jae_w
in
popoffacork
War (Pete/Joe)
Title: War
Recipient: ditchwitchbitch
Author: joyfulseeker
Fandom: Fall Out Boy
Pairing: Pete/Joe
Rating: NC-17
Length: 3400 words
Summary: Joe believes in decency and goodwill toward men and legalized marijuana and he is usually a very laid back dude. A college AU.
Joe leans his head back. There's a crack on the ceiling that his eyes follow for half a second before Pete bites at his thigh, hard, and Joe jerks and swears at the sudden sharp shock of pain.
"Fuck you, fucker, pay attention to me," Pete says.
"I am, I so am," Joe says. He sounds drunk. "Oh fuck," he says. Pete has one hand around Joe's dick, which on its own is enough to earn Joe's undivided attention, but then he licks around the head and sucks it into his mouth, and Joe can't help the way he knocks his head against the wall and closes his eyes. "Fffff," he says and reaches out blindly to touch Pete's neck where it joins his shoulder, all bare, smooth skin that Joe can press his sweaty palm to.
Pete pulls back and laughs, and Joe doesn't even care.
*
"Hey," Joe says when he meets his new roommate for study abroad. He holds up a hand.
They've exchanged a few emails, just introductory shit. This is the first time Joe's meeting Pete Wentz in the flesh. It's weird, because they'd exchanged a few pictures, which was enough for Joe to build a mental picture, and that mental picture isn't accurate at all. For one thing, Pete's a lot shorter than Joe thought. For another, he's wearing tight jeans, two layered tight shirts, and a hoodie even though it's August and 85 degrees out, and he's texting someone on his phone so hard that he doesn't even look up when Joe gets to their prearranged meeting spot.
It's not super friendly.
Whatever, though, Joe can totally have manners and be friendly and stuff with the person he's going to be living with for three months in a foreign country.
"Hi." Joe tries again. "Are you Pete? Uh. Wentz?" It would suck if he had the wrong dark-haired stuck-up hipster.
"Yeah," Pete mutters, glancing up from his phone briefly. "Hang on." He's leaning against the wall of the tiny coffeeshop that had been equidistant between their two apartments.
Joe looks around for an empty table, and drapes his bag over the chair. "I'm going to get something to drink," he says, and then the lingering remnant of his fading hope that Pete won't be a dick makes him ask, "you want anything?"
"I'm good," Pete says.
When Joe gets back with his iced coffee with whipped cream, Pete is sitting in the other chair at Joe's table. His phone is on the table but at least he's not actively looking at it. Instead he's looking at Joe.
"So," he says. "You're Joseph Trohman."
"Yeah," Joe says. "You can call me Joe, though, unless you want to be formal." He takes a drink of his coffee. Pete doesn't say anything else, so Joe says, "How's the packing going?"
Pete smirks. "I'm planning on throwing a bunch of shit into a suitcase the night before the plane. How 'bout you?"
"Oh. Yeah," Joe says. His mom made lists for him and then spent a while rolling up his socks and underwear, but he doesn't plan on telling Pete that. He pulls on one edge of his t-shirt under the cover of the table. "It's pretty crazy, though. Like, I'm having to pack all my stuff up into my parents' basement, which we're all super-stoked about, so my subletter can have my room. What about you? Are you keeping your lease or whatever?"
"No," Pete says. He taps the edge of his phone against the table and looks bored.
"That's cool," Joe says. This conversation kind of sucks. "Uhh...you ever been to Europe before?"
Pete shrugs. "Twice. Once with my parents, and then once with some friends the summer before college. It was pretty cool. We backpacked around Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and got pretty drunk like every night." He shifts in his seat, and then asks like he could care less, "What about you?"
"It's my first time," Joe says and grins. He can't help it. He's going to be spending three months in northern France not speaking his mother-tongue.
"Aw," Pete says. "That's cute. You're all excited, dude."
"Are you, like, not excited at all?" Joe says.
"Not really," Pete says. He doesn't elaborate.
*
There's a constant stream of thisissofuckedup running through Joe's head, but that voice is getting quieter as Joe gets more and more distracted. He braces one hand on the door frame and the other stays on Pete's neck. Sex gets him feeling tactile and high, and he rubs his fingertips against the hair behind Pete's ears.
