Dis.: Lies, damn lies. No statistics.
Note: I don't even know, guys. I'm really sorry. I just hate my ovaries and wanted more hot Pete/Ashlee to be on the internets. Also, title from the awesomely cracked out, gory Korean movie. Oldboy is also an awesomely gory Korean movie, apparently far more likely to make you upchuck than any bodily function. AND, there is a sad and incredible lack of both Andy and Joe. Forgives.
Ack.: Estrellada is the bestest hand-holder ever.
Sympathy For Lady Vengeance
During the months Ashlee is on the road with them, Pete realises he's most attracted to her when she's all soft and irritable the day after her period ends, bundled up in two t-shirts and a sweatshirt and a hoodie and her least-girly pair of jeans, huddled on the couch in the front lounge, glaring up at him from under the brim of a familiar black Clan hat.
"Where'd you get that?" he asks, startled.
"Stole it from Patrick," she says flatly. "My hair looks like shit." She pulls her laptop over and opens it and the picture she makes is so fucking familiar and so fucking tied up in the way he knows exactly what she looks like naked.
"Oh," he says. He swallows and holds up the 7-11 bag in his hand. "I bought Cup-a-Soups?"
She smiles and the spell is broken, whatever the spell was.
At first he thinks he might just have some kind of menstrual fetish. He has the internet, he knows about these things. He thinks he might just never have noticed the fetish before because he's never actually lived with a girlfriend. He's never been so intimately privy to the strange near-monthly rhythm of a girl's life, because fuck knows his mom and his sister never described their day-long cramps in such excruciating detail. This is probably good, since he got a little hard when Ashlee did that.
"You're not living with Ashlee," Patrick says. "And you don't have a fucking menstrual fetish. Jesus Christ, Pete."
"How do you know?" Pete asks, stung. Patrick doesn't know. He can't possibly know what it's like to walk in to his bedroom and see his girlfriend angrily flipping the pages of YM, pissed off at her body and the world, and have to bite back a request for sex. "Also," Pete says, "I think sharing my bus with her for three months means I'm living with her."
"It's on the road," Patrick says. "Speaking as someone who's actually, you know, split rent and food and bills with my girlfriend for, like, a year, you're not fucking living with her."
Pete is maybe willing to accept Patrick's superior experience on this matter. "I still have to deal with the little shaved hairs in the shower," he mutters.
"Like you ever see the inside of your shower," Patrick says.
The next month, he spies a straggly pink string peeking out of the trash can in the bus bathroom, and he realises he totally doesn't have a menstrual fetish.
"I told you," Patrick says, and pours him another glass of flat ginger ale.
"Shut up," Pete says. "Biology is fucking psychotic," he says hoarsely, clinging to the toilet. "How do they stand it? Being eviscerated for a week every month? Fuck, man." His overactive imagination illustrates his words and he dry-heaves again.
"Oh my god, Pete," Ashlee says, leaning in the bathroom door. "What's wrong, baby?"
"Oldboy plus an undercooked Pizza Pop equals yuck," Patrick says, with a shrug and a sad smile. "Right, Pete?"
Pete moans pitifully and puts an arm over his head.
"Poor stupid boy," Ashlee says. "Can you hand me that box of Tampax?" she says to Patrick.
"Oh yeah, no problem," Patrick says, and makes sure Pete sees him handing her the box. Ashlee kisses Patrick on the cheek in thanks and leaves. Patrick smiles a small and evil smile.
"I fucking hate you," Pete says with great feeling. "Hate hate hate."
Two days later, Pete climbs up into his bus and Patrick is sitting at the table with his back to the door, wearing his Richie Rich robot hoodie and a brown plaid hat, leaning over a bowl of cereal, reading Slacktivist on his laptop.
"Dude," Pete says, and Patrick turns and it's fucking Ashlee and she's wearing her goddamn glasses that she never, ever wears and she has a little red spot on her chin and--what?
"Oh fuck me," Pete says, taking a step back and almost falling out of the bus. "What the hell?"
Ashlee frowns and tugs distractedly on her ponytail, which is under her right ear and was totally invisible from behind, goddammit. "Are you okay? You're not still sick from that Pizza Pop?"
"No," Pete says. "I just--thought. You were Patrick."
She raises her eyebrows and tilts her head at a bitchy angle and says, "I'm fucking bloated, asshole, you got a--"
"No, no," Pete says. He puts his hands up and approaches her slowly. "I'm not being an--"
"You are a little," she says.
"Sorry," he says. "It's just--"
She snaps her laptop shut and stands up and he has a moment of dissonance because she's an inch taller than him and he wasn't expecting that, for some reason. "Just what?" she says.
