Happy Holidays, megyal!
To: megyal
From: greenjelloforst
Title: and down the strings
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Frank/Patrick, suggested Gerard/Pete, with mentions of Ray and Bob
Word Count: 2529
Warnings: Um, none, really.
Disclaimer: This…never happened. And I don’t own any of the pretty, pretty boys in this.
Summary: college AU! Tiny snippets of what takes place over the course of some weeks.
Notes: Merry Christmas! :) I hope you like you gift, and that it was sort of what you were looking for! Oh, and the title comes is a line from a Van Morrison song, because I am uncreative when it comes to naming things.
:::
and down the strings
“Hey.”
Patrick doesn’t look up from the book he’s reading. He clears his throat, fisting a hand in front of his mouth, slouching lower in the hard backed library chairs. It’s not that he’s so engrossed with what he’s reading-although The Grapes of Wrath was actually more interesting than he’d thought it would be, who knew-it’s just that, well, Pete was at practice, would be until seven, and Patrick didn’t think anyone would be in this section of the library. In this section of the library on a Saturday. Looking for him.
“Hey?”
It isn’t even been a particularly good part in the book. There is really no excuse for this.
“Um…hey?”
Patrick will reflect on this later and realize how humiliating it is that it took the guy not one, not two, but three tries to get his attention. And even then, it’s the tentative hand on his shoulder that makes him jump, sit bolt upright and choke on air. He almost, almost holds his book up like a shield but damn it he is not usually this twitchy. The guy gives him this look, not so much freaked out as apologetic, worrying his lower lip with his teeth.
“Sorry, I didn’t-” He gestures at the book Patrick is gripping between his hands. “Wasn’t trying to interrupt, but-were you in bio yesterday? Do you have the notes? I was sick,” he explains, with a sheepish smile that makes Patrick substitute ‘sick’ with ‘hung-over’ in his mind. Still, the smile is. The smile is kind of disarming, the way his lips curve, soft and with a metal lip ring in the left corner.
“Bio?” Patrick says blankly, and then he kind of wishes he hadn’t. That was pretty clever, Stump. Real smooth.
The guy doesn’t laugh at him though, he just scrunches his nose and rocks back on the balls of his feet, eyebrows raised hopefully, earnest. “Yeah, McMillain’s class?” Patrick nods. He doesn’t remember ever seeing him in the class before. He wonders how he’d missed him. “Ray said we took notes, but the fucker always sleeps during that class, so I-we did take notes right?”
“Notes?” Patrick wonders where his ability to utter more than one word at a time went. The more helpful, less critical part of his brain kicks in then. “Yeah, no, we took. We took notes. I have them, I think I have them here, hang on. Do you. Do you want them now?” He prides himself on getting the bag open and the two pages of notes out of his binder without, like, impaling himself on a ruler or pencil or something. This had only ever happened once, when some guy nearly a foot taller than Patrick asked to borrow an eraser in class, and Patrick nearly fell out of his seat because the guy was big, blonde and had a lip ring. He’d had a look about him that sort of radiated ‘if you ever [insert stupid mistake here], I will personally [insert threat here] and they will never find the body’.
This guy, the one in front of him now, has a lip ring too, but it was less threatening and more…distracting.
“Here.” Patrick thrusts them at him without waiting for an answer, his eyes on the table. “Just, uh. I just need them back before Wednesday.” Patrick’s eyes flick up and the guy is watching him, the look on his face warm and grateful as he takes the papers.
“Great, thanks,” The guy grins, open and hey wow, really nice smile, and curls a hand around Patrick’s wrist, resting the tips of his fingers lightly over the pulse point. “I’ll drop them off at your room sometime tomorrow, that okay?” Patrick nods again.