Pete pulls back and says, "You're kind of a sweetheart, Trohman," like he's trying not to give an intimate blowjob. He's still wearing his jeans, even though his dick is out, and Joe shoves him back, away from him.
*
Pete is the worst roommate Joe has ever had. His reign of terror is awe-inspiring, from the wet towels he leaves on the floor, to the dishes he leaves in the sink, to the way he steals all of Joe's underwear on their third day in Amiens and won't tell Joe where it's gone. Joe ends up having to brave French department stores at eight in the morning, and the next day Pete steals them again. That time around he finds them under Pete's bed, but the frantic search makes him late to his morning class, and if there's one thing French instructors don't like, it's tardiness.
Pete comes back late three nights in a row while Joe's trying to sleep and then leaves his light on while he surfs the internet on his computer because, go figure, Pete's a fucking insomniac. They both don't sleep. Joe struggles to stay awake in class and gets chalk thrown at him by professors with eagle-eye aim who have been training their hand-eye-coordination with generations of sleep-deprived college students. Pete just gets all wired and hyper. It's all epically unfair. He leaves a note on the door about ripping Pete's balls from his body if Pete keeps him awake again. Pete leaves a note back that says, "mr trohman Im shocked by yr language," and Joe realizes that he's turned into one of Those roommates. The note-leaving roommates.
It's enough that when Pete steals Joe's underwear again a week later, Joe squeezes his hands into fists and practices calm breathing techniques until the rage ebbs. The funny thing is Joe used to consider himself a pretty even-tempered dude.
A week after that incident, Pete steals his underwear again, and Joe's grip on reality disintegrates in one internal volcanic eruption of rage.
"PETE," Joe yells, and hears cackling coming from the closet. When he yanks the door open, Pete is crouched with hangers dangling around his head and laundry scattered around his feet, hugging Joe's package of underwear to his chest and laughing so hard he's almost crying. "Dude," Joe says, and shoves hard with one hand flat against Pete's sternum so that he bangs against the back of the closet. Pete's breath whooshes from his chest and he stops laughing temporarily. Joe grabs his underwear back with his other hand. "You are such! a fucking!" Joe says, and can't even complete a sentence, just flails his arm above his head while Pete laughs harder. He still has one hand pushing Pete back into the paneling, and he can feel the vibrations from Pete's chest, which infuriates him. He shoves Pete harder, so that his head whips back and hits the back of the closet with a bang that Joe can feel. Pete stops laughing.
"Dude, it was a fucking joke," Pete says. He looks uncertain for the first time since they started rooming together.
"Yeah, well, you're not very fucking funny."
"Maybe you just need to get a sense of humor," Pete says. Joe shoves him again, and Pete narrows his eyes, and then smiles big and nasty. "Are you trying to turn me on?" he asks, and when Joe looks down where Pete's spread knees are braced against the floor for balance, he can see a bulge in Pete's girls' jeans.
He's trying to get a rise out of Joe, obviously he is, but people don't do shit like that in Joe's world. He believes in decency and goodwill toward men and legalized marijuana and he is usually a very laid back dude. He lets go of Pete and backs up until he's on his own side of the room. He sits down on his bed and Pete emerges warily, rubbing at the back of his head.
"Do you want me to move out?" Joe says. "Like, I'm just curious."
"No," Pete says. He shrugs a shoulder. "I'm kind of an asshole, man. Sorry I didn't mention that in an email."
Joe snorts and then can't stop himself from laughing. "Dude, you kind of are."
"Sorry," Pete says, and he actually sounds sincere when he says it.
Joe flops backward on his bed and stares at the ceiling. He still has his plastic bundle of underwear pressed to his chest. He snorts again, and that turns into a giggle, ad then he can't stop laughing. "Dude," he says. "Dude, just leave my underwear alone from now on. Me and my underwear are not at war with you. We just want to live in peace."
"I'm not a very peaceful guy," Pete says.
*
Joe slides down the wall and then bends over and pulls on Pete's arms. "Hey, get up," he mutters, and Pete sits back and gives Joe a look that is frankly disbelieving.