"Um," he says. They're standing really close and he's been doing a lot of reading about how a woman's hormones change and she smells different when she's menstruating and Ashlee's seven layers of clothing probably aren't helping, but she smells earthy, and sweet like good homemade bread and--sweaty, a little. He twitches and exhales hard.
She licks her bottom lip and bites it and smiles knowingly. "I'm off the rag, dumbass," she says, even though Pete is not allowed to call her period "the rag." Ever. The low light in the bus glints on her glasses and makes it hard to see her eyes. She tucks Pete's hair behind his ears. "Wanna fool around?"
"Yes," he says, half surprising himself.
In the bedroom, she pushes him down on the bed and climbs over him, straddles and kisses him before she even takes her glasses or her hat off. Her mouth is humid and slickly perfect as always, but still jarring like when he had to look up at her a minute ago. He keeps expecting this to be unfamiliar, or to at least feel the sharp thrill of newness, and he doesn't even know why, it's just her, just them--
She shoves her hand down his jeans and bites his bottom lip, hard. This is pretty new. His hips buck up between her thighs and she groans into his mouth. She wraps her hand close around his dick, but doesn't stroke, not yet.
"Oh fuck," he mutters when she moves her mouth to his neck, nipping sharply. The corner of her glasses pokes his cheek. He can smell her even more now and fuck, fuck, fuck she smells like Patrick after a week in the van, after a show, oh goddammit.
He puts his hand up to touch her hair, because he likes to touch her hair and her hair is entirely her, could not possibly remind him of Patrick, and gets a handful of fedora instead. Patrick.
"God, god," he pants, everything jumbled up in his head. "Ash," he says, mostly to himself, insistently. She hums enthusiastically, opens her zipper, and tugs his hand between her legs.
"Okay," he says, cupping her, squeezing, and she kisses him again, deep, bumping her crotch against his palm. Her thumb presses firmly into the head of his dick.
"Come on," she says, and he fumbles a little, slow because she isn't usually this fast, this ready. She hasn't even got her hoodie off.
He fits his hand into her jeans, into the top of her underwear, her skin all soft and warm, crisp hair under his fingers.
"Pete," she breathes in his ear and he plunges his fingers forward, over her, rubbing the full length of two fingers over her hot, swollen clit.
She moans sweetly, like a kitten mewling, and tosses her head up. Her glasses fall off, to the side, he doesn't fucking care. She tugs jerkily at his dick, like it's a reflex, an uncontrollable reaction to his hand against her cunt.
"Oh, fuck me," she says, so he slides his fingers around in her pooling wetness, and slides them up inside her. She hitches herself closer, inches up the bed to get more of him, give his arm more slack for deeper thrusts, and she lets go of his dick, takes her hand out of his pants. He whines and she fastens her mouth over his.
He gets a good rhythm going, her hips pumping and helping the back and forth of his fingers, the heel of his hand against the base of her clit, and she leans up away from him, riding him. They go like that long enough that he mostly forgets about his dick, engrossed in the familiar feel of her and the strangeness of her clothed torso above him, the grey and red hoodie. Her flushed face, her eyes so dark they're not really blue anymore, her red, red lips, the goddamn hat low over her forehead. Her little panting noises and short keening cries are beautiful, amazing, as ever. Sweat rolls down her temples; he can smell it, it's almost like her usual sweaty sex smell, but not--
"Oh, oh, Jesus fuck," she yelps, and grinds her hips down into his hand sharply. "Harder," she begs, demands, "more."
He fits a third finger in and she clutches at her face, sliding fingers into her mouth, pushing her hat back, tangling her hand in her hair, eyes closed. She drags her fingers against her lower lip, pouty, and he thinks for just a second of taking Patrick's picture in that hoodie.
"Christ," he moans, desperate to see her finish, and her cunt twitches around his fingers, flutters like it knows. "Pat, come on, come on."
She pitches forward, braces her hands on either side of his head, her mouth open, her eyes hot, her expression aggressive, almost combative. "What?" she says, half-smiling. Her ponytail swings against the side of his face as he fucks her--as she fucks him--like the softest lash.
He's about to beg again, beseech, plead, and realises what he said, what he called her. "No, no, I don't," he says, but she kisses him and slams herself down on his hand one, two, three more times and freezes, her cunt clenching around his hand, her teeth on his lip. She gasps in and exhales hard through her nose. She thrusts gently through the contractions, riding them like a carousel, up and down. Pete stares up at her, mouth open, just taking her in until it's over and she settles herself on top of him, sighing into his neck, twitching once in a while.
