Archive of Our Own

There are a lot of perfectly good reasons why Bob isn't outside making the most of his time off; the sky is the main one. It looks melodramatic and gothic and like it's going to explode at any minute, ominous clouds zooming past each other like techies backstage and hot winds spinning around each other like, like, like manic little guitarists. And inside has a consistent temperature and he's tired and there's this new game he wants to finish and the dogs are sleeping; and he maybe feels a little guilty that a fraction of his peace and quiet is down to Frank and Frank's inability to judge distances.

Because if Frank had figured out that fifteen feet was slightly too far to leap like that he wouldn't currently have two fractured ribs, he wouldn't be back in Jersey having his parents tell him fondly that he's an idiot while he lies totally still, and Bob wouldn't be sat here on his own enjoying uninterrupted-by-the-phone gaming time.

Just to be totally, totally sure, he's turned off his cell. And kicked the landline out of its cradle. He nearly disconnected the doorbell as well but there's pizza in his future, maybe tomorrow, and he knows himself well enough to know he'll forget to reconnect it.

For now, Bob Bryar's blissfully luxuriating in the sound of menu music and doggy snores.

He's just passed a save point - luckily - when there's a knocking on the door that surpasses "thunderous" and strays noisily into realms that defy description; the dogs wake up, eyeball the doorway for a bit, and as one canine defence force, go back to sleep, puffing a whuff of disinterest.

Bob considers imitating them; replace "going back to sleep" with "getting the fuck on with this level", although he wouldn't exactly be averse to having a nap either - but the person knocking on the door sounds like they're going to knock through it and into the hall if he doesn't get up.

For one wild and worried moment he thinks it must be Frank, because he doesn't know a single other person who both remembers where he lives and knocks on doors like their presence in the universe is an affront to basic physics, but he got a whiny bored text from him half an hour ago complaining of still being in bed and on not quite enough painkillers, and Frank's not that great at subterfuge.

Bob finally pauses the game, drops his controller onto the floor by accident, and steps over an obstacle course of dog to get to the front door. He's not sure what he's expecting, but he's sure it wasn't what he gets:

Dan Whitesides and Jepha Howard standing under a newspaper and looking alternately sheepish and defiantly soggy.

"Hello we were passing and it's raining can we come in," Jepha says in one breath. If they were passing Bob's a goldfish; there is no way on earth anyone would just be "passing" here. On the other hand, it has just started angry, fat blobs of rain which looks like it's about to really dispense with the build-up and just tear open a hole in the sky.

There's a gentle whuff and a doggy snore from behind him. Bob considers telling them to be quiet and not wake his pets, but he's not sure he can do that level of absurdity. "Uh," he says, by way of a hello, and steps aside.

Dan nods at him as if acknowledging a fellow-professional, most of his face hidden in the shadow of his baseball cap. He's shorter than Bob; Bob's not sure how he keeps forgetting that, but something about Dan makes him loom the same way something about Mikey makes him look about two feet high despite being Bob's virtual twin on that front.

"Um," Bob adds. Jepha's eyeing the TV screen with gamer-avarice - he recognises the expression - and Dan's just standing there with his hands in his ridiculous jeans pockets and his eyes glued to Jepha's back and that, that moment when Bob's thinking ridiculous jeans is the moment when he realises that, what with being at home and everything, he's still wearing pyjama bottoms with his hoodie. And his pyjamas have small cartoon puppies on.

"Nice PJs," Dan says. Bob feels approximately two inches high and does not attempt to defend his pyjamas with anything so righteous as, well, he hadn't been expecting visitors and they're comfortable and everyone in the known world knows that Bob's a comfort man, not a style man. Trouble is, he's at a bit of a loss as to what he should do now, other than stop Jepha looking at the game onscreen the way the dogs look at the food bowl around dinner time.

"Beer," Jepha says suddenly, snapping his fingers. For a bewildering moment Bob thinks it's a demand, which is unusual; his recollection of Jeph - beyond ink, studs, and a certain strange prettiness - involves manners and not being a bossy, demanding asshat. Bob realises he's just been mentally comparing Jepha to Frank, again, and that he's also being offered something.

The beer is warm and he suspects the bottle has come out of Dan's back pocket; it looks tiny in his huge hand, and the label's starting to come off. But it's beer, and by the rules of the road - if not the rules of Bob's house, which he still hasn't really worked out yet beyond "no, dog, you cannot sleep on my face" - beer is suitable recompense for inconvenience. Unless it's really major inconvenience, when payback depends on the individual but with ... with Frank usually involves lighters. And pee. And Frank's laid up with broken ribs and Bob really needs to stop thinking about him.

He takes the beer. "Um, thanks. You don't have to. Um. Thanks."

"It's a token of our affection," Jepha says, beaming. "And gratitude. And having a beer left over."

"Mostly having a beer left over," Dan admits, his hands back in his pockets. "Where's your fu--"

"Shhhhh," Jepha says, putting a finger to his own lips. They are both, Bob realises a little late, somewhat wasted. Whether stoned or drunk or just giddy, he can't tell yet, but the warm, soggy-labelled beer in his hand is starting to look like an attractive defence against dealing with it.

Dan passes him a bottle opener and Bob pops the top off the beer. The top tinkles on the floor, but the only reaction he gets from the dogs is a grunt and one raised ear. Bob feels confident in the knowledge that, if someone broke into his house to murder him, his dogs would definitely probably think about maybe sniffing the guy's ankle as he went past, if it wasn't too much of a stretch.

Dan mouths something at Bob, but since it's not anything obviously connected to his drumkit, sound levels, or the need to take a break Bob can't actually interpret it. Jepha catches him half-way through and frowns, putting a finger to his lips in an exaggerated pantomime of silence.

"Shhhh yourself," Dan says, reaching over to poke Jepha in the arm. Bob discovers he's drained maybe half the bottle in one mouthful, and that he has maybe less social qualms than he thought he did about drinking warm beer in his pyjamas in front of other people. For which, he thinks as Jepha pokes Dan back and Dan snatches at his finger, he totally has Frank to blame. Bob reminds himself Frank's injured and it's not ... karmically okay to blame him at the moment, but force of habit is overwhelming.

He's three-quarters of the way through the beer, standing awkward and fidgety in his own living room while Jepha tries to extract his finger from Dan's crushing grip without much success or apparent seriousness, when he realises the last time he saw these guys to actually talk to, he ended up peeing on Jepha's face and fucking him in the ass while Dan ... the next verb is too much for this degree of sobriety and Bob settles for staring at his feet. Warmth, pink and obvious, comes thundering up his cheeks. Oh, right. Yeah. Stupid blush reflex. Stupid memory. Stupid Bob.

