In Such Great Places
In Such Great Places (Patrick/Brendon, pg13 if that, 2500+)
Patrick doesn't know Brendon. At all.
Thanks to dreamofthem and violentfires for letting me fling this at them in fits of horror at random times of the day and not laughing at me too much. Nell put up with this multiple times, if I remember correctly. And so we're clear - this fic and I are blood enemies and I sleep with one eye open just in case it tries to get me in the night.
Brendon grins at him. Patrick is a little unnerved. “Now that we’re introduced,” says Patrick, “are you going to get off me?”
Patrick knows Brendon has no sense of personal space from hearing Pete - from hearing Ryan complain to Pete on speakerphone at four in the morning - but he doesn’t really hang out with the dude, so he mostly ignores Ryan’s whining. It wasn’t meant for him anyway.
But then Ryan flies down to do music stuff with the band. Ryan is cool, a good musician, guitarist. Brendon comes along too, because as much as Ryan complains to Pete at stupid hours in the morning, him and Brendon are attached at the hip. In fact, the whole of Panic! At The Disco are completely co-dependant on each other. When they aren’t talking about Spencer or Jon, they’re calling one and texting the other. It’s cute. Sort of. The company is nice anyway. Ryan and Brendon are nice kids. Patrick doesn’t know either of them too well, but it’s alright, he likes the atmosphere they bring. New energy or whatever.
He lets himself relax in the studio one day while watching Ryan and Pete work through the glass windows. It’s peaceful, until he hears someone racing through the studio and all of a sudden he ends up with a lap full of Brendon.
“Um,” he says.
“Hello,” says Brendon.
“You’re sitting in my lap,” says Patrick, frowning. “Who are you?”
“How convenient that I should be sitting in your lap,” says Brendon. His face is inches from Patrick’s. “My name is Brendon.”
“Patrick.”
Brendon grins at him. Patrick is a little unnerved. “Now that we’re introduced,” says Patrick, “are you going to get off me?”
“No.”
Brendon brings his face closer to Patrick’s. “Pete said, Ryan said, um, he said, you play trombone?”
He’s jittery, from an innate energy or from racing around the studio all morning, throwing himself into unsuspecting laps. Patrick puts a hand on Brendon’s back to get him to calm the fuck down, or maybe just so he won’t fall off. “Yes, and you play piano?”
Brendon frowns and looks away. “I also play accordion, and guitar, and organ, and drums. And probably bass. And I sing.” He looks to Patrick. “Will you teach me?”
“What?”
“I want to play trombone. Will you teach me?”
“Why trombone?” Patrick really, really doesn’t want to teach Brendon how to play trombone. Brass instruments are not like guitars, not everyone can play them, he himself hasn’t played in so long, and it’s so annoying to hear someone learn-
“Trumpets suck and tuba’s aren’t sexy.” Brendon leans away, back up against the arm of the couch, and looks down at his hands.
Patrick snorts because it’s true. “What about the saxophone? That’s sexy.”
“I’m not cool enough. Trombone, come on.”
Uncool, but sexy. Patrick laughs out loud. It’s befitting for both the instrument and his band, and possibly the whole scene. Not Brendon’s band though. He pats Brendon’s knee. “You’re cool enough.”
“Patrick,” Brendon yanks on his sleeve. “I want to learn.”
Patrick just sighs. Brendon gives him a look. He jumps to his feet. “Andy Hurley, Andrew Hurley!” he shouts, racing back through the corridor.
The next day in studio, Patrick leaves, gets up off the couch to go to the bathroom and when he comes back, Brendon is sleeping on top of his books and his tabs and his papers and his hoodie. He wasn’t gone that long either.
He shakes Brendon’s shoulder. He means to tell him to get up, get off his stuff, or at least move his legs a little so Patrick can sit down but instead he asks “what makes a trombone sexy?”
“Trombones are curvy and elegant,” said Brendon, squinting at him through sleepy eyes. “Trombones are deep and lusty and soulful. What do trumpets know about lust and soul without confusing the two?”
He sits up and pokes Patrick in the stomach. “Patrick!” he says, voice arching in all volumes from sleep, each syllable accompanied with a jab. “I know the difference between lust and soul!”
