weird things to me."
Gene pondered the man in front of him. He'd seemed so alien at first. Gene had been in Hollywood long enough to recognize a good actor, and he'd bet his next paycheck that this man was putting on a show when he started acting human. Gene ordered two shots of Campari, neat.
The man introduced himself with a nod. "Peter Wentz. My wife and I, our, um, car broke down around here, and we just decided it was easiest to settle in." He took a sip of the drink, and quirked his eyebrow at the bitterness, but then took another sip. "We're having a little trouble adjusting." It was almost a rueful grin tucking up the corners of his mouth.
If Gene hadn't been paying attention, he wouldn't have noticed that the man never offered to shake his hand. But then, if Mr. Wentz had been paying attention, he would have noticed that Campari, for all its bitter taste, has more sugar than soda pop.
The man started talking. Gene did what he could to remember; this would really spice up that television pilot he'd been trying to work up. Some of this guy’s story would be the perfect touch, make his crazy story seem almost realistic.
Wentz residence, Brentwood, California, January 2006
Patrick slammed the door behind him. "Don't try to bullshit me, that was you leaking that shit, what the fuck, Pete?" Patrick knew Pete too well, and this had Pete written all over it. A first-time poster on livejournal (supposedly, a 13 year old from Texas, yeah right) had posted pictures that were very clearly of Pete, down to the bathroom wallpaper that Patrick had faced too many times while he peed.
Pete with his dick in his hand, looking hot as fuck, the vain bastard. If they had really leaked, it would have been onto one of the bigger gossip blogs, not on livejournal where Pete hung out. Pete had dropped those himself.
Pete had a pinched expression, his shoulders hunched over. "Yeah, I had to make sure the photoshopped versions came out first, because that bitch is threatening to drop the real soon, and if she does I need them to look like they're the fakes."
Patrick tried to figure out the logic. Pete looked at his expression, sighed and pushed his phone over.
Wow, that was a bright shade of green.
Patrick's experience with dicks was limited, sure, but he'd seen pink, and purplish, and brown. He'd never seen anything close to that shade of grass green, fading to khaki at the sac. It was, well, inhuman.
Patrick heard faint rattling in the kitchen. Pete grabbed his shoulder, and Patrick jumped, the phone falling out of his hand. "You aren't really going to believe me until I do this, no one ever does." Pete had a paring knife in his hand, and made a small cut on the fleshy part of his thumb. Emerald blood welled out.
"Remember I told you my parents weren't from around here? Well, I meant it."
Simpson-Wentz residence, Hollywood, California, June 2009
Patrick was in LA again despite insisting he was moving back to Chicago. He had gone to the movies with Pete and Pete's friend Jensen the night before, and it had been great, one of the rare times where he'd hung out with Pete without it being about the band or the music, and he'd felt really connected. Jensen was a good guy, too, smart and funny and a good friend to Pete. But they had just exchanged numbers, Patrick hadn't been expecting a call from him so soon.
"Pete needs you to get over to his house right now. He's having trouble," Jensen broke into a laugh, "consummating his marriage."
Patrick had laughed too, startled, but headed over to Pete's to see what the joke was, considering Pete had been married for a year and had a six month old kid. When he got there, Jensen had long since sobered. Pete's dad was attempting to console a sobbing Ashlee, while Pete's personal assistant Jenna kept trying to hand Bronx to one or the other of them, the only babysitting in a PA's job description being of the "drunk rockstar" type.
Jensen had a quiet word with her and they left the room, leaving Patrick to wander until he could find someone to explain what had happened. He found Pete's mom Dale sitting at the kitchen table. She looked up expectantly at his arrival.
Dale took a deep breath and said, "It looks like the engagement will have to be broken. Ashlee can't form a mental link with Pete, even with both of us helping, and Pete's turning 30 in less than a month. It's too dangerous for him to be unbonded."
Pete had explained, when he'd asked Patrick to be the best man at his wedding, that the alien ritual would have to be put off until later, that it could be dangerous with Ashlee pregnant. He'd never explained much of his parents' culture despite repeated requests and only-half joking threats of day-long Star Trek marathons on the bus. Pete hated the show, so the threat had some teeth.
But before the wedding, Pete had broken down and given him a little more information about what it meant to be what his family called ‘Romulan,’ since humans couldn't pronounce the real word. Romulans were capable of forming telepathic links, most especially as a part of the Romulan equivalent of marriage, and part of being a Romulan man was preparing for Pon Farr, the sexual frenzy that came once every seven years once he reached maturity at around age 30. The fact that that aspect of their make-up had somehow slipped out to a television writer and become commonly known was a source of shame and self-loathing for the entire Wentz family. Patrick had thought that the feud with Roddenberry was hilarious, but then Pete had started talking about 'very few people die these days' and it wasn't so funny anymore.
It hadn't really occurred to Patrick that to Pete's family, the only Romulans on the planet, the human ceremony just didn't count. The telepathic bond to the husband was the whole point of a Romulan marriage. A wife needed a psychic connection strong enough to sustain a male through the madness that Pon Farr brought, in order to able to handle both the sexual needs of a mature Romulan man as well as keep him sane throughout. If Ashlee couldn't do it, Pete had to find someone who could or he would die in Pon Farr, so that made anything leading up to that link just an engagement.
Pete wandered in, tried for a nonchalant tone as he said, "She’s a little calmer now, but I still wouldn’t go in the living room if I were you.” He grabbed a diet soda out of the fridge. "I still want to try to be Bronx's father, I hope she doesn't try to pull any bullshit paternity tests on me."
Patrick stopped, confused. "He's not yours?"
Dale barked out a sharp laugh in time with Pete's.
"You just flunked basic biology. We aren't the same species, Patrick. My blood is green. My ears were pointed until Mom had them bobbed so I could pass, my eyebrows ditto. I'm not human, I can't breed with humans. I'm not physically mature for my species even if I could. Bronx is human, so he's not my biological child, no.” Pete shoved the hair out of his eyes. “But he could have been my son. Maybe my only chance for one. Still can be, if Ash lets me."
Patrick tried to process. "You asked her to marry you knowing she was pregnant with someone else's kid?"
Pete shrugged. "I figured it was a fair trade for not telling her about the Romulan thing until the honeymoon," he said.
Patrick thought it was no wonder they couldn't get close enough mentally to make the necessary link. Pete had made a terrific groom but a shitty husband. Pete was never truly interested in a girl until she wasn't interested in him. It meant he had dated a long string of cheaters, because they were the only girls that held his interest.
Patrick had had to forcibly remind himself of how Pete's relationships were all clusterfucks; he and Pete were never going to happen, because Pete didn't do relationships with people who didn't hurt him, and Patrick wouldn't hurt him on purpose. When Pete had gotten married, though, Patrick had finally tried to get rid of the last flashes of hope that one day Pete would grow up enough that they would work together. Patrick had really needed Pete to make his marriage work, for Patrick's own sanity, and instead Pete had played bullshit games and hid seriously fucking important information from his wife.
But a mean little part of Patrick finally forgave Pete for waiting so long to tell Patrick, because Ashlee not knowing until the honeymoon was way worse than his not knowing for four goddamn years. But he still wasn’t going to forgive Pete for the fact that Andy and Joe had known from the beginning. That would never be ok with Patrick, Pete’s bullshit, ‘you mattered more to me than they did’ just didn’t fly.