"Hey Jepha," Dan says in a loud whisper, "someone painted Bob pink."

"It suits him," Jepha says critically.

Bob decides to look at his feet some more. Oh look, there's a hole in the toe of his sock. He can just about see his toenail through it, and he's seen Jepha licking his piss out of Frank's mouth with an expression of unfaked bliss and there's a loose thread on the other sock and they don't match, and Dan's long, rough fingers were like a dick inside him and he's finishing that beer now. And possibly drinking all the ones left in the kitchen. Including the weird Polish ones that just showed up without explanation when he was clearing the garage. And Jepha's back dipped and arched as Bob's balls slapped against his ass.

"That's more red now," Dan points out sagely. "That colour there is definitely red."

"Mmm," Jepha says thoughtfully (and the sound is familiar enough that more red creeps up Bob's spine and settles on his brain. He thinks he can feel something beginning to weigh hot and heavy in his balls), "I can't tell when he's looking at the floor."

"Oh look I've finished the beer thank you," Bob mutters, shuffling toward the kitchen. One of the dogs turns her head along the floor to follow him with a whiffly nose, but doesn't actually bother to get up, and outside the spotting rain turns up a notch and starts drumming pretty fucking hard. "D'you guys want. Do you want a. Do you want."

"Another beer thank you that would be really nice," Jepha supplies helpfully. Dan just beams at him and gives him a very large thumbs-up. Bob... tries to concentrate on not tripping over his own feet.

He tries to work out why they're really here as he's taking beers from the fridge; gets half-way through plopping damp bottles onto the counter when he realises he should probably have cleaned the kitchen, and takes his wrist-brace off, picks up the beers again, leaving it in the middle of the table... without ever having even come close to an answer for himself.

When he gets back to the living room Dan's sitting on the sofa stroking the back of Jepha's head the same way Bob usually strokes behind the dog's ears, and the confusion the comparison provokes is so acute he nearly drops the beers. Instead he leans awkwardly down to hand beer to Jepha (a blurred smile; Bob can't see it now without thinking about that little Zen smirk just before he started Frenching the end of Bob's dick and the thought makes all the blood run to his skin like it's trying to escape from him) and to Dan (Dan's fingers catch his and run down the length of them quite deliberately; Bob's breath jumps with his heartbeat. The size of those fucking hands and the ... they were ... in his ass).

Bob takes a seat on one of the chairs further away on purpose. It's covered in dog hair because the canine residents have staked it out as theirs, but he can't, he fucking can't sit any closer because Dan's stroking Jepha's head and neck in a preoccupied way and Jepha's blissed out little smile and the whole fucking thing just keeps making his balls remember the last time he saw them both and. No. No.

He keeps repeating that, in his head: no, no no. No. Like he's arguing with Frank over something. No. Bob realises, as Dan and Jepha cock inquisitive eyebrows at him in near-unison, that he is probably scowling along with his internal click track of no-no-no-no-no-no.

Beer will help. He takes a swig.

There's probably not enough beer in the house to help him to the point of not caring any more. The balance between awkwardness and consciousness isn't one he's sure he can juggle, especially not on these painkillers. But beer will help. He takes another swig.

Two beers later Bob can't remember what they're talking about, and is beginning to think that perhaps beer will not help. It's not helping him remember the thread of conversation, which is rapidly becoming a monologue: Jepha is talking about something, his head more or less resting in Dan's lap while Dan alternates between stroking the back of his neck and playing with his ears, just like a goddamn dog. It's really, really, really fucking distracting.

The problem is, as soon as Bob reminds himself that Jepha isn't an unusually colourful lapdog and that he should pay attention to what he's saying, he gets distracted by his mouth. The two metal balls flashing as it moves. The bowing, the curve upwards at the corners as he smiles between words. The fact that Bob's seen it filled with his dick, and filled with Frank's dick, and that - against all the odds - he misses Frank... and Frank's dick. And that. And that he would quite like. To.

Bob finishes what is either his third or his fourth beer. His bladder is heavy and swollen, Jepha is mumbling something about, about, about E3, and Bob needs to get up to pee. Only. Only, only. Only. Thinking about peeing in this context is having an unwanted, unavoidable, unhelpful side-effect. Pee + Jepha's pretty tattooed body. And Dan's hands.

"Now that," Dan's voice cuts through his thoughts like a, a, a, a chainsaw, "that's not even red any more, is it. That's beet."

"Beat?" Jepha enquires, rolling onto his back. Bob watches with gritted teeth and a straining bladder and a horrifically talkative dick and tries not to think about open mouths, which is like trying not to think about pink elephants, in that it's fucking impossible.

"Yes, beat," Dan says firmly. "Vegetable spanking."

The words hit Bob's brain like the thick blats of rain drumming on the windows and he spits his beer over the back of his hand, all down his arm, and over his lap as he completely fails to contain a bewildered laugh. He doesn't want to laugh, his bladder's horrible and this can only end badly but what the fuck is Dan talking about and now he's covered in fucking beer.

Bob drips helplessly onto the hardwood floor.

He gets up. His bladder whines; the dogs are silent, although one of them thumps her tail hopefully against the floor and licks her lips, like she wants to make a fuss in case of food but can't be assed to.

"Oh man," Dan says happily, shoving Jepha off his lap with both hands. "I've always wanted to say this."

"I want to say it," Jepha says, looking woozy as he paws at his own eyes. "I always wanted to say it as well. Let me say it."

"Nooo," Dan waves his hand drunkenly in Jepha's face, missing actually connecting with it by some distance. "I'm gonna say it. I should say it. It's my cheesy line, I want to say it."

"It's not your cheesy line, you didn't make it up."

Dan claps his hand over Jepha's mouth and holds the back of his head with the other hand; Bob unfortunately thinks the word "controlling" and has to swallow a mouthful of spit, change the way he is standing; another splash of beer runs off the end of his hand. He looks like he's pissed himself already.

"Bob." Dan eyeballs him thoroughly. "Let's get you out of those wet clothes."

Jepha wrests his mouth away from Dan's enormous palm and makes a face. "That was so fucking camp. Quinn wouldn't have said it that camp."