Patrick stares, backs away out of jabbing distance and stares. “What-“
“Glenn Miller!” says Brendon. He reaches out to pull Patrick back in. “Glenn Miller, dude! Come on, don’t you know-”
“Indoor voice,” says Ryan, sticking his head out of the practice room. “We’re working, so you know. Shut up.”
Brendon raises an eyebrow comically high at Ryan. Ryan sticks out his tongue and withdraws into the room. Patrick shifts, a little uncomfortable, and lowers his voice. “Where’d you hear Glenn Miller?”
“Oh, there was this strip club,” says Brendon, “and they played Glenn Miller all the time. It’s so sexy.” He attempts to imitate Travis and laughs. “It’s so sexy!”
“The strip club?”
“Oh no, the strippers were terrible. The music was great.”
Patrick retrieves his book from under Brendon’s hip and leaves, shaking his head. He wonders if they discovered Fall Out Boy the same way.
Patrick’s sitting on that same couch, reading, when Brendon sits into his lap again.
“I don’t do cuddling,” he tells Brendon. Brendon laughs in his face.
“This is not cuddling. When I cuddle with you, you’ll know it. You’ll do it.”
He thinks that maybe by ignoring Brendon, Brendon will go away. He turns to his book but Brendon just brushes the book aside.
“Pete doesn’t sleep enough. He’s got insomnia.”
“Yes,” says Patrick cautiously.
“I always hear Ryan talking to him. Not just here, I mean, even on the road. Sometimes at home too.”
“It helps him sleep,” says Patrick. “Listening to someone. Well, listening to Ryan.”
“But then Ryan doesn’t sleep,” said Brendon. “And that sucks because Ryan is a bitch when he doesn’t get enough sleep.”
“Yeah?”
Brendon leans close, whispering in Patrick’s ear. “Does Pete know that masturbation can be used as a sleep aid?”
Patrick laughs, watching Ryan and Pete through the huge glass windows in the studio. Their heads are bent together over a notebook and they both look content. “No, I don’t know. Probably. I guess not?”
“Maybe we should tell him.”
“Yeah, sure,” says Patrick. “That’s a great idea. You should do it.”
“It’s true though! Isn’t it?”
He goes back to reading, but lets Brendon sit in his lap. Brendon isn’t jittery today, he’s still and contemplative, and he’s also holding onto the front of Patrick’s sweatshirt. Patrick is cruel and heartless, but not heartless enough to tear Brendon’s hands off of his sweatshirt and dump him on
the floor where he belongs.
Also, Brendon is. . .he’s filling up otherwise empty space. Patrick doesn’t really mind.
Patrick is trying to work today, trying to get this piano line out of his head. But Brendon, someone lets him out of their sight, and he’s suddenly sitting too close to Patrick on the piano bench.
“What are you doing?”
“Being helpful,” says Brendon, although he really isn’t. He tries to learn the piano part as Patrick writes it and it’s distracting. Patrick finally gives up. “Play it,” he says, since Brendon’s been following him note for note. Not saying anything, just following Patrick’s hands up and down the keys.
Brendon plays Patrick whatever he’s just written and Patrick likes it enough to write it down.
Patrick goes with Joe to buy guitar stuff at a music store. It’s a good music store, with more than the standard guitars-basses-drums; there’s a good range of brass and string instruments. He loses Joe somewhere between the guitars and drums, and finds himself surrounded by brass instruments and noisy marching band students. He’s missed the natural loudness of the instrument. It doesn’t help that all the teenagers are all trying to see who can make the most noise. One student picks up a particularly beautiful trombone and in one note creates so much sound that Patrick jumps and several kids shout with glee. Patrick buys a mouthpiece for a trombone and sticks it in his jacket pocket. It’s a good mouth piece, silver and the right heaviness. He’ll give it to Brendon later.
Pete invites Patrick over for dinner. He and Brendon and Ryan are the cooks, and for a meal made by three bachelors, two of the barely out of adolescence, it’s actually quite edible. They watch movies afterwards, stupid teen movies they all know by heart. Patrick falls asleep to breakdowns and penis jokes. He dreams about girlgangs and awkward transitions in high schools. Pete stars, looking disturbingly like Lindsey Lohan. It’s quite bizarre. When he wakes up, Brendon is all over but Pete and Ryan are nowhere to be found. The tv’s shining blue, the movie over. It’s only three in the morning.
