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It's funny that the icon randomizer seems to have given up: it gave me the vampire w/out prompting. Good work, randomizer, now stop giving the stfu fangirl to people when I'm not telling people to shut up!
Hey, Patrick, tell us your thoughts on yaoi.
One of those nights when you leave me for no reason, I'll give you a reason. <----- so amused w/ self might need medicaton!
Before he got turned, Pete used to be one of those people who got black outs from Ambien. He'd take the shit and blog and call half his contact list to chit-chat and never remember any of it the next day. Patrick shamelessly took these opportunities to air his real feelings about such diverse topics as Danzig (he hates them but Pete loves them so he usually just doesn't even bother to get into it anymore), abortion (he thinks men really have no particular right to an opinion on this, but he always imagines what it would be like to be the dad in the scenario so his knee-jerk reaction is always pro-life), and Dirty (he really thinks the guy needs to get some therapy).
Now, Pete calls him after taking half a bottle of Oxy just to get some time off from his own head. His thoughts haven't gotten any easier being undead, but now the meds don't work—Patrick imagines they would if they could figure the dosage out. That's basically the story they were telling in 16 Candles, and ever since then, the topic has been taboo along with anything else having to do with the video.
“Patrick,” Pete's voice comes as a croak. The wedding was a nightmare, of course, and Pete's not coping well. Patrick's response to Pete's spiral is to work even more, even harder. Patrick's entire life is work. Gabe's back from England, and Patrick's in New York to talk Gabe into doing a supergroup track, a cover of “The Girl Is Mine” with Brendon playing the piano.
Patrick cracks his neck and looks out the window of Gabe's apartment. It's starting to rain and people dash down the street with newspapers over their heads like in the movies. “Are you ok?”
“What happens if I feed off her?” Pete always asks that, but there's an edge to his voice that usually isn't there.
“Gabe can probably hear everything you're saying.” Patrick sighs and cracks the window so that wind carries some rain in to pink against his face.
“Yeah, yeah.” Pete's the only person Patrick's ever heard who says “yeah, yeah” like he can just dismiss anything you say with a waved hand and a tilt of his head. “Don't let Gabe steal you away from me.”
Gabe slinks into the room with a smirk. For once, it's just Patrick and Gabe, and Patrick's relieved and wary at the same time. The last time they were alone together things got pretty dicey—Gabe almost lured him into making a disastrous decision because he's just that persuasive.
Gabe plops down in his ridiculous papasan chair and kicks his feet out in front of him. He grabs his laptop. Patrick's sure he's booting up youtube.
“Why don't you come out here for the weekend?”
Gabe looks up at Patrick's comment and shakes his head. It's moments like this that Patrick can sort of feel what Gabe must feel like to everyone else, to all of the scene out here—Gabe's authoritative in a smooth sort of way, in charge without having to say anything about it.
Pete sighs long and deep. “I can't. I'm on my honeymoon, you might have heard about that on the internet or on TV or somefuckingwhere.”
Patrick almost protests that he can sneak away, but the whole point is that he can't. Pete can't sneak anywhere because he's Pete Wentz. Something happens on the other end of the phone, and Pete shouts “Fine!” before falling back into the conversation with Patrick “Look, man, I gotta head. Stay away from that motherfucker, for real.” The line goes dead. Patrick tucks his phone back into his pocket.
“I get the feeling that Pete doesn't like me.” Gabe makes an exaggeratedly sad face. “That makes me cry!” He boohoos and rubs his eyes with a knuckle.
“Oh, fuck off. What do you think about the track?” Patrick throws himself down on Gabe's shitty couch.
“I think you're using me to get to Vicky.” And truer words, dude, but that's not really the point today.
“I have the Vicky sitch in the bag.” Patrick straightens his hat and smirks.
Gabe watches him over the top of his laptop screen. “Get out!” He slaps his hand on the chair next to him. “It's because you let them bite you. You love it.”
Patrick has not, in fact, fucked Vicky. He's just fucking with Gabe because he has some weird vampire fixation. He needs to bag any vamp that comes into his orbit or he goes insane. Vicky's resisting. Patrick knows that won't last—god knows Patrick might have gone there with Gabe himself one time if he'd had one more drink—but in the mean time, Patrick's gonna get his yuks where he can.
“Patrick,” Gabe begins. He has this way of using people's names that has to be a power-play. Patrick tenses up inside. Gabe's eyes drop to half-lidded. “Listen, have you thought over my offer?”
Gabe's like the werewolf godfather or something. “You should probably give up since I'm promised to someone else. I leave with the one what brought me, Gabriel, you sassy beast.” Patrick flutters his eyelids. Gabe has his thoughtful face on. Looks like Patrick won't be getting much work done tonight. It's going to be the “make a choice” dance all over again. Patrick has no particular desire to make any sort of choice here. He thinks it's epically fucked that he's being asked to choose. Whoever heard of having to choose what kind of paranormal creature you're going become? Patrick doesn't deny the coolness factor of being in on the joke, unlike Joe and Andy and Bob and Ray and half the label, but there are lines. Patrick knows that Pete's going to go overboard and change him one day, and he doesn't have much hope for what will happen after that. Pete's already gotten his get out of jail free card (kinda, but Ashlee and the baby are a helluva lot better than being totally dead).
“I don't like this kind of talk, Patrick,” Gabe flicks his eyes all over Patrick from head to toe. “But I suppose then we could finally just give up this pretense of friendship and run away to get married in Canada.”
“Sure,” Patrick yawns. “I'm going to take a nap. When I wake up, you can tell me which part you want to sing, MJ or Sir Paul.” Patrick gets a lot of Canadian marriage offers.
Gabe watches him. If Patrick were anyone else, it would probably be creepy, but Patrick mainlines creepy before his morning piss, so it doesn't keep him from dropping off.
Right as he's in that liminal space between awake and asleep, Gabe murmurs “How do you feel about bar-be-ques?”
*
“The thing about being king, Patrick, is that you think that will be enough, but no, there is no enough.” Gabe lifts his right hand off the gear shift and gestures with the palm flat raised towards the roof of the car as he shrugs. “You always want more.”
“I think I was asking about going to Taco Bell, but I'm always open to your random attacks of statecraft.” Patrick watches as Jersey City passes outside his window. He's not particularly sanguine about his chances of getting anything decent to eat tonight. He was hoping to get a chalupa or at least a side of beans before hitting tofuland.
“You really should give up meat again, dude, it's fucking bad for you. Besides all the ethical concerns,” Brendon grits out around a stream of smoke. Brendon and Travis have basically hot boxed the car from the backseat and Patrick's pretty sure he might as well just smoke, too, since he's got a long night ahead of him.
“This is good for Team Vamp, Patrick.” Gabe turns up Billy Joel's Greatest hits and croons along with “Big Shot.” Everyone joins in and they listen to the song on repeat a couple times, adlibbing and camping it up. After he turns the music back down again, Gabe leans over the console and stage whispers “If we can land Jamia, then we've won.”
Patrick thinks that being king means Gabe won't be happy just winning. He seems like a salt and burn kinda guy. He also thinks that it's still not exactly likely that the captain of Team Vamp is a werewolf.
“Winning in the long run means doing some shit I'm not exactly cool with,” Travis says around a column of smoke.
