Archive of Our Own

Brian wakes up to the sound of Pat's ringtone.

This, in itself, is enough to pull him right out of the dream he'd been having: something warm and undefined, already slipping out of his memory like a glass from his hand. If he'd fallen asleep somewhere near Pat last night, Brian is sure it'd be the first thing he'd remember, no matter the hour.

"Nngh," he grunts, throwing his arm out to the side. His hand skips over the pillowy folds of a comforter—he’s in bed, then—until his fingers tangle in a charging cable. He fishes up the phone at the end, blinking away the sleep from his eyes as he blearily jabs his finger at the power button to dismiss the call.

"Pat… m'turning off your phone," he mumbles, and drops the phone back into the comforter.

Then his brain catches up with him.

His eyes shoot open—a mistake, as sunlight stabs into them mercilessly—and sits up in bed. It takes a few seconds of furious scrubbing with the heel of his hand until his eyes adjust, but when they do, the answers are even more baffling than the questions.

He's—he’s in Pat's room. Furthermore, he's in Pat's bed. He can see Pat's streaming set-up at the end of the bed, and though he hasn't seen from this angle before it's clearly the right triangulation for the image of the room he remembers from Pat's streams. As he shifts his feet he dislodges Charlie, who stands up and arches his back before sitting down and fixing Brian with an unblinking stare.

"I don't know either, buddy," Brian starts, extending his hand to Charlie only to be studiously and tensely ignored. His voice sounds different: higher, maybe, the opposite of how he'd expect if he… what, went on some mystery bender? And ended up needing to be put to bed at Pat's? He racks his brain for any memory of how it could have happened, because he's pretty sure he'd stayed home last night. He hasn’t been black-out drunk since Edinburgh, at least, and he doesn't think he'd court disaster-by-romantic-confession by breaking that streak near Pat.

"...Pat?" he calls out tentatively, feeling like a fool. The odd timbre of his voice doesn't clear, even when he coughs a few times and tries again. "Patrick?"

There's less wrong with his eyes than he would have expected having gone to sleep with his contacts in… which he must have, because he's not wearing his glasses and yet he can clearly see the broad details of Pat's room, just blurred out on the edges from what he assumes is some righteous dry-eye. He brings up his hand to rub at his contacts with thumb and forefinger, and overshoots and smacks himself right in the face. He tries again, gingerly, and blinks; no, nothing doing. The last bit of his vision refuses to come into focus, and furthermore, he's not… actually sure he's wearing contacts at all?

"What the fuck," he mutters under his breath, and swings his legs off the bed. And that's when he realizes that everything is a lot more complicated than it seems.

It's kind of incredible, the number of little things you don't notice that add up to the sum total of your perception of yourself. Apart, they're easily missed, or explained away: lack of sleep, poor decisions, illness, distraction. One's sense of self is flexible but, ultimately, persistent. Brian spends a lot of time thinking about his self—probably moreso than others, thanks to the weird performative nature of the video production hustle—but the sight he sees in the slanted mirror standing in the corner of Pat's room would probably shake anyone:

He's Pat.

He stares at the reflection in the mirror for a few long seconds, then slowly raises his right hand. Pat's reflection raises its left. Brian's instantly rocketed back to warming up with his improv group, right down to the sense memory of the wet-wood-and-chalk scent of the drama classrooms, but the movement of his reflection is too smooth, too perfect, to be an exercise. He throws the covers aside and walks over to the mirror, distantly aware that he's shaking like an animal caught in a trap, and gets in real close.

Pat's face fills his vision, eyes darting back and forth as Brian gulps in some steadying breaths. He touches his face—Pat's face—under his eye, pulling the smooth skin as he runs his fingertips down his cheek and over his lips, over the white patch of his beard. "What the fuck," he breathes, again, and throws himself away from the mirror with knot of panic in his stomach.

Pat's phone takes forever to boot up. Brian perches on the edge of the bed, foot beating an anxious tattoo on the floor, and watches the screen as it hangs on the white Apple logo for an interminably long time. Eventually, the lock screen comes up, but Brian doesn't even get a second to consider Pat's password before Brian's own face comes up on-screen, a call from his number.