Dale broke into his thoughts, saying, "Patrick, I had Pete call you and Jensen for a reason. We still have a little hope.
"When his dad and I went looking through Pete's mind, it wasn't that he was totally incapable of forming bonds with humans. He has these tiny little friendship bonds. Nothing like a friendship bond on Romulus, but there is something there, with you and Joe and Andy, and with Jensen and Dan and a few others. I thought maybe you could explain what it felt like to Ashlee, help her prepare her mind, and relax Pete a little by reminding him he's not completely mind-blind."
Patrick looked at Pete, confused. He'd never felt the Wentzs' alienness so strongly, not even that day Pete had proved that his crazy story of his parents being extra-terrestrials who crashed to earth in the fifties wasn't so much a story.
Pete said, "Mind-blind is like the Romulan equivalent of needing glasses, I'm just not very strong telepathically, and the nearest optometrist is about 100 light-years away. On Romulus it's not a big deal, your partner just does more of the heavy lifting, but obviously Ashlee can't. Mom's always teased me about it."
Dale looked stricken, but Pete patted her shoulder reassuringly. She ran her fingers across the side of his face in an affectionate way.
Patrick sat down at the table.
He'd felt a connection to Pete before, when they were writing and the music just flowed, or when Pete just *got* his jokes, no matter how off-the-wall they were. He'd thought that was normal, just part of being such close friends, but with Pete it had always had a little itch to it, like hair on the back of his neck after a haircut. And when they wrote, he felt sometimes like Pete pushed him in a way he couldn't really articulate, but he had learned to push back against.
He searched the back of his mind for that feeling, trying to touch it the way he would try to scratch an itch on his nose by wiggling it. It didn't really work, and he could feel his nose wrinkling sympathetically. Dale's hand brushed the side of his face, and suddenly it was like he had a mental 'hand' to scratch with. He touched the itchy spot gingerly.
Pete.
His mind tried desperately to fit the information flooding it into usable data, into the smells and touches and sounds that it was used to getting information from. But it didn't make sense; Pete in his mind was seeing the taste of dark chocolate, tasting the sound of a foghorn, hearing the rainbows of an oil slick. He did his best to navigate.
A cramp in his toe brought him back into his own body. Every joint in his body felt stiff, like he'd held the same awkward position for far too long. He looked up. The sun was rising, Dale was nowhere to be seen, and Pete had deep creases on his face where he'd been resting it on the seam of his hoodie.
The itchy spot in his mind now felt like a sunburst, or a healing scar. He didn't notice Pete's hand spread over the side of his face until it dropped, and the five points of lost contact felt clammy and forlorn.
Pete's father came in, dumped out the dregs of coffee from the pot to start a fresh one. "Congratulations, son-in-law."
"What!?!" Patrick stood up, then sat down abruptly as his knees crumpled under him.
Dale pushed her husband out of the doorway, caressing his fingers with hers along the way, and helped Patrick up. "What you need is a good breakfast, and I'm sure Pete doesn't have anything here. Let's go to that cafe on the corner. "
Patrick followed them, still trying to shake the pins and needles feeling out of his legs. He made it to the booth of the restaurant before he noticed Pete wasn't with them. He decided to take advantage of his absence and get some questions answered.
"Why do you call yourselves Romulans instead of Vulcans? I mean, I never really watched the show but I thought they were kind of the same, just evil."
"Roddenberry got so much wrong, it drives us crazy. Like that emotion-less stuff? He just didn't get that different cultures show their emotions differently, that doesn't mean we don't have them, for goodness' sake! Plus, it's more fun to be the mysterious bad guys." Dale smiled conspiratorially. Pete came by his sense of humor honestly.
Patrick was sure he had a million other things he'd always meant to ask, but right now, of course he couldn't think of them. He got to the problem at hand. "Why did you call me 'son-in-law'? I thought I was going to show Ashlee how to do it?"
Dale gestured at Patrick’s hands. He looked down at the sugar caddy he’d been absently playing with, crumpling and uncrumpling the packets as he thought, and passed it to her waiting hand. Dale pulled out one blue packet and one yellow one, and carefully straightened them before stirring their contents into her coffee. "Well, what would you have told her?"
It was a good question; it wasn't like Patrick had words for what had happened between him and Pete. He just didn't think it was a betrothal. But if Dale didn't think he could help Ashlee do the same thing she had seen Patrick do, how could he second-guess her?
And even Patrick could tell that whatever had happened the night before between him and Pete, it hadn’t been forming a tiny little friendship bond. It hadn’t been sexual, but there had been the sense that perhaps that was not a deliberate omission so much as an area yet to explore, along with so many other areas of Pete’s self that Patrick had yet to map. He absently scratched his nose along with the sunburst in his head, and got a satisfying impression of smelling the texture of mushrooms that spelled Pete in his mind.
Dale looked up from her cup, quickly, as though she had heard a startling noise. "The bad news is, now that he has created a mating bond, he's likely to go into Pon Farr sooner rather than later. That's why we came to visit, he's getting to be the right age, and he needed some help. But we thought it would be with Ashlee, and we didn't realize just how difficult it would be.” Patrick reached over to her, but she ducked the attempt at comfort.
She said, “It seemed so much easier, 40 years ago, to just settle down and make a home here, to raise a family instead of spending the rest of our lives in a crippled ship trying to reach home before we died of old age. We are so closely related, your species and ours, we thought if they were raised in your culture, our children would at least have a chance!” Dale never showed emotion, to Patrick’s eyes. Peter,Senior, too, had always seemed so stoic to Patrick. It occurred to him, as both their faces took on a greenish tinge, that he just didn’t know what to look for.
Dale took a sip of her coffee, then said, “I don’t want my son to die, Patrick. Peter and I think you should come back to Chicago with us for a few weeks. Just being around him now, even talking to him on the phone, could push him his cycle along that much faster, and you have a lot to learn beforehand." She made eye contact.
Patrick swallowed. "Like what?"
Dale smiled. "Well, I think you know most of the physiological differences already."
Patrick took his glasses off and polished them on his shirttail. "Not really? I mean, I'm not sure. I know to keep Pete away from sugar unless I want to baby-sit him while he gets drunk. I know his skin's always warm, and I saw in the picture that his erm, coloring is different, but Pete's changed in front of me for years and I would think I would have noticed."
Dale smiled and ducked her head. "It's blood flow that changes the color, the same as when your species blushes."
Patrick said, "I can't believe I lived with Pete in a van for years and ..." Patrick trailed off before he actually asked Pete's mom why Pete never got a boner in front of him, but not before the question was obvious. He could feel the blood flow she mentioned heating his face.
"It must have been difficult for Pete when he was trying to conceal himself. We have sex like you do, but the foreplay is a little different, and Romulans need foreplay to get started," she said.
Patrick bit back his questions and wished hard that there was anyone other than his prospective mother-in-law he could have this conversation with. Then he wondered if asking the questions at all meant he’d accepted that she was going to be his mother-in-law. Not like there was a choice, really. She was the expert, and if she said that was what would keep Pete alive, well, Patrick would buy himself a bridal veil.
