Work Text:
It’s still pitch black outside when you wake up, in a bed that’s unfamiliar but comfortable enough that you don’t really want to get up. There’s a light breeze that blows in across your exposed shoulders, one that makes you want to roll back over in the sheets and sleep through the rest of the night.
But that’s when your phone dings, and you’re too much of a gen-zer to ignore it. When you pick it up and see that it’s only midnight, you’re a little surprised- and a little more surprised to see a few texts from Pete.
9:35pm
I’m downstairs when you wake up, have to take care of the party
11:04pm
Sorry if this wakes you up, I gotta drive Patrick home but I’ll be back
11:31pm
Patrick wanted you to know he had a great time
And he said thanks for ur ass lol.
12:11am
Back, everybody’s gone and loaded out
I’m out back if you wake up, I’ll be up when I’m tired
You could wait until he comes upstairs and lies next to you, but you crave him too badly to be without him right now. You groan as you start rolling out of bed, still a bit dizzy and sore as your feet hit the floor. As you go to search for your clothes, your attention is suddenly captured by the folded bathrobe, water bottle, neosporin, heating pad, and tylenol that sits in the chair Pete sat in earlier when he watched Patrick touch you for the first time. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy to look at the mini care package left behind, probably from Pete, who most likely couldn’t provide the world’s best aftercare while hosting a label party. The gesture is more than appreciated as you down a tylenol and wrap yourself up in the robe.
As you descend the stairs, you notice the house is quieter than you knew it could be. When Pete said everybody was gone, you partially expected a few housekeepers to be cleaning up more, but he really did mean it. All of the lights are off, and you have to use your phone flashlight so you don’t absolutely eat shit trying to find the backyard.
And then you see him through the sliding glass doors: sitting on a pool chair, looking up at the stars. You worry he might be asleep, but he turns his head toward you when he hears the doors open.
Pete’s not in his work clothes anymore, opting for a blue hoodie and flannel pants instead as he lounges waiting for you. You’re a little disappointed, because he was so genuinely sexy in that sweater and dress pants, but you know how lucky you are that you get to see him in this attire.
Neither of you say anything as he reaches for you, and you crawl silently over him to straddle his lap. You take a deep breath as you inhale his scent, lying your head on his chest, and it smells like he showered in the time he was shutting down the party, driving Patrick home, and letting you sleep.
“Missed you,” Pete whispers against your forehead before leaving a gentle kiss behind.
“How long was I out?”
“A few hours. You passed out hard after you came.” As he speaks, he’s got one hand playing with your hair, the other gliding up and down your robed back. “It was really cute. I was a bit worried we pushed you too far, though.”
“No, you didn’t, not at all. I loved it, Pete, every second was amazing,” you defend as you sit up, trying to keep his mind from spiraling. You can see it on his face, the way his brow is furrowed and how his eyes scan over you to make sure you’re telling the truth. “It was crazy, in a good, mind-blowing, world-changing way.”
To punctuate the truth to this statement, you lean forward, pressing soft kisses to his forehead, his cheeks, and finally, his lips. He’s fast to catch on, latching on to you like he wasn’t just all over you a few hours ago. Hands gripping tightly at your hips again, yanking you forward so you’re pressed as close to him as possible, he’s suddenly being so slow and gentle with you that it’s more reminiscent of the way you learned Patrick fucks than Pete does normally.
Nonetheless, his desperation remains; he’s making these quiet little moans through each kiss, each time you run your fingers through his hair, and each time you roll your hips down a little just to drive him crazy. You don’t even intend for this to go anywhere, you’ve just discovered that you can’t ever really get enough of him, no matter how hard you try to slow down or stop.
Pete breaks the kiss with a heavy sigh, only pulling back a few inches to practically read your mind as he asks, “it’s never enough, is it? Just always want me?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever not wanted you,” you sigh, emphasizing it with one elongated kiss. “You got me hooked on you when I was thirteen and had an easily moldable brain, I think you’re stuck in there forever.”
