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The music sucked.
That was one of the only things of which Patrick was sure. He didn’t know where the music was coming from. He didn’t know the song, the artist, or even the genre. The composition was like nothing he’d ever heard, as if an attempt at blues had been screened through EDM with pops of baroque influences here and there. It tasted like the colors only shrimps could see: muddled, oversaturated layers of brown.
Although he wasn't a fan, the song soothed his body in the same way an opioid might, soft and relentless but tinged with the risk of a violent pain in the future.
The ropes binding him to the ornate wooden chair hugged his upper arms. He had been the first at the table—that he remembered. He didn't remember why they'd been tied up. It had something to do with the women roaming the cramped, hazy room, he was sure. A sinister energy radiated from underneath their high ponytails, winged eyeliner, and blood-soaked animal masks.
A harsh glint from the candelabra rebounded into Patrick's eyes. The sting bounced from his eyes to his chest, where the rope burn congregated, and settled in his left hand. He inched down the cuff of his leather jacket to inspect his hand, only to discover that his hand was gone. The sleeve it used to occupy was filled with a sticky, maroon rag that Patrick had no urge to look under. Despite its nonexistent source, the pain surged like vomit in the back of his throat.
A woman with perfect bangs offered him another sip of wine, and the pain slid back out.
Patrick decided this was a very, very weird dream.
Dreams couldn't usually replicate the film of sweat that rested on Patrick's skin, or the buzz of his heart beating a touch too fast, or the lightheaded yearning creeping into his fuzzy mind. Despite the fear, confusion, and being tied up at a table of rancid scrap meat surrounded by his blindfolded bandmates, Patrick was hungry.
The song shifted into something smoother, with a janky beat he couldn't help but nod along to. A saxophone sample he couldn't place (though it was on the tip of his tongue) swept across his skin like the steam you exhale in winter. His hand stopped hurting completely. The haze veiling the corners of the room turned rosy, and the flames of the candles on the table flickered in a five-second loop along to the beat.
The ropes slipped from his arms and piled onto the floor like a nest of serpents. The air shifted, the smell of it no longer musty concrete but sweat and evergreen needles. There was a disco ball above him now. He felt hollow. He had a vague sense of what could tackle the hunger.
If this was a whacked out drug fantasy, he might as well have fun.
Walking over on his newly freed legs, Patrick loosened the knot of Andy's blindfold.
Andy flinched back. "Who's there?"
"Just me, dude," Patrick said and swiped the blindfold off.
"Oh, hey," Andy said.
His pupils were barely noticeable, pinpricks in the vast expanse of iris. As the red-tinted light fell upon him, his eyes dilated. Patrick watched the blackness expand and overtake the periwinkle, push it to the edges, until both eyes were monotone like an old cartoon.
“Hey, Andy?” Patrick said.
“What’s up?” Andy asked.
“Do you want to have sex?” Patrick asked, well aware that he sounded robotic.
Andy blinked, one eye at a time. "Pardon?"
“I don't think any of this is real,” Patrick rushed to explain, “or real enough to have consequences. Might as well do some weird shit, right? When in Rome?”
"I think I'm real," Andy said. His mustache quirked to the side with his smile. “And I'm down either way.”
“Oh.” That took a lot less convincing than Patrick would have thought. “So…do we—”
Andy backed his chair away from the table. The resulting rumble of heavy furniture on concrete vibrated through the soles of Patrick's tennis shoes into his legs, which had locked in place as he realized what he was asking. What he had just risked. He wiped the sweat from his face, and his palm came back speckled with bright yellow powder. Strange. It had tasted purple going in.
At least the words were out, And he'd said yes. God, if only Patrick had the balls to do that in real life. Maybe they could have spent the hiatus together instead of in cities hours away by plane. When the world of twitter threatened to break through his phone screen and into his house, Patrick could have tossed the phone on his nightstand and dived down Andy's throat. Maybe if Patrick had showed up to one of The Damned Things shows. Or knocked on his hotel room. Or hung back on the bus with him when Pete and Joe were out partying or discussing the role of Fall Out Boy entering the 2010s. Or crashed into him in the crowd after any of their first shows as openers in cramped venues.