“Can you guys even get high?” Patrick asks, hooking his arm around Gabe's seat and leaning a bit into the backseat. Brendon starts giggling and knocks his Snapple onto the floor. Travis thumps him on the back and starts laughing himself.
“What do you think?” Travis makes Patrick smile with his lifted eyebrow and deadpan delivery.
“I'm going to have to start buying that in bulk.”
“Please dial my number and put me on speaker when you explain to Pete that he needs to get high.” Gabe switches lanes smoothly and skips “Pressure.”
*
When Gabe had said that Jamia had set up a “play date” for Gerard and Frank with some of the safe vamps that she knows, Patrick had thought this was poetic language. When he sees the pool in the backyard, he's not sure. Vicky and Alex are “helping” Jamia in the kitchen when the gang Patrick's attached to wanders through the house. Well, Patrick wanders, Brendon saunters, Travis flops, and Gabe struts. It's quite the parade.
Patrick hasn't been to this house yet. Jamia used to have her own place not that far from the new one, a cute little cottage with flower boxes with actual, real flowers in them and a swinging gate under a little arch on the sidewalk. This place is a bit ramshackle, old—pre-War. The frame's got to be wood. The living room has two couches and wall to wall bookcases that are packed full with books wedged into any crevice available. The wall behind the couch is the only bookcase-free zone, and on it is a knotty tree creeping across and along the ceiling. There's scaffolding folded against one of the bookcases. Patrick recognizes Gerard's work in the painting and in the cigarette burns on the purple couch.
There's a hallway from the living room with several doors leading to what Patrick assumes are the bathroom and maybe an office. Crooked family photos and art photography march up and down the walls of the corridor. Patrick reaches out and straightens a picture of Frank dressed in a giant frog costume—he's probably 14 in the shot. Patrick laughs to himself.
Alex has a cutting board in front of him and stacked neatly on the wooden surface are various perfectly julliened veggies. It's not looking good for Patrick's belly. Gabe leans up against the counter next to Alex with his ass practically sitting on the counter, his arms crossed and a full-born smile on his face. “Jamia, my beshert, where are your men? Why are you in the kitchen?”
Patrick gets a dim thrill of glee at the look on Jamia's face. Someone's in trouble! “Have you seen Gerard with a knife? He peels potatoes and makes drinks.”
“There're potatoes?” Patrick pushes his glasses up and Jamia wheels around to open her arms for a hug.
“Sorry, sorry, this dickhead distracted me from flinging myself at your feet, rockstar.” Patrick moves into a hug with Jamia. She smells like ginger under the cigarette smoke. She hugs him with a knife in one hand and a bag of blood in the other. He doesn't ask. “I'm glad you came.”
Jamia's never scared Patrick. He can see where she would—even if you didn't know that she's some kind of freaky earth goddess or whatever the fuck she is, Gabe isn't good at explaining when he doesn't feel like it.
“How's Lestat?” People always ask him that like Pete's his husband.
Patrick straightens his hat. “About how you’d expect.”
Jamia opens her eyes wide and bites her lip a bit. “Well, what're you going to do?” She shrugs. Yeah, exactly. Alex pours all over him as Jamia says “G-a-b-e told me y-o-u were coming over, so I got some fish. I'm eating fish now, and none of you fuckfaces better say shit about it!” She waves her knife in Gabe's direction.
“Are we going to fry the fish?” Patrick could eat something deep fried about now, after he has six or seven drinks. This is probably going to be a puking in the bushes night.
Vicky hugs Patrick, all tight and close and he oofs. Gabe watches him with a light in his eyes that Patrick figures is trouble knocking on his door. “Hey,” Vicky says and kisses him on the cheek. He blushes and wipes her lipstick away.
“Nibblet,” Vicky says bright and perky and Patrick can't help but laugh. “You stay in LA too much.”
She doesn't let him go, just slides an arm around his waist and latches on. Patrick winks at Gabe.
“Here in California fruit hangs heavy on the vine. There's no gold, I thought I'd warn ya, and the hills turn brown in the summertime,” Patrick sings. Vicky leans away from him a bit and looks at him curiously.
“You listen to Lucinda Williams?”
“It's actually a Kate Wolf song,” Patrick's impressed all the same. Most of this crowd stick to screamo and hip-hop. He wasn't expecting anyone to get the reference, though, and now he kind of regrets singing the lyrics since it implicates him in the Pete marriage even further.
The back door flies open and Travis bursts back into the kitchen. “You have got to see what's going down in the yard.”
Jamia's shoulders tighten. Travie pings the potential meltdown immediately. “Nah, nothing like that. Your boys are chill, just sitting around. I mean the pool!”
Patrick stays in the kitchen when everyone else runs outside. “Sooooooo,” he says to Jamia. “How're you holding up?” Patrick's been through this already. He thinks she has a lot more resources than he did when the shoe was on the other foot, but it would have been nice if someone had bothered to ask him.
“Some days are better than others.” She scratches her chin on her shoulder and blows her hair out of her face. “Wanna drink?”
Patrick claps his hands together once, fast. “Boy would I!” he says like Bob. He yuk yuks a couple times. “If it's free!”
Jamia laughs along. “We have a bar. But.” She pauses and looks over her shoulder at him. “You can have some of my bourbon. I hide it from the marauders.”
Patrick's been drunk on Jamia's bourbon before. He recalls one memorable time when he literally wore a lampshade on his head. It was a thing. It was funny.
“It's under the sink in the cleaning caddy.” Patrick thinks that's a logical place to hide something from Gerard and Frank.
He makes elaborate sneaking motions towards the sink. “You watch the door and I'll grab the hooch.”
Jamia laughs with her head thrown back. Patrick picks up two tumblers from the dish drainer and pours both glasses half full. “When did you switch to Bulleit?”
“Oh, it was this whole episode where I got into a fight with Maker's Mark.” She wipes her hands on a dish towel and takes her glass.
“I guess the bottle won?” He drinks half his glass in three pulls. Patrick's been a rock star since before he could vote; he can drink.
Jamia looks bleakly at the salad in the bowl in front of her. “It was the night Frank died. It wasn't my finest moment.”
Patrick flicks his eyes to the ripped up kitchen floor. “I guess getting contractors in here is pretty tricky now.”
“I haven't even thought about it, honestly.” She sounds tired. She rinses the cutting board in the sink. “I don't know why I bother going through the motions of cooking anymore. They barely ate when they were alive and now the only thing Gerard eats is celery because he likes to sink his teeth into a piece over and over and leave gnawed stalks all over the house. Frank doesn't bother to ingest anything besides liquor, coffee, and blood.” She switches gears, and he looks up at her face to watch her sip her drink. “Hey, speaking of, does Pete drink A-type blood? I can't get Frank to drink it and Gerard is now striking in solidarity, and I have some really fresh packs, you could take them back to LA with you in a cooler with dry ice?”
Patrick's A-positive, so he's pretty sure Pete drinks A-type blood. “That's freaky, and asking for a dude from TMZ to knock the lid off 'accidentally.'”
“Oh, yeah. I always forget how famous you are. It's outta control.” She smiles.