“I think you’re stuck in mine forever, too,” Pete admits, and although you felt you knew he was mutually obsessed with you to some degree, this statement does come as a surprise. You find it hard to wrap your head around him being just as obsessed with you, despite the fact that he’s an international rock star with a family and a house and several cars, and you’re a young, easily impressionable, single recent post-grad. It doesn’t seem equal to you, but to him, it must feel that way. “I love being able to give you what you want.”
“Then give it to me.” You whisper this so softly that you’re not sure that he even hears it.
Pete’s reply comes even softer. “What do you want me to give?”
“The same thing I know you want right now.”
His gaze, which was fixated on your lips, shifts suddenly up to your eyes. “Baby…”
“What?” you ask, voice dripping with faux innocence.
“Are you sure you wanna do that? Maybe we shouldn’t push it.” Judging by the way you feel his dick twitch in his pajama bottoms beneath you, you’re not sure if he’s actually that concerned.
You lean in to give him another quick kiss, before you move to press your lips against his earlobe. When you let out a barely audible, breathy moan directly into his ear, rolling your hips down onto him, it makes his hands reach up and grab at your ass- which is exactly what you wanted.
And when you whisper, “I’m so sure, Pete, I need you to fuck me in the ass,” directly against his ear, you realize just how obsessed with you he actually is.
Pete’s on you like he’s never been able to touch you before, almost like he’s never been allowed to touch you before, like he’s been fighting it off for fucking decades. The tables seem turned now, with the way he’s kissing you and holding you so close that you almost can’t breathe with how tightly he’s got you pressed against him. Not that you care about breathing at the moment, he’s more important than oxygen to you.
It’s a crisp, sixty degrees tonight in Los Angeles, but you try not to care how horribly you immediately shiver when he takes the bathrobe off of you. His aim sucks and it partially lands in the pool, but neither of you even bother to care. The only thing that gets you to stop making out and rolling your hips against each other is when he takes his hoodie off, which he’s at least a little careful about not throwing into the water.
As soon as he turns back to you from discarding the garment, you push him lightly back against the pool chair and hold him down by his upper arms. By this point, you’ve seen him naked plenty of times, but you never get enough time to appreciate his tattoos when he’s balls deep inside of you every fucking day. It’s dark as fuck outside, the only light illuminating your skin coming from the pool lights and a streetlight in front of the house. You can’t see the details, but there’s still enough glow for you to feel like you’re gonna start drooling over the ink.
“Have I told you how sexy your fucking tattoos are?” you ask as you rub your hands up and down the full length of his arms, just staring directly at the artwork.
Pete laughs softly. “Half of them are like, meaningless and stupid.”
“That doesn’t mean they aren’t sexy,” you defend, “and you know, I only ever wanted tattoos because I saw you covered in them. And then you and your fuckin’ band inspired my first one.”
With that, you lean forward, licking a long, slow stripe across his thorn tat, which confirms that, yeah, he did shower at some point in the last few hours, the taste of his familiar soap mixed with the salt of his skin coating your tongue. He lets out a gentle whine when you break away, almost like he wants you to do it again, which you’re more than happy to fulfill. Instead, just to keep him on his toes, you press a kiss to the center before crawling your way down to be eye level with his bartskull tattoo. It’s a little hidden by his waistband, but of course, that’s easy to move out of the way; you grab at it and start pulling down, unsurprised to find out that he was going commando this whole time.
“And you call me a slut,” you say under your breath as you finish getting his pants off of him.
“I never said I wasn’t also one,” Pete responds, grabbing ahold of his cock as soon as it hits the cold, midnight air. “Jesus, it’s cold.”
“Here, let me warm you up,” you offer teasingly, batting away Pete’s hands to replace them with your own. He doesn’t fight it, placing both of his hands up above his head as he watches you drool a long string of saliva off your tongue and on to his tip.
You start to stroke him ever so slowly, eyes fixated on the way his mouth falls open as your fists move up and down, until he interrupts you with a, “let me warm you up too, baby, don’t just sit there freezing your ass off.”