"I wanna," Joe says, but his brain is mush and he's impatient, so he just tries to shove Pete in the direction of the bed, pulling Pete up and manhandling him until they are both going in the same direction. Pete's breath hisses in when Joe tugs his arm a little too hard in its socket, and he shivers full-body. His belt rasps against Joe's bare skin when he twists around so that Joe is holding his arm at an even more acute angle. They haven't kissed. It's utterly backward from anything Joe has ever done, and then Pete slides his lips across Joe's neck, mouths something, and bites down. Joe uses his other hand to force Pete's face up and kisses him. He feels like he's fighting, like he's fucking instead of making love. Pete opens his mouth so that they're kissing dirtily, filthily, and then Joe shoves Pete down onto the bed.
*
Joe goes out to a bar with a few classmates. They pick a German-sounding one because the beer is supposed to be better. It actually ends up being more of a nightclub than a bar, as it turns out, and more of a dance club than a nightclub, but by the time they get there and get in, nobody's too interested in trying to find a different place because it's so cold out that Joe can actually feel his nuts shriveling in his scrotum.
The club is blessedly, miraculously warm. The music is loud and the lights are epileptic, but they have booze, and that's enough for Joe.
They get two rounds in rapid succession, enough that Joe is starting to feel buzzed and relaxed. He regains feeling in his toes. Christine presses her hands against his cheeks and then the back of his neck and laughs when he flinches and swears at her ice cube fingers, then buys him another round in apology. He and Mark get into a loud discussion about Pantera that is mostly Mark shouting and Joe nodding. Christine and Sarah head out to the dance floor, brushing off smoldering-eyed French boys as they go. Mark and Joe get into an argument about French literature that is mostly Joe swearing over the music about existentialism and Mark patting him on the shoulder. Joe has another drink to sooth his soul. Sartre would either approve or disapprove, and either way Joe wins.
When Sarah pulls him away from the table, he's relaxed enough that he doesn't even care that he's dancing badly to Europop.
"This place is awesome!" he shouts.
"You are definitely drunk!" Sarah shouts back.
"I'm just happy," he says, and they jump up and down like bunny rabbits.
He's out of breath and sweaty by the time he stops. He loves his life, and he loves that he doesn't have anything due until next Wednesday which is a whole weekend away from where he is now, and he especially loves this place and its delicious, delicious beer. He even sort of loves his roommate, or at least feels a warm sense of affection when he thinks about him.
He goes back to his group of friends, clustered against one of the walls. One of the other knots of people adjacent to them attracts Joe's attention, as someone Joe can't see makes an outsized gesture that sends people leaning away and laughing. A tall girl with light hair steps away, and Joe can see that the person at the center of the group is Pete. He's talking rapidly and gesturing with both hands, miming something, the punchline to some story Joe can't hear. He looks happy and engaged, his attention solidly focused on the group of people that he's entertaining, and he holds them rapt around him. It's this other side to Pete, one that Joe thought he could make out faintly, underneath Pete's sullenness, and manic boredom. That's the guy that wrote in an email that he liked the Smiths, Michael Jackson, and Rage Against the Machine but could be persuaded by a good argument.
That's the guy Joe hoped he'd be rooming with.
"I'm beat!" Mark bellows. "Chris and Sarah and I were thinking we'd head out."
Joe turns away from Pete.
"Sounds good to me," he says.
*
Pete raises his arms over his head and rests them back against the mattress. It's a deliberate pose that leaves him on display, his eyes still mocking, like he's daring Joe. Like there's something Joe has to do to prove that he means it. Joe takes hold of Pete's jeans, the ones that have been hanging open on his hips the whole time, and pulls down.
"Up," he says, putting his hand to Pete's stomach. Pete plants his feet and arches up, leaving his shoulders on the bed, and lets Joe undress him. Joe's hands are shaking enough that he fumbles pulling Pete's jeans off, finally getting them into a crumpled ball that he shoves behind him. Pete has knobby knees and coarse hair on his legs that goes up high on his thighs before fading a couple inches below his crotch. It's the sort of detail that Joe only knows about people he sleeps with. Pete's dick is lying against his right thigh, no longer fully erect. Joe puts his hands on Pete's knees and watches the long muscle in Pete's leg flex in response.
"Come on," Pete says hoarsely. His hands have come down and he uses one to fist himself. "I'm going to do this without you if you don't."
