Dry As Your Bloodshot Eyes
by imp

Dry As Your Bloodshot Eyes

imp

Summary

Sleepover endings and beginnings. While they were staying together, Pete burned a canvas and Travis decided to go to detox. This is a (fictional) story about that night/morning.

Notes

None

Chapter One

It wasn't that either of them had cabin fever. Pete was good at locking himself in his head, and there was plenty of room to get lost in there, anyway. Travis was good at finding things and people to get him out of his head.

Pete wasn't sure how much he liked being a human pill, but at least he wasn't illegal.

Friends called. They posted to blogs. It wasn't bad. Sleepovers had always been girl shit growing up, so Pete made a point of having them now as much as possible. And Travis was comforting, kind of, proof that you could walk around fucked up and people (people like Pete, but also people like Disashi, who called twice and texted constantly) would still love you.

"Yeah, fuck, it's not coming out right." Travis stabbed the tip of his brush against the canvas, smearing the paint. "Fucking creativity, fucking art. Why'd I go to art school, anyway?"

"You were high," Pete said lightly, kissing the top of Hemmy's head and handing him a rubber bone.

"Yeah, but that was nothing new." Travis kicked the canvas over, crashed on a beanbag chair. "Nothing new."

Pete nodded and curled up next to him. He'd been tentative to touch Travis the first few times, because he could seriously squash Pete like a bug and Pete wasn't really into getting beat up, but they'd long since passed the point where Pete felt fine with crawling all over Travis.

"Get over here," Travis said, and pulled Pete half on top of him.

"I didn't call my therapist," Pete said. "Patrick's gonna have a fit."

"Therapists don't help," Travis said, tracing circles on Pete's back. Pete wasn't sure if they felt bigger than they were, or if it was the other way around. It felt good either way.

"Yeah," he said. "I mean, maybe."

"Just because you swallowed a bunch of pills and haven't since then, it doesn't mean any-fucking-thing except you're doing better."

"And the shrink -"

"Fuck the fucking shrink, Pete, it's you."

"Okay," Pete said, and tucked his head into Travis's shoulder. What about you, he didn't say. "I want a goldfish. Think they can go on buses?"

They fell asleep with missed messages on both their phones.

||

It wasn't like Travis had never rejected help before.

Pete got the money part. He – maybe not really, because it wasn't like he'd ever been wanting. Shitty buses were awesome and authentic and all, but Mom and Dad had always been an (angst-filled) phone call away. He couldn't imagine doing it without that. But he got not wanting help, especially not from a friend whose album was making it big with fucking MTV and Rolling Stone.

But this wasn't money, and whatever else you could say about Pete, the odds of him not getting why Travis swallowed pills more often than food were pretty low.

Helping, though. He didn't know if he could do that, wasn't even sure where to start. "Stop it, fucker, you're scaring me" wasn't exactly the kind of motivation his shrink would approve of.

He disentangled himself from Travis a little past 4 AM. It was close enough to morning that he put coffee on before draping a blanket over Travis's eyes.

Turning on the light still made him twitch, though, so instead he flicked it off and pulled out his lighter, using it to see when he flipped the canvas over.

The colors were all smeared together; he could barely make them out in the shitty light. He wasn't even sure if paint had gotten on the carpet until he poked it. There were probably people to help rich people get shit off their floors, but he figured he could leave it, maybe; framed pictures of sleepovers would get him mocked, but stains were cool. He was a fucking rock star, stains were totally in.

Maybe he could keep the painting too, he thought, reaching out. It was painfully, stupidly typical that he did it with the hand holding the lighter.

The flame burned his finger and then jumped to the canvas, and fuck, paint was flammable. Of course it was, Pete thought, dropping the lighter in favor of staring. He should move, he knew he should move, but the flame spread over the canvas, eating the color and the cloth and then the wood, bits spreading to the pain on the carpet and then the carpet itself, and he just kept staring.

Travis was a light enough sleeper to wake up before the smoke alarm even went off. "What the fuck!" he yelled, reaching out and shoving Pete. Pete went flying, fell on his ass and kept going until he hit the kitchen island. Travis was beating the fire with the blanket Pete had covered him with, but it didn't do a bit of good, and Pete was reaching for his phone slowly when Travis wrapped the blanket around his hands and ran with the canvas over to the kitchen, jamming it in the sink.

It didn't fit. Pete was about to say something, but Travis turned on the water and grabbed the stupid little sink hose and yanked Pete up. "Put it out," he said, and went over and stomped the carpet, putting the last bit of fire out just as the smoke alarm started.

The paint had been mostly burned away. "Shit," Pete said, and concentrated on spraying the canvas. Bits of it fell into the sink, onto the marble countertop that Pete had always thought was pretty ugly.

"Useless fucking idiot," Travis said, moving behind Pete and closing his hand around the one on the spray nozzle. "The fuck were you trying to do?"

"See," Pete said. "I don't know. You're shaking, man."

"I wonder why," Travis said.

Pete winced. "Sorry."

"Yeah." Travis turned the water off, pulling Pete away from the counter and turning away. "You okay?"

His finger hurt like hell. He opened his mouth to tell Travis, and "Are you?" came out.

Travis patted his back. "I'm always okay. You're just an asshole," he said, but he sounded shaky.

"...I made coffee," Pete said finally. "I don't – I didn't want to wake you up."

"Nice job." Travis reached in his pocket and pulled out a pill bottle. "You could've killed us both, dipshit."

"I'm not the one who wants to go."

He winced as soon as he said it, because fuck, fuck, he said stupid things all the time but almost never like he meant them, like he was hoping for the person to get hurt. He could feel Patrick in the back of his brain, glaring at him.