"Jesus, fuck," is what the voice on the other end says as soon as Brian answers. It's familiar, but different, like how listening to himself on stream replays is different than hearing his own voice knocking around his skull. Actually. It's exactly like that, Brian thinks, hysterically.

The voice is still talking. "Hello? Hey? Who's there?"

"...Pat?" Brian tries, not sure if he's answering the question or asking his own.

"Jesus, fucking," the voice blasphemes again, then: "Yeah, it's… to a… to a point, yeah."

"Oh, my god, Patrick—it's good to—it's so good to hear your—I'm really glad it's you," Brian bites out, between big heaving breaths.

Pat's silent for a beat. "Yeah, no kidding," he says, eventually. "But, okay, just to be absolutely clear, though--this is Brian, right? Brian David Gilbert?"

"In the flesh," Brian quips, and a shrill laugh escapes him.

The line is silent for an even longer time. "Okay," Pat says finally, "That's… that's a horrible joke, considering, because there's just… that's entirely too much, uh, flesh between the two of us—"

"I'm you," Brian cuts him off. "I mean, I'm me, but I'm in—I'm in your body. In your room."

"Right. Same," Pat answers, terse with strain. "I mean, I'm also. In your room."

"Wait, how did you unlock my phone?"

"I know your password, Brian," Pat answers, then pauses a beat. "And, I have your thumbprint."

"Oh," Brian replies. "I hadn't thought of that. Geez, this is weird."

"You think so," Pat intones, and hell, it's surreal to hear Pat's wry monotone in Brian's own voice. "You think it's weird, Brian."

"It's an understatement, for sure," Brian acquiesces, rubbing his thumb into his eyes as firmly as he can stand. The sound is wet. "I—do you know what's going on," he asks.

"Not a clue," Pat answers, "Have you pissed off any witches, recently?"

"The old woman at the DMV might have been a faerie in disguise," Brian jokes, weakly.

"Yeah, shit, that'd do it," Pat replies, and they share a laugh that sounds hollow even from the inside. "What—shit—what should we do?"

It's Sunday; they don't work, but Pat usually streams on Sundays, and Brian's sure he'd probably had plans, though he'd be fucked to remember them now. "Come over," he says, instead, "I mean, come back to your place. Maybe we can, god, I don't know, maybe we need to see each other or, or something…? Do we need to touch hands?"

Pat breathes in and out into the phone, blowing out the microphone. "Okay. Okay, yeah, it's as good as anything. I'll be there in… where the hell am I, Kensington? Like, twenty minutes? Thirty? I'm gonna take your car."

Brian has a vague sense of where Pat lives, but obviously Pat doesn’t need directions. "Okay. The keys are—the keys are in my denim jacket by the door."

"Roger," Pat replies, which makes Brian smile. "See you in a bit."

"Sooner if you look in a mirror," Brian replies, and is rewarded by Pat's disgusted scoff just before he ends the call.

Brian's surprised by a sniffle as he pulls the phone away from his ear, one that turns into a single fat blobby tear rolling off his chin. He scrubs his face, mortified to be projecting his messy feelings into Pat's body, and the choking feeling of needing to have a really good cry about it eventually passes. He doesn't want to look freshly-cried when Pat gets here, is all. He doesn't—he doesn't want to see what it looks like when Pat cries.

He thumbs Pat's phone unlocked—the lock screen is Charlie, of course—and opens up the browser. Wiping his eyes with one hand still, he searches traded bodies with my crush.

The first page of results is almost entirely short fiction, interspersed with discussion posts about what people would do in this hypothetical situation. Brian doesn't feel particularly fictional or hypothetical, at this point, so he tries again: how to fix body swap.

The results this time are more his speed. Considering his career trajectory, he hasn't really had much cause to be grateful for his cognitive science degree, but it all comes back while scanning through layman's-interest articles about the nature of the mind, dualism versus monism. He'd always been monistic, himself, but considering his consciousness is now apparently seated in Pat's actual physical brain, he might be forced to reconsider his stance on the existence of a discrete soul.