The odd notion that the proposition had been building over the past decade washed over Patrick, he watched it flow away from him like a foamy wave. The drama of Real-Patrick and Real-Andy didn't matter. So what if Patrick had a thing for him? Right now it was just the dream versions of Patrick and Andy at the dinner table, and Joe and Pete still blindfolded, and a fray of cultish women swarming the room.
Andy patted his lap.
“Here?” Patrick asked.
“Unless you had an exit plan in mind?” Andy asked. At the e-word, one of the women craned her neck to watch.
Patrick tore his eyes from the empty sockets of the sheep mask. “Not really,” he said. “I just—”
“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Andy said, which was frankly mortifying, given he wasn’t even the one who had initiated. It was time for Patrick to own the situation for once in his life.
Without another floundering word, he arched his leg up and over Andy’s lap, then plopped down in a very unsexy manner. To remedy the situation, he whipped his jacket and shirt off.
When he’d first come out publicly in 2008, only a few months on T, he’d taken to masculinity like a turtle to water. He needed it. He wore suit after suit, cropped his hair short, shoved contacts in his eyes every day because one time some guy at a show had claimed he looked more feminine with glasses. If he was going to fight to be a man in the public eye after being the emo scene's darling female vocalist for so long, he was going to be the manliest man possible, dammit. Or else what was he causing all this commotion for?
Then the hiatus dragged on, and, little by little, the public's perception stopped mattering to Patrick.
He shifted his hips over the crotch of Andy’s jeans, slowly convincing himself to unclench. The only authorities here wore dead animal faces. He didn't much care what they had to say about his gender expression.
"You can touch me, you know," Patrick said. "I'll let you know if I don't like something."
"I can't," Andy said.
Patrick stopped all attempts at motion. "Are you, uh, not into this?"
"I physically can't," Andy said.
They both looked down at the ropes still wrapped around Andy's chest.
"Yours didn't fall off?" Patrick asked.
"Do ropes usually do that?"
"God."
Patrick leaned forward to reach around the back of the chair, feeling for the edges of the rope. His chest brushed against Andy's nylon jacket, a shiver breezed across his skin. Or maybe that was the breath Andy let out, face to face with Patrick's collarbones.
"Sorry," Andy said.
"It's just fat," Patrick said.
Did he want all the surgeries fame could afford him? Yes. But did that mean he would quarantine the mismatched parts of his body until they were corrected? Hell no. Especially in this magical dreamscape, where his hot, burly friend was straining at the ropes around his thick biceps to get his hands on Patrick.
A woman in a wolf mask bearing a boxcutter slipped behind Andy and severed the ropes, which shriveled off him like dead vines.
"Thank you," Patrick said.
The wolf-faced woman rubbed her thumb against Patrick's jaw. She remained mute as she wandered back to the outskirts of the warehouse, just visible against the walls and fog, pocketing the knife in her skintight leather pants.
Andy's hand pressed into his chest, then started gently kneading. Definitely a positive sign.
Patrick tipped his hips forward, angling his dick for maximum friction. “Have you even been with someone like me?” he asked.
“I don't think there's anyone quite like you,” Andy said.
“I mean a trans guy,” Patrick said.
“Oh, yeah.” Andy kissed the front of his neck, featherlight. “Not yet.”
“I’ll let you know what to do,” Patrick said.
Andy’s tongue slipped against the bottom of his Adam’s apple. “Yes, sir.”
Patrick opened his mouth to tell him to quit joking around, but the increasing pressure of Andy's jeans against his convinced him to shut his mouth. Jesus, god bless magical dream projections. The sampled saxophone was twisting into a synth, and the bass was deep enough to feel across the streams of air as brilliant streaks of violet. Andy's thighs pressed into the back of Patrick's knees and forced his stance to widen. Something was happening at the other end of the table with the wine, the animal women, and the other half of Fall Out Boy, but the hunger festering in Patrick's guts took his full attention.
"I'd like to suck you off," Patrick said.
"Sounds—" Andy cleared his throat. "Sounds great. Yeah."