He very deliberately does not look at his hand once until the guy is walking away, swinging his backpack up on his shoulder so he can fit his arm through the opposite strap. And even when he does look, Patrick tells himself, it’s only because he’s turning back to his book and can he help that his hand happens to be right next to the paragraph he left off at? It’s not, Patrick assures himself, because he expects to see the ghosts of fingerprints there, red whorls just over the pale skin and blue-green veins.
:::
It turns out that it’s not until late Tuesday night Patrick hears a knock on his door, quick and soft. By all rights, he should have been asleep-he didn’t even have the excuse that Pete was keeping him up; he’d passed out on the couch over an hour ago, arm hanging limp over the side and drooling a wet spot on Patrick’s favorite pillow.
Patrick answers the door with a certain degree of grumpiness. With good reason, he figures. Pete destroying his personal possessions aside, late night cram sessions were a bitch.
“Unless you’re carrying coffee or a miracle, I’m not in the mood,” Patrick says as he’s opening the door. Then, “Oh.” Patrick cannot be that much of an idiot, but apparently he is.
It’s the guy. Of course it’s the guy. “I have half a cup of lukewarm gingerbread latte,” the guy says. “Do I make the cut?”
Patrick closes his eyes for a beat, then huffs a laugh. “Oh, no, sorry-I mean you do! Make the. Yeah. Sorry. My brain kind of shuts off after eleven most nights, and I end up looking like an asshole.”
“No, no, it’s cool. My fault, actually, I was supposed to bring these over a few days ago-“he leans through the doorway and places the cup of coffee on a table Patrick and Pete use for keys and random junk so he can rummage around in his bag. He pulls out the notes triumphantly. “Thanks again, man. I should have brought them back yesterday, but I had to have Bob explain some of it and I didn’t really get the part where-” And Patrick is tuning out at this point. He’s a little blindsided by the fact that he’s found someone here who’s actually shorter than him by a couple inches. Who’s not, like, a girl. He almost misses what the guy says next.
“-anyway, at least now I probably won’t fail on Thursday. I’m Frank.” He-Frank, Frank Frank Frank-holds the other hand next to the one with the notes, and Patrick can’t decide which he should take first so he ends up doing this weird crossover reach thing like he did when he was receiving his high school diploma and shaking the principal’s hand at the same time.
“Thanks for bringing them over,” Patrick says, on reflex and because it’s polite. After that, there’s an almost awkward silence. Frank doesn’t look like he’s planning on leaving any time soon; he settles one shoulder against the doorway and smiles a little at Patrick’s fidgeting. He brushes Patrick’s arm when he reaches for his coffee. For the first time in Patrick’s not sure how long, he really wishes Pete were there being his usual irritating loud-mouthed self, hanging off Patrick’s shoulder and grinning, filling up the silence.
“So. I, um.” Patrick picks at the hem of his shirt and looks up in time to catch Frank’s smile slide neatly off his face.
“Aw, shit, you were studying, right?” Frank says, jamming his free hand into his pocket. “Jesus, sorry about that.”
“Don’t be,” Patrick waves a hand. “I’ve been at it for hours and I’m not getting much of anywhere.”
“Where’re you studying?”
“Calculus.”
Frank perks back up. “Yeah? I could help you with that if you want.”
“I-you sure?” Patrick says; Frank already edging around Patrick to get into the room, pressing the cup of coffee into Patrick’s hands as he does. “It’s, it’s kind of late-”
Frank shrugs, his momentum carrying him to the table strewn with textbooks and loose sheaves of paper, next to the couch with a snoring Pete. “No problem. Not like I have anything else to do right now. Besides, I sort of owe you one.”
“You took calc 2?” Patrick says.
“Took it last year. Easier than the English course I took; with this you just have to know how to put shit together.” Frank looks back over his shoulder and grins at him, and Patrick feels his chest tighten. “I’m pretty sick at putting shit together. What’re you stuck on?”
“Everything,” Patrick admits, and shuts the door behind him.