When the scrolling starts getting to the legal ramifications of having sex while trapped in another person's body, he shuts the phone off quickly and shoves it under the pillow. After a moment, he retrieves it and turns on the ringer, just in case, and puts it back under the pillow with the speaker sticking out. Jesus, he hadn't even considered… even absent the possibility of sex... he's still in Pat's body...

He's thought a lot about Pat's body.

"Oh, don't—don't you fucking—" he hisses down at himself, at the inevitable hardening conclusion of where those thoughts lead. He fists his hands in the bedsheets and takes a few slow, shaking breaths, sick to his stomach with an alien feeling of… of… arousal, and disgust, and… he doesn't even want to think about it, not like this, not trapped on the inside of a sensation that's so familiar and yet so, so wrong. "Please go away," he pleads quietly.

Pat's boxers are olive green. His legs are hairy, like Brian's; his chest is mostly hairless, also like Brian's. The walls are white. His room is a little bit messy. He needs to do laundry. Brian squeezes his eyes shut and wrenches his thoughts away from the pulsing awkwardness between his legs, and eventually, like the urge to cry, it passes as well.

Brian gets up as soon as he feels somewhat under control again, and shuffles out of Pat's bedroom in search of the bathroom, to splash some water on his face or something. It's not far, though the extra couple inches Pat has on him make it difficult to find his balance, like when you get new glasses. He's not used to being so clumsy, and mutters an apology to Pat when he clips his shoulder on the doorframe.

In the bathroom he studiously avoids looking in the mirror more than he needs to, keeping his eyes on the relative safety of Pat's (and his roommate's) bathroom junk. It reminds him that, of course, Pat's got a regular human body, with regular human body needs—and he should—he should brush his teeth, at least. Shower, maybe. He should deal with the fact that his body's gotta do what bodies do in the bathroom.

Christ.

Now that he's thought about it, it cannot be ignored. He braces his hands on the bathroom counter and thinks dry thoughts, but it's insistent. And oh, hell, but he really wishes he was literally anyone else right now, which is a hilarious thought considering the circumstances, but the fact it's Pat's body is just—it's just way too much of a violation—considering how he feels, even though he shouldn't—but he has to, because like it or not, he's driving this rig.

He has to take care of Pat's body. He has to take care of Pat.

This is duty, he thinks as he squares up to the toilet. It's just skin. Without looking down, he fishes himself—Pat's self, god—out of his boxers and gingerly, fingertips only, takes care of business, thinking apologetic thoughts about his aim and, honestly, the whole situation in general.

A shower can wait, he thinks, as he washes his hands and brushes his teeth. Pat's been growing his beard, so Brian doesn't need to shave. He doesn't think Pat uses any, like, skincare products or anything, though being reminded of the bit he did about Solid Snake's skincare routine makes Brian smile. He'll ask Pat to walk him through any medication he takes, and—hell, he'll have to do the same for Pat, because things are gonna get wild for him pretty quickly if he misses too many doses, assuming Brian's anxiety's sticking with his neurons and not his consciousness.

That's… kind of a huge assumption, come to think of it. Probably unanswerable, given that the situation is pretty fucking anxiety-inducing. Brian doesn't feel too bad about being a little on edge.

He goes back into the bedroom and retrieves Pat's phone from under the pillow. hey if you haven't left yet, can you please take two zoloft, the bottle's on my desk, he types.

i'm in the car, Pat replies, but I already took care of it. You told me about your meds after the self care stream, remember?

Brian doesn't remember, actually, but apparently Pat does, and the thought of that makes his chest feel weird. He rubs his knuckles against his breastbone and forces his breathing steady again. He's getting good at it, by now.

—

"Jesus Christ, Patrick," Brian mutters as he stands before Pat's wardrobe and stares into the bleakness of it. Mostly everything is black or white, except for the infamous red-and-black plaid, though Brian's not surprised to learn that apparently Pat has three of them, all identical. Further investigation turns up various button-downs and sweaters in muted tones, all very earthy. Comforting, in a sort of fatherly sense. Brian's running his fingers--Pat's fingers--over a row of chunky cardigan buttons when something at the very end catches his eye.

