When Nick wakes up, he can feel the bus rumbling beneath him. With the curtain closed, he can almost believe that the guys are just a holler away. Then Andy says something to one of his friends, and the moment's gone.

He takes a second to think about the situation. So. Two more days on tour with people he doesn't so much fit in with, working on a record that, to be honest, may never get off the ground, no matter how stellar Patrick's producing talents are, because the label has A Point to Make. Let's not forget with a quickly developing crush on his producer, who is a really nice guy but who hasn't actually given any indication that he's queer, much less attracted to Nick.

"Wonderful," he groans. Sometimes he has really, really stupid ideas.

However, one thing Nick has learned over the years is that he can't avoid the consequences of his stupid ideas. So he peeks out to make sure the corridor's clear before pushing out of his bunk to face the day.

Mornings when the bus is still going, still moving towards their destination, can be excruciatingly boring. Patrick's not much for video games, and as much as he's tried to soundproof and stabilize everything, it affects the quality of his recordings if the studio and everything in it is moving. He could work on some beats, he's always got half a dozen or so on the backburner, never mind that he doesn't use them all and it's not as if there's ever a dearth of words from Pete that need to be reassembled into something resembling songs. But Nick's here, and something about the pre-show last night made Patrick feel as if Nick wasn't quite at ease around strangers or something. So, Patrick gets his shit together and ventures out into the bus proper.

Nick's up already, tucked into the same corner Patrick found him in yesterday. Andy and company are playing their current favourite video game, complete with swearing and energetic gesticulation that hasn't quite degenerated into violence yet. Nick's sort of an island of his own. He's staring out the window, maybe half-asleep, God only knows when the game woke him.

"Hey." Patrick greets him, sitting down next to him.

Nick looks over at him, his movements slow and heavy. He gives Patrick a small smile, his eyes at half mast. It's not cute at all, really. Nick stretches, moving from tiny ball to real boy for a moment before shrinking back in on himself, his feet now tucked under Patrick's thigh. "Mmm. Hey."

"Okay, is there like, the opposite version of that trick that I could learn?"

"Hmm?"

Patrick gestures at him. "Where you go all tiny like that. Is there a reverse?"

This wins him a laugh. "No, sorry. Otherwise I'm pretty sure Howie or Brian would have learned it."

"Damn." Patrick hasn't yet had his coffee, which is about the only excuse he can come up with for the next question. "So, how'd you learn it in the first place?"

For a moment, for just a second, fleeting enough that if Patrick wasn't looking right at Nick, he would have missed it, Nick goes completely rigid, like some sort of hard-shelled creature. The look on his face is dark and old. He hides it almost instantly, but Patrick knows what he saw. "Sometimes," Nick says in an even voice. "It was important that nobody notice me."

Joined the group at twelve, Patrick remembers. He finds himself hoping very hard that it wasn't a trick Nick had learned before that.

"We all had to learn to sleep just about anywhere, in the early days." Nick continues, grinning a little. "I have photographic evidence that Howie can sleep standing up."

"Neat trick. Pete's got me on video sleeping in a gutter. I have no memory of how I got there, of course."

"Maybe the same way candy used to find its way into Howie's ears, nose and mouth when he was sleeping?" Nick suggests, with a mildly evil grin.

Patrick, who has woken more than once to having his face decorated, (and has perhaps decorated a face or two himself in his time) laughs in agreement. "It's possible." And this is sort of a fun game, so he tries another question.

"Do you remember the first time you heard yourself on the radio?"

"Oh man, yeah!" Nick lights up. "Best feeling ever. And it's the same with every new record."

"Still?" Patrick had hoped he wouldn't get sick of that particular thrill, but it really hasn't been all that long since Sugar came out, even though it feels like a couple of lifetimes ago.

"Definitely. We did an official debut of the new single, actually at the radio station, all of us knowing it was going to be on... and it was still fucking awesome." At some point Patrick is going to be sick of Nick's smiles, but probably not until after this visit is over. "We were complete dorks. There was hugging, of course."

Patrick nods sagely. Of course there was.

It's not very helpful in terms of getting on with his album, but Nick is somewhat reassured that today is more of a "real tour" day. Most of the morning is spent on the road, watching the miles go by until Patrick gets up and starts playing "Do you remember?" Nick hasn't got Brian's awesome memory for dates, but that doesn't keep him from trading some good stories with Patrick. By unspoken agreement, they both avoid the real blackmail material about anyone else. It's one thing to let a friend know you're an idiot, it's another to rat out your bandmates.