"Quinn wouldn't have thought to say it at all, he's a retard." Dan sticks his tongue out. Jepha sticks his out back, and Bob's brain takes another dive for his crotch as he remembers just how that little metal nubbin in the centre felt against the achingly hot, pee-splashed head of his dick. Fuck. Fuck.

"DAAAAN. Don't call Quinn a retard when he's not here to agree with you," Jepha dissolves into snickering giggles and Dan almost collapses over the top of him, like a house of cards folding in on itself.

Their sniggering conviviality leaves him feeling unfairly out of place and an intruder in his own living room; Bob has no clue what to say to change this, or even how to articulate the sensation in his own fucking mind, but his mouth opens on its own anyhow. He doesn't inform them that he has to go to the bathroom. He doesn't ask if they want more beer. What he says, dribbling beer from his arm hair and acutely aware of the inappropriately horny little itch in his brain, is, "They're pyjamas."

Dan and Jepha giggle into each other for a little longer and for a moment it looks as if they're going to start making out. Bob's pretty sure he won't be able to stand that without something snapping, so he elaborates, carefully setting what's left of his beer down next to the chair.

"They're pyjamas, not clothes. Wet … pyjamas."

Jepha points unsteadily at Bob, half of his face screwed up to keep him in focus (it's a familiar face. Bob knows he's pulled it plenty of times, and he's had it pulled at him by drunk, sliding-down-the-bus-drunk Gerard before Gee kissed bye-bye to booze), and says, "Pyjamas. Clothes. It's a special time now."

"…what?"

"Jeph means," Dan says, patting Jepha on the back of the head in an incredibly condescending manner which Bob strongly imagines would result in him losing his fingers if he tried it on Frank, "it's NAKED O'CLOCK."

"What?"

Dan's on his feet in a drunken instant, and Bob can't help but marvel at his coordination. And his shoulders. And the length of his hands, which leads his brain back down the dangerous, crotch-bothering path again.

"I have to…" he begins, wondering if the awkwardness of his knees gives it away anyway.

"…pee?" Dan asks, suddenly very, very close to Bob's ear in that way that he, Bob remembers, apparently has. Apparently drumming with The Used lends people teleportation powers that drumming with MyChem does not. It's almost but not quite disconcerting enough to render the question unnecessary; Bob wonders if it's possible to clench your bladder. "I think we've probably got a solution to that."

Bob very carefully does not look at Jepha, in case Jepha's grinning. He asks himself if this is really a good idea, this … thing, this inevitable thing that seems to be looming all large and pee-sexy on the horizon. Is this a good idea?

His balls shoot back with a of course it isn't, that's why we're going to do it now while we're too drunk for your brain to interfere, and Bob, who has a bad track record with getting his balls to shut up, opens his mouth to say "no" and somehow says, "Okay," instead.

"Okaaaay," Dan parrots, smirking. It's definitely a smirk and not a smile. He lifts both his eyebrows at once, then pulls one of them down with his finger so he's looking quizzical. Jepha bursts into a belly-doubling bout of laughter and Bob makes a what face but fails to actually say it this time. "Bedroom?"

"Oh," Bob mutters, looking at the damp beer stain on his pyjamas and thinking how much beer manages to smell like pee even before it goes through the body and how drunk he has to be to keep making these ... parallels ... "Right. Yeah."

His bedroom is ... well.

Bob lives on his own. He has several dogs. He lives on his own and has several dogs and some very time-consuming games and he's used to being on tour and the thing is, the thing is, his bedroom tends to look like a zoo got loose in the bombed-out remains of Dresden.

Jepha pushes the door open in front of him and does "ta-daaa" arms at the hideous, appalling, embarrassing mess. "Dan! Just like home."

Dan gives him the finger.

"I wonder if it's something to do with drumming," Jepha muses.

"Shut up," Dan advises, pushing past Bob and stepping easily over a drift of hoodies which looks like it's in the process of turning into coal.

"Oh wait, no, Branden was real tidy--mmffffffghghghgg-pleh-all right, I'll shut up." Jepha spits the sock out of his mouth and peers over Dan's shoulder at Bob; Dan peers back over his own shoulder and points down at Bob's beer-stained pyajama bottoms.

"You're not naked," he observes.

Bob looks down. He is, indeed, not naked.

"Are you getting out of those wet things or am I getting you out of those wet things?" Dan asks, clapping his hand over Jepha's mouth for reasons Bob doesn't want to pry into. "It is naked time. Why aren't you naked?"

Some more words come out of Bob's mouth but he's fairly certain they're not from his brain, because he generally doesn't think to say something quite that sassy until about twenty minutes after the moment has passed. It's not that he's slow, exactly. More that words aren't really his thing and it's usually easier just to frown at the people he doesn't know very well and pick up the people he does know and turn them upside down until they apologise or laugh themselves unconscious.

The words that he believes belong to someone else are: "Well if it's naked time why are you still wearing clothes?"

Dan frowns. "Good point. Jepha, why are you still wearing clothes?"

Bob can't quite directly translate from hand-over-his-mouth Jepha but logic does kinda suggest that what Jepha's mumbling with an exasperated set of eyebrows is along the lines of 'how am I meant to answer you with your hand over my mouth, Dan?'.

"You want Jepha naked, right?" Dan asks, his eyes half-closed. Bob can't tell if the remark's really being addressed to him or to Jepha, but he does know – from some thinking organ that really is not his fucking brain – that he does, yes, really want Jepha to be fucking naked. His memory helpfully replays naked Jepha at him, like he'd somehow have forgotten what a tiny, slim, heavily-tattooed body looks like, what it looks like with him fucking it, what he looks like with him peeing on it…

Jepha, meanwhile, jerks his head away from Dan's hand. "That incoherent and strangled noise –"

"—I don't remember telling you to talk."

"I don't remember you telling me not to."

Dan shakes his head. "You're not allowed to drink cheap Polish beer again until it stops making you a shitty sub." He makes a talk talk motion with his hand and, right on the end of a pretend jaw-flap, swings his arm round and casually slaps Jepha in the face.

Not hard, not too hard, but hard enough to turn Jepha's head sharply to one side, and more than hard enough to get Bob's dick from mildly interested to really fucking intrigued. Harder. Into the danger zone where he desperately needs to piss but can't because he's too fucking horny. It's a window Bob's so used to now he's wondering if he needs to give it a name; the sex pee window or something.

There's a reason he doesn't name things often.