When he pats his thigh gently, you know exactly where he wants you, and you’re quick to crawl back up to sit on it. Before you can even get a chance to roll your hips down against his muscled leg, he’s sliding his fingers down to be a more textured barrier. You let out a soft gasp, involuntarily squeezing his dick the second his middle finger lightly flicks at your already soaked clit. He smiles at you, like he’s forever the one who has you under control, and you can’t help but fucking kiss that look off his face.
It’s all so gentle, the way you both press against each other and use your hands to make the other feel so fucking good. Pete’s never been slower at touching your clit, and although there’s a pang in your lower abdomen craving even more, you still feel like you’re in heaven with his hand between your legs. All the while, you stay diligent on slowly and intentionally stroking his cock, his quiet grunts vibrating through your lips as he starts to buck up into you.
“Aww, already need more?” you ask teasingly, yet still whine desperately as he keeps touching you.
“Always do, baby, I always need you.”
You smile at him, placing one final, quick kiss on his lips before you stand up. The second your bare feet hit the freezing pool deck below you, you let out a, “fuck, it’s too fucking cold-”
Pete, being Pete, interrupts you before you can even try to jump back on the chair to get into a better position for this, offering a quick, “come here,” before he’s up on his feet and fucking lifting you off the ground.
You let out a stupidly embarrassing squeal as soon as you’re swooped up over his fucking shoulder, kicking your feet lightly in protest as you shout his name.
“Don’t be a brat, (Y/N),” he teases, lifting his hand to lightly slap at your ass. You wince at the impact, which stings with a purpose after the abuse it received a few hours ago. “Fuck, sorry, my bad.”
You expect him to walk you into the house, and back up into the comfort of the warm bed you left behind- but then you’re thrown off by him walking deeper into the pool deck, and when you start going down, the hot steam that first hits your feet gives you more relief than the bed sheets ever would.
“Better?” Pete asks gently as you both descend into the hot tub, sliding you down so you’re now standing in front of him with your lower half in the water. It’s better on all fronts: mostly for the sudden rush of body heat, but also for the thick, heavy warmth of the water that takes the stinging heat off of your ass.
With your arms wrapped around his neck, you keep going further down, pulling him in close to you as you fall backwards into the water. It’s not your intention to really soak the both of you, and Pete’s quick to pull you up by your upper arms so you don’t become fully submerged by the momentum of your combined weight. When he asks where you’re going, you just whisper, “just wanna be warm with you.”
“I’ll keep you warm, but I gotta do it from up here,” he replies, standing back up in the center of the tub. You know that this isn’t the best place to do this at, let alone only for the second time in this… region, if one will, but Pete seems to be an expert on this, so you let him take the lead.
You stand back up, your torso semi-shielded from the cold by the water droplets coating your skin for a few moments, and before they can cool, Pete’s pulling you back in to press your skin against his. The feeling, like always, is fucking euphoric; just sharing his space alone is enough to give you head rush, but when you’re pressed against him, almost as physically close as you can be, it’s somehow magical.
He steps back to lean against the edge of the tub with one leg propped up on the tub seat, reaching around to hold both of your ass cheeks in each hand. When he asks you to stand on the seat with both legs on either side of him, you do your best to follow the direction, even if it takes a couple of minutes of physics to figure out between the two of you. Finally, you lower yourself to sit on his upper pelvis, knowing it’ll take a minute before you can even try to fill yourself up.
“Believe it or not, never had anal in a hot tub before,” Pete shares, and you find this incredibly hard to believe.
“Really? Not even with Patrick?”
“Not even with Patrick,” he answers, “I’ve had regular sex in a hot tub, been a little bit gay in a hot tub, but never fucked anyone in the ass in a hot tub.”
“And you have to wonder how many people have done any type of sex in this hot tub before us, yeah?”
“I try not to think about it. But I’m sure there’s plenty of evidence online,” he pauses, takes a short, slightly needy sounding breath, before asking, “you ready?”