"Don't do that," Joe says. He crawls onto the bed and puts his hand around Pete's, feeling the slide of lube on Pete's fingers and dick as it smears over his palm. Pete breathes in sharply at the touch of Joe's fingers. Joe leans down and kisses the side of Pete's neck, tasting sweat and feeling corded muscles shifting under his tongue. He's starting to not think too clearly. He would really like Pete to touch him, to jack him off or blow him or fuck him, but he doesn't know how to ask for what he wants, so he takes what he can get instead. He kisses Pete slowly, in rhythm with his hand. Pete's dick is hot and velvet-soft against Joe's palm, vulnerable and totally exposed. Pete makes a low, grunting, "hah!" noise that Joe feels in his chest. He ruts up against Pete's thigh, and maybe that reminds Pete, because he flails out with one hand behind Joe's back and grabs something. He pushes Joe back and squeezes more lube into his hand before wrapping that hand around Joe's dick.
"Oh, fuck," Joe says breathlessly, and mimics Pete's strokes. He can feel sweat gathering in his low back and the backs of his knees, and he can't stop the way his body is shifting into Pete's strokes. He closes his eyes. Pete squeezes harder and Joe opens his eyes and comes.
*
Joe gets soaked to the skin by an unexpected rain shower as he walks back to his room from his evening lecture. He stomps up the stairs two at a time and fumbles his keys out of his pocket. The wet denim clings and makes the whole job a lot harder than it needs to be, and he drops the keys twice, once when he pulls them out of his pocket with a little too much enthusiasm and sends them flying down the hallway, and once when he bends over and picks them up and then drops them when he's halfway upright.
"Life is monkey balls of shit in shit ice cream," Joe says, and unlocks his door. Something crashes against the door frame as he pushes the door open. Joe dodges to the side and swears before realizing that it's his copy of Les Bienveillantes, all nine hundred pages of it, and then he says, "What the fuck, Pete?"
"Dude, fuck off!" Pete says from his bed. He's shirtless and his jeans are gaping open, and Joe can see from the doorway that his dick is out and lying heavy on his stomach, half-hidden by his hand.
"You can't beat off in the bathroom like a normal person?" Joe says. He is dumbfounded. He is not going to be kicked out of his room in wet clothes so that his roommate can have a personal moment. Pete's penis is still red and hard in Pete's hand, and it's like a nudie beach. Joe can't stop looking at the goods.
"Yo, close the door behind you when you leave," Pete says. His hand slides up and then down smoothly, like he's put something on it, like he's taking his time.
"I am not fucking leaving so you can jerk off," Joe says grimly, and steps inside the room. He closes the door and wrestles off his soaked t-shirt, throwing it to the ground where it hits with a sodden thunk. His skin is goose-pimpled from the damp. He toes off his sneakers. Pete is still stroking himself on the bed, slowly, his eyes half-lidded as he stares at Joe.
"This is pretty gay," Pete says. His voice is raspy, and his eyelids flicker when he draws his hand up.
"You're pretty gay," Joe says.
"Yeah," Pete says mockingly. "I am."
Joe closes his fingers around the waistband of his jeans, close to the button fastener and hesitates. His skin prickles, nipples tightening into points. His dick is hardening in his pants, and if he takes off his jeans, Pete will know it.
Joe unbuttons his jeans and unzips the fly, shoving his jeans down to his feet and kicking them off. He stands upright and defiantly meets Pete's gaze, but Pete is looking lower, at where Joe's dick is pushing up in his underwear. Pete's glance travels slowly up Joe's body before he makes eye contact. Joe feels every square inch of skin he's showing, and that makes him aware again of Pete's near-nakedness. It's not like they haven't both been in the room while one of them changed, and Pete hardly ever puts a shirt on, but Joe has never really looked before, and they've never been naked like this.
Pete sits up on the bed. Joe's not letting himself think about what Pete's going to do next, their entire short history could be described as Joe never knowing what Pete's going to do next, so he's completely surprised when Pete gets up and walks toward him.
Pete crouches down in front of Joe. There's a crack in the opposite wall that leads up to the ceiling and spreads through the paint like spider webbing. Joe feels Pete's fingertips against his belly, pulling down his underwear, and he squeezes his eyes closed for a second before forcing them open.
"Fucker," Pete says. "Pay attention to me."