Almost everything in the world works just fine if you don't put a name to it. Bob's cool with that. He's pretty fucking happy with not putting a name to anything, ever; he looks down at the obnoxiously obvious lump in his beer-damp pyajam bottoms and mouths go away at it. His dick, as always, refuses to listen to him. Bob decides that his dick's name, should it ever be graced with one, will be "stubborn fuck".

"Bob," Dan's voice cuts through Bob's thoughts like a chainsaw through any damn thing it wants to cut through, and he jerks his head up as guiltily as if he's still in high school. Dan's voice is lower than it was, and sounds more … more like it did in the motel. Bob's a fairly cooperative kinda guy – or at least not deliberately obstructive most of the time – but Dan's voice has these harmonics which just beg for obedience. It's fucking amazing.

I need to learn how to do that, Bob thinks, at the same time recognising that no, with Frank the battle is half the fun.

Well, maybe less than half.

"Bob," Dan repeats, one eye shut again. He's holding Jepha's wrists in his huge, bony hands, holding them together with one hand, holding them up in the air so Bob can see that yup, that is one restrained bassist. Bob risks a look at Jepha's face and recognises the sloppy, blurred smile immediately. Yup. That is one happily restrained bassist. "If you want him naked, you have to tell him to get naked."

Bob's brain politely short-circuits at this and informs him that all future decision-making will be taken by the department of Bob's balls. This will of course end brilliantly and has never led to pee-soaked hotel rooms, angry concierges, having confusing interminable text-fights with Pete Wentz, or dangling Frank upside-down from the bus roof in search of an apology he will never receive. No. Bob's balls are entirely the right organs to be making calls at this stage. They are, alas, also impervious to sarcasm.

"Um," Bob says, decisively. There's a huge problem with this scenario. Well, several. But. If Jepha gets naked…

Twitch, says his libido.

And Dan gets naked …

His libido gives a curious twitch.

Then at some point Bob is going to have to get naked, and there. The thing is. Jepha and Dan are the kind of people who, because Jepha – among his many good qualities – is also quite impressively vain. They. You know. They work out. And Bob's the kind of guy who, well. He's thought about it. He definitely considered working out a couple of times but he's not on tour and he doesn't need to and his wrists aren't that strong and games companies are evil and keep bringing out updated releases and he has a fucking Wii, it's almost the same thing but. But, but.

He'd rather fuck with his fucking clothes on when he can. It's just not … especially horny-making … turn-on-ing … sexifying … to have to look down at himself and see that stupid pale flabby belly and his idiotically pink nipples and the orange body hair that doesn't have the decency to decide whether or not it's going for a carpet or scarcity and, and, and. And he has fucking freckles. No one should have fucking freckles.

"Today," Dan says, not privy to this intense internal battle, holding Jepha's hands up above his head until Jepha bites his lower lip and Bob's libido roars angrily at him, "Jepha does anything you tell him to. But you have to tell him."

Bob's libido roars again. Fine. Telling him should be easy. He's good at telling Frank to do things, in this sort of situation, it's the same theory, it's … Dan takes two steps back and sits down on Bob's bed, leaving Bob in his fucking fucking pyjamas staring at Jepha like Jepha's a hallucination.

"Get—" Bob's voice flops out from under him momentarily. "-get naked, for fuck's sake."

Jepha once again - Bob still remembers last time and so do his fucking balls, the domineering bastards - attempts to set a land-speed record for nudity, and Bob finds himself faced with a short, slim but relatively toned, inky, pretty freak smirking at him from a pile of dirty laundry while his nuts chatter to his willpower.

Okay. He's going to do this. He's going to take off his damp and unpleasantly clammy pyjama bottoms and yes, yes then he will have his dick out but more importantly he will only have his legs on display and while his legs are kind of ... unimpressive ... they're at least not his stomach. Also, they're not as skinny as Jepha's. That's something to hold on to.

Bob manages to set a new world record for Most Awkward Removal Of Pants-Like Garment, and wishes he hadn't done it, and then looks at Jepha and wishes he knew what the fuck he was doing here.

"Where's the fast-forward button?" Dan asks from Bob's bed. Bob doesn't quite get up the will to see what he's doing.

"On your knees," Bob tells Jepha, and amazingly his voice doesn't crack or go weird on him. "On your knees in front of me."

Jepha goes down without a pause, and Bob fins himself staring down at a compliant, friendly face that is still chewing contemplatively on its lower lip; something about that action seems to be hardwired to his dick. His bladder whines at him.

"I'd get the fuck on with it," Dan says sagely from Bob's bed. "Or you're not going to be able to do it at all."

Bob wonders when the fuck Dan became his own external monologue. He guesses Dan's speaking from experience. He also guesses Dan can tell because Dan's looking at Bob's increasingly hard dick and that makes his face hot. And his chest, and his thighs, and his fucking dick. Is getting harder. At the thought.

He tries to concentrate on Jepha, which is mercifully easy ... Jepha's shuffled forward on his naked knees until he's right under Bob's dick. This isn't fair. This supremely fucking isn't fair. He's going to end up pissing on his favourite fucking hoodies. Okay, the dogs have done that a couple of times too but that's not the ...

Jepha opens his mouth a little and runs his tongue over his lower lip.

"Something is clearly missing," Dan says in a mock-pensive voice. "Jepha, you are being a shitty sub again."

Jepha rolls his eyes pleadingly up to Bob, and peers up at him through his eyelashes. Bob's balls mutter encouragingly, and Bob's close enough now that his dick is practically rubbing on Jepha's nose.

"Or Bob's being a shitty dom. Bob, you have to make him beg if you want begging."

The mere notion blows Bob's mind so badly that for a moment he can't speak, only grimace down at Jepha's placid, smiling face and slightly quirked eyebrows and naked inkiness, his dick in his hand, his own face burning like a fucking house fire. He inhales so hard he nearly swallows his lower lip, and mutters, "Beg for it."

"Loudeeeer," Dan suggests.

Bob grits his teeth against the hot flush that appears to be filling his ears with thunderstorms, and repeats, "Beg me for it."

And Jepha, his hands twisted automatically behind his back and his head thrown back and his eyes wet and dilated behind the veil of his stupid-pretty eyelashes, says, "Please, Bob."

"Manners," Dan and Bob say in almost the same breath; Dan's voice is steadier than Bob's but the inflectionn is almost the same. "Show some fucking respect," Dan adds. His voice sounds like a slap to the face, and Bob watches with dreamy fascination as Jepha's smile gets a little more blurry.