You nod, because you’ve never been more ready for this to happen, and start to take matters into your own hands. As you reach behind you, careful not to lose your balance in this squat, only when you press his tip to your now-slightly-tightened hole you realize- “lube?”
Pete looks around, then back over at the pool chair, and sighs. “Shit, in my hoodie pocket.”
There’s no way in hell you’re getting out of this god damn hot tub.
“Here,” you start, with an annoyed, punctuated sigh, placing your hand just below his mouth. “Spit, please.”
You don’t know what you expected when you ask him to do this, but the sight in front of you as he gathers the liquid on his tongue before slowly pooling it in the palm of your hand is enough to make you cum on the spot if you really tried. Instead, you let out a soft, giggly moan and tell him how fucking hot that was, which he rolls his eyes at in return.
“You know that won’t be enough.”
“I know,” you answer, not paying much attention to his argument as you glide your spit coated fingers against your hole, dipping two fingers gently inside. The stretch isn’t as bad as it initially has been, but the dry friction might pose an issue. “But maybe I like it when it hurts a little.”
Pete starts to make a snarky reply, but cuts himself off when you slide your fingers out to start pushing him inside. This is a different stretch, that borders on uncomfy in this position, in this setting, with this much lack of lubrication, that you start to think that this is a bad fucking idea.
…until you watch Pete’s face. The way his mouth falls open and he shuts the hell up when his tip breaches through is unlike any expression you’ve ever seen- or imagined- on his face before. Even in all the times he’s thoroughly fucked you, his eyes have never rolled so far back into his own skull, jaw has never been so agape, the air in his lungs never escaped faster. It’s unreal how into this shit he is, from just his tip penetrating you. This, alone, is enough motivation for you to forget about the subtle, burning friction, and you leverage yourself on the tub wall before pushing back to fill yourself up.
Pete, who is normally beyond attentive to your every microexpression and body language to be able to tell what’s wrong within milliseconds, is unable to form a single coherent word from his mouth when you start to fully bottom out. You can’t help but let out slight whines of discomfort, trying your best to breathe through it like he and Patrick taught you earlier, trying to be good and let him enjoy this as much as he is.
And you can’t help but wonder if he reacts like this every time he pushes into Patrick.
Then, finally, in what feels like thirty minutes of silence and breathing, he speaks out a long, loud, and low, “fuuuuuuck,” rumbling straight out of his chest and landing in your ears like fucking music. He seems to regain mobility as he brings his hands up to wrap them around your ass cheeks, pulling them slightly apart as he supports most of your weight. “Christ, (Y/N), Patrick was right, your ass is fucking heaven.”
Giggling, you lean down to kiss the blissed-out grin off his face, moaning into his mouth as he experimentally thrusts up into you. When you wince softly, he whines out a quiet apology, which you reply to with an even quieter, “it’s okay, baby, do it again,” and he happily obliges once before he starts to move his whole body.
In a quick yet gentle move with you still in his grasp, he moves off the tub seat so he’s now stood in the center, both of your lower halves covered by the hot water. He’s still supporting you with ass in both hands, and even though he’s manhandled you plenty before, you’re shocked at his pure strength from how he holds your full weight. It gives you the sense that he has literal and total control over your body.
All the while, you don’t stop kissing him. Fuck, you don’t want to stop kissing him, especially not as he starts raising you up on his cock to make you ride him slowly. This pace is unusual for him, his usual fuck more aggressive and rough right away, but you know that he’s savoring in this first time as much as you are.
When you finally do break away to breathe, your faces remain within centimeters of each other, your eyes locked into the big hazel pupils staring back at you. They’re so full of adoration, maybe even fuller than yours, looking at you like you’re the only person he’s ever wanted to do this with- even though you know that isn’t true. But that doesn’t matter at all.
“How’s it feel, daddy?” you ask, which is usually his line.
“So fucking good, baby, god,” he whines out, carefully picking up the pace and making the water splash around you. “Your body is just made for taking me, I swear.”
