The Little Things, a bandom AU.

[claire_debonair]

Part One

Patrick shuts up shop on the twentieth of December, secure in the knowledge that preorders for Valentine’s Day will ensure no loss of profits if he takes a long break now. He and Pete go to see Brendon’s concert, which turns out to be spectacular, and they have a mildly worrying Moment where they both say ‘Ryan’s an idiot’ at the same time. Brendon helpfully interrupts what could potentially be awkward and make Patrick take things more seriously than he’s been led to believe they actually are, and they don’t talk about it.

 

He spends Christmas with his family, although Pete steals him for two days to meet the family Wentz, an experience Patrick isn’t likely to forget for many years. New Years comes and goes with no more than the requisite family gathering and a sloppy kiss on the cheek (mild, for Pete), as well as the mandatory resolution-making, ordered by his mother. 

 

By the time Patrick gets back into the swing of things at the shop, it’s halfway through January and he’s collected a new stray. Ryan’s best friend Spencer turns up one afternoon, looking half dead and so depressed that Patrick abandons his plans to make use of the quiet time to start a batch of new double-chocolate chip cookies, and instead pulls Spencer behind the counter and onto Pete’s stool.

 

They know each other peripherally, mainly because Spencer picks Ryan up from the shop when they both have an evening class. Ryan’s nearly always late, so they’ve chatted on and off since he started working there. Patrick knows Spencer likes the coffee creams, to he sets a box of failed ones by Spencer’s elbow and waits. It doesn’t take long; Patrick’s the sort of person you feel you can talk to.

 

“Ryan’s an idiot. Like, a colossal idiot,” Is how Spencer starts off, glaring down at a coffee cream so hard that Patrick’s surprised it doesn’t melt. “He’s been avoiding Brendon, and it’s making them both fucking miserable!”

 

“Ryan says he’s straight.”

 

“Well, he was. Then he met Brendon, and now he’s all emo and angsty and stupid. And not straight.” Spencer says it with such venom that Patrick realises there’s something else going on here. He rolls his eyes and pokes Spencer’s arm.

 

“Who’s straight, Spencer?”

 

Spencer sighs and lets his head drop forward. Consequently his voice is muffled, so Patrick has to strain to hear it. “Jonwalker.”

 

“Who?”

 

“Jon Walker, okay? He’s straight and older and so fucking hot it’s ridiculous.” Spencer, Patrick has noticed, tends not to use the verbal equivalent of commas – i.e. breathing – when he’s angry. And here’s where Patrick’s connections with the Chicago music scene still come in handy. He knows for a solid, set-in-stone fact that Jon Walker is not straight. He has the memories to prove it, although it’d probably be inappropriate to say that.

 

Patrick sends Spencer away with the rest of the failed coffee creams, makes a mental note to start setting some aside, if the way Spencer was eating them is any indication, and then makes a phone call. Jon, Patrick knows, is doing photography at the university, after deferring entry to go on tour with his friend’s band. Within ten minutes it’s Jon sitting in Pete’s stool, looking a little apprehensive as Patrick blocks the way out.

 

“Have you seen Spencer Smith around campus?” Patrick occasionally worries about how much Pete is affecting him, because before they met he was never this direct. Taking a leaf out of Pete’s book does have its advantages though. He catches Jon off-guard, the pinking of his cheeks clearly showing yes, he does know Spencer.

 

“What about him?” Jon strives for casual, but fails as badly as Ryan does at inflections. With that sort of opening, Patrick tells Jon exactly ‘what about’ Spencer Smith, and by the additional blushing and the way Jon ducks his head, Patrick feels relieved. He’d really taken a leap in to the dark with this; he had no idea whether Jon would even have heard of Spencer, let alone be so transparently interested, but apparently he’s good at this sort of thing. 

 

At the end of the week, and with Ryan back to only working at weekends and on Wednesday afternoons now that classes have started again in earnest, Patrick is too busy to wonder how things are progressing. This means he’s caught unawares when Spencer flies in to the shop, stopping only inches away from the counter and bracing his hands on it as he looks directly at Patrick.

 

“Either the universe hates me, or it loves me.”

 

“It loves you. How could the universe not love you, Spencer Smith,” pipes up Pete, feet swinging as he sits on his stool. He’s meant to be working out the details in a new band’s contract, but he’s more interested in annoying Patrick. This entails whispering filthy innuendo in Patrick’s ear as he tries to work, and generally being a nuisance.