"Please, sir," Jepha corrects, his fingers groping at his pinky toes as he bends back, presenting the whole wide surface of his chest and stomach, right there for Bob to pee on, "please. Piss on me."

No one's ever directly asked him before. And by "no one", Bob means "the only other person he's ever pissed on"; normally it's just a question of Frank acting like a prize doucheknuckle until Bob has to burn him and pee on him just to feel like he's having some sort of ... vaguely, at the back of his mind, he knows that's deliberate, that's Frank asking directly, but this ... this is a whole new set of cards.

He rocks forwards on the balls of his feet, stops thinking about his dirty laundry, and lets go.

The smell of his hot urine steaming off someone else's skin is never, ever going to stop making him horny. It's something that keeps him awake nights, wondering how it got like this, how he got so messed up; right now all he can think of is how Jepha's tattoos are highlighted by the liquid, how his sweat's transformed into a whole new smell by the rush of slightly-too-yellow piss, how fucking hot he looks with his head thrown back and Bob's ... Bob's piss splashing off his ribs and nipples, running down his body like an invitation, a waterfall.

His hips jerk forward like Jepha's pulling them with invisible thread, and the last gout of pee he can get out before his dick gives over to the other function hits Jepha in the teeth.

Jepha just smiles.

The hotness of that pretty much makes up for Dan's delighted sniggering. Bob ...isn't quite sure what to do now, but he can hear himself panting and ...oh gross, he can hear himself panting. Jepha kneels before him, wet and uncomplaining, and tips his head back until Bob can read the tattoo on the underside of his chin.

CHOKE

It's a request, Bob thinks, but it's not one he can fulfill. He's got fucking limits, and anything that conceivably endangers someone's life is so far into the FUCK NO zone that he could break out in a cold sweat just thinking about it if he wasn't already scalding hot and tinted pink and wood-fucking-hard. Aching hard.

"Bed," Dan says. A one-word order. Bob guesses it's aimed at him, since he's supposed to be bossing Jepha around himself (and isn't he just doing a fucking excellent job of it, he sneers at himself. Can't even get a sentence out without stuttering, keeps losing track of his thoughts), and he climbs awkwardly onto his own bed, leaving Jepha kneeling on piss-soggy hoodies like an abandoned statue. "And you," Dan adds.

Bob's not sure how he finds himself sprawled out with his back against Dan's chest, Dan's mouth by his ear, but he does know that, no matter how he feels about his own belly, Dan's huge hand on it like a guiderail is both comforting and hot. Oddly comforting, and not at all oddly hot. It's huge. He feels like a midget.

Fortunately, there's one at the end of the bed.

"Anything you want," Dan mutters in his ear, hot beery breath coming down from an unexpected angle, making Bob tense, but not tense enough to even start thinking about losing his damn erection yet. He can feel Dan's t-shirt against his back as his own rides up from the uncomfortable angle, and Dan pushes his shirt up higher with his thumb. Strokes idly at Bob's naked belly like it's somehow worth touching. "Anything you want, but you have to ask him right."

Which, okay, sounds actually like dialogue right out of a nightmare.

"Ask right?" Bob asks. Jepha's chin comes to an abrupt, pointy rest on his thigh, next to a surprisingly gentle hand. He can feel guitar calluses, but they're more like tickles than scrapes, and the slow and thoughtful circling motions of Jepha's thumb are almost exactly in time with the back-and-forth half-scritch-half-stroke of Dan's finger tips just in his ... the hair between his bellybutton and his pubes. He's not calling it a fucking happy trail because that implies someone might be happy with what they find at the end of it.

"Yup." Dan's fingers don't change tempo at all. "You have to say, I am sexy Bob Bryar who is very sexy and I command you to do the thing that I am telling you to do."

There's a short pause in which Jepha's hand creeps slightly further up Bob's thigh towards his dick and Jepha licks his lips, apparently unconsciously. It does have the probably deliberate effect of driving particular thoughts a long way into Bob's head.

"Only," Dan adds with a contemplative air, "the last bit's like, more simple. You say 'blowjob' or something. But you have to say I am sexy Bob Bryar who is very sexy."

"I'm not saying that," Bob mutters, watching Jepha, who appears to be hypnotised by the head of his dick like a cat by a bird it can't get to, "I can't say that."

"You have to," Dan says, digging his blunt nails in momentarily and making Bob wonder what in the name of hissing painful living fuck it is that Frank and Jepha get from stuff like that because fucking ow, "you have to because it's true. Also, I said so."

Bob takes a very short moment to consider whether he's willing to pass up on a blowjob from Jepha just because Dan wants him to say something retarded and he's apparently not really calling the shots - the brief flickering of a sarcastic am I ever calling the fucking shots flares in his mind but there's too much else going on to give it time - and the answer is a very emphatic NO. No, he is not going to pass up on a fucking blowjob. He's here, he's slightly drunk, he's harder than calculus with a headache (and more so since he realises Jepha's going to get a tongueload of piss-drips when he starts and when, when did that become so freaking sexy? When? When did he stop thinking, piss makes you mine and start thinking, piss on you is hot?), and he is not fucking passing up on a blowjob from a guy who could suck a baked potato through a tailpipe.

Dan's hand pauses on Bob's belly, and Jepha inches himself a little further up Bob's inner thigh.

Bob abruptly swallows his lack-of-pride and mutters with bad grace and worse diction, "IamsexyBobBryarwhoisverysexyandwouldyou<!--<wbr>--><!--</wbr>-->suckmydickplease."

Dan tuts right in his ear. "Please? Please? You're telling, not asking."

It's like drama class all over again. Bob... dropped that class pretty fucking quick.

Bob peers down the length of his torso at Jepha and reaches vaguely for his head; before he knows what's happening, Dan has his arms caught behind his back and there is no more friendly hand on his belly. "You have to tell him right," Dan says, not even out of breath. "Say, sexy Bob Bryar who is very hot wants you to suck his dick, because everyone wants to."

It's probable that what Jepha does next is intended to encourage Bob down the path Dan wants him to take. It probably isn't meant to make Bob temporarily relinquish control over his language centers, but that's the actual result:

Jepha, within pouncing distance of Bob's dick, leans up and administers a quick-but-slightly-lingering lick to the very head of Bob's red-with-erection-blood-for-fuck's-sake dick, and doesn't break eye contact with him the whole time.

"Jesssssssusssschrist," Bob hisses, as an army of fuckyes sparks decamp from his brain and take up residence in his balls. There is no way in hell he's passing up on this.