:::
“So,” Pete starts, dropping down next to Patrick on the common room couch, one arm securing itself behind Patrick’s head. There is noise all around them, the kind where it’s impossible to pick out just one thread of conversation, but rather all the words have blended together to create a dull buzzing. Patrick likes the imagery of that, wishes he could be that poetic in his class essays. “So. You and Frank.”
Patrick blinks at him, twice. His mind is still on the analysis of Madeline and Roderick’s relationship and the significance of the house’s hairline crack down the center. (He wonders yet again why he decided to be a Poe major. When the fuck was he going to use thatin his life? How was knowing the breakdown of man’s innate evil tendencies going to land him a job in the music industry?) “What?”
Pete’s grin takes up half his face. “You,” he says slowly, squeezing Patrick’s shoulders. “And Frank.” He jerks his chin towards the corner of the room with the pool table. Frank’s lining up a shot, eyes squinty with concentration, mouth open a little. A chunk of hair falls forward into his face, and his arms flex, tattoos shifting with them, every time he readjusts his grip.
“And?” Patrick looks away and back at Pete. “Oh c’mon. He’s been over to our room, what, three times?”
“Yeah.” Pete’s grin gets, if possible, even wider.
“To study,” Patrick stresses. “Fuck off,” he adds when Pete laughs.
“Oh man,” Pete says, still snickering. “Oh man, you’ve got it bad.”
“I’ve-what? No, seriously, what? No, I don’t.” At all. Because Patrick is just not that fucking transparent. And fuck Pete, anyway for thinking he’s being perceptive. “Frank is, he’s cool-”
“And hot,” Pete points out. Unnecessarily, in Patrick’s opinion. Because, well, yeah, but-
“-but no. It’s not like that. Really,” Patrick says, when Pete doesn’t seem convinced.
“He’s about your height,” Pete says, poking Patrick in the ribs, like Patrick hadn’t realized that. “But whatever. Listen, I’m not coming back to the room…” He waggles his eyebrows at Patrick; Patrick snorts. “No, really though, I’m not. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“Yeah? And what’re the special plans for tonight?”
Pete dips his head and points at the collection of coffee tables diagonal from them. A guy, maybe about their age, maybe a senior, is hunched over one, scrawling something in a thin notebook. He’s got on a long, worn-looking jacket, and has dark hair that covers his face and looks like it has dried blue paint in it. Patrick raises an eyebrow at Pete, like, him? Yeah?
All he gets is another grin. Pete glances at Frank again when he says to Patrick, “Like I said, I’ll be gone all night.” He winks at Patrick and pushes himself up, bouncing away.
Patrick tries to go back to his essay but can’t for the life of him figure out where he was going with the sentence he’d stopped in the middle of. He pushes his glasses up to his forehead to pinch the bridge of his nose, and when they drop into place again he’s unavoidably looking in Frank’s direction again. Frank had positioned the pool cue behind his neck and hooked his wrists over either side of it. It should have looked ridiculous, but all Patrick can think of is how it makes the end of Frank’s shirt ride up just that little bit to expose bare skin and black ink that hints at another tattoo.
Frank catches him watching and waves a little. His smile gets softer at the edges and Patrick would swear he sees his eyes get darker, and that thought alone is doing strange things to his stomach.
Patrick smiles and waves back, thinks, fuck.
:::
Frank is more careful taking Patrick’s hat off than his is taking his glasses off. Patrick doesn’t know what it says about him that he is so helplessly turned on by this.
“Wanted to do this for a while,” Frank says, when he finally stops kissing Patrick in favor of nuzzling his neck. Frank’s mouth is perfect and just right and his lip ring is cold when it bumps Patrick’s skin as he talks. His hands skim up Patrick’s chest, sliding under his jacket. Frank presses so close that it’s a struggle to get the jacket off at first, because neither of them seems to be willing to relinquish the close proximity. “Didn’t know how you’d react.”
Patrick is fairly sure he’s blushing. His face feels hot enough for it. Frank pulls his head back and laughs in a high, breathy giggle that pretty much confirms it.