 

“What’s going on?” asks Patrick mildy, swatting Pete’s hand as he reaches for a finished chocolate that’s meant for the window display.

 

“Tomrad – you know him, right, with the hair?” At Patrick’s nod Spencer continues. He’s learnt that nine times out of ten Patrick will know the older students he mentions, or someone who’s connected to them. “Well, he’s friends with Jon, and he volunteered me to be Jon’s model for a series of music-themed photographs.”

 

From this humble beginning stems a relationship that Ryan wearily describes as epically annoying, although Pete suspects that seeing Spencer and Jon so happy (at last, it took seven rolls of film for Jon to work up the courage to ask Spencer out) is helping Ryan make up his mind about the ongoing saga of his sexuality, and the problem of Brendon.

 

This theory of Pete’s is shredded when Ryan’s new girlfriend turns up one evening to walk to the dorms with him. She’s tall, pretty, obviously a dancer, and according to Pete, ‘stupidly wrong for Ryan’. Patrick has to agree. As the weeks progress and time moves closer to Valentine’s Day, Pete gets more and more irritated with Ryan. He looks utterly happy with the girl - Keltie - but it’s so fake that even Patrick starts to find it sickening.

 

He snaps at Ryan over some Valentine’s hearts that are actually perfect, and then makes him do a batch of love-heart cookies again because Ryan was talking about his Valentine’s plans with Keltie. Not that they amount to much, but it’s the principle of the thing. Brendon comes into the shop a few times, studiously avoiding saying anything other than the most excruciatingly polite phrases to Ryan.

 

How he found out, neither Pete nor Patrick have any idea, but Brendon knows that Ryan assumed his invitation to the concert was a date and not a friendly gesture, as much as Brendon would’ve liked it to be the former. He always looks carefully blank when talking to Ryan, and it’s driving Pete insane. How Pete can manage to spend so much time in the chocolate shop and still keep his job, Patrick isn’t sure, but he’s very glad it is apparently possible.

 

At some point they’ve become best friends, although Pete’s never stopped his frequent declarations of undying love for Patrick, or for regaling him with exactly what he’d like to do to Patrick in bed. Right now they’re watching Brendon turn his coat collar up as he leaves with a small box of candied ginger, after telling them with a shrug that no, there’s no one around for him to spend Valentine’s Day with.

 

“That’s fucking it.” Pete slams the pile of contracts down on the worksurface, narrowly missing Patrick’s latest cake (a pink monstrosity for a local rapper Patrick knows; what his boyfriend will think is a worrying thought) as he launches himself from behind the counter to stand in front of Ryan.

 

“I don’t fucking care if you’re ‘not sure’ about being gay, or bi, or whatever-the-fuck you might be, but if you don’t get your head out of your ass and see that Brendon’s worth a dozen of that chick you’re stringing along, then I don’t think you should be working here.” Patrick’s about to tell Pete off for making the assumption about how strong his own feelings are about all this, but stops himself.

 

Ryan opens his mouth, but no words issue. Pete nods decisively. “Tomorrow, I think you should make up your mind. Moron.” With that last, and apparently definitive word, Pete regains his seat and makes grabby hands for the almost empty bowl of ganache. Patrick hands it to him without looking, instead watching Ryan stand completely still in the centre of the shop. His hands are shaking slightly, but when he says goodnight his voice is clear and steady.

 

“Pete, what the fuck was that?” Pete’s forehead is furrowed in concentration when he looks up, a smear of ganache on his lower lip ruining the image of a hardworking executive. Not that Patrick would’ve believed it anyway, but still. Pete shrugs.

 

“Knocked some sense into him, hopefully.”

 

“You think?” Patrick agrees with Pete, actually, but he can’t help sounding disapproving. Pete sees through it anyway; he dabs a chocolaty finger on Patrick’s nose and grins at him.

 

”He needed it. They’re two of those people who should be together; you know it, I know it, hell, Spencer and Jon know it. The only one who doesn’t is Ryan, although if Brendon gets any better at denial there could be two people who don’t get it.”

 

“I know, I know, but did you have to be so mean about it. You scared the kid.” Patrick wrinkles his nose and reaches for a cloth to wipe the ganache off, but Pete grabs his collar, pulls him down and licks it off with one broad stroke of warm and wet tongue before Patrick can stop him. “Okay, ew. I said don’t ever do that again.”