“I would take you every second of every day if I could,” you whisper, “just let you do whatever you want whenever you want me.”
He has a good grip on your figure, but to support yourself, you lift your legs and rest your feet on the seat behind him. This, immediately, takes some of the weight off his hands and lets him buck his hips into you with better ease. It’s still incredibly dry, but he seems wildly into that with the way his breathing gets shallower and shallower with every thrust. Whenever you open your eyes, you can see his squeezed shut, like he’s stuck in the feeling of every groove of the inside of your ass gliding against his cock.
“I want you always,” Pete replies, punctuating his statement with a long kiss as he starts really fucking into you.
You have no choice but to let yourself go and let him take you how he wants, not that you don’t want him to do that, but you breathe out a heavy sigh and just rest your head on his shoulder as you fully give into the feeling. The burning starts to fade away with each of his movements, and slowly but surely, you start to feel just as blissed out as he does. Hell, you really never stopped feeling light and blissed out from your activities earlier in the night, but this just starts to amplify it.
It becomes more amplified each time Pete sighs out into your ear, his cut fingernails digging crescent moon markers into your flesh, small indications of his impact over you. To an extent, you feel like you belong to him, and that feeling heightens with each time he slides home inside of you- not just tonight, but every night since you first met at work. And you want to belong to him. You want him to say you’re his, no one else’s, unless he gives them his permission first.
And that’s when you let out an experimental, “I’m yours, Pete,” as you intertwine your digits into his hair, pulling slight enough to yank a reaction out of his throat. “I’m yours, always, whenever, wherever, I’m yours.”
“That’s right, baby, you’re fucking mine,” he replies, just as breathy as you, placing a few kisses against your neck when your skin flushes with chills. “No one else’s, just mine.”
You didn’t expect him to reciprocate that feeling so fast, and the butterflies in your stomach start working overtime with oxytocin. They work so fast, that, without warning, they start flying out of your mouth.
“Fuck, Pete, I love you.”
The words escape you so fast that you don’t even hear them hit the air.
But Pete does. And they start ricocheting off every inch of his body when he stops moving and gently nudges you forward to look at him, that suddenly, you do hear them.
“(Y/N), what?” he says first, his eyes scanning over your face so fast that you can’t even possibly match the speed to even try to make eye contact.
Quickly, your hands fly up to cover your mouth, in a desperate, far-too-late attempt to take the words back. “Shit, I- sorry, I was- I, uh, I was really in the moment,” you excuse, a silent plea for him to ignore those eight letters and get back to business. “It was an accident, I swear, I am so sorry-”
“Okay, but… you don’t mean it, yeah?” It’s fucking devastating the way he says this, like he doesn’t want you to mean it. And in this moment, you wish you didn’t mean it. “Like, you don’t really feel that way, do you?”
You cannot lie to him. You don’t want to lie to him. Because you do love him.
It takes you too long to answer that question, but it’s already been answered in the way you stare at him and try to fight back the tears welling up behind your eyes while you see the worried look in his. Pete sighs heavily- not annoyed, just more… frustrated, maybe a little upset- and tells you to move off of him. You can feel your heart shatter apart the second he requests this, because the only thing you know could quell your rapid heart rate is him holding you for a few minutes. This is the first time in, whatever this relationship is, that you can’t ask for that. So, instead, you slide yourself off of him, and push yourself away to sit on the other side of the hot tub.
The two of you sit there, in silence, the physical distance making the tension in the air feel like you’re miles away. It takes everything in you not to start sobbing, and you don’t want to make him feel bad in any way for reacting how he is. You know he’s always been sensitive and fragile when it comes to emotions, and the suddenness of this all makes you feel horrible for triggering that. There was so much wrong about telling him that you love him, even if it is how you really feel. You wish you could’ve just kept it to yourself forever, because you already know that you just killed what’s been going on between you two.