“This-this is okay, right?” Frank says, tilting his head to one side, and that. Patrick acts all on instinct when he puts his hand on the back of Frank’s neck and brings him back in for another kiss. Frank laughs again, kisses the corner of Patrick’s mouth and then his whole mouth, walking them backwards until the back of Patrick’s knees hit the edge of the couch.
In the split second before the two of them tumble down onto the cushions, Patrick hopes fervently that Pete wasn’t kidding even a little bit about being gone till morning.
:::
“Merry Christmas,” Patrick says, almost ten minutes after he’d opened the door to find Frank standing there, wrapped in a scarf, gloves, two coats and a hat, his nose red and his eyes watery, coughing into a tissue.
Frank groans pitifully enough that Patrick almost smiles. “I hate being sick on holidays,” he says, so vehemently that he sneezes and wipes his nose on Patrick’s thigh.
“That’s disgusting,” Patrick says absently. It was hard to care about his jeans when Frank’s head was in his lap, fever-warm. “You’re disgusting,” he amends fondly.
“You love me though,” Frank says, sniffling and sighing when Patrick brushes cool fingers against his jaw.
“Mm,” Patrick agrees. “Even though you didn’t get me a present.”
“I did too,” Frank mutters, and Patrick does grin then, remembering Frank on his knees in front of him the night before, looking up through a fringe of hair, hands splayed over Patrick’s hips, saying, Early gift. I used to exchange presents on Christmas Eve at home anyway “There’s only so much I can do with student loans.”
“I was joking.” Patrick pats the side of Frank’s head where the hair is short and bristled, bleached blonde. He wants to say more but Frank’s eyes are closed and his breathing is starting to sound less wheezy and more even and Patrick is too comfortable to tell him to go sleep somewhere else. He tugs the blanket higher up on Frank’s shoulders and wonders if it’s snowing out yet.
Mod note: A big thank you to megyal for pinch hitting!
From: greenjelloforst
Title: and down the strings
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Frank/Patrick, suggested Gerard/Pete, with mentions of Ray and Bob
Word Count: 2529
Warnings: Um, none, really.
Disclaimer: This…never happened. And I don’t own any of the pretty, pretty boys in this.
Summary: college AU! Tiny snippets of what takes place over the course of some weeks.
Notes: Merry Christmas! :) I hope you like you gift, and that it was sort of what you were looking for! Oh, and the title comes is a line from a Van Morrison song, because I am uncreative when it comes to naming things.
:::
and down the strings
“Hey.”
Patrick doesn’t look up from the book he’s reading. He clears his throat, fisting a hand in front of his mouth, slouching lower in the hard backed library chairs. It’s not that he’s so engrossed with what he’s reading-although The Grapes of Wrath was actually more interesting than he’d thought it would be, who knew-it’s just that, well, Pete was at practice, would be until seven, and Patrick didn’t think anyone would be in this section of the library. In this section of the library on a Saturday. Looking for him.
“Hey?”
It isn’t even been a particularly good part in the book. There is really no excuse for this.
“Um…hey?”
Patrick will reflect on this later and realize how humiliating it is that it took the guy not one, not two, but three tries to get his attention. And even then, it’s the tentative hand on his shoulder that makes him jump, sit bolt upright and choke on air. He almost, almost holds his book up like a shield but damn it he is not usually this twitchy. The guy gives him this look, not so much freaked out as apologetic, worrying his lower lip with his teeth.
“Sorry, I didn’t-” He gestures at the book Patrick is gripping between his hands. “Wasn’t trying to interrupt, but-were you in bio yesterday? Do you have the notes? I was sick,” he explains, with a sheepish smile that makes Patrick substitute ‘sick’ with ‘hung-over’ in his mind. Still, the smile is. The smile is kind of disarming, the way his lips curve, soft and with a metal lip ring in the left corner.