This means that the answers to "the closest you've come to killing a bandmate" are skimpy on the details. It's still nice to know Nick's not the only teenager who came thisclose to murdering a bandmate, even if he suspects he had less reason than Patrick. Nick will admit he was sort of a brat. He's still sort of a brat, as he manages to prove by poking Patrick's thigh with his toes until Patrick swats at him. The fourteen-year-old from last night murmurs something about Patrick touching him for once but Nick squashes him pretty fast.

"Breakfast" is a quick stop roadside for muffins and such. Nick toys with the idea of getting postcards for the guys. When Patrick doesn't look at him as if that's the weirdest thing he's ever heard, he picks out four and buys stamps. He'll mail them at the airport if he can't find anywhere else.

When they finally hit the venue, the tour manager passes out the day's schedule and Patrick groans.

"What's up?"

"Interview. Radio."

Nick's heard a couple of Patrick's rants about interviews, radio deejays and public speaking in general. He has a feeling there are a few more he hasn't heard yet. "Take your guitar," he suggests. "They always love the 'exclusive' shit." Also, Patrick acoustic is a fun treat.

Patrick considers. "Couldn't hurt. I'll check with Pete."

Instead of getting off the bus and knocking on Pete's bus like a normal person, Patrick locates his cell phone and dashes off a text message. There's a message waiting from Pete already.

"You got made, dude." Patrick laughs and shows Nick.

It's a very blurry photo of the space between the barrier and the stage. If Nick wasn't pretty sure Fall Out Boy hadn't had any other guests on tour recently, he wouldn't have identified the tall blue shape as himself.

"Wow." Nick peers at it some more, before handing it back to Patrick. "Mad photography skills."

"According to Pete, the internet is going nuts. He's had fifteen questions about you already."

"Questions?"

"There's like a q&a on our official site. Pete answers a few every so often."

Nick reflects on the questions he's gotten from fans and reporters over the years and decides that Pete's even more nuts than he'd thought.

"Did you want to keep this quiet?"

Nick shrugs. "Nah. Everyone who needs to know already knows. The fans know I'm a rock guy, most of them won't think much of it. He can say what he wants, as long as he knows my guys will kick his ass if he steps outta line."

Patrick looks supremely unimpressed. Patrick has never seen Brian mad.

The radio interview is just Pete and Patrick, but Pete's delighted with the idea that Patrick can kill some time by singing, so the guitar comes along, as does Nick. He wears a different hoodie as well as a baseball cap and Marcus sets him up with a spare walkie-talkie, so at first glance it just looks like Pete and Patrick are a little over-cautious with their personal security. It turns out to be a good idea, as there's a studio audience just on the other side of the glass, fans who have won contests.

The actual interview is pretty boring. Same old questions. It almost makes Patrick want to schedule new studio time and start on another record, just so they have a new batch of questions... or at least a new batch of answers for the standard questions. Maybe they should take a look at the schedule.

"So Patrick, I see you've got your guitar with you. You going to play something for us?" the deejay invites him.

"Oh, uh yeah." He picks up the guitar, fidgets with it for a moment.

"Pete, no bass?"

"No dude," Pete demurs. "I have an acoustic around somewhere but getting it out on short notice is sort of a hassle. This is Patrick's thing. He sits around before the show with a guitar, and if he's in the right mood you can get him to play pretty much anything."

"You take requests?"

"I also do birthdays and weddings." Patrick quips. "I was just going to do a bit of our latest single, Me and You"

"Oh come on now, you wrote the whole long title, you gotta *say* it." The deejay teases.

"Hey, blame him." Patrick nods at Pete.

"Hey now!" Pete protests. "Besides, doing the single is boring, it's what everyone expects."

"It's also what the guitar is tuned for."

"Yeah but... do something fun, dude. Bust out the Akon or something."

"Wait. Fall Out Boy covering Akon?" Well, that answers whether or not this is one of the more informed deejays. "That's definitely... special."

"Yeah, we did a cover of Don't Matter on our last tour. "Pete explains. "And then Akon heard about it and covered The Takeover, the Break's Over. It was awesome."

Patrick swallows his opinion on how awesome or not the cover was, because the fact that Akon actually tried a Fall Out Boy track was pretty cool.

"Ok, now this I gotta hear."

Pete's grinning like the asshole he is and Patrick is well and truly cornered. "All right. A little."

"Do that medley thing," Pete suggests, pushing his luck.