The back door creaks open a bit and Gerard creeps in through a two-inch sliver of space. He's sopping wet, dripping all over the place. His black t-shirt and jeans cling to him. He's barefoot.
“Brendon pushed me in the pool.” The tone of the dude's voice is epically tragic. Patrick downs his drink and pours himself another one.
Jamia watches Gerard for a few seconds with a thunderous expression, her hand on her cocked hip. “Why didn't you kick his ass?” she says in the tone that frightens Pete.
Gerard stands up straighter and lifts his chin. “I don't condone violence. Even if it's justified.”
“This is where I say 'bitch, please!' and you get mad. How about instead you go out there and push Brendon in the pool?”
“Do you want a towel or something?” Patrick asks, because, you know, he's had two drinks in ten minutes and he thinks it's fucking funny.
Gerard seems to just then recognize him. The guy's weird. Patrick knows some freaks, but Gerard endlessly ups the wacky stakes.
“It's my karaoke buddy.” Gerard waves at him with a little motion and pulls a soggy pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Oh,” he says like he expected them to be dry.
“Get another pack out of the freezer, dumbass.” Jamia waves in the direction of the fridge.
“Lay off, ok?” Gerard grates out. The fucking amazing thing is that Gerard lives. Even after he goes on to say “You're going to trigger me. I need some sympathy.”
“You let a reformed Mormon boy with a bowl cut push you into an inflatable kids' pool, kitten, what the fuck do you want? I assume Frank's sitting on his chest picking his eyelashes out one by one anyway. He's the sympathy bestower.”
Patrick can't drink fast enough. “Did you say inflatable?” He pretends he cares so he can get the fuck out of Dodge since this has fucked up relationship dynamics written all over it, and he cannot get involved in that. He pours himself another drink as Gerard starts up about Jamia overextending herself into a traditionally male persona in compensation for something and bales.
He doesn't even feel bad about it. She can take care of herself. Plus, she has knives.
The backyard is utter chaos. Right in the middle of it is a giant, blue and yellow inflatable pool with slides and hand-holds like a rock climbing wall. Next to the pool, various people are standing over Frank who has Brendon in a headlock. Gabe's sprawled on a float in the pool with his sunglasses on. He's in his underwear holding a giant casino quarter cup that Patrick's sure has liquor in it. Probably Hypnotiq. Patrick wanders down the back stairs to stand next to Alex as Frank noogies Brendon into submission.
“What were you thinking?” Patrick says to no one in particular. Maybe he's talking to himself.
“It was funny!” Brendon says through tears and gasps. “You...” gasp...”should have seen his face!”
“You should have filmed it for youtube.” Patrick responds. Frank pauses from noogieing Brendon and twists around to look up at Patrick.
“You brought a human? That's Patrick?” Frank's hair is a lot longer than Patrick's ever seen. He probably had most of it back in a ponytail when he pounced on Brendon, but now it's all hanging around his face in clumps. He looks deranged. That's not all that unusual. “You're not scared.”
Patrick wonders how drunk Frank was the night they were out karaoking. He thought he was ok, but Patrick has a long history with people who are ridiculously drunk but good at covering it.
“Patrick's our mascot,” Travis supplies.
Vicky wraps her arm around Patrick's waist.
“He knows everything, duh.” Brendon stretches out on the ground. “Who do you think Pete told first? Not his mom.”
Patrick watches Frank from over the lip of his glass.
“She gave you the good stuff?” It's a whine, so Patrick can tell he's shifted focus.
Now that the fight's over, everyone's bored by it and the guests peel away to investigate the grill or hop in the pool or, in one case, strip down to his underwear (Brendon).
Frank's sort of preternaturally beautiful now. He was always a pretty boy, but now he glows in the moonlight, white skin against black hair and dark eyes. Patrick can see the predator in him a lot more than in Pete. Gerard, oddly, seems pretty much the same as ever. Maybe that just reflects how poorly Patrick knew him before, or how the guy always set off Patrick's alarm bells.
Vicky picks at Patrick's shirt. Frank's still watching him steadily. “You're being weird.” Vicky informs Frank.
“He smells good, Vic, that's all.” Frank stands up and knocks dirt off his jeans. He's wearing a black and white striped scoop-neck shirt. A girl's shirt probably. He flicks his hair off his forehead as Patrick thinks about how deadly Frank would be off his leash. It's the sort of thought that stops him in his tracks, because it comes so naturally that it's only an after-thought to boggle at it. Frank smiles wide and Patrick thinks he should do something fucked up to his hair again to dim the shine a bit.
Frank sticks his hand out and Patrick automatically shakes it. “Sorry, dude, I didn't mean to freak you out.”
“I'm fine,” Patrick responds, because he's not freaked out so much as drunk.
“You're a weird little dude,” Frank tells him and saunters off.
“I don't think you're weird,” Vicky whispers.
“I'm glad he thinks I'm weird. That means I'm normal.” She slides her arm from around his back to rest her hand in the crook of his elbow. Gabe watches them from the pool.
“Wanna play whatever game console they have here?” Patrick needs a little safe.
“Yeah, awesome. These guys are boring.” She laughs around it, and Patrick recognizes they just crossed a line that he didn't realize was there.
*
Travis and Ryland have copped the living room to watch Fuse, so Patrick asks Jamia if they have a basement.
“Like we could live in a house without a basement? Have you seen my basement-dwelling companion? His name is Gerard and he smells like oil paints most of the time.” She hooks her thumb at Gerard who's in dry clothes. He has a funky red cigarette with a gold filter stuck between his teeth and is holding a grey and white cat.
“I told you you could renovate down there and I'd stay up here if you want.” Gerard sounds aggrieved. Jamia looks at him with the indulgent look women get sometimes. Patrick gets that look a lot. Jamia turns back to Patrick and Vicky and pins Vicky with a narrow-eyed look.
“Oh, I see,” she says without explanation. Vicky laughs, sharp, bright, like glass on gravel.
“That's the door to the basement,” Gerard points. “My shit's everywhere, but I got a PS2 down there with new controllers.” He tucks the cat under his arm and ashes his cigarette in the sink. “Frank fucking broke the original ones smacking them against the fucking wall because he's a fucking agro addict.” He punctuates this by tucking his hair behind his ear and singeing it with his cigarette.
“You shouldn't play Grand Theft Auto with him anyway.” Jamia spits out.
Gerard looks like he swallowed a cockroach. He clutches the cat closer. “I don't play that game.” He's practically vibrating.
“Ok then,” Vicky says eloquently and tugs Patrick towards the door to the basement. Patrick grabs the bottle of bourbon on the way.
The stairs are creaky and the railing's falling apart. The smells of paint and tar are strong and get stronger as they descend into the basement. It's fully finished and partitioned into rooms. The central part has a ratty old wool plaid couch heaped with pastels, pencils, notebooks, and sheets of heavy paper covered with sketches. Sat against the wall facing the couch is an brand new plasma TV affixed to the wall with what looks like pipe cleaners and chicken wire. There's an easel propped against one wall with a black canvas sitting on it. Clothes and debris litter the floor.
Patrick shoves some of the junk into a tighter pile on the couch and he flops down in the mostly vacant spot. Vicky wedges in next to him and tucks her feet under her. The remote's on the arm of the couch. Patrick flips on the TV and the channel that blares to life is predictably G4.