"I am," Joe says.
[END]
Recipient: ditchwitchbitch
Author: joyfulseeker
Fandom: Fall Out Boy
Pairing: Pete/Joe
Rating: NC-17
Length: 3400 words
Summary: Joe believes in decency and goodwill toward men and legalized marijuana and he is usually a very laid back dude. A college AU.
Joe leans his head back. There's a crack on the ceiling that his eyes follow for half a second before Pete bites at his thigh, hard, and Joe jerks and swears at the sudden sharp shock of pain.
"Fuck you, fucker, pay attention to me," Pete says.
"I am, I so am," Joe says. He sounds drunk. "Oh fuck," he says. Pete has one hand around Joe's dick, which on its own is enough to earn Joe's undivided attention, but then he licks around the head and sucks it into his mouth, and Joe can't help the way he knocks his head against the wall and closes his eyes. "Fffff," he says and reaches out blindly to touch Pete's neck where it joins his shoulder, all bare, smooth skin that Joe can press his sweaty palm to.
Pete pulls back and laughs, and Joe doesn't even care.
*
"Hey," Joe says when he meets his new roommate for study abroad. He holds up a hand.
They've exchanged a few emails, just introductory shit. This is the first time Joe's meeting Pete Wentz in the flesh. It's weird, because they'd exchanged a few pictures, which was enough for Joe to build a mental picture, and that mental picture isn't accurate at all. For one thing, Pete's a lot shorter than Joe thought. For another, he's wearing tight jeans, two layered tight shirts, and a hoodie even though it's August and 85 degrees out, and he's texting someone on his phone so hard that he doesn't even look up when Joe gets to their prearranged meeting spot.
It's not super friendly.
Whatever, though, Joe can totally have manners and be friendly and stuff with the person he's going to be living with for three months in a foreign country.
"Hi." Joe tries again. "Are you Pete? Uh. Wentz?" It would suck if he had the wrong dark-haired stuck-up hipster.
"Yeah," Pete mutters, glancing up from his phone briefly. "Hang on." He's leaning against the wall of the tiny coffeeshop that had been equidistant between their two apartments.
Joe looks around for an empty table, and drapes his bag over the chair. "I'm going to get something to drink," he says, and then the lingering remnant of his fading hope that Pete won't be a dick makes him ask, "you want anything?"
"I'm good," Pete says.
When Joe gets back with his iced coffee with whipped cream, Pete is sitting in the other chair at Joe's table. His phone is on the table but at least he's not actively looking at it. Instead he's looking at Joe.
"So," he says. "You're Joseph Trohman."
"Yeah," Joe says. "You can call me Joe, though, unless you want to be formal." He takes a drink of his coffee. Pete doesn't say anything else, so Joe says, "How's the packing going?"
Pete smirks. "I'm planning on throwing a bunch of shit into a suitcase the night before the plane. How 'bout you?"
"Oh. Yeah," Joe says. His mom made lists for him and then spent a while rolling up his socks and underwear, but he doesn't plan on telling Pete that. He pulls on one edge of his t-shirt under the cover of the table. "It's pretty crazy, though. Like, I'm having to pack all my stuff up into my parents' basement, which we're all super-stoked about, so my subletter can have my room. What about you? Are you keeping your lease or whatever?"
"No," Pete says. He taps the edge of his phone against the table and looks bored.
"That's cool," Joe says. This conversation kind of sucks. "Uhh...you ever been to Europe before?"
Pete shrugs. "Twice. Once with my parents, and then once with some friends the summer before college. It was pretty cool. We backpacked around Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and got pretty drunk like every night." He shifts in his seat, and then asks like he could care less, "What about you?"
"It's my first time," Joe says and grins. He can't help it. He's going to be spending three months in northern France not speaking his mother-tongue.
"Aw," Pete says. "That's cute. You're all excited, dude."
"Are you, like, not excited at all?" Joe says.
"Not really," Pete says. He doesn't elaborate.
*
There's a constant stream of thisissofuckedup running through Joe's head, but that voice is getting quieter as Joe gets more and more distracted. He braces one hand on the door frame and the other stays on Pete's neck. Sex gets him feeling tactile and high, and he rubs his fingertips against the hair behind Pete's ears.