"You know, it really is better promo if I play a song that we actually wrote." But he leaves his guitar against the desk and leans into the mic. Pete claps out the beat when he gets to the breakdown and moves into Ignition.

"Wow. Okay. that was Patrick Stump from Fall Out Boy covering Akon and R. Kelly, with Pete Wentz on percussion. You're a talented dude, there Pete."

Even though it's a joke, Pete's jaw tenses like it always does when he feels Patrick's talent is being overlooked. "Yeah, I do all the hard work. Patrick's just here to sit and look pretty."

They go into a commercial and the deejay explains they'll take fan questions next, do a wrap, and then there's a room where they can do a meet and greet. Patrick eyes his guitar. Not that he doesn't like meeting fans but...

Nick steps forward and goes about putting the guitar away. He mutters something about taking it back to the bus and disappears out of the studio.

"I didn't realize you'd brought a guitar tech with you as well." Pete says. "Diva!"

Patrick starts counting down the seconds until the interview's end.

After the fans are all safely gone, Marcus escorts Pete and Patrick out. Patrick wonders if there's some sort of rule that every radio station have at least one floor that's a total fucking maze. They round a corner and Pete nearly trips over Nick. He's sitting against the wall, eyes closed, cross-legged, with his iPod in his lap and noise-canceling headphones over his ears, Patrick's guitar case propped against the wall next to him. He's tapping out a beat and nodding his head.

Pete opens his mouth to cuss Nick out. Nick licks his lips, opens his mouth and starts singing, softly. It sounds weird, and it takes Patrick a moment to realize he's singing only parts of it. He exchanges a "what the fuck" look with Pete, and then Pete, never very patient for answers at the best of times, kicks Nick's thigh.

Nick startles and the iPod skids to the floor. "Ow!"

"Dude, what the fuck?"

Nick shoves the headphones down around his neck. "Shouldn't that be my line?" He rubs his thigh. "Seriously, Wentz, are those things steel-toed?"

"Uh, you are sitting in the middle of the hallway." Patrick points out. Not that he thinks Nick deserved it exactly, but really, what the fuck?

"Couldn't find a chair." Nick retrieves his iPod and climbs to his feet. "Back to the venue?"

"Yes, thank fuck. But answer the fucking question, Nicky."

Nick turns a Glare of Death on Pete, but already it's half-resigned. Either he's getting used to Pete much faster than most people or he's already got somebody who refuses to stop calling him Nicky. "What fucking question was that?"

"What. Were. You. Doing?"

"Oh. Just rehearsing. The guys would kick my ass if I didn't spend some time on the new songs while I'm here."

Marcus starts moving down the hall again and Patrick follows, hoping he's heading for the elevator. Nick grabs the guitar and catches up with him, slinging an arm around his shoulders. Pete takes Patrick's other side, sticking Patrick firmly in the middle of whatever "discussion" they're going to have.

"So you rehearse by doing what, karaoke?"

"I know the words already." Patrick can hear the patience in Nick's voice. "It's for the harmonies. Five... I mean four voices don't just fit together. You gotta work for it. Plus without Kevin we had to pick the setlist way early and re-do the arrangements. There's a lot of timing and shit going on. I gotta have that down before they throw blocking and choreography at me."

"Choreography." Pete is grinning, Patrick can tell without looking over at him.

"You expect us to what, stand in one spot for ninety minutes?" Nick says evenly. "Or maybe you want me to believe you don't go onstage with a plan of how you're gonna move, where you're gonna be for one song after another?"

"You take all the fun out of this, Nicky."

"You're just too easy, Wentz."

"Hey, can you teach Patrick that one dance, with the hats?" Marcus has found the elevator. Patrick leans against the wall. Just great. He was hoping Nick and Pete would learn to get along, but he'd forgotten that would probably mean teaming up against him.

"Nah, Patrick has moves all his own." Nick says, bumping Patrick with his hip. Or maybe it won't.

"Hey Patrick. You hear that? Nicky thinks you've got moves." Patrick checks his watch. It's about three hours since breakfast and only the first time today he's wanted to punch Pete in the head. So, a good day.

"Marcus? Hold Pete for me, will you?"

Lunch is followed by soundcheck, and it's after three o'clock that afternoon before Nick can finally get Patrick to himself. Patrick's got stuff set up in a room backstage this time, but before he opens GarageBand, he passes Nick a few sheets of paper. Nick blinks at the lyrics.

"Dude, when did you have time to come up with this?"