“Why did you let Gabe drag you out here? I mean, a party in Jersey with all the losers?” Vicky lays her arm on the low back of the couch behind his shoulders and slumps into him.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Which is Patrick's nine word biography.
Morgan Webb annoys Patrick for no real reason. Maybe because she's a representative of all those cool girls who didn't even know he existed before the band that now want to suck his dick and would pay to do it. It pisses him off and he never says anything about it because he knows thinking that makes him kind of a dickhead and he's learned to shut his mouth and smile instead of saying all the things he wouldn't want ending up as a soundbite.
“It's hard to be around people with so much energy all the time.” Vicky sighs into his ear. Patrick's drunk and getting morose. He's not enjoying his Pete-free time nearly enough. Vicky's telegraphing wanting to get it on, and Patrick's half thinking about Gabe's elaborate mechanizations and half thinking about Pete being stranded thousands of miles away, sad, dejected, and completely right that the world's out to get him.
Vicky kissing him isn't a surprise. How cool her skin is against his booze-flamed cheek is, though. Her fingers move against his face like Noxema on a sunburn—surprisingly sharp and exactly what he didn't know he needed.
She kisses him slow, tentative, like she's the one who's out of her depth. Patrick reaches up to tuck his hand into her hair, to reassure her. He always gets the nervous girls, the virgins and shivering earnest lovers. He knows it's him, but he's not sure what it is about him.
He pulls his glasses off and lets Vicky knock his hat off. Her skin warms when he topples her into the piles of art supplies and presses against her. Her smile's open and young. He gets what Gabe wants to tarnish in her even through the booze. Her arms are perfectly shaped and her hands feel like birds' wings fluttering against his back.
“Are you sure about this?” He says, because he always says that. Her answer is a trill of a laugh and her foot wrapping around his leg to pin his knee.
Her mouth tastes like pot and lemonade and she reaches between them to undo his pants. He's not sure where this is going, because he's not the kind of guy to carry condoms around and she's wearing an 80's one-piece jumper with lots of zippers that don't look like pockets. Her hand wraps around his dick and he's into this a lot more suddenly. The kiss breaks when he has to let out a long, low groan. Her hair is impossibly soft between his fingers.
“Patrick,” she whispers and his eyes pop open. She pricks her tongue on one of her rapidly elongating teeth.
“Oh,” he groans out between pants. He's getting close and he hasn't even seen her tits. “Yeah,” he says, because he's not thinking and doesn't want to argue. He just wants to come, and that's about to happen, and she twists her wrist and yeah. Her teeth slide into his neck without resistance, sweet, blissful, and the endorphins hit his bloodstream as he comes all over Vicky's stupid jumper. All thought shuts off, and Patrick's high, utterly stoned out of his mind, literally.
When he comes back down, he blinks his eyes open and feels Vicky wrapped all around him like a vise. He struggles a bit, so he can breathe more freely.
“Is the blue notebook under you?” Fingers snap. “I really sorta need that. Um, you know, I mean, I don't care, and you can, you know, do whatever, but could I have my notebook? It's got the thing I'm in the middle of in it, and I sorta have this great idea for the middle bit...it needs shrapnel!”
It's been a little while since this sort of thing's happened to Patrick. That's mostly because he doesn't live in a van anymore. He also knows how to use a door lock. He's usually not this drunk, either.
“Go away,” Vicky whispers.
“I need that notebook. I'm more fucking embarrassed right now that you are! I pretend everyone I know is a virgin, fucking shit.” He pauses and Patrick gets enough room to button his pants up. “I won't say anything about the bloodplay, but just know I'm not saying it.”
Patrick peels away and touches the place on his neck he knows has barely any mark. Gerard's watching him from behind the hair of his bangs. “I know what I'm doing, it's ok.”
“No you don't, and it's not.” Gerard says primly. Patrick just wants to go to sleep for ten years.
“Why're you meddling?” Vicky says with obvious curiosity.
“I don't even fucking know. I feel like I should. I try to follow my vampiric sensibilities.” Vicky rolls off the couch to her feet and Gerard paws through the pile of shit. Patrick throws an arm over his eyes and flings his head on the back of the couch. He falls asleep like that.
Gabe wakes him up sometime later. He's wearing a totally different outfit right down to his hat, and he's got Gerard's cat. “I know you think you got me there with your mad skillz, but, my brother, sex means insertion, and you ain't managed that.”
Patrick thinks not responding is the best course of action. He's not sure he can speak yet anyway.
“I will give you props for being shameless, though, mad props. Only a fucking rock star fucks at a party. That's style. That's rolling hardcore, but you gotta learn how to finesse the vamp babes. I'm not giving you any tips, though, because I know your player ass will play me, the mastah, and I don't fuck myself in the ass like that.”
“How long are you going to keep talking?” Patrick manages to croak out.
“That's a good question, a long time. I'm fucking stoned. Where the fuck does Brendon get that shit? I think it's laced with crack.” The cat howls, bites him, and runs up the stairs. “That was unnecessary, Fabio!”
“Did you wake him up?” Brendon screams down the stairs.
“Youth, what energy.” Gabe says with the mad gleam he gets in his eyes before he does something seriously jacked up.
“No,” Patrick whines.
Patrick actually does fuck Vicky later, towards dawn, sleepy and worn out, not drunk anymore, just exhausted from Gabe. She's sweet and dangerous at the same time and Patrick thinks about making better life decisions as he steps into the cab in the early morning grey of New York City. He's covered in bruises and sore from falling down the back steps of the Iero house. He ripped his fingernail scrambling to get away from Gabe when he pulled him down the subway steps once they were back in the city. His throat's sore from singing without warming up after breathing cigarette smoke all night. All in all, it was good night. Patrick doesn't sport fuck, but he's come as close as it gets and the only regret he has is the biting thing.
These are the lyrics to the song Patrick sings:
When I was young my mamma told me
She said child take your time
Don't fall in love too quickly
Before you know the one
She held me round the shoulders
In a voice so soft and kind
She said love can make you happy
And love can rob you blind
Here in California fruit hangs heavy on the vines
There's no gold I thought I'd warn you
And the hills turn brown in the summertime
Now I will learn to love you
But I can't say when
This morning we were strangers
And tonight we're only friends
I'll take the time to know you
I'll take the time to see
There's nothing I won't show you
If you take your time with me
Here in California fruit hangs heavy on the vines
There's no gold I thought I'd warn you
And the hills turn brown in the summertime
I would just post the song, but I don't have it. There's a heavy amount of self-parody on Patrick's part singing this. Also, it's a country song. HAHAA Oh well, we make our own fun, people! This is currently me amusing myself. I really love the idea of Vicky rocking out to Lucinda Williams.
I have determined where I'm going w/ Brendon, too, and all I can say is LOLLERSAURUS!!!
Hey, Patrick, tell us your thoughts on yaoi.
One of those nights when you leave me for no reason, I'll give you a reason. <----- so amused w/ self might need medicaton!