"I'm afraid Jesus isn't here to take your call right now," Dan says severely. "Would you like to leave a suck my dick after the beep or is Jepha going to start drooling?"

Jepha takes this as his apparent cue to once again dart a quick, eyes-locked lick on the end of Bob's dick and turn his brain into so much wordless, worthless paste.

"Do it for fuck's sake," Bob's mouth says, while his brain says nurble gurble and fails to contribute much to the situation at all. His arms are a little painful, yanked back like this, but the discomfort - to his infinite surprise - doesn't make him feel so much trapped or alarmed as ... as ... as ... reassured. Now that is fucking fucked up. Beyond fucking fucked up.

He doesn't really get much time to contemplate this newfound whateveritis - fucked-uppery, fucked-upness - because his brain is once again hijacked by his balls and with good reason; Jepha has just put his mouth over the end of Bob's dick and apparently inhaled it.

At any rate, there is warm, wet pressure around the head, just the head of Bob's dick, and it feels like someone's ... like ... like someone's making out with the end of his dick, because that is precisely what's happening, and Bob's brain goes fizz and Dan murmurs, "Good boy," in his ear, although whether he means Bob or Jepha is beyond his ability to reason out right now.

Jepha's tongue protrudes from his mouth and cups the underside of Bob's dick, just beyond the rim of the head, the edge of it, the, the. His tongue. Bob stares down over Jepha's toned little shoulders and the inky map of his back and the interlocking mountain range of his spine; the world keeps sending pretty, dirty dirty guys in his direction and he's not quite sure what he did to deserve it.

Right now he doesn't care. Jepha's tongue is a miracle in flesh and metal and Bob's sure if Dan wasn't holding him right now he'd be pulling Jepha's head down onto his dick by his fucking hair.

For a few beautiful, mind-bending, language-breaking moments they continue like this; Dan's hands firm and slightly too tight around Bob's upper arms, Jepha's mouth fucking perfect and wet and hot and there and hot and wet on Bob's dick. Just there.

But this is Bob's life, not perfect happy wonderful land, which means that he's just settling into his stride and his eyes are beginning to slip closed (he'd rather they didn't, he wants to see his dick sliding in and out of Jepha's mouth, always wants to watch when someone blows him, but there's no dealing with all the sensation if he keeps them open) ... just as he's slipping into a pleasure-coma, Jepha slides off his dick and rests his face on Bob's thigh again.

"Hey," Bob mutters, pulling against Dan's hands until he remembers they're holding his arms back for a reason. "No. Damn it. Jepha."

"Guess he ran out of ideas," Dan mutters, a smirk in his voice. "Guess you have to tell him what you want, Bobbobobobob." He squeezes Bob's biceps, such as they are (how it is every other drummer Bob's ever met manages to have intimidating upper arms and he doesn't, he's never figured out).

"Nggh," Bob tries to worm his hips to the side. Maybe if he just wriggles far enough he can get his dick back under Jepha's face again. It's a stupid idea, the kind of idea his balls think up when he's not able to keep them in line. The kind of idea that goes in the same box as "why don't I cigarette-burn Frank every time he spits on something, that'll show him" and forgets who and what he's dealing with. Stupid balls.

Jepha's hand brushes enquiringly against Bob's stupid balls.

Balls.

Bob tries not to have the thought he's just had, but the testicles have the upper hand at the moment. Well. Strictly speaking, Dan has all the hands and ... Bob's too confused for all this heavy thought.

"What do we say?" Dan breathes in his ear, readjusting his grip.

"Please," Bob mutters. "Please ... mo... please su-- I can't do this."

"You're going to," Dan sighs, "or you don't get to come, and Jepha doesn't get to eat your balls and what kind of world is that? Think about Jepha if you won't think about yourself. Try again." He sounds like Bob's just being obstructive for the sake of ruining everyone's evening. And Bob hates guilt-trips but there's no denying that they work on him like a goddamn charm; feeling bad that he's upset someone easily overrides any sense of being manipulated, and damn if he doesn't hate that.

Of course right now what he hates the most is that he's really fucking horny and two seconds ago Jepha Howard was sucking his dick and now he fucking isn't.

Bob takes a deep, shuddering breath from his solar plexus and tries not to think about the actual words. It's a technique that's always worked well interviews, except when it hasn't. It's not a technique that works brilliantly in, say, life in general but that's no reason to let it stop him when sensible decision-making got dumped by the wayside when he let these two into his house. "Pleasejephasuckmyballs."

The snort that answers this tells him he shouldn't have said please, but he can't fucking help it. That shit's so far beyond a favour that "please" doesn't cover it.

Dan's breath is hot and wet on the back of his neck. "Jepha, suck Bob's balls."

Rain drums as viciously on the window as Bob ever did on the skins; moreso. The rhythm is syncopated and strange and just adds to the sense of mild unreality that his beer is assisting him in. There's a warm moist silence and Bob can't quite keep in the following uh as Jepha plants a slobbery kiss on the base of his dick and puts his hand deliberately cockeyed around, well, his cock. Dan's arms encircle him now, holding his arms in front of them both, but holding them still.

"What else do we say?" Dan adds, and he's holding Bob's wrists together (carefully, because Dan knows very well just how important that body part is to a drummer), but he's also stroking, very gently, with one finger, the back of Bob's hand. Reassurance again, in a weird kind of way.

"Thank you?" Bob suggests. His brain is on vacation in his testicles and he knows it.

"Bzzt." Dan makes a buzzer noise and tickles Bob's ear. "Jepha, stop until Bob says the right thing."

"No--" Bob wasn't intending to say that out loud but it seems to come out anyway. Story of his fucking life and especially his fucking day; the controller at his … words … is not his brain. And he wasn't intending to sound slightly desperate either, but when you've gone part of the way towards looking fucking stupid you might as well go the whole route.

"Say it," Dan says calmly, "say it like you mean it." He lowers his voice, "Because it's true. Also, I like watching him blow you. Stop being a jerk."

Bob would shut his eyes, but then he'd shut out Jepha, who is holding his thighs apart gently with hand-some hands and nuzzling the very nearest stretch of skin to his nuts without actually touching them, rubbing his nose and his chin and his cheeeeeek along the inside of Bob's thighs, and ...

Did Dan just say he liked watching it?