"Oh, y'know..." Patrick shrugs.

It's clearly a rough draft, but Patrick has taken Nick's aimless babbling about being out on the water and turned it into a song.

"Is there music, too?" He's not sure if he's being sarcastic, or whether he expects Patrick the magic time-manipulator to actually have something put together.

"I haven't put anything into the computer yet," Patrick says apologetically, but picks up his guitar and starts playing.

It's bare bones, of course, but if anyone had asked Nick what a rock power ballad about the ocean was going to sound like on an acoustic guitar, this was what he would have tried to describe. The verses are driving and repetitive, the boat rocking beneath his feet on a rough day, the power and age of the sea just barely leashed. The chorus is hushed, reverent, the peace and safety of his sanctuary away from people, washed clean. The bridge needs more instrumentation, but Patrick's voice rising high and triumphant has Nick mentally filling in his own voice, putting his own twist on it.

"Seriously, how are you real?" Nick demands when Patrick's done. He just manages to bite back on the "And can I keep you?" that threatens to get out.

Patrick looks at him as if he's the one pulling things out of thin air. "What are you talking about? I wrote a song, it's not like you don't do it too."

"Okay, that's it. I'm kidnapping you, you can come on the road with us, where you'll be properly appreciated. You write the songs, I'll arrange the harmonies, we'll take over the world."

"Fuck that." Oops. Nick turns to see Pete scowling at him from the doorway, arms folded across his chest. He's not quite as intimidating as Brian, but clearly Pissed Off. "Patrick's already taking over the world." The "with me" is left to hang unsaid between them.

"Pete..." is all Patrick can come up with as a protest. Pete moves further into the room, aiming for Nick.

"How come he doesn't get that he's a complete musical genius?" If Nick's going to get into a fight, he may as well try to get his point across in the process.

"He's a moron that way." Pete glances fondly at Patrick. "It's part of his charm. Which you clearly don't understand, Nicky."

"You know, I'm right here."

Nick considers Patrick's irritated expression. "So like, telling him at least once a day?"

"Doesn't work." Pete relaxes a little, his arms coming down. "I tried once an hour, dude tried to break my jaw."

"Right here." Patrick reiterates. "Also, you totally deserved it, you were being an asshole."

"All right, well if you're actually treating him right, I guess you can keep him."

"Yeah, thanks asshole." Pete shoves at him a little, but it's half-hearted and Nick lets it go.

"Pete, was there something you wanted?"

"My Patty-sense was telling me you were singing." Patrick's Death Glare makes Nick want to hit the deck. "Okay, okay. I just... was looking for you?"

And that's Nick's cue to be somewhere else. He folds the lyrics and slips them into his jeans. "I'm going to go find Marcus."

"You sure, man?" Pete actually looks grateful, which is stupid. Jokes aside, Nick's not coming between Patrick and his bandmates. There are rules about that sort of shit.

"Yeah, yeah. Find me later, Patrick."

As he slips out the door, he hears Pete saying to Patrick, "Okay, you can keep him, I guess."

Nick finds Marcus "supervising" a video game tournament in the Plain White T's dressing room. He's welcomed with enthusiasm as "fresh blood" and invited to take his turn. It's a racing game, one Nick hasn't played in a while and Darren totally demolishes him. It's another familiar moment... until he passes off his controller and someone tries to pass him a beer in return.

The alarm bells are going off in his head, screaming "Wrong, wrong, wrong!" and he doesn't even realize he's frozen in place until Marcus lays a heavy hand on his shoulder and removes the beer from his line of sight. Nick sort of stumbles over to a convenient chair and sits down hard.

He looks around and sees the beer cans he'd been ignoring, scattered here and there around the room. He guesses he's lucky that there's no alcohol on Patrick's bus, that Fall Out Boy don't indulge the way some of their tourmates do. This is totally not his world. Patrick's great, and everyone's nice enough, but Nick will never fit in here.

"Hey, are you okay?" Nick looks up to see Andy in front of him, looking concerned. "You look like you need some air." He says decisively. "Come on."

It's an out and Nick is glad to take it. He trails after Andy, out the door to the hall, which does seem larger and brighter and... wow. Okay maybe Nick had been more shook up than he'd thought. He leans against the wall for a minute, Andy watching him patiently.

"I'm pretty much as straight-edge as they come and I don't react to a beer like that." Andy tells him. "Do you need to make a phone call?"