Before he got turned, Pete used to be one of those people who got black outs from Ambien. He'd take the shit and blog and call half his contact list to chit-chat and never remember any of it the next day. Patrick shamelessly took these opportunities to air his real feelings about such diverse topics as Danzig (he hates them but Pete loves them so he usually just doesn't even bother to get into it anymore), abortion (he thinks men really have no particular right to an opinion on this, but he always imagines what it would be like to be the dad in the scenario so his knee-jerk reaction is always pro-life), and Dirty (he really thinks the guy needs to get some therapy).
Now, Pete calls him after taking half a bottle of Oxy just to get some time off from his own head. His thoughts haven't gotten any easier being undead, but now the meds don't work—Patrick imagines they would if they could figure the dosage out. That's basically the story they were telling in 16 Candles, and ever since then, the topic has been taboo along with anything else having to do with the video.
“Patrick,” Pete's voice comes as a croak. The wedding was a nightmare, of course, and Pete's not coping well. Patrick's response to Pete's spiral is to work even more, even harder. Patrick's entire life is work. Gabe's back from England, and Patrick's in New York to talk Gabe into doing a supergroup track, a cover of “The Girl Is Mine” with Brendon playing the piano.
Patrick cracks his neck and looks out the window of Gabe's apartment. It's starting to rain and people dash down the street with newspapers over their heads like in the movies. “Are you ok?”
“What happens if I feed off her?” Pete always asks that, but there's an edge to his voice that usually isn't there.
“Gabe can probably hear everything you're saying.” Patrick sighs and cracks the window so that wind carries some rain in to pink against his face.
“Yeah, yeah.” Pete's the only person Patrick's ever heard who says “yeah, yeah” like he can just dismiss anything you say with a waved hand and a tilt of his head. “Don't let Gabe steal you away from me.”
Gabe slinks into the room with a smirk. For once, it's just Patrick and Gabe, and Patrick's relieved and wary at the same time. The last time they were alone together things got pretty dicey—Gabe almost lured him into making a disastrous decision because he's just that persuasive.
Gabe plops down in his ridiculous papasan chair and kicks his feet out in front of him. He grabs his laptop. Patrick's sure he's booting up youtube.
“Why don't you come out here for the weekend?”
Gabe looks up at Patrick's comment and shakes his head. It's moments like this that Patrick can sort of feel what Gabe must feel like to everyone else, to all of the scene out here—Gabe's authoritative in a smooth sort of way, in charge without having to say anything about it.
Pete sighs long and deep. “I can't. I'm on my honeymoon, you might have heard about that on the internet or on TV or somefuckingwhere.”
Patrick almost protests that he can sneak away, but the whole point is that he can't. Pete can't sneak anywhere because he's Pete Wentz. Something happens on the other end of the phone, and Pete shouts “Fine!” before falling back into the conversation with Patrick “Look, man, I gotta head. Stay away from that motherfucker, for real.” The line goes dead. Patrick tucks his phone back into his pocket.
“I get the feeling that Pete doesn't like me.” Gabe makes an exaggeratedly sad face. “That makes me cry!” He boohoos and rubs his eyes with a knuckle.
“Oh, fuck off. What do you think about the track?” Patrick throws himself down on Gabe's shitty couch.
“I think you're using me to get to Vicky.” And truer words, dude, but that's not really the point today.
“I have the Vicky sitch in the bag.” Patrick straightens his hat and smirks.
Gabe watches him over the top of his laptop screen. “Get out!” He slaps his hand on the chair next to him. “It's because you let them bite you. You love it.”
Patrick has not, in fact, fucked Vicky. He's just fucking with Gabe because he has some weird vampire fixation. He needs to bag any vamp that comes into his orbit or he goes insane. Vicky's resisting. Patrick knows that won't last—god knows Patrick might have gone there with Gabe himself one time if he'd had one more drink—but in the mean time, Patrick's gonna get his yuks where he can.
“Patrick,” Gabe begins. He has this way of using people's names that has to be a power-play. Patrick tenses up inside. Gabe's eyes drop to half-lidded. “Listen, have you thought over my offer?”
Gabe's like the werewolf godfather or something. “You should probably give up since I'm promised to someone else. I leave with the one what brought me, Gabriel, you sassy beast.” Patrick flutters his eyelids. Gabe has his thoughtful face on. Looks like Patrick won't be getting much work done tonight. It's going to be the “make a choice” dance all over again. Patrick has no particular desire to make any sort of choice here. He thinks it's epically fucked that he's being asked to choose. Whoever heard of having to choose what kind of paranormal creature you're going become? Patrick doesn't deny the coolness factor of being in on the joke, unlike Joe and Andy and Bob and Ray and half the label, but there are lines. Patrick knows that Pete's going to go overboard and change him one day, and he doesn't have much hope for what will happen after that. Pete's already gotten his get out of jail free card (kinda, but Ashlee and the baby are a helluva lot better than being totally dead).
“I don't like this kind of talk, Patrick,” Gabe flicks his eyes all over Patrick from head to toe. “But I suppose then we could finally just give up this pretense of friendship and run away to get married in Canada.”
“Sure,” Patrick yawns. “I'm going to take a nap. When I wake up, you can tell me which part you want to sing, MJ or Sir Paul.” Patrick gets a lot of Canadian marriage offers.
Gabe watches him. If Patrick were anyone else, it would probably be creepy, but Patrick mainlines creepy before his morning piss, so it doesn't keep him from dropping off.
Right as he's in that liminal space between awake and asleep, Gabe murmurs “How do you feel about bar-be-ques?”
*
“The thing about being king, Patrick, is that you think that will be enough, but no, there is no enough.” Gabe lifts his right hand off the gear shift and gestures with the palm flat raised towards the roof of the car as he shrugs. “You always want more.”
“I think I was asking about going to Taco Bell, but I'm always open to your random attacks of statecraft.” Patrick watches as Jersey City passes outside his window. He's not particularly sanguine about his chances of getting anything decent to eat tonight. He was hoping to get a chalupa or at least a side of beans before hitting tofuland.
“You really should give up meat again, dude, it's fucking bad for you. Besides all the ethical concerns,” Brendon grits out around a stream of smoke. Brendon and Travis have basically hot boxed the car from the backseat and Patrick's pretty sure he might as well just smoke, too, since he's got a long night ahead of him.
“This is good for Team Vamp, Patrick.” Gabe turns up Billy Joel's Greatest hits and croons along with “Big Shot.” Everyone joins in and they listen to the song on repeat a couple times, adlibbing and camping it up. After he turns the music back down again, Gabe leans over the console and stage whispers “If we can land Jamia, then we've won.”
Patrick thinks that being king means Gabe won't be happy just winning. He seems like a salt and burn kinda guy. He also thinks that it's still not exactly likely that the captain of Team Vamp is a werewolf.
“Winning in the long run means doing some shit I'm not exactly cool with,” Travis says around a column of smoke.
“Can you guys even get high?” Patrick asks, hooking his arm around Gabe's seat and leaning a bit into the backseat. Brendon starts giggling and knocks his Snapple onto the floor. Travis thumps him on the back and starts laughing himself.
“What do you think?” Travis makes Patrick smile with his lifted eyebrow and deadpan delivery.
“I'm going to have to start buying that in bulk.”
“Please dial my number and put me on speaker when you explain to Pete that he needs to get high.” Gabe switches lanes smoothly and skips “Pressure.”