He tries to shift but Brendon really is all over. He’s lying over the entire couch, his feet jammed against the side and himself jammed against Patrick. One of his hands is holding, no, clutching the front of Patrick’s sweatshirt and the other is wrapped around Patrick’s arm, as if Patrick might try to leave.
He finds the remote, turns off the tv and closes his eyes in the dark. There’s faint murmuring coming from down the hall near the door, the deep whispery sounds of Pete and Ryan. He can sort of understand why Pete always talks to Ryan at night. Ryan’s got a soothing voice.
Brendon sighs, and buries his head in Patrick’s arm. Patrick shifts to put an arm around Brendon and falls back asleep when he hears the door to the apartment shut.
Patrick is sitting on his couch the next day (he feels a sense of entitlement, calling it his couch; Andy has his own room, Joe has his own kitchen, and Pete walks around the studio around like he owns the place) when Brendon runs in looking a little upset. He does a slight double-take when he sees Patrick sitting on the couch and with a huff, sits down on the other end of the couch, very pointedly ignoring Patrick. He sits still at his end of the couch, looking away from Patrick, looking a little upset but mostly downcast.
Patrick ignores Brendon back, because he figures that whatever Brendon wants will come out of him eventually. It doesn’t and when Patrick can’t stand Brendon’s sulk anymore, he reaches over and hits Brendon’s leg with his book.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. Brendon frowns at him and doesn’t say anything. Patrick gets nervous.
“Seriously, Bren, what-”
“Patrick, you-” Brendon frowns. “You suck.”
“I-“ begins Patrick and then he stops. Yeah. He’d left Brendon alone at Pete’s. Pete and Ryan had gone off to God knows where and he’d left the house, and Brendon, and gone home.
Reflectively, that was pretty lame.
Brendon just looks at him, upset and downcast.
“Trick?” calls out Joe, “did you come in with Pete this morning?”
“No,” Patrick calls back, “no, I came in by myself.” He’d left in the morning, when Brendon had loosened his grip on Patrick enough so that Patrick could leave without waking him. He had wanted to stay.
“How’d his car get here then?”
“I stole it,” shouts Brendon, standing up violently, “since him and Ryan abandoned me this morning. I came here by myself!”
They can hear Joe try to muffle his giggles from down the hall. “Better go pick him up then, Bren. I need him.”
Brendon turns to leave, hands in his pockets. Patrick stands too, and touches his sleeve. “I’ll drive. I’ll go with you.”
Brendon looks at him and Patrick can see the real hurt in his eyes. He knows it won’t make Brendon forgive him but he sticks his hand in his pocket and pulls out the mouthpiece anyway.
“Here. I bought this for you awhile ago.”
Brendon takes it and holds it close. He blows into and it makes a loud buzzing sound. Patrick nods. “Yeah.”
Brendon smiles at Patrick.
Pete is only mildly annoyed that Brendon took his car, and he insists on driving back to the studio, occasionally petting the dash as if to comfort the car that he’s back. Ryan clutches a cup of coffee in the backseat and whispers to Brendon. They both look more serious then Patrick likes. He turns to Pete.
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah.” Pete taps his fingers on the steering wheel and looks at him. “Yeah.”
“Where were you guys? When I left this morning-“
“We were just. Out. Walking around all night. I couldn’t sleep, so Ryan and I just walked around. We went to the beach.” He turns to Patrick. “You left Brendon by himself? That’s fucking shitty.”
“He was. . .” Patrick doesn’t have words for how Brendon looked in the morning, old and young, and something that didn’t belong to Patrick. Patrick had wanted to, well. “Yeah.”
Pete frowns.
Brendon and Ryan commandeer Patrick’s couch. It’s not as if there aren’t any other places for Ryan to take a nap using Brendon’s lap as a pillow in the studio, but Patrick’s not going to be pushy. Brendon’s still angry with him, as far as Patrick can tell.