Bob breathes in through his nose. This turns out to be a mistake; over the slightly sharp smell of his own turned-on sweat, the faintly canine ambience of his bedroom, the earthy and almost dough-like smell of Dan's sweat, he can still smell his own piss, dried on Jepha's skin like a badge. Like … pre-come. Like. Like his piss, on Jepha's skin, the way Jepha's saliva is drying on his dick.

"Say it," Dan murmurs, Bob's wrists clamped together between his hand and his heart thumping against Bob's back. "Say, I deserve this because I am fucking hot and everyone wants to bone me."

Bob says from between his teeth, "I deserve this because I am fucking hot and everyone wants to bone me."

"Say, I'm sexy Bob Bryar and I don't ask, I tell." Dan's voice is not quite steady but it's measured and a lot calmer than Bob's.

"Jesus-" Bob objects, his hips rising of their own accord, trying to push his dick, his balls at Jepha's mouth. Dan's hand tightens perceptibly.

"Bzzt. That's Jepha. See, no beard."

"Say, it, Bryar." Dan's mouth touches the outside of Bob's ear and he almost chokes on his own tongue. He can see, looking down at himself, the miserable mess that is his stomach, his decidedly not-washboard abs buried somewhere under a squashy pale mass sparsely carpeted with russet-orange wire hair. His alleged Happy Trail is at least partially made up of stupid fucking freckles. There is absolutely nothing sexy down there apart from Jepha, who is attached to Jepha's mouth, which is tragically not attached to Bob's dick, balls or anything else, and this means he's going to have to lie.

He's a bad liar.

Bob winces out, "I'm sexy Bob Bryar and I don't ask, I tell."

"With conviiiiiiiction," Dan sings, flat and off any known key, right in Bob's ear.

Bob clenches his fists as best he can with Dan gently squashing his tendons. "I'm … sexyBobBryarandI don't … ask … I … tell."

"Correct," Dan says. "Jepha, as you were."

Jepha's lips rub the wrinkled, hairy - forget that part, forget it - skin of his scrotum and push open wide. Bob's mouth mimics them in an unconscious gape, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and his lungs suddenly not big enough for him; his head spins, and Dan's hand holding his wrists together - a perfunctory gesture now rather than physical restraint - Dan's chest and, erm, prodigious hard-on against his crooked spine are like a sanity anchor.

For a moment or two all Bob can think about is keeping breathing. He thinks about breathing in, and breathing out, and the way his thighs and belly and crotch are hot and tingling and sort of ... burning but aching but the good ache all at once; he thinks about breathing because thinking about what this feels like requires words he doesn't know. And because if he doesn't think about breathing he's going to pass out.

His dick's starting to ache from lack of attention; a kind of insistent, absence-pain that just gets worse when Jepha's nose brushes the base momentarily and what the--

Oh. The sound like someone being stabbed in the lung apparently comes from his own mouth, which is kind of horrifying, to think he still has noises like that in him. And makes them in front of people. Bob's glad his idiot skin is already flush with blood because otherwise it might actually be noticeable that he blushed even at that.

"Nuh," comes skipping out over his teeth with gay abandon. Okay. There needs to be something on his dick soon or his brain's gonna explode. Trouble is, articulating that is going to take more mental energy than he can currently muster, what with all of it being spent on him remembering to keep breathing. Just marshalling the idea of what he wants is hard enough. "Nnn. Uh. J-ffffff."

"Jepha. Jepha," Dan says, apparently a little amused. "Is Bob going to say something?"

Bob is just about composed enough to be amused himself at Jepha giving Dan the finger, but he's got other, more pressing matters on his balls. Mind. Balls.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Nope.

"Ffffff." Bob scrabbles for the words that will unlock what he needs, which is a hand on his goddamn dick before his goddamn dick kills him. It's like some sort of porno video game; get the combination right, get the reward. Simple. Figure out what it is you want, get the fucking words out of your mouth…

"C'mon, Bob," Dan says, his fingers stroking strange, encouraging circles on his wrists, brushing the fine red hairs the wrong way and somehow sending additional shivers through Bob's already overfuckingstimulated skin. "Words words words. Speaking with your mouth. Words words."

Easy for him to say.

Bob reins in the remains of his conscious thought and points every scrap of it at his lips. "Jesus fucking Christ Jepha put your fucking hand on my dick now."

"Attaboy," Dan says, right in his ear.

Then there's a hand on his dick and Dan's mouth is abrupt on his mouth and Bob's head is caving in. Caving in. Dan's weird, thin-lipped mouth is fucking amazing against his tongue, his, his, and Jepha's. Fuck.

Fuck. His tongue, Dan's tongue, Jepha's mouth on his balls, hand, hand on his dick.

The surge of sensation towards his crotch leaves his legs almost shaking, his skin indescribable… hot, cold, tingling, ready for something … his heart's thunder and the skies outside are either echoing or his heart's really really really fucking thunder, and Jepha's mouth on his, and his hand, and there's everything. Right here.

And right in the middle of all this, right here, he finds himself wondering hazily what Frank's doing right now; his brain helpfully supplies "jerking off" as a possibility and that mental image – Frank in hospital, furtively rubbing his dick under starched, bleached sheet – is what's lurking in his head as he comes.

His eyes shut automatically, so he doesn't get to see the rain of hot come falling onto his lower belly like wax from a waved candle, only feel it. Only hear Dan, slightly out of breath by his ear, saying with mock-reproach, "Jepha made a mess. Jepha, clean that up."

Bob gets his eyes open in time to see what causes the damp, warm tickling over the same spot; Jepha licking with the patience and enthusiasm of a dog at spilled beer, his hand still very slowly and almost distractedly working the remains of Bob's hard-on. Like he's forgotten to stop. It's going to start hurting in a minute.

"Look at that," Dan murmurs. Bob is looking. He's definitely looking. He's spaced out and spent and feels like could be poured into a bowl right now, but he still looking, because even in the post-orgasmic disgust Jepha licking anything looks pretty fucking hot. "Uh, talking about looking," Dan adds in a quite urgent tone. "Do you mind--?"

Bob shrugs, because at the moment he minds very, very little. Including the perpetual rain flinging itself against the windows out of any known rhythm, the fact that the kitchen roof is almost certainly leaking again, and that he's just pissed on most of his clothes. Oh well. He was probably meant to wash them soon anyhow.

Dan makes a relieved noise and before Bob's entirely sure what's happening, he's bunched up alone on the pillows and Jepha's bent double over the end of the bed with his face pushed hard into the mattress by Dan's hand. From what Bob can see of his expression, he's enjoying it in that specifically Jepha way that involves looking like he's been either drugged or clubbed around the head; he knows Jepha well enough to know just how much he's enjoying this.