Mr. Wentz put his menu down with an irritated noise. "It's not that he didn't find you attractive, Patrick, he wouldn’t have instinctively formed a marriage link with you if he didn't want you in that way.” And hey, there was someone more embarrassing than Dale to get this information from, because Peter’s no-nonsense voice carried through the restaurant easily.
Patrick sank in his seat as Mr. Wentz continued, “He’s not fully mature, you know. Our species is longer-lived than yours. We consider Pon Farr the end of puberty, which makes a Pete a teenager by your standards. Also, our physiology is different. We need mental contact to become aroused. Among our own kind a random erection is just as common as for yours, but Pete wasn't around other telepaths, so he'd have to make a deliberate effort. And even then, humans have slightly different erogenous zones. If his partner wasn't touching his hands or face, it's not surprising you never saw him hard." He placed his menu at the end of the table with finality.
The waitress came scurrying over as though that was her summons. The Wentzes inquired about sugar-free pancake syrup. Patrick ordered a delicious abomination of chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream on top. He planned to put syrup on it, too, maybe even a sugar packet. It was a petty revenge against people who were only trying to help, help both him and their son, but it made him feel better anyway.
O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, Illinois, August 2009
Patrick looked up at the welcome sign glowing above him. He was pretty sure he was booked on Southwest Airlines, and they flew through Midway airport, which was a little farther from Glenview, but easier to navigate than the gigantic O'Hare airport. No matter, O’Hare then.
He found himself at the United counter, but the next flight to LAX was on American. He asked about a code-sharing system, and he didn't even know what that meant, but somehow he ended up with an American Airlines ticket without having to go to another terminal. He got through security by forcing himself to stay focused on what was in front of him, what was in his bag.
He didn't have luggage; he'd planned to pack this evening, considering he wasn't supposed to leave until tomorrow afternoon. Fine. He pulled out his laptop, threw away a half empty bottle of water, put his sneakers in the bin to go through the x-rays. He was vaguely proud of himself for not holding up the line.
He looked up at the entrance to the Admiral's Club. One of the few things he did remember clearly at the ticket counter was saying no thanks to first class, it was a waste for someone with legs as short as his. So now he had to override his legs, which kept edging towards that stupid first class lounge, which he somehow knew would be quiet, dark and inviting, a perfect place to relax and concentrate.
Instead, he went directly to the gate and asked to pre-board. He only got permission after one of the counter girls hummed 'Sugar' for her supervisor, and Patrick thought absently that normally that would be pretty mortifying. Right now, though, going down the gangplank next to a grandma in a wheelchair and two school-age kids flying alone to a currently blissfully-empty plane, Patrick was willing to deal with a little humiliation to get into his seat 10 minutes early.
He found a blanket and pillow in the overhead compartment and grabbed them; if the flight attendants think he's sleeping, they won't bother him. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the window, did the mental exercises Pete's parents had been drilling him on all month. When he was as close to a trance as a human could come, he addressed the autopilot in his head.
He tasted the smell of fresh-turned earth. 'Pete?'
'Patrick, parted from me and never parted.' The cheesy words were tinged with an edge of desperation; Pete felt very parted from him right now. Patrick couldn't quite tell if it was a joke that fell flat, or one of the very few things Roddenberry didn't screw up.
Patrick felt a ghost-touch over the tops of his fingers. His fingers tingled, the touch making him rock hard and squirming.
'Oh fuck Pete, never and always touching and touched. I await you.' The words had the force of ritual. Roddenberry did remember this part, then. Patrick gasped in his head, trying hard not to thrust up and gross out the businessman that had somehow been seated next to him when he wasn't looking.
Pete ran a mental hand over Patrick's thought processes, calming him and overlaying a sense of Pete over everything. Patrick took a grateful breath.
'So it's happening now?'
Pete's mental voice chuckled ruefully. 'You think? I'm getting rugburn on my dick and I still can't stop, I have perfect concentration to say, override your free will and drag your ass to California, but Jensen says I've sent him the same changes to the latest Clan designs three times, and the MTV execs are asking me where I get my drugs because they must be the really good ones.
'Yeah, I'd say I'm going through goddamn Pon Farr.'
Patrick took a moment to collect himself. He breathed out carefully, and then thought as loudly as he can, 'Is it dangerous, that it started before we 'consummated our relationship'?' Patrick tried to let the echo of Jensen's snicker when he used that phrase bleed through his mental transmission.
Silence.
Patrick wasn't sure if the trance had been broken by his own distraction by memory, the flight attendant's obnoxious insistence on trying to sell him an overpriced boxed snack, or Pete's reluctance to answer his question. Trying to restart the connection, though, left his brain feeling like he'd done too many pull-ups and could now only hang limply from the bar. All that remained was a faint whiff of foghorns.
He fumbled for his ipod, put in the headphones, then found himself restlessly skipping ten songs in a row, unable to find anything to suit his antsy mood. The fabric of his shirt irritated the skin of his chest, and the blanket felt hot and confining. Pete's lingering presence in his mind, though, made removing the blanket from his lap completely far too risky.
Patrick tried to convince himself it would be ok. Of course, his research on the issue consisted of watching that Star Trek episode where it happens to Spock twenty times, and trying to stop cringing enough to listen when his in-laws discussed his prospective sex life, but. Pete had obviously had sex with humans before, without them knowing, so he couldn't be all that different, as long as he kept the lights off. And if humans and Romulans were that compatible, he could take whatever Pete could throw at him, no matter how intense Pon Farr got, right?
Patrick couldn't help getting a funny sense that Pete's parents had been pleased that it was him and not Ashlee, though, because he was physically stronger. He wasn't sure if his answering thought, that girlparts were actually designed to be fucked, was ever picked up by them. It wasn't as though he'd ever say that out loud, though.
He realized too late that he could have been doing some sort of practice along those lines; bought a dildo, or at least watched some gay porn. But he'd always been content before to identify as mostly-straight. His feelings about being accidentally married had included some freaking about the gay-marriage part, but it was kind of swallowed up by his panic over the inter-species marriage part, and oh yeah, the Pete part. Now it was a little late. He coughed to cover a laugh at the thought of joining the mile-high club solo, in a last-ditch effort to not go into this completely blind. Yeah, no.
Los Angeles International Airport, El Segundo, California, August 2009
"Ok, so we are taxi-ing, is that the word? When the plane drives on the blacktop? Anyway, that’s what we’re doing right now, where are you, and please don't tell me you drove yourself." Talking to Pete on the phone was weird, but he wouldn't even bother attempting a trance in the noise and bustle of the other passengers gathering their carryons.
Pete's answer came through the phone with an eerie trace of a pre-echo in his head and a faint texture of soy-sauce-smell. "I'm in the Radisson across the street, Jenna drove me, don't worry, and I think we'd be better off if you just get a cab over here, because I do not think I'm going to be appropriate when we are in the same room."
Patrick nodded and hung up. The businessman next to him must have been watching, because he was unsuccessfully trying to hide a smile. Patrick couldn't very well tell him that Pete heard his nod and goodbye anyway, so he put in his headphones until he could get off the plane.