*
When Gabe had said that Jamia had set up a “play date” for Gerard and Frank with some of the safe vamps that she knows, Patrick had thought this was poetic language. When he sees the pool in the backyard, he's not sure. Vicky and Alex are “helping” Jamia in the kitchen when the gang Patrick's attached to wanders through the house. Well, Patrick wanders, Brendon saunters, Travis flops, and Gabe struts. It's quite the parade.
Patrick hasn't been to this house yet. Jamia used to have her own place not that far from the new one, a cute little cottage with flower boxes with actual, real flowers in them and a swinging gate under a little arch on the sidewalk. This place is a bit ramshackle, old—pre-War. The frame's got to be wood. The living room has two couches and wall to wall bookcases that are packed full with books wedged into any crevice available. The wall behind the couch is the only bookcase-free zone, and on it is a knotty tree creeping across and along the ceiling. There's scaffolding folded against one of the bookcases. Patrick recognizes Gerard's work in the painting and in the cigarette burns on the purple couch.
There's a hallway from the living room with several doors leading to what Patrick assumes are the bathroom and maybe an office. Crooked family photos and art photography march up and down the walls of the corridor. Patrick reaches out and straightens a picture of Frank dressed in a giant frog costume—he's probably 14 in the shot. Patrick laughs to himself.
Alex has a cutting board in front of him and stacked neatly on the wooden surface are various perfectly julliened veggies. It's not looking good for Patrick's belly. Gabe leans up against the counter next to Alex with his ass practically sitting on the counter, his arms crossed and a full-born smile on his face. “Jamia, my beshert, where are your men? Why are you in the kitchen?”
Patrick gets a dim thrill of glee at the look on Jamia's face. Someone's in trouble! “Have you seen Gerard with a knife? He peels potatoes and makes drinks.”
“There're potatoes?” Patrick pushes his glasses up and Jamia wheels around to open her arms for a hug.
“Sorry, sorry, this dickhead distracted me from flinging myself at your feet, rockstar.” Patrick moves into a hug with Jamia. She smells like ginger under the cigarette smoke. She hugs him with a knife in one hand and a bag of blood in the other. He doesn't ask. “I'm glad you came.”
Jamia's never scared Patrick. He can see where she would—even if you didn't know that she's some kind of freaky earth goddess or whatever the fuck she is, Gabe isn't good at explaining when he doesn't feel like it.
“How's Lestat?” People always ask him that like Pete's his husband.
Patrick straightens his hat. “About how you’d expect.”
Jamia opens her eyes wide and bites her lip a bit. “Well, what're you going to do?” She shrugs. Yeah, exactly. Alex pours all over him as Jamia says “G-a-b-e told me y-o-u were coming over, so I got some fish. I'm eating fish now, and none of you fuckfaces better say shit about it!” She waves her knife in Gabe's direction.
“Are we going to fry the fish?” Patrick could eat something deep fried about now, after he has six or seven drinks. This is probably going to be a puking in the bushes night.
Vicky hugs Patrick, all tight and close and he oofs. Gabe watches him with a light in his eyes that Patrick figures is trouble knocking on his door. “Hey,” Vicky says and kisses him on the cheek. He blushes and wipes her lipstick away.
“Nibblet,” Vicky says bright and perky and Patrick can't help but laugh. “You stay in LA too much.”
She doesn't let him go, just slides an arm around his waist and latches on. Patrick winks at Gabe.
“Here in California fruit hangs heavy on the vine. There's no gold, I thought I'd warn ya, and the hills turn brown in the summertime,” Patrick sings. Vicky leans away from him a bit and looks at him curiously.
“You listen to Lucinda Williams?”
“It's actually a Kate Wolf song,” Patrick's impressed all the same. Most of this crowd stick to screamo and hip-hop. He wasn't expecting anyone to get the reference, though, and now he kind of regrets singing the lyrics since it implicates him in the Pete marriage even further.
The back door flies open and Travis bursts back into the kitchen. “You have got to see what's going down in the yard.”
Jamia's shoulders tighten. Travie pings the potential meltdown immediately. “Nah, nothing like that. Your boys are chill, just sitting around. I mean the pool!”
Patrick stays in the kitchen when everyone else runs outside. “Sooooooo,” he says to Jamia. “How're you holding up?” Patrick's been through this already. He thinks she has a lot more resources than he did when the shoe was on the other foot, but it would have been nice if someone had bothered to ask him.
“Some days are better than others.” She scratches her chin on her shoulder and blows her hair out of her face. “Wanna drink?”
Patrick claps his hands together once, fast. “Boy would I!” he says like Bob. He yuk yuks a couple times. “If it's free!”
Jamia laughs along. “We have a bar. But.” She pauses and looks over her shoulder at him. “You can have some of my bourbon. I hide it from the marauders.”
Patrick's been drunk on Jamia's bourbon before. He recalls one memorable time when he literally wore a lampshade on his head. It was a thing. It was funny.
“It's under the sink in the cleaning caddy.” Patrick thinks that's a logical place to hide something from Gerard and Frank.
He makes elaborate sneaking motions towards the sink. “You watch the door and I'll grab the hooch.”
Jamia laughs with her head thrown back. Patrick picks up two tumblers from the dish drainer and pours both glasses half full. “When did you switch to Bulleit?”
“Oh, it was this whole episode where I got into a fight with Maker's Mark.” She wipes her hands on a dish towel and takes her glass.
“I guess the bottle won?” He drinks half his glass in three pulls. Patrick's been a rock star since before he could vote; he can drink.
Jamia looks bleakly at the salad in the bowl in front of her. “It was the night Frank died. It wasn't my finest moment.”
Patrick flicks his eyes to the ripped up kitchen floor. “I guess getting contractors in here is pretty tricky now.”
“I haven't even thought about it, honestly.” She sounds tired. She rinses the cutting board in the sink. “I don't know why I bother going through the motions of cooking anymore. They barely ate when they were alive and now the only thing Gerard eats is celery because he likes to sink his teeth into a piece over and over and leave gnawed stalks all over the house. Frank doesn't bother to ingest anything besides liquor, coffee, and blood.” She switches gears, and he looks up at her face to watch her sip her drink. “Hey, speaking of, does Pete drink A-type blood? I can't get Frank to drink it and Gerard is now striking in solidarity, and I have some really fresh packs, you could take them back to LA with you in a cooler with dry ice?”
Patrick's A-positive, so he's pretty sure Pete drinks A-type blood. “That's freaky, and asking for a dude from TMZ to knock the lid off 'accidentally.'”
“Oh, yeah. I always forget how famous you are. It's outta control.” She smiles.
The back door creaks open a bit and Gerard creeps in through a two-inch sliver of space. He's sopping wet, dripping all over the place. His black t-shirt and jeans cling to him. He's barefoot.
“Brendon pushed me in the pool.” The tone of the dude's voice is epically tragic. Patrick downs his drink and pours himself another one.
Jamia watches Gerard for a few seconds with a thunderous expression, her hand on her cocked hip. “Why didn't you kick his ass?” she says in the tone that frightens Pete.
Gerard stands up straighter and lifts his chin. “I don't condone violence. Even if it's justified.”
“This is where I say 'bitch, please!' and you get mad. How about instead you go out there and push Brendon in the pool?”