When you look over at him, he’s not looking back. He’s the quietest he’s ever been in all the time you’ve known him, both parasocially and personally, just staring down at the bubbles swimming around his collarbones and shoulders. You’ve never wished you could read his mind more than you do right now. There are a million things you want to say, to defend yourself, maybe double down and lay out your soliloquy to him for why you’re so in love with him, and why you hope he feels the same way, but you know that will only make things worse.
Then, he finally says, “(Y/N), no, you can’t say that.” You want to interject and say that’s not true, you can say whatever you want, because that’s how you really feel, but he continues. “I don’t think you understand. I have the power to end your entire career in a matter of seconds, you cannot say you love me-”
And for this, you have to interrupt: “but I know you, Pete, I know you won’t do that, you don’t do things like that to people.”
“Do you?” The bite that comes out when he asks this two-worded question feels like it shoots its venom straight into your bloodstream. “I mean, we’ve only known each other for a few months, and I know you think you’ve known me for longer, but that Pete isn’t the Pete that you’ve come to know. That’s a different guy.”
“I don’t feel that way about that Pete, I feel that way about you. And I don’t think you’re the type of guy to go out of your way to make a big, public deal about your personal relationships.” This, you know, is a lie, even though you didn’t want to lie to him earlier. But, there’s a sense of truth to it: the Pete that existed twenty years ago and the Pete that exists in front of you right now are completely different people. While you feel the Pete from 2004 might have done everything he could to ruin your name on the internet, you know for a fact, the Pete sitting across from you, the Pete who paid hush money to the paparazzi so you wouldn’t get blasted online for giving him head in his Porsche, the Pete who’s paying you to be his “assistant” so nobody will question why you’re seen with him so much, would never do that to you.
“Christ, (Y/N), it doesn’t matter whether or not I’d put you on blast like that,” Pete argues, his gaze now shifting from the water up to the stars above. He closes his eyes for a minute, taking a deep breath while you watch him search for the words to continue. “It matters if we’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, if the wrong person sees us or gets the wrong idea, and then the wrong outlet picks up the story, and suddenly your boss sees us together and figures out what happened. And then your career is over, and mine just has another stain that will fade until the next one covers it up.”
There’s no way for you to argue with this. So you don’t even try. And he keeps on talking. And finally looks at you. It makes your heart fall twenty floors into the sub-basement of your soul.
“I just… with everything that could happen, I don’t understand why you think you love me.”
This makes your blood fucking boil. There have been many, many times when you thought you’ve been so-called ‘mad at Pete Wentz’, primarily whenever he did a merch drop or they announced a tour and wanted more money from you, but this is, obviously, a new level of anger.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” you yell, staring back at him with a new fire in your soul. “Pete, you… oh my god, you give me everything I’ve ever fucking wanted, how could you even say that, how could I not love you?”
“Is this really everything you’ve ever wanted?” he asks, his voice softening as soon as you get the last, pointed word out of your mouth. “I’m twice your age, I have a family, I feel like… there’s absolutely no reason to… I don’t know.”
Pete looks back down at the bubbling waters as he trails off, deep in thought once again. He’s cooling off, the initial shock mostly coursed through his body as he’s able to be a bit more coherent with you.
“I don’t want to ruin you.”
These words break your heart in a whole new way; not so much along the lines of angry heartbreak you’ve felt while you’ve been sitting here going back and forth about why you feel the way you feel. Now, it somehow feels like you’re the one ruining him. Like you’re the one letting him down.
“Pete…”
“No, (Y/N), I’ll be completely honest,” he starts, making your heart stop again. “You do not deserve this. You deserve so much better than what I can give you.”
It takes every fiber of your being not to argue that this is the best thing that’s ever happened to you; that he’s the greatest person that you could ever cross paths with in your whole life. You do your best to keep it in and listen as he speaks.