He kneels next to Brendon, sitting on the floor next to the couch rather then disturbing Ryan. Brendon’s reading Patrick’s book, one hand curving around the spine, the other in Ryan’s hair. “How do you like it?” he whispers.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Brendon whispers back. “I picked up where you left off.”
Patrick shrugs. Brendon puts the book down. “Pretty sure Pete doesn’t know about our sleep aid, Patrick,” he whispers, looking down at Ryan with animal protectiveness. “I really think you should tell him.”
Patrick looks at him, not sure whether he’s allowed laugh or not. Brendon looks nervous. “Why’d you - why did you leave-“ Brendon starts, pauses. His hand stills in Ryan’s hair and he bites his lip.
There’s something inside Patrick’s stomach and his chest that swells and crashes inside him when Brendon falters and hesitates. “Sorry,” says Patrick. “I really am.”
He rolls to his knees and kneels, looking at Brendon’s anxious face. He kisses the corner of Brendon’s mouth.
Brendon leans over, knocks Patrick’s hat off and closes around Patrick’s mouth with his own. He takes his hand off of Ryan’s head to pull Patrick closer.
Ryan shifts on Brendon’s lap, disturbed by the movement. “Brendon,” he mumbles.
“Shh,” Brendon takes a hand off Patrick to rub Ryan’s neck. “Ry, Ryan.” He sounds starstruck, like he can’t quite believe his lips are still on Patrick’s.
Patrick pulls back. He says, “Brendon?” and Brendon says, “yeah?”
He kissed Brendon again, light, on the lips.
Patrick slips off into the studio, intent on finding a guitar that he can wail on. He finds Pete instead, curled in the corner of one of the practice rooms, taking a nap. Patrick sprawls out next to him and thinks about napping too, when Brendon comes running in and crawls into Patrick’s lap.
“This is cuddling, okay Patrick,” he whispers, putting his elbows on Patrick’s shoulders and kissing him quickly on the lips. Patrick squints at him as Brendon hugs his neck. “Okay Patrick? You can do this.”
Brendon buries his face in Patrick’s shoulder. The fabric turns warm from his breath. Patrick only hesitates for a second before bringing his hands to cradle Brendon and hold him close.
Patrick doesn't know Brendon. At all.
Thanks to dreamofthem and violentfires for letting me fling this at them in fits of horror at random times of the day and not laughing at me too much. Nell put up with this multiple times, if I remember correctly. And so we're clear - this fic and I are blood enemies and I sleep with one eye open just in case it tries to get me in the night.
Brendon grins at him. Patrick is a little unnerved. “Now that we’re introduced,” says Patrick, “are you going to get off me?”
Patrick knows Brendon has no sense of personal space from hearing Pete - from hearing Ryan complain to Pete on speakerphone at four in the morning - but he doesn’t really hang out with the dude, so he mostly ignores Ryan’s whining. It wasn’t meant for him anyway.
But then Ryan flies down to do music stuff with the band. Ryan is cool, a good musician, guitarist. Brendon comes along too, because as much as Ryan complains to Pete at stupid hours in the morning, him and Brendon are attached at the hip. In fact, the whole of Panic! At The Disco are completely co-dependant on each other. When they aren’t talking about Spencer or Jon, they’re calling one and texting the other. It’s cute. Sort of. The company is nice anyway. Ryan and Brendon are nice kids. Patrick doesn’t know either of them too well, but it’s alright, he likes the atmosphere they bring. New energy or whatever.
He lets himself relax in the studio one day while watching Ryan and Pete work through the glass windows. It’s peaceful, until he hears someone racing through the studio and all of a sudden he ends up with a lap full of Brendon.
“Um,” he says.
“Hello,” says Brendon.
“You’re sitting in my lap,” says Patrick, frowning. “Who are you?”
“How convenient that I should be sitting in your lap,” says Brendon. His face is inches from Patrick’s. “My name is Brendon.”
“Patrick.”
Brendon grins at him. Patrick is a little unnerved. “Now that we’re introduced,” says Patrick, “are you going to get off me?”
“No.”
Brendon brings his face closer to Patrick’s. “Pete said, Ryan said, um, he said, you play trombone?”
