Work Text:
Moping is not something Bob Bryar does very well. It's the kind of emotional act that really is an act - it needs an audience, and for now he's kind of grateful not to have one of those. What he does wonderfully and probably more often than is healthy is to hide, and hiding is what he is currently doing; holed up in an apartment in Chicago that's not really big enough for two, justifying his hermitude with the maximum I'm working very hard on learning studio sound.
Patrick is being kind, which is something else Bob's not very good with. He's being patient, and letting him fuck up occasionally, letting him sit in on every single nuance of recording and even sticking up for him when the head engineer blows his lid and rants himself purple about Bob's "infernal" presence.
This is because Patrick is nice.
Although Bob recalls from the last time they lived together that "nice" is occasionally cut with "an incredible temper"; he's aware that he's in the way. He's aware that he's not picking things up as fast as he might.
So he's theoretically studying, and in practice he's watching rain chasing more rain down the windowpane with a book on studio sound open on his knees and Penny chewing on his slipper; it's around now that the phone makes the sad brrp-meeeweeeeep noise it's doing instead of ringing at the moment (and okay he might have chosen that noise to reflect his mood), and keeps making it until he digs it out from under the dog.
It's Patrick.
Bob eyes the phone for a minute before he realises he should probably answer it and stop wondering why his roomate is calling him, and actually maybe find out. "'Lo?"
"Bobert," Patrick says, a little slurry, and Bob pokes himself in the chest at the acid-reflux feeling that accompanies the nickname. No. That's over with, that's done. His wrists aren't good enough for him to be Bobert any more. "Bobert, you home?"
"Yeah...?"
"You sober?"
"Um. Yeah?"
Patrick's voice gets a little more quiet and a little more urgent, "Oh god good thank god can you come get me I've had too much, beer and of these guys and be quick I am seriously going to kill someone in a minute."
Bob finds himself unexpectedly wanting to laugh. He doesn't. "Where are you? Studio?"
"Bar at the end of the block from the studio I am so going to choke that motherfucker--"
"Whoa, no you're not," Bob pushes Penny away from his slippers with one hand, already trying to remember where the keys to the jeep were and, for that matter, whose bay he'd ended up parking in. This is easy, though. This is useful Bob. This is Collect Drunk Friends Bob, this is Carry Heavy Shit Bob. He feels better about himself already.
All the way to the bar Bob keeps Patrick on the line, because Patrick insists that if he doesn't have an excuse to stand outside the bar on his phone he's going to have to go back inside to the temper-frayingly wretched conversation, and Bob sympathises and tucks the phone against his ear while Patrick swears at him.
And it's okay, because he's driven in slippers before, he just can't get out of the jeep when he gets there, and has to drive past calling for Patrick instead of hopping down and grabbing at his arm, which would - by the look on Patrick's face - probably have earned him a punch in the neck anyhow. And then it's not okay, because Patrick looks like he very much wants to punch someone in the neck most of the way home again.
"Are you--"
"Drive."
Bob drives.
"--what was the--"
"Just fucking drive, Bobert."
He parks in someone else's bay again. Patrick doesn't comment, and Bob thinks this might be to do with the way the little dude is concentrating on his breathing so hard that he looks like he's going to give himself a nosebleed.
"Is there anything--" Bob begins, and he's expecting to be cut off again, so when Patrick lean away from the apartment block door and doesn't interrupt him he kind of flounders for a bit, trying to remember what he was going to say. "--I can do?" he finishes, sounding a little dumb and a little confused. Which is great, because that's pretty much exactly how he feels.
They're half-way up the stairs (because the elevator is having some kind of industrial dispute with gravity and has been stuck up in the roof for three days, refusing to come down) when Patrick answers; Bob's behind him, a careful eye on his legs in case he trips and slithers. Concrete stairwells are kind to no one's skull.
"Got to get this mood out of my fucking head or I won't sleep," Patrick grumbles, although he already sounds less murderous.
"Okay," says Bob, who has a hunch that he might not be quite so ignorant about what that means as he'd like to think he is.
"Just... help take my mind off it," Patrick says, and in the rain-cast gloom of the landing in front of the apartment door, Bob can see the backs of his ears and his neck turning red.