"Nice job," Travis said again, barely audible over the smoke alarm's wailing.

Pete shook his head. "You know I didn't mean it."

"Liar." Travis put the pill bottle down.

Pete's eyes widened, but before he could say anything, Travis said, "Go turn the alarm off. I'm going to grab us food."

He didn't even own a ladder; in the end, it came down to standing on top of a chair and three bullshit coffee table books and hitting the alarm until it finally shut off. Travis came back awhile later with a frozen pizza.

"That's not breakfast," Pete said, setting two mugs of coffee on the floor in front of the couch.

"It's food, isn't it?" Travis said, and sat down next to him.

"You know I'm sorry, right?"

"Shut the fuck up," Travis said. He didn't sound mad, though, so Pete rested his head on Travis's shoulder and watched infomercials, waiting for the pizza to be done and the sun to come up.

||

The pizza was done and the infomercials giving way to Scooby Doo when Pete checked his feeds.

"...you could've told me," he said, skimming the entry.

Travis shrugged. "I liked having a couple hours where it wasn't true, I guess."

"You called - "

"Disashi? Yeah. Him and Eric'll be at the airport."

Pete nodded. His head hurt,like he could feel his brain hitting the inside of his skull. "I need water."

"Then get some."

Pete did, pouring the water he didn't drink into the sink, watching it splash around what was left of the canvas before going back out to the living room. Travis had his head buried in a pillow. "I don't want to get on the computer, do I," he mumbled when Pete sat on his legs.

That one was easy. "Fuck no. Roll over."

The hug was premeditated, and Pete took his time, stretching out over Travis's body and squeezing his arms and legs as tight as he could. The kiss, which happened about two seconds after Pete scratched his stubble over Travis's neck and Travis gasped, wasn't.

His head was spinning again and Travis's hands were pressing too hard against his back, but Pete kept kissing him anyway, shaking his head and trailing his lips down Travis's neck when Travis started squirming.

"I'll," he said, and stopped. He was ready to say all kinds of things, but forever promises never worked out well. "I'll do this when you get back, too, okay?"

Travis nodded slowly. His eyes were red and his lips were twisted in the same way they'd been the night he told Pete about his cousin dying. He wasn't crying, though, and this was about a beginning instead of an end; Pete stretched up awkwardly to kiss him, smiling a little and patting his shoulder before tugging at his shirt.

It took a few tries to get it off, mostly because Travis wiggled in the wrong direction and Pete fell off the couch. "You do it, then, asshole," Pete said from his spot on the floor.

Travis was throwing his gym shorts across the room when Pete stood up. It was a shock to be yanked down and stripped like some kind of fucking doll ("I hate these tiny-ass hoodies, man, you have no idea"), but then, Travis got laid a lot more than Pete did. "Naked," he said, straddling Travis's hips again. "Awesome."

Travis's smile didn't come as quickly as it should have. Pete knew he couldn't fix that, but he could make him smile again. He kissed his way down Travis's neck, stopping to lick his chest, grinning when Travis moaned. "I'm going to suck your dick," he said. "Just don't, you know, kick me in the head or anything."

"Fuck off," Travis said.

Pete scraped his teeth over Travis's hipbone. "No."

It was easy after that. He stroked Travis's thigh and sucked him as best as he could, keeping his eyes on the faces Travis made and the sounds he let through. Travis's hand at the back of his head was something he knew he was going to get used to; the steady stream of endearments that would sound stupid any time other than this was nice, too. He swallowed when Travis came, rested his head on Travis's thigh and waited.

The hand that tugged his hair did it just hard enough to make him wince. "Shit, sorry." Travis's voice was rough, like he'd been the one sucking cock. "Get up here."

Pete scooted up and Travis rolled until Pete's back was pressed against the couch. "You're – I don't even know. Shit, we could've been doing this all along."

"It's better now. I think," Pete said, but couldn't elaborate, because Travis was jerking him off and Pete couldn't get enough air to talk.

"This is such a good look for you, baby," Travis whispered, dragging his lips over Pete's ear. And seriously, baby, but Pete was shuddering anyway, clinging when Travis pushed him up a little further and kissed him hard.

It was easy to come after that, fingers digging into Travis's shoulders, whispering "Don't fucking go, don't you dare go."

He wasn't talking about detox, though, and they both knew it.

"Shh, okay. I won't. Are you like this every time you get laid?"

"Find out," he mumbled.

Travis pulled him close enough that he was touching more of Travis than the couch. "Alright."

||

Patrick was at the airport.

"Fuck you," he told Travis, but he stopped in the bathroom and went on his toes to kiss him.

"You knew I'd call, admit it," Travis said.

"Yeah." Pete hugged him. "Good luck and stuff."

Travis arched a brow. "Like I need luck," he said, and left the bathroom, letting Disashi walk with him to security.

Pete rocked back on his heels. "Hi."

Patrick shook his head, holding out an arm. Pete half-tripped his way back to the car, clinging.

"Think he'll be okay?" he said.

Patrick held out his hand. "Lighter."

Pete handed it and the small notebook he'd had for a week over. "You didn't answer."

"He'll be okay." Patrick opened the notebook, flipping through it. "You'll help him stay that way."

Patrick didn't object when Pete draped his legs over Patrick's own. "You'd know."

"I would."

It wasn't quite a smile on either of their faces, and the text Travis sent hours later wasn't quite cheerful. bandaid steps my man, it said.

"What the fuck is in your sink. Take it out," Patrick said.

Bandaid steps was right, Pete thought, and crossed his fingers for luck.