He texted Pete while he waited for a cab, unable to restrain his curiosity now that the time was upon them. 'How did you manage to get laid w/o any1 knowing?'
His phone beeped a moment after he felt Pete's amusement. 'grls think its romantic 2 do it in the dark. guys think im a closet case who wont take hs pants off.' Patrick could see it, too, Pete using it to his advantage, making himself seem mysterious and secretive to everyone else, while Patrick as his husband got to appreciate the fact that he was Kermit-the-frog-colored. Oh god, Pete was going to want to have sex, and Patrick was going to start singing, “The Rainbow Connection,” in bed, which was just wrong, and would that make it their song? Because even accidental interspecies gay marriages don’t deserve songs sung by frogs, and yeah, he was definitely panicking.
The only thing that managed to calm Patrick down was Pete's thoughts, which began bleeding through to Patrick in the cab. Pete had shoved the do-not-disturb sign in between the door and the latch to keep the door from closing all the way, to save Patrick the two minutes of getting a key from the front desk, or the 30 seconds of knocking and waiting for Pete to answer the door. Patrick appreciated this fact more than the knowledge that the hotel only had rooms with two queen beds available, so Pete was sprawled on the bed nearer the door to save Patrick a few steps to get to him (which was what Patrick heard coming down the escalator) or knowing what Pete's hand was currently doing (which he hadn't been able to completely ignore since he woke up that morning feeling like someone else was driving his body).
By the time Patrick got to the seventh floor and found the room with the propped door, he was nervous enough that he found himself doing a doing his pre-show breathing exercises. He pushed open the door, holding the card so the door could close completely behind him.
Pete had been standing just out of view, naked and vulnerable. He reached out his hand and touched Patrick's fingertips in the same way he'd done on the plane. Patrick's whole body reacted in a confusing way, nerve endings that shouldn't be that sensitive trying to react to the stimuli. Pete sensed his confusion, and tried to smooth it out with his 'mental hand,' but instead he spread his own madness across the entirety of Patrick's mind.
Patrick fell in.
In the morning, he could remember only flashes; Pete's hipbone grinding against his wrist, biting Pete's Achilles tendon and feeling the echo of pain and pleasure bounce back and forth between them. His ass was sore, and Pete's mind seemed back to normal, so they must have done it, but he couldn't remember that part at all.
He wandered over to the desk, where Pete was texting furiously, curled up into a purple hoodie that made his skin faintly green in the sunlight. Patrick glanced over his shoulder to read the screen of Pete’s phone. Ashlee.
Patrick realized he'd asked a lot of questions about getting married to a Romulan, but not nearly enough about what it meant to a Romulan to be married. Then he realized it didn't matter. Pete made his own rules anyway, always had. Patrick had lasted the last few months without any contact from Pete at all, at least now they could go back to being friends.
He blurted out, "Pete? You know, if you just need it every seven years, I mean..." He stopped, feeling Pete push in his head. He pushed back, hard. He didn't need Pete to witness his humiliation from the inside, too.
"Patrick? Please, I just need..." the pressure backed off, retreated into Pete's own head, but Pete had somehow dragged him along. His thoughts were still jumbled at the edges with Pon Farr, but the urgency that had been driving him was gone.
Pete approached, hand spread, giving Patrick a chance to duck out. Instead, he pushed his chin up to face Pete. Pete caressed his face, letting his fingers tingle Patrick's face before slipping into place. The raw edges of Pete's mind grated against him. Patrick tried to do Pete's trick of wiping a mental hand over the rough bits. He probably did it so clumsily that he just it made it worse, but he figured it was the thought that counted, right? Pete took a deep breath and let his hand slip down.
"I need this, ok? Not the way I needed it before, I just, I do," Pete said almost angrily.
Patrick reached forward and touched Pete's hand, the way he'd seen Pete's parents greet each other. Pete's fingers beneath his were hot and dry, and Patrick could feel each sensitive point he passed as his fingers traveled up and down the length of Pete's. The touch opened Pete's mind to him again, and Patrick could see that the rough edges there were better for his meddling. When Pete said he need this, he meant he needed Patrick, and Patrick did what he could to fill that need.
Almost absently he saw what Pete had been texting Ashlee; it turned out that the split had been messy, and one of the many things they were currently fighting over what the proper schedule was for Bronx’s vaccinations. Pete was sending her a link to a website with information on his side. Pete wasn't thinking about that right now, though. He was thinking about the way Patrick's hand felt against his, the crease of his index finger almost unbearably sensitive to Patrick's gentle touch.
It felt so different in Pete's mind to the way that the same touches would feel to Patrick. He found himself asking over and over, what feels good to you, what should I be doing? Pete abruptly shifted something open in their heads, just enough that any contact between their bodies kept the link open, so Patrick could shift his hand. Patrick caressed his neck and collarbone, sliding over the smooth skin to feel the texture of the bones beneath. Pete let him feel that it just tickled, although he didn't mind Patrick's attention there as long as Patrick enjoyed it.
He tried stretching his hands into the position that Pete always took on his face, and was shocked at the response. A gentle touch of Patrick's thumb caressing Pete's chin had him groaning, while Patrick's pinkie at the very sensitive psi point next to his ear left Pete biting his lip and thrusting. He kissed Pete's face on the spots of contact, a simple brush of lips over skin, and Pete wrapped his body around Patrick's, begging inarticulately. Patrick moved to Pete's hand, and he shivered before Patrick's lips even made contact. He ran his tongue along a nail-bed, and Pete gasped. His skin was so very warm beneath Patrick.
Patrick had gotten the sense, before, that Pete's reputation as a make out king was well-earned. Later he realized that of course that would be the case--most of his partners would have no way to know what really turned him on, and he didn't get hard without a mental effort. Pete must have prided himself on learning humans well enough to pass, and to him that must have meant being willing to just make out for hours, just to let them enjoy it. Patrick aimed to do the same.
Pete leaned back and smiled at the thought, a faint sound of black-olive-flavor ringing in the background.
"So last night? That was a Romulan wedding. This,” Pete curled his fingers to give Patrick better access to lick the creases between them, “is what it means to be in a Romulan marriage."
Patrick sucked the skin of Pete’s palm thoughtfully, and Pete gulped. There would be some greenness to get over later, and Pete would maybe have to show him how sex worked when they weren’t completely out of their minds, but overall, being married Romulan-style didn't sound so bad after all.
Author: naotalba
Fandom: Bandom with some Star Trek, but no Star Trek knowledge necessary (this doesn't follow Star Trek canon)
Pairing: Pete/Patrick
Rating: R
Length: 6233 words
Beta: Thanks to megyal, even though I outraged her trekkie soul with this. Heavily revised since, please feel free to point out errors.
Disclaimer: These are non-profit, non-commercial works of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. These fictional stories are not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.
Summary: Pete Wentz's parents were actually aliens who crash landed to Earth in the '50s.
Snow White Bar, Hollywood, California, September 1957
Gene Roddenberry looked around the bar. There was nothing he wanted to see; the only distraction was in the form of the bar's solitary other occupant. Gene glanced over at the young man looking intent and nursing a shot, his stark black hair in a shaggy mop that came down over the tops of his ears. He didn't seem to want company.