"Be a good soldier for me and take off those pants," Patrick said, then stood.
The enthusiasm and speed at which Andy obeyed Patrick lay somewhere between flattering and concerning. Patrick settled on humorous, given that Andy nearly knocked the chair over. But any risk of laughter fled his throat as Andy unzipped his pants.
Patrick's knees pressed into the concrete floor. His lips ran along Andy's dick, thankful that this was a dream. In dreams, you never had to hesitate for fear of looking desperate.
"Jesus." Andy palmed Patrick's head.
"Not too hard," Patrick freed his mouth to say. One of the less attractive effects of T—the risk of male pattern baldness was already rearing its ugly head.
"Sorry," Andy said, and moved his hand to the back of Patrick's neck. "Better?"
Patrick answered by filling his mouth with Andy again. His tongue grew slippery with spit, similar to how it did when he was hungry. Which he still was, more than before, now that he knew what he was hungry for. His stomach's growls echoed in the cavern of his insides, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd consumed something not in powder or liquid form.
He wasn't sure if he was doing it right. Touring as the only "woman" in a scene full of greasy-haired douchebags didn't give him a lot of decent options for practice. And Andy wasn't exactly an easy start.
His teeth fell shut on instinct, and Andy squeaked. Patrick moved back to say oh god I'm so sorry, but before he could, the hand petting the back of his neck encouraged him forward.
"All good," Andy said, accepting an apology that hadn't even left Patrick's lips.
Still, he offered his tongue and throat up with closed eyes, and the hums coming from above him were enough to send him reaching for the zipper of his own pants. Thank god it wasn't his dominant hand that was chopped off. He wouldn't be able to play guitar again, but at least he could run his fingers down the grooves of his dick, then lower, then inside him. And as his legs crept apart, he could transfer a ghost of the hot weight in his mouth to his insides.
“Holy shit,” Joe said. “You’re fucking hung, Andy.”
“You didn’t know that?” Pete asked.
“No?” Joe turned to squint at Pete. “You did?”
Patrick shut his eyes tighter and focused on the sounds of Andy panting, the sensation of his sweaty hand on the back of his neck, the sliding green and aquamarine diminished chords around him.
“We lived in a van together for years, and you never saw his dick?”
“I didn’t, like, stare. Did you?”
“I like to think of myself as more observant."
Jesus Christ. Patrick slid off. “Can you two find something else to do?”
“Aw,” Pete tilted his head onto his fists, very much freed from his ropes. “You gettin’ performance anxiety?”
Patrick scowled at him. “The Statler and Waldorf commentary is a little distracting.”
“Buzzkill.” Pete elbowed Joe in the gut. “You wanna fuck?”
It took a moment for Joe to face Pete, as though the sound of his question had been delayed by a few seconds. “Dude," he said. One of his pupils was twice the size of the other. "I am way too high for that right now.”
“Fair enough," Pete said. “What about you?” He directed the question to the nearest woman, with long brown hair and a leather harness with enough straps to make Patrick's mind hurt.
“Dude,” Joe said again, reaffirming his intoxication. “That’s a cow lady.”
“She’s not an actual cow," Pete protested.
Andy tucked his hand around Patrick's jaw, guiding his eyes back. “Ignore those idiots.” In the looping candlelight, the lines of his face warmed. His cheeks filled with the pinks and reds of the fog, which only darkened his tattoos over his neck.
“Is this weird for you?” Patrick asked. His hand took up stroking Andy, absentmindedly. “This should be weird, right?”
"Not weirder than any of my other dreams about you," Andy said.
Oh? "Dream about me a lot?"
"Not, like, all the time."
Patrick removed his hand and raised his eyebrow. The red in Andy's face was most certainly not from the drugs alone.
"All the time," Andy said. "Most nights on tour."
Even when he'd been a lesbian, Patrick had wanted to ride Andy. Which had been more than confusing. He'd reasoned it out with Andy's then-long hair. But he knew he didn't have a chance with Andy, as just one more soft-spoken nerd in the scene. When he'd figured out he was trans, the chance dropped to nonexistent. The idea that Andy would be not only be gay but open to getting with a guy he'd seen in shirts without bras on particularly hot Warped days was laughable. Patrick put it out of his head. But apparently his subconscious held onto that desire. That crush. That whatever.