Pete pulls back and says, "You're kind of a sweetheart, Trohman," like he's trying not to give an intimate blowjob. He's still wearing his jeans, even though his dick is out, and Joe shoves him back, away from him.
*
Pete is the worst roommate Joe has ever had. His reign of terror is awe-inspiring, from the wet towels he leaves on the floor, to the dishes he leaves in the sink, to the way he steals all of Joe's underwear on their third day in Amiens and won't tell Joe where it's gone. Joe ends up having to brave French department stores at eight in the morning, and the next day Pete steals them again. That time around he finds them under Pete's bed, but the frantic search makes him late to his morning class, and if there's one thing French instructors don't like, it's tardiness.
Pete comes back late three nights in a row while Joe's trying to sleep and then leaves his light on while he surfs the internet on his computer because, go figure, Pete's a fucking insomniac. They both don't sleep. Joe struggles to stay awake in class and gets chalk thrown at him by professors with eagle-eye aim who have been training their hand-eye-coordination with generations of sleep-deprived college students. Pete just gets all wired and hyper. It's all epically unfair. He leaves a note on the door about ripping Pete's balls from his body if Pete keeps him awake again. Pete leaves a note back that says, "mr trohman Im shocked by yr language," and Joe realizes that he's turned into one of Those roommates. The note-leaving roommates.
It's enough that when Pete steals Joe's underwear again a week later, Joe squeezes his hands into fists and practices calm breathing techniques until the rage ebbs. The funny thing is Joe used to consider himself a pretty even-tempered dude.
A week after that incident, Pete steals his underwear again, and Joe's grip on reality disintegrates in one internal volcanic eruption of rage.
"PETE," Joe yells, and hears cackling coming from the closet. When he yanks the door open, Pete is crouched with hangers dangling around his head and laundry scattered around his feet, hugging Joe's package of underwear to his chest and laughing so hard he's almost crying. "Dude," Joe says, and shoves hard with one hand flat against Pete's sternum so that he bangs against the back of the closet. Pete's breath whooshes from his chest and he stops laughing temporarily. Joe grabs his underwear back with his other hand. "You are such! a fucking!" Joe says, and can't even complete a sentence, just flails his arm above his head while Pete laughs harder. He still has one hand pushing Pete back into the paneling, and he can feel the vibrations from Pete's chest, which infuriates him. He shoves Pete harder, so that his head whips back and hits the back of the closet with a bang that Joe can feel. Pete stops laughing.
"Dude, it was a fucking joke," Pete says. He looks uncertain for the first time since they started rooming together.
"Yeah, well, you're not very fucking funny."
"Maybe you just need to get a sense of humor," Pete says. Joe shoves him again, and Pete narrows his eyes, and then smiles big and nasty. "Are you trying to turn me on?" he asks, and when Joe looks down where Pete's spread knees are braced against the floor for balance, he can see a bulge in Pete's girls' jeans.
He's trying to get a rise out of Joe, obviously he is, but people don't do shit like that in Joe's world. He believes in decency and goodwill toward men and legalized marijuana and he is usually a very laid back dude. He lets go of Pete and backs up until he's on his own side of the room. He sits down on his bed and Pete emerges warily, rubbing at the back of his head.
"Do you want me to move out?" Joe says. "Like, I'm just curious."
"No," Pete says. He shrugs a shoulder. "I'm kind of an asshole, man. Sorry I didn't mention that in an email."
Joe snorts and then can't stop himself from laughing. "Dude, you kind of are."
"Sorry," Pete says, and he actually sounds sincere when he says it.
Joe flops backward on his bed and stares at the ceiling. He still has his plastic bundle of underwear pressed to his chest. He snorts again, and that turns into a giggle, ad then he can't stop laughing. "Dude," he says. "Dude, just leave my underwear alone from now on. Me and my underwear are not at war with you. We just want to live in peace."
"I'm not a very peaceful guy," Pete says.
*
Joe slides down the wall and then bends over and pulls on Pete's arms. "Hey, get up," he mutters, and Pete sits back and gives Joe a look that is frankly disbelieving.