A car went careening around outside, its headlights spilling light into the bar's windows. In the flash of light, the young man's face looked positively green, and his eyebrows seemed permanently pulled up in an inquisitive expression.
Gene's curiosity got the better of him. He wandered over to the stranger and put on his best salesman’s grin. "I'll make you a deal. I'll buy you a drink if you buy me one, I'll tell you some lies if you promise to say you believe them, and if you want to tell the truth, well, I'll pretend it's a lie if you like."
The man looked up, startled. "It isn't very logical us to purchase drinks for each other rather than our own. And alcohol does not affect me. Refined sugar, on the other hand, is widely available here, and has a much more potent psychoactive effect on my physiology." The young man abruptly stopped his rambling, changed his manner entirely. "I mean, sure, you can buy me a drink and I'll buy you one. I'm not much of a drinker, whatever you recommend. Just no sweet mixers, sugar does weird things to me."
Gene pondered the man in front of him. He'd seemed so alien at first. Gene had been in Hollywood long enough to recognize a good actor, and he'd bet his next paycheck that this man was putting on a show when he started acting human. Gene ordered two shots of Campari, neat.
The man introduced himself with a nod. "Peter Wentz. My wife and I, our, um, car broke down around here, and we just decided it was easiest to settle in." He took a sip of the drink, and quirked his eyebrow at the bitterness, but then took another sip. "We're having a little trouble adjusting." It was almost a rueful grin tucking up the corners of his mouth.
If Gene hadn't been paying attention, he wouldn't have noticed that the man never offered to shake his hand. But then, if Mr. Wentz had been paying attention, he would have noticed that Campari, for all its bitter taste, has more sugar than soda pop.
The man started talking. Gene did what he could to remember; this would really spice up that television pilot he'd been trying to work up. Some of this guy’s story would be the perfect touch, make his crazy story seem almost realistic.
Wentz residence, Brentwood, California, January 2006
Patrick slammed the door behind him. "Don't try to bullshit me, that was you leaking that shit, what the fuck, Pete?" Patrick knew Pete too well, and this had Pete written all over it. A first-time poster on livejournal (supposedly, a 13 year old from Texas, yeah right) had posted pictures that were very clearly of Pete, down to the bathroom wallpaper that Patrick had faced too many times while he peed.
Pete with his dick in his hand, looking hot as fuck, the vain bastard. If they had really leaked, it would have been onto one of the bigger gossip blogs, not on livejournal where Pete hung out. Pete had dropped those himself.
Pete had a pinched expression, his shoulders hunched over. "Yeah, I had to make sure the photoshopped versions came out first, because that bitch is threatening to drop the real soon, and if she does I need them to look like they're the fakes."
Patrick tried to figure out the logic. Pete looked at his expression, sighed and pushed his phone over.
Wow, that was a bright shade of green.
Patrick's experience with dicks was limited, sure, but he'd seen pink, and purplish, and brown. He'd never seen anything close to that shade of grass green, fading to khaki at the sac. It was, well, inhuman.
Patrick heard faint rattling in the kitchen. Pete grabbed his shoulder, and Patrick jumped, the phone falling out of his hand. "You aren't really going to believe me until I do this, no one ever does." Pete had a paring knife in his hand, and made a small cut on the fleshy part of his thumb. Emerald blood welled out.
"Remember I told you my parents weren't from around here? Well, I meant it."
Simpson-Wentz residence, Hollywood, California, June 2009
Patrick was in LA again despite insisting he was moving back to Chicago. He had gone to the movies with Pete and Pete's friend Jensen the night before, and it had been great, one of the rare times where he'd hung out with Pete without it being about the band or the music, and he'd felt really connected. Jensen was a good guy, too, smart and funny and a good friend to Pete. But they had just exchanged numbers, Patrick hadn't been expecting a call from him so soon.
"Pete needs you to get over to his house right now. He's having trouble," Jensen broke into a laugh, "consummating his marriage."
Patrick had laughed too, startled, but headed over to Pete's to see what the joke was, considering Pete had been married for a year and had a six month old kid. When he got there, Jensen had long since sobered. Pete's dad was attempting to console a sobbing Ashlee, while Pete's personal assistant Jenna kept trying to hand Bronx to one or the other of them, the only babysitting in a PA's job description being of the "drunk rockstar" type.
Jensen had a quiet word with her and they left the room, leaving Patrick to wander until he could find someone to explain what had happened. He found Pete's mom Dale sitting at the kitchen table. She looked up expectantly at his arrival.
Dale took a deep breath and said, "It looks like the engagement will have to be broken. Ashlee can't form a mental link with Pete, even with both of us helping, and Pete's turning 30 in less than a month. It's too dangerous for him to be unbonded."
Pete had explained, when he'd asked Patrick to be the best man at his wedding, that the alien ritual would have to be put off until later, that it could be dangerous with Ashlee pregnant. He'd never explained much of his parents' culture despite repeated requests and only-half joking threats of day-long Star Trek marathons on the bus. Pete hated the show, so the threat had some teeth.
But before the wedding, Pete had broken down and given him a little more information about what it meant to be what his family called ‘Romulan,’ since humans couldn't pronounce the real word. Romulans were capable of forming telepathic links, most especially as a part of the Romulan equivalent of marriage, and part of being a Romulan man was preparing for Pon Farr, the sexual frenzy that came once every seven years once he reached maturity at around age 30. The fact that that aspect of their make-up had somehow slipped out to a television writer and become commonly known was a source of shame and self-loathing for the entire Wentz family. Patrick had thought that the feud with Roddenberry was hilarious, but then Pete had started talking about 'very few people die these days' and it wasn't so funny anymore.
It hadn't really occurred to Patrick that to Pete's family, the only Romulans on the planet, the human ceremony just didn't count. The telepathic bond to the husband was the whole point of a Romulan marriage. A wife needed a psychic connection strong enough to sustain a male through the madness that Pon Farr brought, in order to able to handle both the sexual needs of a mature Romulan man as well as keep him sane throughout. If Ashlee couldn't do it, Pete had to find someone who could or he would die in Pon Farr, so that made anything leading up to that link just an engagement.
Pete wandered in, tried for a nonchalant tone as he said, "She’s a little calmer now, but I still wouldn’t go in the living room if I were you.” He grabbed a diet soda out of the fridge. "I still want to try to be Bronx's father, I hope she doesn't try to pull any bullshit paternity tests on me."
Patrick stopped, confused. "He's not yours?"
Dale barked out a sharp laugh in time with Pete's.
"You just flunked basic biology. We aren't the same species, Patrick. My blood is green. My ears were pointed until Mom had them bobbed so I could pass, my eyebrows ditto. I'm not human, I can't breed with humans. I'm not physically mature for my species even if I could. Bronx is human, so he's not my biological child, no.” Pete shoved the hair out of his eyes. “But he could have been my son. Maybe my only chance for one. Still can be, if Ash lets me."
Patrick tried to process. "You asked her to marry you knowing she was pregnant with someone else's kid?"
Pete shrugged. "I figured it was a fair trade for not telling her about the Romulan thing until the honeymoon," he said.