This was going to be a fantastic dream.
“I just like the way your hair curls at the ends, and how you stick your lip out when you frown,” Andy said. “I didn’t tell you earlier because you had enough people trying to sleep with you.”
Oh, sure. Dream logic: everyone in the scene wanted to crack the short, chubby trans guy. Or maybe he was referencing the Warped days, when Patrick had been a short, chubby lesbian who people only propositioned as a prank.
"Do you say that to every guy with D-cups?" Patrick asked.
"I'm saying it to you, Patrick. I can't imagine anyone else I'd rather be here with."
Patrick should have asked more questions. He should have soaked up every complement Dream-Andy was willing to throw him.
Instead, Patrick rolled off his bloody, greasy jeans all the way and straddled Andy, reprising their earlier position. This time without any barriers. Breezy pleasure rushed over him as the smooth skin on Andy’s inner thigh kissed his own smooth, damp skin. He felt himself open a little more at the contact. Like his body was anticipating it as much as he was.
“I haven’t done this in a while,” Patrick warned.
“Me neither,” Andy said.
“I mean specifically bottoming like this,” Patrick said. “Front side.”
“Oh,” Andy said. “Definitely me neither.”
Patrick wasted a few seconds rolling his eyes before taking hold of Andy’s dick and guiding it inside.
His knees buckled. He hadn't done this since he'd come out. Just the thought of it used to give him dysphoria, make him feel coated in cold, rank sweat. Two years ago, he would have rather gone celibate than let a dick inside him. He was a goddamn man, and he'd prove it with his strap any day of the week.
But the nerves deep inside him never died. That sensitive spot near the front, if he leaned just right—that was definitely still there. And now he had the privilege of jerking himself off while riding a nice, thick cock. Was this what people meant when they said you'd get the best of both worlds?
In other words, he felt fucking fantastic.
He told himself to go slow, reminded himself of micro-tears and atrophy and plain-old age. But the monster inside him had awoken, and it wanted more.
He landed so hard the chair screeched backwards. The throbbing pain of his hand took a backseat to the pounding of his insides. Just like riding a bike. Save a bike, ride an anarchist. He squeezed Andy’s shoulder and held on for dear life.
Andy dug his hands into Patrick’s thighs, back around to his ass, fuck city tattoos clenched around his soft skin. He faceplanted in Patrick’s sternum with a whimper, and Patrick had just enough time to worry that he was actually fucking the life out of him before Andy pressed his lips to his inner chest.
“Please, please don’t let me wake up,” Patrick muttered under his breath.
“If you pinch me and I wake up hard on the tour bus again, I'm quitting,” Andy said.
Patrick grabbed the back of the chair to get himself back to an angle that rubbed against that inner ridge. “Thought you were into a little pain?” he asked.
“Only coming from you,” Andy breathed into his chest. He tucked one hand between their shaky bodies and slid his fingers over Patrick’s dick.
Patrick sandwiched Andy’s face between his forearms and kissed him, softer than one normally would while speared on another’s dick, but passionately. With the double attack on his junk, warm blue sparks started to generate along his abdomen. Each landing made the electrical storm bigger, like a thundercloud gathering rain for what would surely become a hurricane. Patrick had forgotten how intense it could all get like this, after the past year with only his hands for company.
Shit, now that he only had one hand, he wouldn’t be able to hit both parts of himself at once. It was probably the least pressing issue from getting amputated, but he was thinking about it all the same. If he woke up from this hellish wonderland and his hand was still gone, maybe he could invest in some freakily accurate prosthetic. Hell, maybe he could get the prosthetists to mold it after Andy's hand, because despite being a novice, he was quickly easing Patrick into the threat of an early orgasm.
Speaking of. It seemed Pete and his cow-lady had achieved something of the sort, from the sturdy ahh coming from the former.
“This is so weird,” Patrick said. “Is this weird?”