“Bio?” Patrick says blankly, and then he kind of wishes he hadn’t. That was pretty clever, Stump. Real smooth.
The guy doesn’t laugh at him though, he just scrunches his nose and rocks back on the balls of his feet, eyebrows raised hopefully, earnest. “Yeah, McMillain’s class?” Patrick nods. He doesn’t remember ever seeing him in the class before. He wonders how he’d missed him. “Ray said we took notes, but the fucker always sleeps during that class, so I-we did take notes right?”
“Notes?” Patrick wonders where his ability to utter more than one word at a time went. The more helpful, less critical part of his brain kicks in then. “Yeah, no, we took. We took notes. I have them, I think I have them here, hang on. Do you. Do you want them now?” He prides himself on getting the bag open and the two pages of notes out of his binder without, like, impaling himself on a ruler or pencil or something. This had only ever happened once, when some guy nearly a foot taller than Patrick asked to borrow an eraser in class, and Patrick nearly fell out of his seat because the guy was big, blonde and had a lip ring. He’d had a look about him that sort of radiated ‘if you ever [insert stupid mistake here], I will personally [insert threat here] and they will never find the body’.
This guy, the one in front of him now, has a lip ring too, but it was less threatening and more…distracting.
“Here.” Patrick thrusts them at him without waiting for an answer, his eyes on the table. “Just, uh. I just need them back before Wednesday.” Patrick’s eyes flick up and the guy is watching him, the look on his face warm and grateful as he takes the papers.
“Great, thanks,” The guy grins, open and hey wow, really nice smile, and curls a hand around Patrick’s wrist, resting the tips of his fingers lightly over the pulse point. “I’ll drop them off at your room sometime tomorrow, that okay?” Patrick nods again.
He very deliberately does not look at his hand once until the guy is walking away, swinging his backpack up on his shoulder so he can fit his arm through the opposite strap. And even when he does look, Patrick tells himself, it’s only because he’s turning back to his book and can he help that his hand happens to be right next to the paragraph he left off at? It’s not, Patrick assures himself, because he expects to see the ghosts of fingerprints there, red whorls just over the pale skin and blue-green veins.
:::
It turns out that it’s not until late Tuesday night Patrick hears a knock on his door, quick and soft. By all rights, he should have been asleep-he didn’t even have the excuse that Pete was keeping him up; he’d passed out on the couch over an hour ago, arm hanging limp over the side and drooling a wet spot on Patrick’s favorite pillow.
Patrick answers the door with a certain degree of grumpiness. With good reason, he figures. Pete destroying his personal possessions aside, late night cram sessions were a bitch.
“Unless you’re carrying coffee or a miracle, I’m not in the mood,” Patrick says as he’s opening the door. Then, “Oh.” Patrick cannot be that much of an idiot, but apparently he is.
It’s the guy. Of course it’s the guy. “I have half a cup of lukewarm gingerbread latte,” the guy says. “Do I make the cut?”
Patrick closes his eyes for a beat, then huffs a laugh. “Oh, no, sorry-I mean you do! Make the. Yeah. Sorry. My brain kind of shuts off after eleven most nights, and I end up looking like an asshole.”
“No, no, it’s cool. My fault, actually, I was supposed to bring these over a few days ago-“he leans through the doorway and places the cup of coffee on a table Patrick and Pete use for keys and random junk so he can rummage around in his bag. He pulls out the notes triumphantly. “Thanks again, man. I should have brought them back yesterday, but I had to have Bob explain some of it and I didn’t really get the part where-” And Patrick is tuning out at this point. He’s a little blindsided by the fact that he’s found someone here who’s actually shorter than him by a couple inches. Who’s not, like, a girl. He almost misses what the guy says next.
“-anyway, at least now I probably won’t fail on Thursday. I’m Frank.” He-Frank, Frank Frank Frank-holds the other hand next to the one with the notes, and Patrick can’t decide which he should take first so he ends up doing this weird crossover reach thing like he did when he was receiving his high school diploma and shaking the principal’s hand at the same time.