A phone call? Nick looks at him for a moment before realizing what he means. "Oh. No, man. I'm not in AA. I just... this is weird for me, being on tour with you guys. It's normal but not, like some bizarre alternate dimension."

"Yeah?" Andy picks a direction and they start walking.

"It's not like I don't have a beer sometimes." Nick tries to explain. "I mean, I don't drink much these days, but I used to. Alcohol with dinner, or at a party is fine, whatever. I can go to a bar or a club and not freak out."

"Mmm." Is all Andy says, but it's a listening sound, not a judging one, so it's enough.

"I didn't even know I'd react like that to someone having a beer backstage." Nick draws a breath, calming himself down a little more. "It's just... it doesn't happen with us."

"Doesn't fit with the squeaky clean image?" Andy teases.

"Probably in the beginning, that was it." Nick shoves his hands in his pockets, not looking at Andy, trying not to remember the other bad stuff from before. "They kept a pretty close eye on us, and we were all underage when we started out. In Europe, Howie and Kevin could drink after a show, but there wasn't beer backstage. Nobody ever went onstage drunk." The next bit is maybe more than he should be telling someone outside the band, but he sort of feels like he has to get it out, that the fact that Andy is a stranger who wasn't in the middle of it is one of the reasons he can say it. "It was the last rule AJ broke. Never go onstage messed up. He tried so hard to hide it around us, even though we could tell he was messed up. First he was performing hungover, then just barely sober... and then alert enough to perform because he'd taken something that messed him up just as much as the booze."

"That must have been pretty hard."

"It nearly broke us up." What Nick won't, can't say to anyone outside the band, is how terrified he was as things spiralled down, as AJ went into rehab and it seemed as if nothing would ever be right again. What life has drummed into him over and over again is that he cannot survive without the Boys in his life. As long as they are a unit (and even with Kevin not in the studio or onstage, he's still a part of them) he can go on with his life, sure things will be all right eventually. "I guess seeing it backstage... I know for these guys it's a normal part of being in a band, but to me it just means that bad shit is about to go down." He laughs a little. "God, I sound like a wimp."

"Staying away from stuff that can mess you up doesn't make you a wimp, man." Andy says. "It makes you smart. Stick to our dressing room, there's rarely booze in there."

"Yeah, maybe I will."

They walk in silence for a while, until Nick has pretty much pulled himself together. "Hey, Andy?"

"Yeah?"

"That was a kick-ass drum solo last night."

Andy grins. "Thanks."

"Would you mind showing me some stuff?" Nick feels like a kid asking a sports hero for pointers, but hey, drums are drums and he has questions. "Patrick and I were writing, but Pete needed a minute and..."

"You play?" Andy looks at him like he's unpgrading Nick's worth from "person" to "drummer". "Oh right, you said yesterday. I keep forgetting you do stuff besides sing and dance."

He says it without malice, so Nick lets it slide. "Played drums before I started with BSB. I'm not on your level, but I still know my way around a kit."

"Sure, let's go mess around a little. Got something in mind?"

Patrick comes looking for Nick, only to be backed into a corner by Andy and lectured on taking care of his guest. He doesn't say what exactly happened, just, "It's weird for him, being on tour without his guys. You're the only one he really knows around here. Just... keep a closer eye on him, okay? He's a good kid."

Patrick stammers out an agreement, refraining from pointing out that Nick is actually older than Andy. He is pointed towards their dressing room, where Nick is sprawled on a couch, drinking Coke and singing along with his iPod again.

Nick looks relieved to see him, and even pulls Patrick into a one-armed hug before they head back to the makeshift studio.

By this point, Patrick can definitively say that Nick is a clingy bastard. Worse than Pete, except Pete's clingy comes with bonus kissing. After that first moment on the bus when Nick had slung a friendly arm around his shoulders, it seems as if Nick forgot how to breathe without being in Patrick's space. When Patrick is standing up he becomes the recipient of an endless amount of quick hugs, pats to the shoulder, or on the head (although Nick learned quickly than anything other than his chin on top of Patrick's hat was off-limits). If he's sitting there's a head on his shoulder, or feet tucked under his thigh, or, if Nick's on the ground, he'll lean back against Patrick's legs. Patrick gets the impression that if he didn't have his laptop in his lap 98% of the time, Nick would have filled the empty space with his head.

And while Patrick has no qualms in telling Pete to get off him when he's being overly obnoxious, anytime Patrick shies away from Nick he shrinks back like a kicked puppy. Pete's kicked-puppy look, he's immune to. Sort of. But this is whole new levels of quiet, scrunched-up, "I'm sorry, don't hit me". So Patrick gives in.