"Oh, you minx," Brian says, pulling the light pink sweater off of its hanger and shaking it out. He's never seen it before, but it looks incredible. Cashmere, maybe, impossibly soft. Brian gives it a sniff; it smells old, but clean, and not like Patrick at all. A ghost from before his divorce, maybe.

It fits like a dream, though, and when paired with blue jeans it almost looks like Pat wears colour on a daily basis. Brian feels vaguely guilty for taking the first opportunity to give Pat a makeover, but he figures he doesn't know how long he's gonna be stuck like this, so he should be comfortable.

Comfortable might be a big ask, he realizes pretty quickly. Somewhere between stooping to pull on his socks and fixing his hair in the mirror, his back starts to hurt in a way that Brian doesn't recognize from his own body, even with all the punishment he's subjected it to in the name of art. It's just a burn at first, then a pulling sensation that deepens and tightens as he keeps moving, constricting his movement. Stretching it out does nothing to help; in fact, when he tries to reach down and touch his toes—not usually a problem, for him—it seems to ignite, racing up his spine to stab right into his brain with such viciousness he has to sit on the bed and breathe through the pain.

It's ridiculous, he thinks, as he tips sideways onto the pillow and closes his eyes. Pat can do, like, flips and handstands, he used to wrestle; he must have figured out a way to move that doesn't trigger this kind of pain. Either that, or he's a lot more resilient than Brian gave him credit for. He has a new appreciation for why Pat always appears more reserved in videos, compared to Brian's frenetic energy, if he had been rationing himself to avoid this.

He feels weird putting stuff in Pat's body that's not strictly necessary, but Brian gathers from the jumbo bottle of painkillers on the nightstand that Pat himself probably doesn't consider it optional. He reads the dosage, swallows two pills and washes them down with a glass of water also already on the nightstand, then rolls onto his back to wait it out.

—

He's still feeling touchy when there's a knock at the door, something like twenty minutes later, but the painkillers have done enough of their dark magic that he only feels tight and warm when he gets up to answer it. His legs hurt now, from lying down, which is—that's just bullshit, honestly, and Pat could probably stand to move around more.

He unlocks the door, and:

Seeing Pat in the mirror was surreal enough, but being face-to-face with himself unleashes a spike of fight-or-flight adrenaline that makes his stomach plummet and his limbs go hot and cold. It's wrong, to see himself moving in the world; the only way his brain can parse it is to read it as danger.

"Hey," Pat-as-Brian greets him, pushing past Brian to enter the apartment. Like he owns the place, hah. If he’s as affected by the sight of himself as Brian is, he doesn’t look it other than in the tense, jerky way he moves in Brian’s body. He's dressed in something that wouldn't look out of place if Brian had chosen it—it's all his clothing, after all—but definitively screams Pat: dark grey joggers and a black sweater zipped up over a white county fair t-shirt that's, actually, on second thought, probably Laura's. "Is Quinn home yet?"

Brian hasn't heard anyone other than himself in the apartment so far, so he shrugs and shakes his head. Pat blows out air through his lips and runs his hand through his hair—a distractingly natural gesture, even in a borrowed body. "He's been working nights," Pat explains, "You'd know if he came home."

"Guess not, then," Brian says, rubbing his stomach. Pat's body's a clenched-up mess under his hand, and he tries to breathe evenly to relax. Just a weird thing. Just a really weird thing, to be staring at himself as Pat paces the living room, frisking his hands together like he's trying to keep warm.

"Have you figured anything out yet?" Pat asks.

Brian shoves down the less savory memories of his internet research. "A bunch of men on the internet are really interested in talking about what they'd do if they woke up as women," he elides, and Pat raises his eyebrows.

"I mean, statistically, at least some people would be like, 'oh, hell yeah, sweet. Just what I was hoping for.'"

"Right?” Brian says, spreading his hands. "We should figure out how it works and like, fix the fuck out of everything."

Pat laughs and scrubs his hand down his face, until his laughter turns into a groan. "Let's focus on fixing ourselves first, yeah? Did you ever watch Freaky Friday?"