“Thanks for bringing them over,” Patrick says, on reflex and because it’s polite. After that, there’s an almost awkward silence. Frank doesn’t look like he’s planning on leaving any time soon; he settles one shoulder against the doorway and smiles a little at Patrick’s fidgeting. He brushes Patrick’s arm when he reaches for his coffee. For the first time in Patrick’s not sure how long, he really wishes Pete were there being his usual irritating loud-mouthed self, hanging off Patrick’s shoulder and grinning, filling up the silence.
“So. I, um.” Patrick picks at the hem of his shirt and looks up in time to catch Frank’s smile slide neatly off his face.
“Aw, shit, you were studying, right?” Frank says, jamming his free hand into his pocket. “Jesus, sorry about that.”
“Don’t be,” Patrick waves a hand. “I’ve been at it for hours and I’m not getting much of anywhere.”
“Where’re you studying?”
“Calculus.”
Frank perks back up. “Yeah? I could help you with that if you want.”
“I-you sure?” Patrick says; Frank already edging around Patrick to get into the room, pressing the cup of coffee into Patrick’s hands as he does. “It’s, it’s kind of late-”
Frank shrugs, his momentum carrying him to the table strewn with textbooks and loose sheaves of paper, next to the couch with a snoring Pete. “No problem. Not like I have anything else to do right now. Besides, I sort of owe you one.”
“You took calc 2?” Patrick says.
“Took it last year. Easier than the English course I took; with this you just have to know how to put shit together.” Frank looks back over his shoulder and grins at him, and Patrick feels his chest tighten. “I’m pretty sick at putting shit together. What’re you stuck on?”
“Everything,” Patrick admits, and shuts the door behind him.
:::
“So,” Pete starts, dropping down next to Patrick on the common room couch, one arm securing itself behind Patrick’s head. There is noise all around them, the kind where it’s impossible to pick out just one thread of conversation, but rather all the words have blended together to create a dull buzzing. Patrick likes the imagery of that, wishes he could be that poetic in his class essays. “So. You and Frank.”
Patrick blinks at him, twice. His mind is still on the analysis of Madeline and Roderick’s relationship and the significance of the house’s hairline crack down the center. (He wonders yet again why he decided to be a Poe major. When the fuck was he going to use thatin his life? How was knowing the breakdown of man’s innate evil tendencies going to land him a job in the music industry?) “What?”
Pete’s grin takes up half his face. “You,” he says slowly, squeezing Patrick’s shoulders. “And Frank.” He jerks his chin towards the corner of the room with the pool table. Frank’s lining up a shot, eyes squinty with concentration, mouth open a little. A chunk of hair falls forward into his face, and his arms flex, tattoos shifting with them, every time he readjusts his grip.
“And?” Patrick looks away and back at Pete. “Oh c’mon. He’s been over to our room, what, three times?”
“Yeah.” Pete’s grin gets, if possible, even wider.
“To study,” Patrick stresses. “Fuck off,” he adds when Pete laughs.
“Oh man,” Pete says, still snickering. “Oh man, you’ve got it bad.”
“I’ve-what? No, seriously, what? No, I don’t.” At all. Because Patrick is just not that fucking transparent. And fuck Pete, anyway for thinking he’s being perceptive. “Frank is, he’s cool-”
“And hot,” Pete points out. Unnecessarily, in Patrick’s opinion. Because, well, yeah, but-
“-but no. It’s not like that. Really,” Patrick says, when Pete doesn’t seem convinced.
“He’s about your height,” Pete says, poking Patrick in the ribs, like Patrick hadn’t realized that. “But whatever. Listen, I’m not coming back to the room…” He waggles his eyebrows at Patrick; Patrick snorts. “No, really though, I’m not. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“Yeah? And what’re the special plans for tonight?”