It's not quite as intimate as cuddling with Pete, Nick hasn't taken to napping on him, or sitting on him, and occasionally there's a whole inch between their thighs when they sit next to each other, but it is constant. And after the first couple of hours, Patrick kinda of warms to it. Nick isn't anywhere near as bony as Pete, to start with. He's warm and cuddly and Patrick knows from personal experience that those can be really horrible adjectives, but they're true, dammit.

And when Nick falls asleep on Patrick's bed that night, about two hours into their post-show collaborative session, Patrick (when he looks up from his laptop and realizes what's going on) doesn't really think twice about curling up next to him.

The sun streaming through the window wakes Nick up, and for a moment he's disoriented, if immensely comfortable, trying to reconcile the motion of the bus with the sun in his eyes. He's lying in a bed, curled around the warm weight of Patrick's body. He has a vague recollection of kicking off his jeans in the middle of the night and sliding under the covers. Apparently he didn't manage to have enough caffeine pre-show to stay awake for Patrick. He's not complaining about the results, though.

Patrick's still wearing his hat, or was when he got into bed. It's half off, enough to hint at the bald spot Patrick had confessed to one night. Cuddled against Nick's body he's about the cutest thing Nick's ever seen. Nick's tempted to touch the fine, soft hair that's suddenly on display, but contents himself with stroking Patrick's back and snuggling in closer. Patrick's got a great body for snuggling, nice and solid, no bony shoulders or pointy elbows. He smells good too, hints of musk and sweat from the show the night before, enough to get Nick from mildly aroused to comfortably horny.

But as much as Nick would love a morning make-out session, he's still not sure Patrick's up for something like that. Nick may have lost some weight but he's no one's definition of a little guy. Patrick probably just decided it was easier to let him be than to try and drag his sleep-heavy body out to his bunk. It's not like Patrick hasn't had to sleep in close quarters with other guys before, and he doesn't trust Nick enough to go to sleep with his hat off, which says something right there.

So Nick closes his eyes and feigns sleep, listening to Patrick breathe and savoring the moment.

Patrick wakes up from a really nice dream to find that reality is almost as nice. He's not surprised that Nick's a cuddler in bed - he's a cuddler out of bed, after all. He has about two seconds to appreciate the feeling of being surrounded by a warm, firm body, and then Nick's eyes blink open. Patrick is still in that half-asleep mode where nothing seems entirely real, and maybe that's how he sees, or imagines he sees, the flash of dark, hot appreciation in Nick's eyes. Possibly some part of his subconscious remembers that Nick's leaving tonight and there won't be another moment like this for a while, but whatever the reason, Patrick's instincts lead him to lean forward and close the gap between them, pressing his lips to Nick's in a chaste "good morning" kiss.

Nick's arm tightens across Patrick's back and his other hand comes around to cradle the back of Patrick's head, holding him in place while Nick returns the favour. His lips are dry and a little chapped, but Patrick honestly couldn't care less. His body is humming with the realization that this is really happening, that Nick is kissing him hot and slow and dirty and Patrick's cold streak looks to be ending really soon. It's possible that he makes some sort of noise to express his appreciation of that fact.

Patrick breaks away to breathe, flopping back against the pillow, some part of him making a mental note to ask Nick about breath control techniques, since Nick clearly has him beat in that area.

"Patrick," is all Nick says, but he says it with a growl of satisfaction that is really not helping Patrick's hard-on at all. Patrick decides to rectify this by pushing at Nick's shoulder and climbing on top of him.

Patrick's hat is hanging at a crazy angle and getting in his eyes. He shoves it off and dives back in for another taste of Nick's mouth. They rock against each other, seeking contact more than release. It's hot and lazy and Patrick could go on like this forever. When Nick's fingers eventually find the waistband of Patrick's boxers, he has a moment of regret that they're moving on before common sense kicks in and he starts helping. Once they're both naked from the waist down, the feel of skin on skin isn't something Patrick would give up for the world.

Nick comes first, nearly throwing Patrick off as he arches against him, making a high keening noise in this throat. Patrick thrusts down against him almost in self defense and the warm wetness between them is enough to set him off, biting down on Nick's shoulder as he comes.

When Patrick can function again, Nick is looking very proud of himself. "'Morning," he says lazily. "Sleep well?"

Patrick snorts at him. "No, asshole. Someone was hogging my bed."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Nick replies, not sounding sorry in the least.



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