Brian fixes him with a look. "Am I Lindsay Lohan or Jamie Lee Curtis in this situation?"

Pat gestures one open hand at him. "So you did see it. Clearly, we both have to come to some kind of, uh, understanding about each other. Walk a mile in each others shoes, literally."

"You're basing your hypothesis off of Freaky Friday, Pat."

"It's all I've got," Patrick defends himself, counting on his fingers, "Freaky Friday, 17 Again, Big, even, fuckin', The Hot Chick; the whole point is learning something about the other person and/or yourself, and then they switch back."

In most of the stories I skimmed this morning, they had to fuck it out first, Brian thinks, and immediately regrets it when it sends that sick feeling skittering through his stomach again.

Pat's still talking, though, and he's taken up pacing again. "So what's our deal, then? Do we have beef, or…? Got any secrets you're keeping from me?"

"Nope!" Brian answers, probably too quickly; quickly enough that Pat stops pacing and looks at him with an indecipherable expression. He opens his mouth to reply, only to be interrupted by the sound of Brian's text message chime. Brian's got that twitch memory for his own ringtone—the goose honk from Untitled Goose Game—as much good as it does, right now. Pat fishes Brian's phone out of the pocket of his joggers and passes it to him.

The message is from Jonah. He scoffs as his phone rejects his thumbprint, keys in his password manually, and opens the message. "Ah, damn it," he groans, "I blocked off all of today to work on new songs with Jonah, and he wants to know when I'm coming home."

Pat grimaces with all of his teeth. "I can't do that."

"Yeah, no offense—"

"—seriously, none taken—"

"—but Jonah and Laura are gonna know in a hot minute that something is wrong with me. There's no way you're gonna be able to fool both my sister and my closest friend."

He's already composing the text: I'm so so so sorry Jonah, I double-booked myself this weekend and I'm supposed to work on stuff with Pat, he types, which isn't exactly a lie. Can we do it next weekend?

When Brian looks up from his phone, Pat's somehow conjured up an armful of Charlie. "Look!" he beams, scratching Charlie under the chin, "He knows who I am!"

Brian's phone honks. Is that what you're calling it, reads Jonah's text, and Brian cringes at the flat affect. Jonah the type to get real calm the more he's pissed off, which is usually fine because it complements Brian's tendency to overcompensate when he's done the pissing off, which is often. that sucks, man, comes Jonah's next text, then: I'll see if I can swtich shifts next weekend but I don't know

seriously, so so so so so sorry jojo, Brian types back.

Jonah's response is nearly instantaneous: whatever... get your bone on, my son

Brian makes a strangled noise and shoves his phone into the pocket of his jeans, which makes Pat look up from where he's rubbing his face on Charlie's head. "Everything okay?" he asks.

"Yep! Great, no problem. You're off the hook," Brian answers.

Pat breathes a sigh of relief. "Thank god," he mutters. "Quinn's fine, but we're not super close, so he probably won't notice if I seem a little weird. We should probably stick around here until we figure this shit out." He pauses, with a far-away look in his eye. "Hey, are you just, like, hungry all the time, or what? I'm fuckin' starving."

"Oh, yeah," Brian laughs, "I burn a real gross amount of energy, honestly. If you haven't eaten breakfast, you're already behind."

Without saying another word, Pat turns on his heel and walks stoically into his kitchen, still holding Charlie like a baby. "What do you usually eat?"

"Recently?" Brian laughs. "Uh, crap, mostly. Like, two-bowls-of-Cheerios and sometimes-there-are-doughnuts-at-the-office crap."

Pat stops and turns to face Brian, framed in the doorway of his little kitchen. "You can't eat like that," he says, and it's kind of surreal to see his serious Producer Pat expression on Brian's face. "Your body's gonna give up, man, and it fuckin' sucks. It happens way earlier than you think, trust me. I'll make breakfast."

—

Seemingly by magic, over the next half hour Pat efficiently produces an array of breakfast foods Brian's previously only seen at restaurants designed for that purpose.

