Notes: Written for strangecobwebs.
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Pete kissed Patrick seventy-two times before they ever really kissed.
Not that Patrick was counting or anything.
Kissing was just something Pete did, like talking, or breathing, or wrapping himself around people for no reason at all. Honestly, Patrick can't remember the first time it happened, because he feels like Pete has been kissing him since the moment they met.
He can remember the first time he kissed Pete, though. The first time it was real.
It was just after a show, and Pete had spent almost the whole last song pressed up against his back, face on Patrick's shoulder. As they were leaving the stage, Pete flung an arm around his waist and kissed him, hard and sweaty and full of performance energy. He went to pull back as they got out of view of the crowd, but Patrick didn't let him. He grabbed Pete's arm and slammed him against the wall, ignoring Andy's shout from behind them.
"I am so fucking sick of this," he said, right up against Pete's ear, hands tight on Pete's arms, holding him into the wall. "You do this," he nodded back towards the stage, towards the spot where Pete had kissed him, "like it's nothing. Like it's�" He gave up. Words were Pete's thing. He never had the right ones.
Instead, he leaned in and kissed Pete, slow and hard, tasting the sweat on the corners of his lips. Pete's hands came up, and for a second Patrick thought he was going to push him away, but instead his fingers slipped into Patrick's back pockets, pulling them tighter together.
Eventually they broke apart enough to breathe, and Patrick lowered his head to Pete's shoulder, not wanting to look at him. "It's not," Pete said quietly next to his ear.
"Not what?" Patrick asked against the fabric of Pete's shirt.
"Nothing. It's not nothing," he said, and Patrick kissed him for the second time.