Dan, on the other hand, after slipping a glimpse of his fucking whale cock or whatever it is he keeps in those preternaturally tight and low-slung pants of his into Bob's line of sight, is soon into the face-pulling vinegar strokes; Bob closes his eyes, embarrassed vaguely on Dan's behalf and still wallowing in the gooey finality of orgasm. His dick's kinda sticky. He should probably do something…

…Bob figures he must have fallen asleep for a minute there because the next thing he's aware of is the faintly aggressive cellphone renderings of "Never Gonna Give You Up" (because Mikey Rick-rolled his fucking phone last time they were together and Bob hasn't really gotten around to changing it back) drifting in from the living room; perhaps he's imagining the shrillness and insistence, perhaps he was only dreaming that he'd heard them going on for quite some time, but they sound urgent. He rolls off the bed and hops blindly through the detritus of his room with the practiced feet of a man who has been meaning to tidy up for more than a month now.

He catches the vague memory of Dan coming on Jepha's face and nearly falls over air in the corridor.

It's possible that the frustrated urgency of his phone is to do with who's calling him; Bob picks up the handset and stares dumbly at "FRANK" for a minute before actually answering it.

"Are you, is every okay?" he asks, because he can't think why in the hell else he'd be calling; nor can he currently remember what time it is back there (Frank's dad had been overbearingly insistent; the Iero family health insurance pays for Frank's injuries, so they decide which damn hospital he's recuperating in, and that means somewhere close to home. Home, as in Jersey, not fucking LA). "Did something happen?"

"Did you get my gift?" Frank asks. He sounds blurred and croaky and like he's being played at the wrong speed.

"I'm not getting you a gift for being retarded, Frank. I'm sorry you broke your ribs but I'm not—"

"I got you a gift, asshole," Frank says, peevish and painkiller-stoned. "Did you get it?"

"Nothing's here…" Bob feels confusion wrap itself around his already dumb post-coital brain.

"You totally fucking did get it, they texted me like ten minutes ago, don't lie."

Bob's head feels like it's slowly imploding into the space left by sex. "I didn't get any gift. How did you know … who texted … what?"

Frank sighs like Bob's the one being drugged-out and incomprehensible, and says, "They are the gift, you fucking … dumb … fuck."

"Oh." Bob takes a moment to digest this. He can hear the shower running, but he can also hear an argument breaking out somewhere outside the bathroom, which sounds like it's the kind of total nonsense-argument he's used to from touring, and not the kind of argument that requires Bob running back there to see if anything's about to get broken, but… "Oh. I. Okay."

"Say thank you." Frank pauses, breathy on the line, and adds in a much quieter voice, "Did you, you know?"

"What?"

"You know."

"What?"

"You know." There's a bang. "NO, IT'S A PRIVATE CALL. PRIVATE. LEAVE ME ALONE. THE DRESSING IS FINE. PLEASE. FUCK OFF—OKAY, I'M SORRY I CUSSED. JUST – GO."

"I don't know," Bob says, confused and slightly headachy. "I don't know what you're, did I what?" He wishes he'd at least thought to put on a t-shirt before answering the phone. He's getting cold, goosebumps making tiny pink mountains in his horrible pale skin, and as the happy sex-feeling drains out of him the naked, ahaha, naked truth returns to bug him; he's not happy with the way he looks. At all. Bob brushes sweaty and other-stuff-y ooze from the damp, flattened curls of his pubic hair and despairs internally.

"Pee on him," Frank says in an elaborate whisper, which is so disproportionately secretive and unFranklike that Bob actually starts laughing.

"I … yes?"

There's a silence. "Oh, okay. Good. I just."

"Are you okay?"

"You know what's great about morphine?" Frank asks, abruptly.

"Er, no?" Bob can think of a few things but they mostly aren't the sort of thing he can articulate, and the whole 'needing morphine in the first place' part of the experience made him really eager to never try it again.

"Nor do I." There's another silence, and Frank says, "Uh. Just so I know. So you know."

"What?" Bob's feet are starting to go blue. There are no socks in the living room, because the dogs have this tendency to chew holes in them and then he has to clean up dog barf when they discover that socks aren't food, and he has to clean it up fast because, well, dogs have this tendency to eat their own barf and then throw up again… "What?"

"I'm." Frank stops and there's another bang. "DIDN'T I TELL YOU TO FF----- NOT RIGHT NOW, NO."

"Frank."

"Just. It didn't mean anything, okay?"

Bob blinks at the scuff marks on the counterpane and tries to work out what Frank's just said, and what it actually means, and what he isn't saying, and wishes he was a girl. Maybe if he was a girl he'd understand what the crap is happening right now. Girls know how to read between the lines, he's been told.

"What?"

"It."

"FRANK." Bob holds his breath and counts to twenty as all the dogs' heads perk up to look at him quizzically before, slowly and in sequence, lying back down on the floor again. "I don't … what… the fuck are you …" he presses his free hand to his eye. "What are you talking about?"

"… I don't remember." Frank sounds like he really does remember, but Bob's cold and confused and he wants a shower and this phone call is too fucking weird and there's still a crazy-ass storm howling through the garden. "I have to go now. Don't pee on anyone."

"What?"

"I said goodbye."

"Okay." Bob's about to hit the end call button when Frank says, urgently:

"Bob!"

"What?"

There is another huge pause – there seem to be more pauses than words in this conversation, which is pretty weird for a talk that involves Frank in it anywhere, Bob guesses it must be the morphine slowing his brain down – and Frank says, deflating, "Nothing. See you."

"…bye?"

The line goes dead and Bob puts the phone down on the arm of the sofa. Instead of wandering back to the bedroom and finding some clothing he hasn't just peed on and maybe getting warm again, he sits gingerly on the sofa, his balls sticking to his thighs, and rests his face in his hands. There's something like a rat gnawing at his stomach and his throat feels too small and somewhere in his chest is a squeezing hand which reminds him a little of having broken something expensive while the owner was out of the room. He's clumsy. It happens.

"You dick," Jepha's voice floats down the corridor, framing Bob's mental state perfectly.

It's guilt, he realises as one of the dogs shuffles forward on her belly to lick his toes enquiringly. He reaches down and scratches her behind the ear, and she whines, thumping her tail on the floor in a half-wag. That squeezy feeling is unidentifiable, but the gnawing is definitely guilt.