"Geez, how did you learn all this?" Brian breathes out in amazement as Pat puts down a plate piled high with bacon.

"What, cooking? It's not hard, you just pick it up bit by bit. You can't commit food crimes forever."

"No, like," Brian says, gesturing to all of the food laid out on the table. "I know how to make eggs. I know how to make bacon, and toast, and pancakes… but like, doing it all at the same time? And everything's warm? And having all the ingredients in the house at the same time?"

Patrick laughs as he sits down across the table across from Brian. "You know what, Brian, I gotta say, you've got a great body, but you could not pay me to be twenty-five again. I was such a dumbass, man. I didn't know shit about anything. It's fine. You'll get there."

Brian's so stuck on you've got a great body that the dig doesn't even faze him. "Go on, eat," Pat encourages, piling his plate high with food.

"Y-yeah, okay," Brian stutters, and tucks into the spread.

—

Quinn comes home just as they're finishing up, looking ragged. "Hey," he calls out as he walks through the kitchen, then stops, then reverses so his head's poking back through the doorframe. "Holy shit, did you make breakfast?" he says, understandably addressing Brian.

"Yeah," Pat replies instead, "I made extra. You can have the rest, if you want."

Quinn's head swivels to Pat, just in time to see him grimace as Brian kicks him under the table. "You made breakfast?" Quinn asks, dubiously.

Pat's face—that is, Brian's face—drains of colour. "Uh…" he drawls.

Brian clears his throat. "Quinn, this is my coworker, Brian. Brian, this is my roommate, Quinn. He... works nights."

"Hello," Quinn says, holding out his hand towards Patrick, who takes it and gives it a shake. "You're the other guy from the videos."

"Yep, that's me!" Pat replies, affecting what Brian supposes is his idea of a Brian-like smile. It's not bad, actually. A bit more teeth than expected.

Quinn doesn't seem perturbed at all. Mostly, he just looks tired as he retrieves a plate from the cupboard and loads it with the leftovers from breakfast, not even bothering to sit down as he stuffs a piece of bacon in his mouth. "Well, thanks for making breakfast, anyway."

"Yeah, any time," Pat laughs, and Quinn shoots Brian a look that Brian can't even begin to decipher.

They sit in an awkward silence for a few moments while Quinn stands over them and eats, until Pat rises from the table. "I'm—I'm just gonna use the bathroom a sec," he says, quickly.

"Uh, second door on the right," Brian replies, for verisimilitude.

"Nope, third," Quinn corrects him, to Pat's retreating back. "Second door's the hall closet."

Quinn slides into the seat Pat vacated, while Brian watches Pat leave with a pang of—something. Loneliness, maybe, to see his body walking away from him, or empathy that Pat's probably about to have the same kind of bathroom-related epiphany that Brian did earlier. He's studiously not contemplating Pat's reaction to looking at Brian's dick for the first time when Quinn makes a thoughtful noise.

"Didn't think you were ever gonna go for it, man," Quinn says.

"Huh, what?" Brian replies, blinking away the mental image of Pat unzipping Brian's pants and shoving a hand inside. Either of their hands, really. The article seems both important and not important, right now.

Quinn gestures over his shoulder with his chin. "That's the guy, right? The one you were doing that stream with? I never thought you were actually gonna shoot your shot, I'm proud of you."

Brian's incapable of speech. "Uh…"

Quinn shrugs as he shovels eggs into his mouth. "For how much you were hung up on him being the new guy, I thought you meant he was young. I'm just happy, man. It's good you're dating again."

"No, we're not—" Brian stammers, until Quinn's words catch up with him and he just has to put his face in his hands. This is definitely privileged information. "Oh my god."

Quinn frowns, piecing together Brian's denial. "You still haven't said anything?" he says, incredulously, and then gestures to the empty breakfast plates, "Patrick, lock it down. Put a fuckin' ring on it, dude! He made you breakfast!"

"It's not like that!" Brian despairs, feeling his face go hot. Which is weird, because he can't remember the last time he blushed. Being reminded of such a Patrick thing right now is a little too intimate.