Pete dips his head and points at the collection of coffee tables diagonal from them. A guy, maybe about their age, maybe a senior, is hunched over one, scrawling something in a thin notebook. He’s got on a long, worn-looking jacket, and has dark hair that covers his face and looks like it has dried blue paint in it. Patrick raises an eyebrow at Pete, like, him? Yeah?
All he gets is another grin. Pete glances at Frank again when he says to Patrick, “Like I said, I’ll be gone all night.” He winks at Patrick and pushes himself up, bouncing away.
Patrick tries to go back to his essay but can’t for the life of him figure out where he was going with the sentence he’d stopped in the middle of. He pushes his glasses up to his forehead to pinch the bridge of his nose, and when they drop into place again he’s unavoidably looking in Frank’s direction again. Frank had positioned the pool cue behind his neck and hooked his wrists over either side of it. It should have looked ridiculous, but all Patrick can think of is how it makes the end of Frank’s shirt ride up just that little bit to expose bare skin and black ink that hints at another tattoo.
Frank catches him watching and waves a little. His smile gets softer at the edges and Patrick would swear he sees his eyes get darker, and that thought alone is doing strange things to his stomach.
Patrick smiles and waves back, thinks, fuck.
:::
Frank is more careful taking Patrick’s hat off than his is taking his glasses off. Patrick doesn’t know what it says about him that he is so helplessly turned on by this.
“Wanted to do this for a while,” Frank says, when he finally stops kissing Patrick in favor of nuzzling his neck. Frank’s mouth is perfect and just right and his lip ring is cold when it bumps Patrick’s skin as he talks. His hands skim up Patrick’s chest, sliding under his jacket. Frank presses so close that it’s a struggle to get the jacket off at first, because neither of them seems to be willing to relinquish the close proximity. “Didn’t know how you’d react.”
Patrick is fairly sure he’s blushing. His face feels hot enough for it. Frank pulls his head back and laughs in a high, breathy giggle that pretty much confirms it.
“This-this is okay, right?” Frank says, tilting his head to one side, and that. Patrick acts all on instinct when he puts his hand on the back of Frank’s neck and brings him back in for another kiss. Frank laughs again, kisses the corner of Patrick’s mouth and then his whole mouth, walking them backwards until the back of Patrick’s knees hit the edge of the couch.
In the split second before the two of them tumble down onto the cushions, Patrick hopes fervently that Pete wasn’t kidding even a little bit about being gone till morning.
:::
“Merry Christmas,” Patrick says, almost ten minutes after he’d opened the door to find Frank standing there, wrapped in a scarf, gloves, two coats and a hat, his nose red and his eyes watery, coughing into a tissue.
Frank groans pitifully enough that Patrick almost smiles. “I hate being sick on holidays,” he says, so vehemently that he sneezes and wipes his nose on Patrick’s thigh.
“That’s disgusting,” Patrick says absently. It was hard to care about his jeans when Frank’s head was in his lap, fever-warm. “You’re disgusting,” he amends fondly.
“You love me though,” Frank says, sniffling and sighing when Patrick brushes cool fingers against his jaw.
“Mm,” Patrick agrees. “Even though you didn’t get me a present.”
“I did too,” Frank mutters, and Patrick does grin then, remembering Frank on his knees in front of him the night before, looking up through a fringe of hair, hands splayed over Patrick’s hips, saying, Early gift. I used to exchange presents on Christmas Eve at home anyway “There’s only so much I can do with student loans.”
“I was joking.” Patrick pats the side of Frank’s head where the hair is short and bristled, bleached blonde. He wants to say more but Frank’s eyes are closed and his breathing is starting to sound less wheezy and more even and Patrick is too comfortable to tell him to go sleep somewhere else. He tugs the blanket higher up on Frank’s shoulders and wonders if it’s snowing out yet.
Mod note: A big thank you to megyal for pinch hitting!