“Do you want a towel or something?” Patrick asks, because, you know, he's had two drinks in ten minutes and he thinks it's fucking funny.
Gerard seems to just then recognize him. The guy's weird. Patrick knows some freaks, but Gerard endlessly ups the wacky stakes.
“It's my karaoke buddy.” Gerard waves at him with a little motion and pulls a soggy pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Oh,” he says like he expected them to be dry.
“Get another pack out of the freezer, dumbass.” Jamia waves in the direction of the fridge.
“Lay off, ok?” Gerard grates out. The fucking amazing thing is that Gerard lives. Even after he goes on to say “You're going to trigger me. I need some sympathy.”
“You let a reformed Mormon boy with a bowl cut push you into an inflatable kids' pool, kitten, what the fuck do you want? I assume Frank's sitting on his chest picking his eyelashes out one by one anyway. He's the sympathy bestower.”
Patrick can't drink fast enough. “Did you say inflatable?” He pretends he cares so he can get the fuck out of Dodge since this has fucked up relationship dynamics written all over it, and he cannot get involved in that. He pours himself another drink as Gerard starts up about Jamia overextending herself into a traditionally male persona in compensation for something and bales.
He doesn't even feel bad about it. She can take care of herself. Plus, she has knives.
The backyard is utter chaos. Right in the middle of it is a giant, blue and yellow inflatable pool with slides and hand-holds like a rock climbing wall. Next to the pool, various people are standing over Frank who has Brendon in a headlock. Gabe's sprawled on a float in the pool with his sunglasses on. He's in his underwear holding a giant casino quarter cup that Patrick's sure has liquor in it. Probably Hypnotiq. Patrick wanders down the back stairs to stand next to Alex as Frank noogies Brendon into submission.
“What were you thinking?” Patrick says to no one in particular. Maybe he's talking to himself.
“It was funny!” Brendon says through tears and gasps. “You...” gasp...”should have seen his face!”
“You should have filmed it for youtube.” Patrick responds. Frank pauses from noogieing Brendon and twists around to look up at Patrick.
“You brought a human? That's Patrick?” Frank's hair is a lot longer than Patrick's ever seen. He probably had most of it back in a ponytail when he pounced on Brendon, but now it's all hanging around his face in clumps. He looks deranged. That's not all that unusual. “You're not scared.”
Patrick wonders how drunk Frank was the night they were out karaoking. He thought he was ok, but Patrick has a long history with people who are ridiculously drunk but good at covering it.
“Patrick's our mascot,” Travis supplies.
Vicky wraps her arm around Patrick's waist.
“He knows everything, duh.” Brendon stretches out on the ground. “Who do you think Pete told first? Not his mom.”
Patrick watches Frank from over the lip of his glass.
“She gave you the good stuff?” It's a whine, so Patrick can tell he's shifted focus.
Now that the fight's over, everyone's bored by it and the guests peel away to investigate the grill or hop in the pool or, in one case, strip down to his underwear (Brendon).
Frank's sort of preternaturally beautiful now. He was always a pretty boy, but now he glows in the moonlight, white skin against black hair and dark eyes. Patrick can see the predator in him a lot more than in Pete. Gerard, oddly, seems pretty much the same as ever. Maybe that just reflects how poorly Patrick knew him before, or how the guy always set off Patrick's alarm bells.
Vicky picks at Patrick's shirt. Frank's still watching him steadily. “You're being weird.” Vicky informs Frank.
“He smells good, Vic, that's all.” Frank stands up and knocks dirt off his jeans. He's wearing a black and white striped scoop-neck shirt. A girl's shirt probably. He flicks his hair off his forehead as Patrick thinks about how deadly Frank would be off his leash. It's the sort of thought that stops him in his tracks, because it comes so naturally that it's only an after-thought to boggle at it. Frank smiles wide and Patrick thinks he should do something fucked up to his hair again to dim the shine a bit.
Frank sticks his hand out and Patrick automatically shakes it. “Sorry, dude, I didn't mean to freak you out.”
“I'm fine,” Patrick responds, because he's not freaked out so much as drunk.
“You're a weird little dude,” Frank tells him and saunters off.
“I don't think you're weird,” Vicky whispers.
“I'm glad he thinks I'm weird. That means I'm normal.” She slides her arm from around his back to rest her hand in the crook of his elbow. Gabe watches them from the pool.
“Wanna play whatever game console they have here?” Patrick needs a little safe.
“Yeah, awesome. These guys are boring.” She laughs around it, and Patrick recognizes they just crossed a line that he didn't realize was there.
*
Travis and Ryland have copped the living room to watch Fuse, so Patrick asks Jamia if they have a basement.
“Like we could live in a house without a basement? Have you seen my basement-dwelling companion? His name is Gerard and he smells like oil paints most of the time.” She hooks her thumb at Gerard who's in dry clothes. He has a funky red cigarette with a gold filter stuck between his teeth and is holding a grey and white cat.
“I told you you could renovate down there and I'd stay up here if you want.” Gerard sounds aggrieved. Jamia looks at him with the indulgent look women get sometimes. Patrick gets that look a lot. Jamia turns back to Patrick and Vicky and pins Vicky with a narrow-eyed look.
“Oh, I see,” she says without explanation. Vicky laughs, sharp, bright, like glass on gravel.
“That's the door to the basement,” Gerard points. “My shit's everywhere, but I got a PS2 down there with new controllers.” He tucks the cat under his arm and ashes his cigarette in the sink. “Frank fucking broke the original ones smacking them against the fucking wall because he's a fucking agro addict.” He punctuates this by tucking his hair behind his ear and singeing it with his cigarette.
“You shouldn't play Grand Theft Auto with him anyway.” Jamia spits out.
Gerard looks like he swallowed a cockroach. He clutches the cat closer. “I don't play that game.” He's practically vibrating.
“Ok then,” Vicky says eloquently and tugs Patrick towards the door to the basement. Patrick grabs the bottle of bourbon on the way.
The stairs are creaky and the railing's falling apart. The smells of paint and tar are strong and get stronger as they descend into the basement. It's fully finished and partitioned into rooms. The central part has a ratty old wool plaid couch heaped with pastels, pencils, notebooks, and sheets of heavy paper covered with sketches. Sat against the wall facing the couch is an brand new plasma TV affixed to the wall with what looks like pipe cleaners and chicken wire. There's an easel propped against one wall with a black canvas sitting on it. Clothes and debris litter the floor.
Patrick shoves some of the junk into a tighter pile on the couch and he flops down in the mostly vacant spot. Vicky wedges in next to him and tucks her feet under her. The remote's on the arm of the couch. Patrick flips on the TV and the channel that blares to life is predictably G4.
“Why did you let Gabe drag you out here? I mean, a party in Jersey with all the losers?” Vicky lays her arm on the low back of the couch behind his shoulders and slumps into him.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Which is Patrick's nine word biography.
Morgan Webb annoys Patrick for no real reason. Maybe because she's a representative of all those cool girls who didn't even know he existed before the band that now want to suck his dick and would pay to do it. It pisses him off and he never says anything about it because he knows thinking that makes him kind of a dickhead and he's learned to shut his mouth and smile instead of saying all the things he wouldn't want ending up as a soundbite.