"Yuh-huh," Quinn scoffs, "Homeboy stay the night, or did he just come over in the morning to make you eggs and bacon for no reason?" He clears his plate in a few massive forkfuls. "You gotta get over it," Quinn says as he leans in, conspiratorially, "I promise I won't be weird. I told you, I'm totally fine with you being gay. Or bi, or whatever."

"Uh huh," Brian manages, feeling that sick feeling return, and is so incredibly grateful to hear the door at the end of the hallway open and shut again, and Pat's footsteps come towards them.

"Thanks again for breakfast, Brian," Quinn says as he stands and puts his dishes in the sink. "I'm gonna go crash for like eight hours, but I sleep like the dead, so like, don't worry about making noise or anything." He gives Brian another significant look as he sidles past Pat in the doorway, giving Pat a high five.

Pat freezes as Quinn passes him, then comes in and starts clearing away the table without meeting Brian's eye. Ah, the bathroom epiphany. "Everything okay?"

"Uh huh," Brian repeats, scrubbing his hands down his face.

Pat runs the sink. "Quinn say anything weird? I know he's a little, uh… normal. He tries, but he doesn't really get the whole streaming thing—" He stops, mid-sentence, and his shoulders slump. "Oh, no. It's Sunday, isn't it."

"Yeah," Brian confirms. "I'm gonna have to stream for you."

"Fuck me," Pat swears, and turns off the sink. He leans forward and rests his elbows on the counter, putting his head in his hands. "Fuck me."

"You could cancel?" Brian offers. "I mean, it's kind of extenuating circumstances."

Pat sighs and holds up one hand, rubbing two fingertips and his thumb together.

"To hell with New York, huh," Brian commiserates, and Pat groans in agreement. "You could do the stream and say that I'm covering for you because you're sick?"

Pat straightens up and turns to lean against the counter, arms crossed. "Nah, I don't want to cross the streams, you know? Like, if someone from Polygon covers for me, it's too much like a work stream."

I'd do it as a friend, Brian thinks, stubbornly, but something tells him not to push. Honestly, all he wants to do right now is lie down and contemplate what Quinn was insinuating—does Pat like him? If he does—god, if he does, then what does it mean that he's chosen to not say anything?

Pat's like a stone at work, that can't be an act; he must have a good reason. It's true Pat might not be his direct boss, but he's still senior to Brian, and he can't be blind to the optics. Maybe that's why he doesn't want it to look like he and Brian are close. Or maybe, that's just a thing Pat and Quinn do as roommates, dunking on each other about their stupid lovelorn coworkers—Brian's tried not to be obvious—

"So, what do you think," Pat interrupts his train of thought. "I don't stream until four, so I can walk you through it."

Brian swallows away the lump of anxiety balling in his throat. "What are you playing?"

Why haven’t you said anything, Pat Gill?

Pat has the decency to grimace. "Sekiro," he says, grimly, and at Brian's answering hiss of displeasure, he adds, "but you could probably play anything. It's pretty chill."

"I think people are gonna realize something's up if I play picross for two hours on my phone."

Pat shrugs. "As long as they can make the soundboard shout at you, they probably won't get rowdy."

"Oh, god," Brian groans, and Pat laughs.

"That's where the money is, Brian," he says, spreading his hands. "People love clicking buttons!"

"Okay, okay," Brian sighs. "Take me to your Steam library."

—

Pat, it turns out, has options.

"Half of these aren't even installed yet," Brian observes, scrolling through the library.

"Yeah," Pat says, "I'm a hoarder. I pick things up when they go on sale, just in case I wanna do a stream. A lot of them are gifts, actually."

Brian laughs. "Ooh, we got a hotshot over hee-ah," he says, in a thick fake Brooklyn accent. "Lookit him, gettin' free games 'n shit."

He scrolls a little bit farther, to a category Pat's labelled Brian. There's only a few in the category, but they're all games he's recommended, either on Good Cheap Games or on stream or just talking while waiting around on set. Hell, Brian doesn't remember talking about some of them. "Aw, Pat," he says, smiling.