He’s jittery, from an innate energy or from racing around the studio all morning, throwing himself into unsuspecting laps. Patrick puts a hand on Brendon’s back to get him to calm the fuck down, or maybe just so he won’t fall off. “Yes, and you play piano?”
Brendon frowns and looks away. “I also play accordion, and guitar, and organ, and drums. And probably bass. And I sing.” He looks to Patrick. “Will you teach me?”
“What?”
“I want to play trombone. Will you teach me?”
“Why trombone?” Patrick really, really doesn’t want to teach Brendon how to play trombone. Brass instruments are not like guitars, not everyone can play them, he himself hasn’t played in so long, and it’s so annoying to hear someone learn-
“Trumpets suck and tuba’s aren’t sexy.” Brendon leans away, back up against the arm of the couch, and looks down at his hands.
Patrick snorts because it’s true. “What about the saxophone? That’s sexy.”
“I’m not cool enough. Trombone, come on.”
Uncool, but sexy. Patrick laughs out loud. It’s befitting for both the instrument and his band, and possibly the whole scene. Not Brendon’s band though. He pats Brendon’s knee. “You’re cool enough.”
“Patrick,” Brendon yanks on his sleeve. “I want to learn.”
Patrick just sighs. Brendon gives him a look. He jumps to his feet. “Andy Hurley, Andrew Hurley!” he shouts, racing back through the corridor.
The next day in studio, Patrick leaves, gets up off the couch to go to the bathroom and when he comes back, Brendon is sleeping on top of his books and his tabs and his papers and his hoodie. He wasn’t gone that long either.
He shakes Brendon’s shoulder. He means to tell him to get up, get off his stuff, or at least move his legs a little so Patrick can sit down but instead he asks “what makes a trombone sexy?”
“Trombones are curvy and elegant,” said Brendon, squinting at him through sleepy eyes. “Trombones are deep and lusty and soulful. What do trumpets know about lust and soul without confusing the two?”
He sits up and pokes Patrick in the stomach. “Patrick!” he says, voice arching in all volumes from sleep, each syllable accompanied with a jab. “I know the difference between lust and soul!”
Patrick stares, backs away out of jabbing distance and stares. “What-“
“Glenn Miller!” says Brendon. He reaches out to pull Patrick back in. “Glenn Miller, dude! Come on, don’t you know-”
“Indoor voice,” says Ryan, sticking his head out of the practice room. “We’re working, so you know. Shut up.”
Brendon raises an eyebrow comically high at Ryan. Ryan sticks out his tongue and withdraws into the room. Patrick shifts, a little uncomfortable, and lowers his voice. “Where’d you hear Glenn Miller?”
“Oh, there was this strip club,” says Brendon, “and they played Glenn Miller all the time. It’s so sexy.” He attempts to imitate Travis and laughs. “It’s so sexy!”
“The strip club?”
“Oh no, the strippers were terrible. The music was great.”
Patrick retrieves his book from under Brendon’s hip and leaves, shaking his head. He wonders if they discovered Fall Out Boy the same way.
Patrick’s sitting on that same couch, reading, when Brendon sits into his lap again.
“I don’t do cuddling,” he tells Brendon. Brendon laughs in his face.
“This is not cuddling. When I cuddle with you, you’ll know it. You’ll do it.”
He thinks that maybe by ignoring Brendon, Brendon will go away. He turns to his book but Brendon just brushes the book aside.
“Pete doesn’t sleep enough. He’s got insomnia.”
“Yes,” says Patrick cautiously.
“I always hear Ryan talking to him. Not just here, I mean, even on the road. Sometimes at home too.”
“It helps him sleep,” says Patrick. “Listening to someone. Well, listening to Ryan.”
“But then Ryan doesn’t sleep,” said Brendon. “And that sucks because Ryan is a bitch when he doesn’t get enough sleep.”
“Yeah?”
Brendon leans close, whispering in Patrick’s ear. “Does Pete know that masturbation can be used as a sleep aid?”
Patrick laughs, watching Ryan and Pete through the huge glass windows in the studio. Their heads are bent together over a notebook and they both look content. “No, I don’t know. Probably. I guess not?”
“Maybe we should tell him.”
“Yeah, sure,” says Patrick. “That’s a great idea. You should do it.”