“The air tastes like cilantro," Andy said. "Things have been weird ever since they made me snort that blue stuff. Being with you feels like the most normal thing in the world.”
“Andy, if we escape this shit do you want to go out with me?” Patrick asked, grinding down to rub the tip of Andy’s dick into the deepest, softest part of him.
The woman with the fox mask appeared at his side, dark eye sockets bearing down on him behind the waxy fur and leather straps. She grabbed his shoulder and shook her head.
"No talk of escaping," she said in an unnaturally velvety voice.
Patrick shook her off. “Relax, I can't escape a dream.”
“I’d like that, going out with you,” Andy said and dug his fingers into the sensitive edge around the tip of Patrick’s dick.
“Really?” Patrick gasped out, overwhelmed by blue tingles. “Because there’s this taco place near my apartment, and I’ve only tried their shrimp fajitas but I’ve heard good things about their vegan burritos.”
“Sounds perfect,” Andy said. And then he lifted his hips off the chair and molded his entire dick inside Patrick.
Patrick’s thighs clamped shut around Andy’s waist, probably crushing his hand and dick and whatever else was in the way. He pressed down harder, sending jolt after jolt of electricity up his spine. It was a full body workout, a no holds barred orgasm that left his skin goosebumped and legs noodley.
Now completely drenched below the waist, Patrick pried his fingers off Andy's shoulder. Although he noticed he left behind little bloody indents in his skin where his fingertips had been. He was so fixated on the dips that he almost didn't notice Andy starting to pull out.
"Hey, no, keep going," Patrick protested.
"Are you sure?" Andy asked, although his hips shifted up under Patrick's.
“Mm-hmm.” Patrick bit his lip to keep from saying anything more, but the words slid out nevertheless. "I want to feel what it's like to get filled up by the great Andy Hurley.”
"I can do that," Andy said.
Another thing Patrick had forgotten is how his insides didn’t have a refractory period, like his dick often did. The pleasure just kept hitting him even as his dick ached. He was sweaty enough to feel repulsive. His knees were burning. But his insides were electric.
A twinge of pain spread through his guts, this time on a more external level. Patrick glanced down, and a slight vertigo swept over him as he watched Andy's dick go in and out of him. He was really doing this. And it felt good. Aside from the pain, which he now saw was the gash on his abdomen reopening. A couple stitches fell loose, allowing the mouth of the wound to split open. As he watched, the red line spread over his stomach, and fresh blood joined the splatter of dried maroon along the skin under his navel.
"Shit," Andy said, watching the same violence. "Should we—"
Patrick curled his fingers (and wrist of his non-hand hand) around the back of the chair, trapping Andy's neck between his forearms. His arm echoed with pain, but he only squeezed the chair tighter.
"I swear to god," he said, "if you stop right now because of me, I'll delete every file we have so far for the new record. I'll smash the goddamn computers. I'll throw your fucking kit out the studio window—"
"Oh, god," Andy said. His legs were shaking.
"Show me, goddammit," Patrick said.
The gash widened enough for the reddish skins of his organs to poke their heads out, sinewy and spiderwebbed with arteries. A couple loops of his intestines dangled out. While it was strange how many of his organs were just piled inside his stomach cavity, there wasn't as much in there as there should have been.
Then he remembered being eaten.
Not directly, mouth to flesh. But he'd watched the others feast on everything the cult women had taken out of him. The limp, greyish, shredded meat that could have easily come from any other animal, if not for the smell. The bitter aroma of fresh rot had choked him more than the wine forced down his throat. He'd felt bad that they'd forced it on Andy, what was probably his first taste of meat in a decade. Which was totally beside the point; Patrick didn't think any of his friends would be okay with cannibalism.
He also remembered the satiation. Watching the others gorge themselves on him. Take of my body and all that. He felt like a provider. He felt like a savior. And a little like a voyeur.
He wondered if the taste of his blood was lingering on any of their tongues.
Patrick kissed the scratches where his fingerprints had embedded into Andy's shoulder.
"Did I taste good?" he asked.