Patrick thought it was no wonder they couldn't get close enough mentally to make the necessary link. Pete had made a terrific groom but a shitty husband. Pete was never truly interested in a girl until she wasn't interested in him. It meant he had dated a long string of cheaters, because they were the only girls that held his interest.
Patrick had had to forcibly remind himself of how Pete's relationships were all clusterfucks; he and Pete were never going to happen, because Pete didn't do relationships with people who didn't hurt him, and Patrick wouldn't hurt him on purpose. When Pete had gotten married, though, Patrick had finally tried to get rid of the last flashes of hope that one day Pete would grow up enough that they would work together. Patrick had really needed Pete to make his marriage work, for Patrick's own sanity, and instead Pete had played bullshit games and hid seriously fucking important information from his wife.
But a mean little part of Patrick finally forgave Pete for waiting so long to tell Patrick, because Ashlee not knowing until the honeymoon was way worse than his not knowing for four goddamn years. But he still wasn’t going to forgive Pete for the fact that Andy and Joe had known from the beginning. That would never be ok with Patrick, Pete’s bullshit, ‘you mattered more to me than they did’ just didn’t fly.
Dale broke into his thoughts, saying, "Patrick, I had Pete call you and Jensen for a reason. We still have a little hope.
"When his dad and I went looking through Pete's mind, it wasn't that he was totally incapable of forming bonds with humans. He has these tiny little friendship bonds. Nothing like a friendship bond on Romulus, but there is something there, with you and Joe and Andy, and with Jensen and Dan and a few others. I thought maybe you could explain what it felt like to Ashlee, help her prepare her mind, and relax Pete a little by reminding him he's not completely mind-blind."
Patrick looked at Pete, confused. He'd never felt the Wentzs' alienness so strongly, not even that day Pete had proved that his crazy story of his parents being extra-terrestrials who crashed to earth in the fifties wasn't so much a story.
Pete said, "Mind-blind is like the Romulan equivalent of needing glasses, I'm just not very strong telepathically, and the nearest optometrist is about 100 light-years away. On Romulus it's not a big deal, your partner just does more of the heavy lifting, but obviously Ashlee can't. Mom's always teased me about it."
Dale looked stricken, but Pete patted her shoulder reassuringly. She ran her fingers across the side of his face in an affectionate way.
Patrick sat down at the table.
He'd felt a connection to Pete before, when they were writing and the music just flowed, or when Pete just *got* his jokes, no matter how off-the-wall they were. He'd thought that was normal, just part of being such close friends, but with Pete it had always had a little itch to it, like hair on the back of his neck after a haircut. And when they wrote, he felt sometimes like Pete pushed him in a way he couldn't really articulate, but he had learned to push back against.
He searched the back of his mind for that feeling, trying to touch it the way he would try to scratch an itch on his nose by wiggling it. It didn't really work, and he could feel his nose wrinkling sympathetically. Dale's hand brushed the side of his face, and suddenly it was like he had a mental 'hand' to scratch with. He touched the itchy spot gingerly.
Pete.
His mind tried desperately to fit the information flooding it into usable data, into the smells and touches and sounds that it was used to getting information from. But it didn't make sense; Pete in his mind was seeing the taste of dark chocolate, tasting the sound of a foghorn, hearing the rainbows of an oil slick. He did his best to navigate.
A cramp in his toe brought him back into his own body. Every joint in his body felt stiff, like he'd held the same awkward position for far too long. He looked up. The sun was rising, Dale was nowhere to be seen, and Pete had deep creases on his face where he'd been resting it on the seam of his hoodie.
The itchy spot in his mind now felt like a sunburst, or a healing scar. He didn't notice Pete's hand spread over the side of his face until it dropped, and the five points of lost contact felt clammy and forlorn.
Pete's father came in, dumped out the dregs of coffee from the pot to start a fresh one. "Congratulations, son-in-law."
"What!?!" Patrick stood up, then sat down abruptly as his knees crumpled under him.
Dale pushed her husband out of the doorway, caressing his fingers with hers along the way, and helped Patrick up. "What you need is a good breakfast, and I'm sure Pete doesn't have anything here. Let's go to that cafe on the corner. "
Patrick followed them, still trying to shake the pins and needles feeling out of his legs. He made it to the booth of the restaurant before he noticed Pete wasn't with them. He decided to take advantage of his absence and get some questions answered.
"Why do you call yourselves Romulans instead of Vulcans? I mean, I never really watched the show but I thought they were kind of the same, just evil."
"Roddenberry got so much wrong, it drives us crazy. Like that emotion-less stuff? He just didn't get that different cultures show their emotions differently, that doesn't mean we don't have them, for goodness' sake! Plus, it's more fun to be the mysterious bad guys." Dale smiled conspiratorially. Pete came by his sense of humor honestly.
Patrick was sure he had a million other things he'd always meant to ask, but right now, of course he couldn't think of them. He got to the problem at hand. "Why did you call me 'son-in-law'? I thought I was going to show Ashlee how to do it?"
Dale gestured at Patrick’s hands. He looked down at the sugar caddy he’d been absently playing with, crumpling and uncrumpling the packets as he thought, and passed it to her waiting hand. Dale pulled out one blue packet and one yellow one, and carefully straightened them before stirring their contents into her coffee. "Well, what would you have told her?"
It was a good question; it wasn't like Patrick had words for what had happened between him and Pete. He just didn't think it was a betrothal. But if Dale didn't think he could help Ashlee do the same thing she had seen Patrick do, how could he second-guess her?
And even Patrick could tell that whatever had happened the night before between him and Pete, it hadn’t been forming a tiny little friendship bond. It hadn’t been sexual, but there had been the sense that perhaps that was not a deliberate omission so much as an area yet to explore, along with so many other areas of Pete’s self that Patrick had yet to map. He absently scratched his nose along with the sunburst in his head, and got a satisfying impression of smelling the texture of mushrooms that spelled Pete in his mind.
Dale looked up from her cup, quickly, as though she had heard a startling noise. "The bad news is, now that he has created a mating bond, he's likely to go into Pon Farr sooner rather than later. That's why we came to visit, he's getting to be the right age, and he needed some help. But we thought it would be with Ashlee, and we didn't realize just how difficult it would be.” Patrick reached over to her, but she ducked the attempt at comfort.
She said, “It seemed so much easier, 40 years ago, to just settle down and make a home here, to raise a family instead of spending the rest of our lives in a crippled ship trying to reach home before we died of old age. We are so closely related, your species and ours, we thought if they were raised in your culture, our children would at least have a chance!” Dale never showed emotion, to Patrick’s eyes. Peter,Senior, too, had always seemed so stoic to Patrick. It occurred to him, as both their faces took on a greenish tinge, that he just didn’t know what to look for.
Dale took a sip of her coffee, then said, “I don’t want my son to die, Patrick. Peter and I think you should come back to Chicago with us for a few weeks. Just being around him now, even talking to him on the phone, could push him his cycle along that much faster, and you have a lot to learn beforehand." She made eye contact.
Patrick swallowed. "Like what?"
Dale smiled. "Well, I think you know most of the physiological differences already."
Patrick took his glasses off and polished them on his shirttail. "Not really? I mean, I'm not sure. I know to keep Pete away from sugar unless I want to baby-sit him while he gets drunk. I know his skin's always warm, and I saw in the picture that his erm, coloring is different, but Pete's changed in front of me for years and I would think I would have noticed."