“It’s true though! Isn’t it?”
He goes back to reading, but lets Brendon sit in his lap. Brendon isn’t jittery today, he’s still and contemplative, and he’s also holding onto the front of Patrick’s sweatshirt. Patrick is cruel and heartless, but not heartless enough to tear Brendon’s hands off of his sweatshirt and dump him on
the floor where he belongs.
Also, Brendon is. . .he’s filling up otherwise empty space. Patrick doesn’t really mind.
Patrick is trying to work today, trying to get this piano line out of his head. But Brendon, someone lets him out of their sight, and he’s suddenly sitting too close to Patrick on the piano bench.
“What are you doing?”
“Being helpful,” says Brendon, although he really isn’t. He tries to learn the piano part as Patrick writes it and it’s distracting. Patrick finally gives up. “Play it,” he says, since Brendon’s been following him note for note. Not saying anything, just following Patrick’s hands up and down the keys.
Brendon plays Patrick whatever he’s just written and Patrick likes it enough to write it down.
Patrick goes with Joe to buy guitar stuff at a music store. It’s a good music store, with more than the standard guitars-basses-drums; there’s a good range of brass and string instruments. He loses Joe somewhere between the guitars and drums, and finds himself surrounded by brass instruments and noisy marching band students. He’s missed the natural loudness of the instrument. It doesn’t help that all the teenagers are all trying to see who can make the most noise. One student picks up a particularly beautiful trombone and in one note creates so much sound that Patrick jumps and several kids shout with glee. Patrick buys a mouthpiece for a trombone and sticks it in his jacket pocket. It’s a good mouth piece, silver and the right heaviness. He’ll give it to Brendon later.
Pete invites Patrick over for dinner. He and Brendon and Ryan are the cooks, and for a meal made by three bachelors, two of the barely out of adolescence, it’s actually quite edible. They watch movies afterwards, stupid teen movies they all know by heart. Patrick falls asleep to breakdowns and penis jokes. He dreams about girlgangs and awkward transitions in high schools. Pete stars, looking disturbingly like Lindsey Lohan. It’s quite bizarre. When he wakes up, Brendon is all over but Pete and Ryan are nowhere to be found. The tv’s shining blue, the movie over. It’s only three in the morning.
He tries to shift but Brendon really is all over. He’s lying over the entire couch, his feet jammed against the side and himself jammed against Patrick. One of his hands is holding, no, clutching the front of Patrick’s sweatshirt and the other is wrapped around Patrick’s arm, as if Patrick might try to leave.
He finds the remote, turns off the tv and closes his eyes in the dark. There’s faint murmuring coming from down the hall near the door, the deep whispery sounds of Pete and Ryan. He can sort of understand why Pete always talks to Ryan at night. Ryan’s got a soothing voice.
Brendon sighs, and buries his head in Patrick’s arm. Patrick shifts to put an arm around Brendon and falls back asleep when he hears the door to the apartment shut.
Patrick is sitting on his couch the next day (he feels a sense of entitlement, calling it his couch; Andy has his own room, Joe has his own kitchen, and Pete walks around the studio around like he owns the place) when Brendon runs in looking a little upset. He does a slight double-take when he sees Patrick sitting on the couch and with a huff, sits down on the other end of the couch, very pointedly ignoring Patrick. He sits still at his end of the couch, looking away from Patrick, looking a little upset but mostly downcast.
Patrick ignores Brendon back, because he figures that whatever Brendon wants will come out of him eventually. It doesn’t and when Patrick can’t stand Brendon’s sulk anymore, he reaches over and hits Brendon’s leg with his book.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. Brendon frowns at him and doesn’t say anything. Patrick gets nervous.
“Seriously, Bren, what-”
“Patrick, you-” Brendon frowns. “You suck.”
“I-“ begins Patrick and then he stops. Yeah. He’d left Brendon alone at Pete’s. Pete and Ryan had gone off to God knows where and he’d left the house, and Brendon, and gone home.
Reflectively, that was pretty lame.
Brendon just looks at him, upset and downcast.
“Trick?” calls out Joe, “did you come in with Pete this morning?”