Pete shoves his hand in his jeans and jerks himself off quickly, Ashlee's fingers stealing up under his t-shirt to scratch lightly at his stomach and chest.
"You can call me Pat," she whispers. "Anytime." And she bites his earlobe and he comes, but it's not because she said that. No, it's not.
"It's not like that," Pete starts, but Ashlee shakes her head and waves her hand.
"No, no, you think Patrick's like a PMSing girl, just all the time, and I remind you of him when I'm bitchy and bloated," she says. "It's cool."
"Ashlee," he says, because it's not like that, he doesn't think of Patrick like that at all. Except maybe sometimes. And maybe sometimes Ashlee reminds him of Patrick. Just, only once in a very long while. Like, not even as often as monthly. Maybe.
"I'm not going to tell him," she says, and it's a good thing, because the thought never crossed Pete's mind. "Especially if you keep fucking me like that, Jesus." She yawns and bites at one of the marks on his neck. "Hm. I'm always so horny after all the goddamn cramping and bleeding stops."
"Really?" he asks, curious.
"Yes," she says exasperatedly.
"You never said," he says, kind of annoyed. Because if good, awesome sex could be happening to him with the girl he loves, it fucking should be. "Dude."
"Well, it's a little embarrassing," she says. "And you also seemed kind of grossed out by the whole period thing in general."
"Ha," he says, sleepy. "Not really, I just thought I had a menstruation fetish all of a sudden and that was kind of freaky."
She frowns, he can feel her forehead scrunching up against his neck. "Um," she says after a while. "Do you? Have a fetish? Because I can--"
"No," he groans. "No, no, no. No fetishes. Um. None you don't already know about."
"Oh good," she says, relieved. She giggles. "Well, maybe a Patrick fetish."
"Fuck you," he mutters, and pulls her more snugly against his side, and falls asleep.
Geum-ja stares at the puppy, steeling herself, and the puppy licks the barrel of the gun and Pete whimpers.
"Hemmy's really locked in the bathroom, right," he whispers to Patrick.
"Yes," Patrick says. He pets Pete's head on his thigh.
The shot rings out and Pete flinches, his eyes clamping shut. "I hate that part," he says.
"I know," Patrick says.
"The (After) Life of the Party" crashes tinnily in Pete's pocket and he sits up, digging for his phone.
"Who--" Patrick says.
"Hey, baby," Pete says into the phone.
"Oh my god," Patrick says, and rolls his eyes. "I can't believe that's her ringtone. Does she know that's her ringtone?"
Pete waves at him to shut up.
"Hi," Ashlee is saying. "Did she shoot the puppy yet?"
"Yeah," Pete says sadly. "Why do I always hope she won't?"
"Because you're American," Ashlee says. "Guess what today is."
"Tuesday?" Pete tries.
Patrick gets up and rummages in the bus cupboards. Pete slumps over into the warm spot.
"I'm off the rag, baby," she says and he actually feels his heart start thumping hard and loud.
"Oh, awesome," he says, trying to sound normal.
"Are you coming back to the bus of hot sex any time soon?" she asks mildly.
"Yes," he says. "Like, right now. Momen-fucking-tarily." He gets up and starts gathering his crap--DS, Sidekick, candy. He walks down the hall and lets Hemingway out of the bathroom, clipping his Playboy leash on and leading him back to the front lounge.
Patrick turns from putting a fresh bag of popcorn in the microwave and raises his eyebrows. Pete shrugs.
"What kind of hat is Patrick wearing?" Ashlee asks.
"Um," Pete says, staring at the green-orange-yellow argyle monstrosity on Patrick's head. It's seriously the least sexy thing Pete has ever seen. "The brown one."
"What?" Patrick asks, putting a hand on his head. "What's wrong? Is there something on my hat?"
"Sweet," Ashlee says. "I'll see you in a minute. Love you."
"Love you," Pete says, and ends the call. "There is nothing on your hat but a bucketful of fug," he says to Patrick.
"Fuck you," Patrick says, frowning and biting at his lip, hands on his hips. "Get the fuck off my bus, asshole."
"Okay," Pete says, saving up that expression, that stance, that tone of voice. And yes, it's all a little fucked up, but at least he doesn't have a menstruation fetish.
"Now, motherfucker," Patrick says, and points at the door.
"Gone," Pete says. Hemingway trundles down the stairs into the parking lot and Pete jumps after him. He breaks into a run, his dog loping along happily beside him, heading for his bus, his girl, in her shiny black jacket and brown plaid hat.
End.