Dale smiled and ducked her head. "It's blood flow that changes the color, the same as when your species blushes."
Patrick said, "I can't believe I lived with Pete in a van for years and ..." Patrick trailed off before he actually asked Pete's mom why Pete never got a boner in front of him, but not before the question was obvious. He could feel the blood flow she mentioned heating his face.
"It must have been difficult for Pete when he was trying to conceal himself. We have sex like you do, but the foreplay is a little different, and Romulans need foreplay to get started," she said.
Patrick bit back his questions and wished hard that there was anyone other than his prospective mother-in-law he could have this conversation with. Then he wondered if asking the questions at all meant he’d accepted that she was going to be his mother-in-law. Not like there was a choice, really. She was the expert, and if she said that was what would keep Pete alive, well, Patrick would buy himself a bridal veil.
Mr. Wentz put his menu down with an irritated noise. "It's not that he didn't find you attractive, Patrick, he wouldn’t have instinctively formed a marriage link with you if he didn't want you in that way.” And hey, there was someone more embarrassing than Dale to get this information from, because Peter’s no-nonsense voice carried through the restaurant easily.
Patrick sank in his seat as Mr. Wentz continued, “He’s not fully mature, you know. Our species is longer-lived than yours. We consider Pon Farr the end of puberty, which makes a Pete a teenager by your standards. Also, our physiology is different. We need mental contact to become aroused. Among our own kind a random erection is just as common as for yours, but Pete wasn't around other telepaths, so he'd have to make a deliberate effort. And even then, humans have slightly different erogenous zones. If his partner wasn't touching his hands or face, it's not surprising you never saw him hard." He placed his menu at the end of the table with finality.
The waitress came scurrying over as though that was her summons. The Wentzes inquired about sugar-free pancake syrup. Patrick ordered a delicious abomination of chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream on top. He planned to put syrup on it, too, maybe even a sugar packet. It was a petty revenge against people who were only trying to help, help both him and their son, but it made him feel better anyway.
O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, Illinois, August 2009
Patrick looked up at the welcome sign glowing above him. He was pretty sure he was booked on Southwest Airlines, and they flew through Midway airport, which was a little farther from Glenview, but easier to navigate than the gigantic O'Hare airport. No matter, O’Hare then.
He found himself at the United counter, but the next flight to LAX was on American. He asked about a code-sharing system, and he didn't even know what that meant, but somehow he ended up with an American Airlines ticket without having to go to another terminal. He got through security by forcing himself to stay focused on what was in front of him, what was in his bag.
He didn't have luggage; he'd planned to pack this evening, considering he wasn't supposed to leave until tomorrow afternoon. Fine. He pulled out his laptop, threw away a half empty bottle of water, put his sneakers in the bin to go through the x-rays. He was vaguely proud of himself for not holding up the line.
He looked up at the entrance to the Admiral's Club. One of the few things he did remember clearly at the ticket counter was saying no thanks to first class, it was a waste for someone with legs as short as his. So now he had to override his legs, which kept edging towards that stupid first class lounge, which he somehow knew would be quiet, dark and inviting, a perfect place to relax and concentrate.
Instead, he went directly to the gate and asked to pre-board. He only got permission after one of the counter girls hummed 'Sugar' for her supervisor, and Patrick thought absently that normally that would be pretty mortifying. Right now, though, going down the gangplank next to a grandma in a wheelchair and two school-age kids flying alone to a currently blissfully-empty plane, Patrick was willing to deal with a little humiliation to get into his seat 10 minutes early.
He found a blanket and pillow in the overhead compartment and grabbed them; if the flight attendants think he's sleeping, they won't bother him. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the window, did the mental exercises Pete's parents had been drilling him on all month. When he was as close to a trance as a human could come, he addressed the autopilot in his head.
He tasted the smell of fresh-turned earth. 'Pete?'
'Patrick, parted from me and never parted.' The cheesy words were tinged with an edge of desperation; Pete felt very parted from him right now. Patrick couldn't quite tell if it was a joke that fell flat, or one of the very few things Roddenberry didn't screw up.
Patrick felt a ghost-touch over the tops of his fingers. His fingers tingled, the touch making him rock hard and squirming.
'Oh fuck Pete, never and always touching and touched. I await you.' The words had the force of ritual. Roddenberry did remember this part, then. Patrick gasped in his head, trying hard not to thrust up and gross out the businessman that had somehow been seated next to him when he wasn't looking.
Pete ran a mental hand over Patrick's thought processes, calming him and overlaying a sense of Pete over everything. Patrick took a grateful breath.
'So it's happening now?'
Pete's mental voice chuckled ruefully. 'You think? I'm getting rugburn on my dick and I still can't stop, I have perfect concentration to say, override your free will and drag your ass to California, but Jensen says I've sent him the same changes to the latest Clan designs three times, and the MTV execs are asking me where I get my drugs because they must be the really good ones.
'Yeah, I'd say I'm going through goddamn Pon Farr.'
Patrick took a moment to collect himself. He breathed out carefully, and then thought as loudly as he can, 'Is it dangerous, that it started before we 'consummated our relationship'?' Patrick tried to let the echo of Jensen's snicker when he used that phrase bleed through his mental transmission.
Silence.
Patrick wasn't sure if the trance had been broken by his own distraction by memory, the flight attendant's obnoxious insistence on trying to sell him an overpriced boxed snack, or Pete's reluctance to answer his question. Trying to restart the connection, though, left his brain feeling like he'd done too many pull-ups and could now only hang limply from the bar. All that remained was a faint whiff of foghorns.
He fumbled for his ipod, put in the headphones, then found himself restlessly skipping ten songs in a row, unable to find anything to suit his antsy mood. The fabric of his shirt irritated the skin of his chest, and the blanket felt hot and confining. Pete's lingering presence in his mind, though, made removing the blanket from his lap completely far too risky.
Patrick tried to convince himself it would be ok. Of course, his research on the issue consisted of watching that Star Trek episode where it happens to Spock twenty times, and trying to stop cringing enough to listen when his in-laws discussed his prospective sex life, but. Pete had obviously had sex with humans before, without them knowing, so he couldn't be all that different, as long as he kept the lights off. And if humans and Romulans were that compatible, he could take whatever Pete could throw at him, no matter how intense Pon Farr got, right?
Patrick couldn't help getting a funny sense that Pete's parents had been pleased that it was him and not Ashlee, though, because he was physically stronger. He wasn't sure if his answering thought, that girlparts were actually designed to be fucked, was ever picked up by them. It wasn't as though he'd ever say that out loud, though.
He realized too late that he could have been doing some sort of practice along those lines; bought a dildo, or at least watched some gay porn. But he'd always been content before to identify as mostly-straight. His feelings about being accidentally married had included some freaking about the gay-marriage part, but it was kind of swallowed up by his panic over the inter-species marriage part, and oh yeah, the Pete part. Now it was a little late. He coughed to cover a laugh at the thought of joining the mile-high club solo, in a last-ditch effort to not go into this completely blind. Yeah, no.