Ah.
Okay.
"uh, sure," Bob says, the door swinging shut behind him. "I can do that."
Patrick stops in the middle of greeting a wagging and ecstatic Penny - anyone would think he'd been gone for a month instead of an evening and afternoon - and says in a deeper voice than he normally talks in, "Are you sure about that?"
"... stop being fucking weird," Bob says eventually.
"Okay but really, you don't have t-"
"I wouldn't have agreed if I didn't want to." Bob is surprised at the firmness of his voice, but he's learnt his lesson; Frank, Jepha, Dan, everything, everyone, the whole ugly mess that's ruined everything so far and contributed to this, to - to - to this state of not being the same Bobert Bryar Who Plays Drums any more ... he's learnt the hard way that unless he's sure what he wants or at least sure people know what he's thinking, things get fucking ugly.
"You don't even know what I..." Patrick stops again and closes one eye thoughtfully. "Bob." He doesn't sound as level as he probably wants to.
"Yeah?"
"So if I said get down and suck my dick, you'd-"
"Be sad that you didn't say please," Bob says, looking at the ceiling as if that will make his face stop being scarlet. No amount of self-realisation changes the fact that he has fair skin and apparently very delicate ears.
"Bob," Patrick says, crossly. "I don't feel like saying please."
Bob's knees are not in the best condition in the world. He's been unkind to them, and in the back of his mind he knows part of the neglect has been self-punishment for fucking up, for fucking up Russia and China and fucking up and fucking up everything that came after until there was no choice; one of them had to go. His knees are unhappy knees.
But Bob gets down onto them as fast as they'll let him go, and sits back on them, and looks up at Patrick, who is as red as a strawberry and smiling just a little. He has a beautiful mouth, which is disturbing and hot at the same time, and he looks almost the same shape as he did the last time they roomed; thinner than the promo photos and intense and focussed.
Bob thinks about the woe pounds his belly has attracted and hopes to any god listening that Patrick isn't going to make him take off his hoodie, never mind his sweater and his t-shirt.
The gods are on his side today, and instead of issuing any undressing orders, Patrick puts his hands on the sides of Bob's face and bends down to give him a short, abominably soft kiss. It's fucking insane; Bob knows it's been a while but he shouldn't get so fucking spongy on the inside just because someone kisses him.
Patrick holds Bob's chin with the fingers of one hand while unbuttoning his jeans with the other; he doesn't seem as drunk as he said he was, and Bob gets the feeling that he's done this, in this position, several times before. He does not quite succeed in killing the thought, with Pete Wentz; and wishes he could actively destroy the name from his memory. Pete Wentz and Pete Wentz's ridiculous bullshit have tripped up Bob's life without trying, more than once.
His dick is freckled. Bob tries not to laugh from sheer relief, this time. Well, that makes two of them, with their silly, freckly dicks and their silly orange pubic hair. And he's comfortable, suddenly, with where he is, his hands clasped behind his back and Patrick's fingers stroking the short rough hair on his cheek, Patrick's dick resting on his lips for a second before he opens his mouth.
He keeps sucking while Patrick yanks on his ears. Keeps sucking while Penny yips at something out of the window, barely registering the sound. He holds his hands firmly behind his back and loses his discomfort and concentrates on the sounds and the feeling; the weight of Patrick's dick on his tongue, the way his saliva is trickling out of the corners of his mouth, and Patrick's grip tightening on his face, Patrick's hips jerking toward his mouth.
When Patrick comes Bob's almost reluctant to stop. There's silence and certainty on his knees with his mouth full. As soon as he lets Patrick slip out of his mouth there's going to be discussion or embarrassment or worries; if he can just delay that a minute longer...
But Patrick puts a finger over Bob's teeth and pulls his jaw open, pulls his dick out, and says, "Thank you," as politely and about as passionately as if Bob had only driven him home, and Bob sits back on his legs, confused. "You're a good friend, Bob Bryar," Patrick adds, with a distant smile.
Bob finds himself smiling back.
A good friend.
Yeah, he can definitely live with that.