“No,” Patrick calls back, “no, I came in by myself.” He’d left in the morning, when Brendon had loosened his grip on Patrick enough so that Patrick could leave without waking him. He had wanted to stay.
“How’d his car get here then?”
“I stole it,” shouts Brendon, standing up violently, “since him and Ryan abandoned me this morning. I came here by myself!”
They can hear Joe try to muffle his giggles from down the hall. “Better go pick him up then, Bren. I need him.”
Brendon turns to leave, hands in his pockets. Patrick stands too, and touches his sleeve. “I’ll drive. I’ll go with you.”
Brendon looks at him and Patrick can see the real hurt in his eyes. He knows it won’t make Brendon forgive him but he sticks his hand in his pocket and pulls out the mouthpiece anyway.
“Here. I bought this for you awhile ago.”
Brendon takes it and holds it close. He blows into and it makes a loud buzzing sound. Patrick nods. “Yeah.”
Brendon smiles at Patrick.
Pete is only mildly annoyed that Brendon took his car, and he insists on driving back to the studio, occasionally petting the dash as if to comfort the car that he’s back. Ryan clutches a cup of coffee in the backseat and whispers to Brendon. They both look more serious then Patrick likes. He turns to Pete.
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah.” Pete taps his fingers on the steering wheel and looks at him. “Yeah.”
“Where were you guys? When I left this morning-“
“We were just. Out. Walking around all night. I couldn’t sleep, so Ryan and I just walked around. We went to the beach.” He turns to Patrick. “You left Brendon by himself? That’s fucking shitty.”
“He was. . .” Patrick doesn’t have words for how Brendon looked in the morning, old and young, and something that didn’t belong to Patrick. Patrick had wanted to, well. “Yeah.”
Pete frowns.
Brendon and Ryan commandeer Patrick’s couch. It’s not as if there aren’t any other places for Ryan to take a nap using Brendon’s lap as a pillow in the studio, but Patrick’s not going to be pushy. Brendon’s still angry with him, as far as Patrick can tell.
He kneels next to Brendon, sitting on the floor next to the couch rather then disturbing Ryan. Brendon’s reading Patrick’s book, one hand curving around the spine, the other in Ryan’s hair. “How do you like it?” he whispers.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Brendon whispers back. “I picked up where you left off.”
Patrick shrugs. Brendon puts the book down. “Pretty sure Pete doesn’t know about our sleep aid, Patrick,” he whispers, looking down at Ryan with animal protectiveness. “I really think you should tell him.”
Patrick looks at him, not sure whether he’s allowed laugh or not. Brendon looks nervous. “Why’d you - why did you leave-“ Brendon starts, pauses. His hand stills in Ryan’s hair and he bites his lip.
There’s something inside Patrick’s stomach and his chest that swells and crashes inside him when Brendon falters and hesitates. “Sorry,” says Patrick. “I really am.”
He rolls to his knees and kneels, looking at Brendon’s anxious face. He kisses the corner of Brendon’s mouth.
Brendon leans over, knocks Patrick’s hat off and closes around Patrick’s mouth with his own. He takes his hand off of Ryan’s head to pull Patrick closer.
Ryan shifts on Brendon’s lap, disturbed by the movement. “Brendon,” he mumbles.
“Shh,” Brendon takes a hand off Patrick to rub Ryan’s neck. “Ry, Ryan.” He sounds starstruck, like he can’t quite believe his lips are still on Patrick’s.
Patrick pulls back. He says, “Brendon?” and Brendon says, “yeah?”
He kissed Brendon again, light, on the lips.
Patrick slips off into the studio, intent on finding a guitar that he can wail on. He finds Pete instead, curled in the corner of one of the practice rooms, taking a nap. Patrick sprawls out next to him and thinks about napping too, when Brendon comes running in and crawls into Patrick’s lap.
“This is cuddling, okay Patrick,” he whispers, putting his elbows on Patrick’s shoulders and kissing him quickly on the lips. Patrick squints at him as Brendon hugs his neck. “Okay Patrick? You can do this.”
Brendon buries his face in Patrick’s shoulder. The fabric turns warm from his breath. Patrick only hesitates for a second before bringing his hands to cradle Brendon and hold him close.