Los Angeles International Airport, El Segundo, California, August 2009
"Ok, so we are taxi-ing, is that the word? When the plane drives on the blacktop? Anyway, that’s what we’re doing right now, where are you, and please don't tell me you drove yourself." Talking to Pete on the phone was weird, but he wouldn't even bother attempting a trance in the noise and bustle of the other passengers gathering their carryons.
Pete's answer came through the phone with an eerie trace of a pre-echo in his head and a faint texture of soy-sauce-smell. "I'm in the Radisson across the street, Jenna drove me, don't worry, and I think we'd be better off if you just get a cab over here, because I do not think I'm going to be appropriate when we are in the same room."
Patrick nodded and hung up. The businessman next to him must have been watching, because he was unsuccessfully trying to hide a smile. Patrick couldn't very well tell him that Pete heard his nod and goodbye anyway, so he put in his headphones until he could get off the plane.
He texted Pete while he waited for a cab, unable to restrain his curiosity now that the time was upon them. 'How did you manage to get laid w/o any1 knowing?'
His phone beeped a moment after he felt Pete's amusement. 'grls think its romantic 2 do it in the dark. guys think im a closet case who wont take hs pants off.' Patrick could see it, too, Pete using it to his advantage, making himself seem mysterious and secretive to everyone else, while Patrick as his husband got to appreciate the fact that he was Kermit-the-frog-colored. Oh god, Pete was going to want to have sex, and Patrick was going to start singing, “The Rainbow Connection,” in bed, which was just wrong, and would that make it their song? Because even accidental interspecies gay marriages don’t deserve songs sung by frogs, and yeah, he was definitely panicking.
The only thing that managed to calm Patrick down was Pete's thoughts, which began bleeding through to Patrick in the cab. Pete had shoved the do-not-disturb sign in between the door and the latch to keep the door from closing all the way, to save Patrick the two minutes of getting a key from the front desk, or the 30 seconds of knocking and waiting for Pete to answer the door. Patrick appreciated this fact more than the knowledge that the hotel only had rooms with two queen beds available, so Pete was sprawled on the bed nearer the door to save Patrick a few steps to get to him (which was what Patrick heard coming down the escalator) or knowing what Pete's hand was currently doing (which he hadn't been able to completely ignore since he woke up that morning feeling like someone else was driving his body).
By the time Patrick got to the seventh floor and found the room with the propped door, he was nervous enough that he found himself doing a doing his pre-show breathing exercises. He pushed open the door, holding the card so the door could close completely behind him.
Pete had been standing just out of view, naked and vulnerable. He reached out his hand and touched Patrick's fingertips in the same way he'd done on the plane. Patrick's whole body reacted in a confusing way, nerve endings that shouldn't be that sensitive trying to react to the stimuli. Pete sensed his confusion, and tried to smooth it out with his 'mental hand,' but instead he spread his own madness across the entirety of Patrick's mind.
Patrick fell in.
In the morning, he could remember only flashes; Pete's hipbone grinding against his wrist, biting Pete's Achilles tendon and feeling the echo of pain and pleasure bounce back and forth between them. His ass was sore, and Pete's mind seemed back to normal, so they must have done it, but he couldn't remember that part at all.
He wandered over to the desk, where Pete was texting furiously, curled up into a purple hoodie that made his skin faintly green in the sunlight. Patrick glanced over his shoulder to read the screen of Pete’s phone. Ashlee.
Patrick realized he'd asked a lot of questions about getting married to a Romulan, but not nearly enough about what it meant to a Romulan to be married. Then he realized it didn't matter. Pete made his own rules anyway, always had. Patrick had lasted the last few months without any contact from Pete at all, at least now they could go back to being friends.
He blurted out, "Pete? You know, if you just need it every seven years, I mean..." He stopped, feeling Pete push in his head. He pushed back, hard. He didn't need Pete to witness his humiliation from the inside, too.
"Patrick? Please, I just need..." the pressure backed off, retreated into Pete's own head, but Pete had somehow dragged him along. His thoughts were still jumbled at the edges with Pon Farr, but the urgency that had been driving him was gone.
Pete approached, hand spread, giving Patrick a chance to duck out. Instead, he pushed his chin up to face Pete. Pete caressed his face, letting his fingers tingle Patrick's face before slipping into place. The raw edges of Pete's mind grated against him. Patrick tried to do Pete's trick of wiping a mental hand over the rough bits. He probably did it so clumsily that he just it made it worse, but he figured it was the thought that counted, right? Pete took a deep breath and let his hand slip down.
"I need this, ok? Not the way I needed it before, I just, I do," Pete said almost angrily.
Patrick reached forward and touched Pete's hand, the way he'd seen Pete's parents greet each other. Pete's fingers beneath his were hot and dry, and Patrick could feel each sensitive point he passed as his fingers traveled up and down the length of Pete's. The touch opened Pete's mind to him again, and Patrick could see that the rough edges there were better for his meddling. When Pete said he need this, he meant he needed Patrick, and Patrick did what he could to fill that need.
Almost absently he saw what Pete had been texting Ashlee; it turned out that the split had been messy, and one of the many things they were currently fighting over what the proper schedule was for Bronx’s vaccinations. Pete was sending her a link to a website with information on his side. Pete wasn't thinking about that right now, though. He was thinking about the way Patrick's hand felt against his, the crease of his index finger almost unbearably sensitive to Patrick's gentle touch.
It felt so different in Pete's mind to the way that the same touches would feel to Patrick. He found himself asking over and over, what feels good to you, what should I be doing? Pete abruptly shifted something open in their heads, just enough that any contact between their bodies kept the link open, so Patrick could shift his hand. Patrick caressed his neck and collarbone, sliding over the smooth skin to feel the texture of the bones beneath. Pete let him feel that it just tickled, although he didn't mind Patrick's attention there as long as Patrick enjoyed it.
He tried stretching his hands into the position that Pete always took on his face, and was shocked at the response. A gentle touch of Patrick's thumb caressing Pete's chin had him groaning, while Patrick's pinkie at the very sensitive psi point next to his ear left Pete biting his lip and thrusting. He kissed Pete's face on the spots of contact, a simple brush of lips over skin, and Pete wrapped his body around Patrick's, begging inarticulately. Patrick moved to Pete's hand, and he shivered before Patrick's lips even made contact. He ran his tongue along a nail-bed, and Pete gasped. His skin was so very warm beneath Patrick.
Patrick had gotten the sense, before, that Pete's reputation as a make out king was well-earned. Later he realized that of course that would be the case--most of his partners would have no way to know what really turned him on, and he didn't get hard without a mental effort. Pete must have prided himself on learning humans well enough to pass, and to him that must have meant being willing to just make out for hours, just to let them enjoy it. Patrick aimed to do the same.
Pete leaned back and smiled at the thought, a faint sound of black-olive-flavor ringing in the background.
"So last night? That was a Romulan wedding. This,” Pete curled his fingers to give Patrick better access to lick the creases between them, “is what it means to be in a Romulan marriage."
Patrick sucked the skin of Pete’s palm thoughtfully, and Pete gulped. There would be some greenness to get over later, and Pete would maybe have to show him how sex worked when they weren’t completely out of their minds, but overall, being married Romulan-style didn't sound so bad after all.