"I wanna," Joe says, but his brain is mush and he's impatient, so he just tries to shove Pete in the direction of the bed, pulling Pete up and manhandling him until they are both going in the same direction. Pete's breath hisses in when Joe tugs his arm a little too hard in its socket, and he shivers full-body. His belt rasps against Joe's bare skin when he twists around so that Joe is holding his arm at an even more acute angle. They haven't kissed. It's utterly backward from anything Joe has ever done, and then Pete slides his lips across Joe's neck, mouths something, and bites down. Joe uses his other hand to force Pete's face up and kisses him. He feels like he's fighting, like he's fucking instead of making love. Pete opens his mouth so that they're kissing dirtily, filthily, and then Joe shoves Pete down onto the bed.
*
Joe goes out to a bar with a few classmates. They pick a German-sounding one because the beer is supposed to be better. It actually ends up being more of a nightclub than a bar, as it turns out, and more of a dance club than a nightclub, but by the time they get there and get in, nobody's too interested in trying to find a different place because it's so cold out that Joe can actually feel his nuts shriveling in his scrotum.
The club is blessedly, miraculously warm. The music is loud and the lights are epileptic, but they have booze, and that's enough for Joe.
They get two rounds in rapid succession, enough that Joe is starting to feel buzzed and relaxed. He regains feeling in his toes. Christine presses her hands against his cheeks and then the back of his neck and laughs when he flinches and swears at her ice cube fingers, then buys him another round in apology. He and Mark get into a loud discussion about Pantera that is mostly Mark shouting and Joe nodding. Christine and Sarah head out to the dance floor, brushing off smoldering-eyed French boys as they go. Mark and Joe get into an argument about French literature that is mostly Joe swearing over the music about existentialism and Mark patting him on the shoulder. Joe has another drink to sooth his soul. Sartre would either approve or disapprove, and either way Joe wins.
When Sarah pulls him away from the table, he's relaxed enough that he doesn't even care that he's dancing badly to Europop.
"This place is awesome!" he shouts.
"You are definitely drunk!" Sarah shouts back.
"I'm just happy," he says, and they jump up and down like bunny rabbits.
He's out of breath and sweaty by the time he stops. He loves his life, and he loves that he doesn't have anything due until next Wednesday which is a whole weekend away from where he is now, and he especially loves this place and its delicious, delicious beer. He even sort of loves his roommate, or at least feels a warm sense of affection when he thinks about him.
He goes back to his group of friends, clustered against one of the walls. One of the other knots of people adjacent to them attracts Joe's attention, as someone Joe can't see makes an outsized gesture that sends people leaning away and laughing. A tall girl with light hair steps away, and Joe can see that the person at the center of the group is Pete. He's talking rapidly and gesturing with both hands, miming something, the punchline to some story Joe can't hear. He looks happy and engaged, his attention solidly focused on the group of people that he's entertaining, and he holds them rapt around him. It's this other side to Pete, one that Joe thought he could make out faintly, underneath Pete's sullenness, and manic boredom. That's the guy that wrote in an email that he liked the Smiths, Michael Jackson, and Rage Against the Machine but could be persuaded by a good argument.
That's the guy Joe hoped he'd be rooming with.
"I'm beat!" Mark bellows. "Chris and Sarah and I were thinking we'd head out."
Joe turns away from Pete.
"Sounds good to me," he says.
*
Pete raises his arms over his head and rests them back against the mattress. It's a deliberate pose that leaves him on display, his eyes still mocking, like he's daring Joe. Like there's something Joe has to do to prove that he means it. Joe takes hold of Pete's jeans, the ones that have been hanging open on his hips the whole time, and pulls down.
"Up," he says, putting his hand to Pete's stomach. Pete plants his feet and arches up, leaving his shoulders on the bed, and lets Joe undress him. Joe's hands are shaking enough that he fumbles pulling Pete's jeans off, finally getting them into a crumpled ball that he shoves behind him. Pete has knobby knees and coarse hair on his legs that goes up high on his thighs before fading a couple inches below his crotch. It's the sort of detail that Joe only knows about people he sleeps with. Pete's dick is lying against his right thigh, no longer fully erect. Joe puts his hands on Pete's knees and watches the long muscle in Pete's leg flex in response.
"Come on," Pete says hoarsely. His hands have come down and he uses one to fist himself. "I'm going to do this without you if you don't."