The sharp noise Andy made could have been shaped around an uh-huh, or maybe Patrick was thinking too hard. Or maybe he wasn't thinking hard enough, because in the next second his insides warmed considerably. Patrick felt, for lack of a better word, really wet, but in a pleasant sense. Finally, he felt slightly less empty. As if cum could replace the stolen organs quietly digesting inside Andy's esophagus. Or maybe that was a fair trade.
Then a goat-woman offered him a line of green powder, and he remembered this was a dream. Might as well make the most of whatever little time he had. He leaned over the silver tray and inhaled. The saxophone melted into an electric harp. The carmine fog turned canary. Everything smelled vaguely of laundry detergent.
"You wanna make out?" Patrick asked with a cough.
"Really?" Joe lifted his head where he was lying prone on the table, tracing squiggles in discarded powder. "You're asking to kiss him after he came raw in you?"
Andy's hands hadn't moved from Patrick's ass. "Sounds cool to me," he said.
"Fucking weirdos," Joe said.
The lean-in was strangely intimate, even though Andy's dick was still inside him. Patrick closed his eyes at the last second, when Andy's face became too blurry to decipher. The first brush of lips on his was dropping your date off after prom friendly, and the second teetered toward we've slept two feet apart for almost a decade. By the third, they were nearing the territory of you just came inside me.
Andy traced the lip of the wound crossing Patrick's stomach. He pressed into the organs slipping out, as if trying to put them back. The waterfall of blood pooling in their laps didn't deter Patrick from sliding closer, although the amount told him he should feel more lightheaded than he was. One last dream miracle: a clear head to enjoy the epilogue.
Patrick let himself slip his hand down Andy's bare chest (when had he taken off his shirt?) and squeeze the pure muscle he'd envied for so long. He had top surgery scheduled for right after they finished the record, a month before its release, so he'd be back on his feet before they started touring. Maybe he could wear some of the tight Clandestine shirts Pete tweeted him pictures of. Or maybe he could sport the dryer- and age-shrunken tees from bands so old they'd stopped making merch, the ones fading into dust at the bottom of his closet. Maybe he could run down the beach shirtless. Maybe Andy could join him. Maybe he could swerve into the ocean and splash water in Andy's face, and Andy could pick him up with that ever-present grace and dunk him mercilessly. Maybe the spotlight of a sun could bring out the latent cerulean of his eyes amidst the golden orange of his voice.
"I wish you were real," Patrick said. "This version of you."
"I wish you'd asked me out years ago," Andy said.
The next drag of his lips against Patrick's was tinted with salt.
Patrick didn't remember fading out of the dream, or being drugged again, or getting transported to the backlit room. He didn't know how he'd been tied up again, or what the wires taped to his face were for, or what the glow behind him was from. Or why there were pews in front of him. All he remembered was waking up to an assortment of pain, all across his body.
His stomach didn't ache so much as it stung. It felt like someone had gone in with a spork and tried to make mashed potatoes of his organs. And then he remembered they had. Well, not with sporks. With knives and scalpels and saws. All because he wouldn't give them the briefcase.
Shit—he'd let them take the briefcase. Hopefully the others knew to reconnect and make a plan to get it back, before the Vixens found them too. The Defenders wouldn't get taken out that easily.
At least he could keep the dream, as long as he remembered it. It would make for good comfort during whatever the kidnappers had next in store for him. Surely he could take it, face it with—
Hang on.
His legs felt wrong. Sweatier than usual. A little itchy.
And the scratch marks along where his stomach peeked out from his shirt were definitely fresh, along with the stitches. And his throat was raw, worse than after the most strenuous shows. And that stretch in his insides definitely hadn’t been there that morning, when he’d been getting sawed into. Oh god, his hand. His guitar-fingering hand. He clearly (viciously) remembered clenching every single muscle in his body while getting dissected, every muscle except the sorest one between his legs.
He leaned forward against his restraints to examine his legs better, and something pooled between his thighs. Way too much to be the aftereffects of even the wettest dream. It soaked into his black jeans, staining the fabric blacker in thick waves.
It wasn’t sweat. And he hadn't gotten his period since his first year on T.
"Oh, fuck me," Patrick said.