 

Pete grins. “Aww, you know you love it.” He looks away, suddenly serious, eyes fixing on the tray of Valentine’s chocolates that Ryan had set out before he left. “I hope I did the right thing.” Patrick watches Pete’s face change from teasing to worried, and gently touches his shoulder.

 

“It’ll work out. It always does; it’s the shop.”

 

“Yeah, you’re right. This shop’s special.” Pete looks so much like a little boy when he says it that Patrick laughs, and they pack up together with smiles on their faces. Once again, it’s a Moment, and again they don’t talk about it. Patrick doesn’t take Pete any more seriously than he did at Christmas, even if he does notice Pete staring at him with a much more serious look in his eyes than the laughably lewd ones from all those months ago.

 

One of the things Patrick has noticed about Pete is that when he’s being serious about things, he’s actually very rarely wrong. This is borne out by Valentine’s Day, when the shop ends up being the meeting place for those people who don’t really want to do anything big, or don’t have anyone to do anything with. Spencer and Jon wander in just after two, and stand chatting to Patrick. It’s not that they’re not celebrating, but all their plans are for much later.

 

They stand holding hands, which makes Patrick smile when they collect two hot chocolates and sit talking quietly with their feet touching under the table. Now that’s one wedding Patrick would be happy to make the cake for.

 

Pete’s uncanny ability to push someone right when they need it scores big time with Ryan. When Brendon walks in at around three-thirty, Ryan looks up from where he’s just finishing serving some guy who forgot about the big day, grabs a small box wrapped in ornate ribbon, and makes a beeline for him. Brendon’s face starts to shift into blank when Ryan stops in front of him, but it quickly shifts to incredulous.

 

“See, what did I tell you?” whispers a jubilant Pete, hanging on to Patrick’s elbow. Patrick laughs and jabs him in the ribs, and then they both watch Ryan do some serious apologising. When they finish talking, Brendon nodding frantically, Pete runs out and drags them over to the counter. Between sharing the chocolates Ryan made specially for Brendon, they explain.

 

“We’re gonna try something-”

 

“Nothing serious, not yet, ‘cos Ryan’s not-”

 

'“Yeah, because I’m not good at this in general, so-”

 

“So it’s slow for now.” Yeah, that’s another wedding Patrick’ll be happy to do the cake for. Finishing each other’s sentences after only just being back on speaking terms is a giveaway, as is their body language. Somehow Patrick has ended up with a shop full of couples, most of whom he doesn’t know but is more than willing to put up with. He watches his four strays – well, three, because Jon was never really a stray – push two tables together and sit talking, and feels unbelievably glad that he chose the right shop.

 

He also owes Gerard some more chocolate.

 

It’s only later, when he’s clearing up, that Patrick feels a twinge of sadness that he hasn’t got anyone to share Valentine’s Day with. Then a voice makes him look up, and he sees Pete wiping down tables and stacking chairs, generally being helpful even though he doesn’t have to be here. Patrick looks down again quickly, and tries to concentrate on putting the last of the chocolates into the fridge.

 

When he looks up again Pete’s standing right in front of him, a soft look in his eyes. “Pete-”

 

Pete shakes his head and puts a finger over Patrick’s lips, stopping him from talking. He shakes his head gently, stepping closer. “Time to take me seriously, Patrick.” Their kiss is, inevitably, chocolaty, slightly bitter because Pete likes the dark stuff, but sweet because he likes the crystallised petals as well. Pete’s fingers deftly undo Patrick’s apron, pulling it out from between them to be flung over the counter.

 

When they break apart to breathe Pete rests his forehead against Patrick’s, sounding small and quiet again when he says, “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting?” Patrick lifts shaking fingers, slightly sticky from a day’s work, and traces the line of Pete’s jaw, his neck.

 

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry, I should’ve-” This time their kiss is pure heat, the only flavours those of themselves. Pete pulls back only far enough to put his hands on Patrick’s hips and starts tugging him towards the stairs that lead to Patrick’s little apartment above the shop, giving him short but dirty kisses as they slowly move.

 

“Come on,” says Pete softly against Patrick’s mouth, “Valentine’s Day isn’t over yet.”

 

It occurs to Patrick, as they wind their way up the stairs, that he can’t exactly cater at his own wedding. 

Comments

[kooku4u.livejournal.com]

awwww,
now i really wish i had some chocolate
♥ it

[ladyrogueevie.livejournal.com]

Thank you :) I craved chocolate after I finished writing it as well.

[kooku4u.livejournal.com]

haha i got a king size twix bar like an hour later