“I know the age thing isn’t a big deal to you. It isn’t a big deal to me, until I think about how I’m getting older, and yeah, you are too, but… you still have many youthful years to live through. I do not. In a few years, I’ll be old and decrepit and you won’t want anything to do with me, and I already know how much that will break your heart to make that decision. And I know you’re twenty-two and have plenty of time to fuck around, but someday, you might want a spouse and kids, and those are two things I cannot, in any good conscience, give to you. You can love me now, but I know in a few years time, you can’t love me anymore for whatever reasons, and that will crush you. Because you’ve loved the Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy longer than you’ve loved me, and the heartbreak that will come from leaving me will be accompanied by a whole new level of heartbreak when you realize you can’t love the first version of me you ever loved in the same way anymore.”
You take a deep breath, trying to cool down with him to meet him at his level. It still comes out a little heated: “so, what, you get to be the one who’s in a weird, poly thing with several people, but when I want that, it’s a whole thing? And I’m not able to love you and also maybe love other people someday who can give me the things that you can’t give me? But fuck, Pete, I never cared about marriage or kids, you’re already giving me everything I want.”
“If I got everything I wanted at twenty-two, you and I both know I wouldn’t even be-”
Your pupils widen at the words you know he’s about to say. His do the same when they look back at you. There’s no need for him to finish that statement for your heart to somehow sink even lower.
“Look,” he starts again, taking a long inhale, “I’m just saying that your life will change as you get older, and so will the things that you want. What you want now might not be what you want in five years. Maybe not even in a year.”
“Which is okay with me. But this is what I want now,” you argue, “I want you, as long as I can have you, and I don’t care if that’s for another month or another twenty years. And I have a feeling that you want the same.”
Beneath the jets of the hot tub, you’ve noticed that, this entire time, Pete’s still hard. For a guy who just argued about how old he is, his age definitely does not show in that regard.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t cut me off entirely after our first meeting. I don’t understand, out of all the fans out there who would kill to be in my position, that you picked me to be the one that gets a fake, paid assistant position to cover up the fact that we’re secretly fucking. You literally have a supermodel girlfriend and a best friend-slash-life partner already, and I don’t feel like I fit into either of those molds, yet for some fucking reason, I love you anyways, and it would only make somewhat of a sense if you felt the same. Does that not make sense?”
Pete sighs through his nose, and for a second, you swear you see him roll his eyes. It’s too brief- and too dark- to really tell.
“If I tell you the truth, I’m afraid I’ll make it worse.”
“Make what worse? I’m not mad at you, Pete, I just-”
“No, not your anger, I mean the fact that you do, somehow, love me, even though it’s all so fucked up,” he interrupts, “I don’t want it to hurt more when it ends. And that’s not just for you, really it’s… it’s also for me.”
“And we’ll get there when we get there, if we ever get there. I don’t want to put a label or an expectation or a timeline on this. I just want to be yours, that’s it,” you explain, and for the first time in a hot minute, you feel comfortable enough to swim closer to his side of the hot tub. As you move, you realize he needs the same thing you need right now- to be in each other’s space, more than anything. This is especially apparent when, your intention being to sit a few feet away from him, he reaches out for you before you stop. Instead, he pulls you over to sit in his lap, straddling over his thighs to face him. You’re both careful with your hands, suddenly treading new waters you haven’t dove into before. You keep yours firmly planted on his shoulders, his placed on your mid back.
When you’re settled, you continue with, “you don’t have to ever say it back or anything, by the way, I already know how you feel, so-”
Then, the tension breaks when Pete kisses you, so sweetly that, yeah, maybe you will finally cry over this. It’s one of his kisses that only makes your obsession, and now, newly pronounced love for him, much much worse. You swear to god, but maybe not to Pete yet, that you would be content being with him for the rest of your life, because you already know nobody will ever come close to giving you the feelings that he’s given you.
“I love you too, (Y/N),” he whispers against your lips, and then, you do start crying. It’s instinctual as you wrap your arms around him and pull him as close as you can possibly get, and somehow you wish you could be even closer. Pete laughs a soft, breathy laugh as he holds you back, rubbing up and down your skin with his fingertips. “God, you’re gonna ruin my life as much as I’ll ruin yours if this ends poorly, you know that?”
“I know,” you reply with a heavy sniffle, “but at least we’ll ruin each other equally.”