“It's hard to be around people with so much energy all the time.” Vicky sighs into his ear. Patrick's drunk and getting morose. He's not enjoying his Pete-free time nearly enough. Vicky's telegraphing wanting to get it on, and Patrick's half thinking about Gabe's elaborate mechanizations and half thinking about Pete being stranded thousands of miles away, sad, dejected, and completely right that the world's out to get him.
Vicky kissing him isn't a surprise. How cool her skin is against his booze-flamed cheek is, though. Her fingers move against his face like Noxema on a sunburn—surprisingly sharp and exactly what he didn't know he needed.
She kisses him slow, tentative, like she's the one who's out of her depth. Patrick reaches up to tuck his hand into her hair, to reassure her. He always gets the nervous girls, the virgins and shivering earnest lovers. He knows it's him, but he's not sure what it is about him.
He pulls his glasses off and lets Vicky knock his hat off. Her skin warms when he topples her into the piles of art supplies and presses against her. Her smile's open and young. He gets what Gabe wants to tarnish in her even through the booze. Her arms are perfectly shaped and her hands feel like birds' wings fluttering against his back.
“Are you sure about this?” He says, because he always says that. Her answer is a trill of a laugh and her foot wrapping around his leg to pin his knee.
Her mouth tastes like pot and lemonade and she reaches between them to undo his pants. He's not sure where this is going, because he's not the kind of guy to carry condoms around and she's wearing an 80's one-piece jumper with lots of zippers that don't look like pockets. Her hand wraps around his dick and he's into this a lot more suddenly. The kiss breaks when he has to let out a long, low groan. Her hair is impossibly soft between his fingers.
“Patrick,” she whispers and his eyes pop open. She pricks her tongue on one of her rapidly elongating teeth.
“Oh,” he groans out between pants. He's getting close and he hasn't even seen her tits. “Yeah,” he says, because he's not thinking and doesn't want to argue. He just wants to come, and that's about to happen, and she twists her wrist and yeah. Her teeth slide into his neck without resistance, sweet, blissful, and the endorphins hit his bloodstream as he comes all over Vicky's stupid jumper. All thought shuts off, and Patrick's high, utterly stoned out of his mind, literally.
When he comes back down, he blinks his eyes open and feels Vicky wrapped all around him like a vise. He struggles a bit, so he can breathe more freely.
“Is the blue notebook under you?” Fingers snap. “I really sorta need that. Um, you know, I mean, I don't care, and you can, you know, do whatever, but could I have my notebook? It's got the thing I'm in the middle of in it, and I sorta have this great idea for the middle bit...it needs shrapnel!”
It's been a little while since this sort of thing's happened to Patrick. That's mostly because he doesn't live in a van anymore. He also knows how to use a door lock. He's usually not this drunk, either.
“Go away,” Vicky whispers.
“I need that notebook. I'm more fucking embarrassed right now that you are! I pretend everyone I know is a virgin, fucking shit.” He pauses and Patrick gets enough room to button his pants up. “I won't say anything about the bloodplay, but just know I'm not saying it.”
Patrick peels away and touches the place on his neck he knows has barely any mark. Gerard's watching him from behind the hair of his bangs. “I know what I'm doing, it's ok.”
“No you don't, and it's not.” Gerard says primly. Patrick just wants to go to sleep for ten years.
“Why're you meddling?” Vicky says with obvious curiosity.
“I don't even fucking know. I feel like I should. I try to follow my vampiric sensibilities.” Vicky rolls off the couch to her feet and Gerard paws through the pile of shit. Patrick throws an arm over his eyes and flings his head on the back of the couch. He falls asleep like that.
Gabe wakes him up sometime later. He's wearing a totally different outfit right down to his hat, and he's got Gerard's cat. “I know you think you got me there with your mad skillz, but, my brother, sex means insertion, and you ain't managed that.”
Patrick thinks not responding is the best course of action. He's not sure he can speak yet anyway.
“I will give you props for being shameless, though, mad props. Only a fucking rock star fucks at a party. That's style. That's rolling hardcore, but you gotta learn how to finesse the vamp babes. I'm not giving you any tips, though, because I know your player ass will play me, the mastah, and I don't fuck myself in the ass like that.”
“How long are you going to keep talking?” Patrick manages to croak out.
“That's a good question, a long time. I'm fucking stoned. Where the fuck does Brendon get that shit? I think it's laced with crack.” The cat howls, bites him, and runs up the stairs. “That was unnecessary, Fabio!”
“Did you wake him up?” Brendon screams down the stairs.
“Youth, what energy.” Gabe says with the mad gleam he gets in his eyes before he does something seriously jacked up.
“No,” Patrick whines.
Patrick actually does fuck Vicky later, towards dawn, sleepy and worn out, not drunk anymore, just exhausted from Gabe. She's sweet and dangerous at the same time and Patrick thinks about making better life decisions as he steps into the cab in the early morning grey of New York City. He's covered in bruises and sore from falling down the back steps of the Iero house. He ripped his fingernail scrambling to get away from Gabe when he pulled him down the subway steps once they were back in the city. His throat's sore from singing without warming up after breathing cigarette smoke all night. All in all, it was good night. Patrick doesn't sport fuck, but he's come as close as it gets and the only regret he has is the biting thing.
These are the lyrics to the song Patrick sings:
When I was young my mamma told me
She said child take your time
Don't fall in love too quickly
Before you know the one
She held me round the shoulders
In a voice so soft and kind
She said love can make you happy
And love can rob you blind
Here in California fruit hangs heavy on the vines
There's no gold I thought I'd warn you
And the hills turn brown in the summertime
Now I will learn to love you
But I can't say when
This morning we were strangers
And tonight we're only friends
I'll take the time to know you
I'll take the time to see
There's nothing I won't show you
If you take your time with me
Here in California fruit hangs heavy on the vines
There's no gold I thought I'd warn you
And the hills turn brown in the summertime
I would just post the song, but I don't have it. There's a heavy amount of self-parody on Patrick's part singing this. Also, it's a country song. HAHAA Oh well, we make our own fun, people! This is currently me amusing myself. I really love the idea of Vicky rocking out to Lucinda Williams.
I have determined where I'm going w/ Brendon, too, and all I can say is LOLLERSAURUS!!!
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Entirely plausible. And I can't tell you how happy I would be to break that pattern. DAMN.
I love your book-reading, bourbon-hiding, Gerard-bollicking Jamia. And my Gabe icon is eerily appropriate for these stories.
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He has a funky red cigarette with a gold filter stuck between his teeth and is holding a grey and white cat.
HAHAHAHAA, I LOVE THIS IMAGE. THE CAT MAY BE MY FAVORITE BIT. DON'T MESS WITH THE CAT, MAN.
I feel most of the time the proper response to Brendon is LOLLERSKATES or derivations thereof.
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This is lolerskates. ♥♥♥
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Am friending you! Do hope you don't mind!! I don't want to miss any more of this, or any more awesomeness you come up with.
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Oh, I am sure.
I love this whole series so crazy much! And I was tragically behind in ... well, all of my fic reading so now I am catching up and it's just delicious to be back reading this series. I want to know everything about it but I never want it to end. So good.