"Don't do that," Joe says. He crawls onto the bed and puts his hand around Pete's, feeling the slide of lube on Pete's fingers and dick as it smears over his palm. Pete breathes in sharply at the touch of Joe's fingers. Joe leans down and kisses the side of Pete's neck, tasting sweat and feeling corded muscles shifting under his tongue. He's starting to not think too clearly. He would really like Pete to touch him, to jack him off or blow him or fuck him, but he doesn't know how to ask for what he wants, so he takes what he can get instead. He kisses Pete slowly, in rhythm with his hand. Pete's dick is hot and velvet-soft against Joe's palm, vulnerable and totally exposed. Pete makes a low, grunting, "hah!" noise that Joe feels in his chest. He ruts up against Pete's thigh, and maybe that reminds Pete, because he flails out with one hand behind Joe's back and grabs something. He pushes Joe back and squeezes more lube into his hand before wrapping that hand around Joe's dick.
"Oh, fuck," Joe says breathlessly, and mimics Pete's strokes. He can feel sweat gathering in his low back and the backs of his knees, and he can't stop the way his body is shifting into Pete's strokes. He closes his eyes. Pete squeezes harder and Joe opens his eyes and comes.
*
Joe gets soaked to the skin by an unexpected rain shower as he walks back to his room from his evening lecture. He stomps up the stairs two at a time and fumbles his keys out of his pocket. The wet denim clings and makes the whole job a lot harder than it needs to be, and he drops the keys twice, once when he pulls them out of his pocket with a little too much enthusiasm and sends them flying down the hallway, and once when he bends over and picks them up and then drops them when he's halfway upright.
"Life is monkey balls of shit in shit ice cream," Joe says, and unlocks his door. Something crashes against the door frame as he pushes the door open. Joe dodges to the side and swears before realizing that it's his copy of Les Bienveillantes, all nine hundred pages of it, and then he says, "What the fuck, Pete?"
"Dude, fuck off!" Pete says from his bed. He's shirtless and his jeans are gaping open, and Joe can see from the doorway that his dick is out and lying heavy on his stomach, half-hidden by his hand.
"You can't beat off in the bathroom like a normal person?" Joe says. He is dumbfounded. He is not going to be kicked out of his room in wet clothes so that his roommate can have a personal moment. Pete's penis is still red and hard in Pete's hand, and it's like a nudie beach. Joe can't stop looking at the goods.
"Yo, close the door behind you when you leave," Pete says. His hand slides up and then down smoothly, like he's put something on it, like he's taking his time.
"I am not fucking leaving so you can jerk off," Joe says grimly, and steps inside the room. He closes the door and wrestles off his soaked t-shirt, throwing it to the ground where it hits with a sodden thunk. His skin is goose-pimpled from the damp. He toes off his sneakers. Pete is still stroking himself on the bed, slowly, his eyes half-lidded as he stares at Joe.
"This is pretty gay," Pete says. His voice is raspy, and his eyelids flicker when he draws his hand up.
"You're pretty gay," Joe says.
"Yeah," Pete says mockingly. "I am."
Joe closes his fingers around the waistband of his jeans, close to the button fastener and hesitates. His skin prickles, nipples tightening into points. His dick is hardening in his pants, and if he takes off his jeans, Pete will know it.
Joe unbuttons his jeans and unzips the fly, shoving his jeans down to his feet and kicking them off. He stands upright and defiantly meets Pete's gaze, but Pete is looking lower, at where Joe's dick is pushing up in his underwear. Pete's glance travels slowly up Joe's body before he makes eye contact. Joe feels every square inch of skin he's showing, and that makes him aware again of Pete's near-nakedness. It's not like they haven't both been in the room while one of them changed, and Pete hardly ever puts a shirt on, but Joe has never really looked before, and they've never been naked like this.
Pete sits up on the bed. Joe's not letting himself think about what Pete's going to do next, their entire short history could be described as Joe never knowing what Pete's going to do next, so he's completely surprised when Pete gets up and walks toward him.
Pete crouches down in front of Joe. There's a crack in the opposite wall that leads up to the ceiling and spreads through the paint like spider webbing. Joe feels Pete's fingertips against his belly, pulling down his underwear, and he squeezes his eyes closed for a second before forcing them open.
"Fucker," Pete says. "Pay attention to me."
"I am," Joe says.
[END]