"Uh, yeah," Pat stammers. He's sitting behind Brian, at the foot of his bed, but Brian can still see out of the corner of his eye the way Pat's hand twitches like he wants to take the mouse and scroll faster. "What can I say, you have good taste."

"Kind of not your usual thing, though," Brian says. Like me. You haven't said anything.

"Yeah, well," Pat says, then trails off. It takes a few moments before he tries again. His voice is different. "It wouldn't be the first new thing I've tried because of you."

Brian raises an eyebrow, but Pat's tight-lipped smile doesn't break. "All right, then. Keep your secrets," Brian grouses, turning back to Pat's computer. He scrolls a while longer—god, there really are a lot of games—until finally coming across one where he has a hope of passing himself off as entertainingly Pat-like.

—

Three hours later, Brian's hooked in to Pat's streaming set-up as well as he can be, and significantly more knowledgeable about livestreaming. Pat had always done this part of Gill and Gilbert, and most of the technical stuff for their other streams too, so while Brian has a passing familiarity with how it all comes together, everything about how it actually works is pretty much new information. Together they'd watched a few videos of past streams to give Brian a crash course on how to convincingly pretend to be pizza_suplex, Twitch streamer.

You can't just take the piss out of my expensive shoes again, Pat had said, to Brian's giggle, and then: Jesus, okay, you're not allowed to make that noise when you're pretending to be me.

The end result is that it's five minutes to when the stream usually goes live (which means it's approximately 4:03PM) and Brian's having a good panic as he stares at the screen and realizes he's forgotten everything about being live on camera.

"Cramming has never, ever worked for me," Brian moans.

"Who's cramming?" Pat replies. He's eating a banana ("oh my god, Brian, I'm still hungry after lunch?") and scritching Charlie, who's been expressively sanguine about this whole disaster. "If I had to trust anyone to impersonate me on short notice, it'd be you."

Brian's expression must do something complicated, he can feel it, because Pat changes the subject quickly. "Anyway, I'll be here if things go completely wrong, so don't worry about it. They're good fans, mostly, you just have to hang out and talk to them about stuff. I don't usually get too personal, so you'll be fine."

Brian takes a few deep breaths. "Okay. Okay," he says, "This'll be fine."

"This'll be fine," Pat repeats, clapping Brian on the shoulder. It's—it's the first time they've touched each other since the swap, and Brian can't tell if it's lingering magic from that or just his normal, everyday reaction to the idea of Pat touching him that sends electricity jolting through his body at the contact.

"Huh," Pat says, shaking out his hand as if he'd felt the same thing. "That felt like it almost might've done something."

Maybe it takes longer. Maybe it takes, like, a lot longer, with fewer clothes, Brian thinks, traitorously, but stamps down that thought before it can grow legs and become a whole Situation. He clears his throat. "We can try it out later," he says. "I should—I should probably start the stream."

Pat checks the time on the computer and laughs self-consciously. "Oh, yeah, probably."

Brian squares back up to the monitor and checks his appearance in the webcam output window. Yeah, he looks—he looks like Patrick, that's for sure, if a little greasier and more anxious than usual. He clicks the button to start the stream.

You don't have to talk all the time, Pat had told him. In fact, you probably shouldn't. So, don't worry about long stretches of dead air.

Brian ignores the camera for about a minute, surreptitiously watching the chat as a bunch of people say hello. "Hey," he deadpans, remembering Pat's plea that he not, under any circumstances, start his stream with a chipper hey guys, no matter how ironic. "Work's really been kicking my ass this week, so we're gonna do something different for today's stream. Subscribers already know this from the Discord, but today we're doing, just… a real soft stream. A soft stream, today, yeah. Really chill. It's Stardew Valley."

He pauses for about twenty seconds to let chat catch up, stifling his smile at the enthusiastic chaos of Pat's fans. "I mean… if you think about it… Stardew Valley is really like… the Dark Souls of farming sims, so…"

The soundboard emits a truly horrifying scream, making him jump. "Damn, starting early today," Brian laughs, "Thank you, killyourdarlings, very nice pull."

He rattles off a few more thanks to various subscribers as he loads up the game. On his left side, just out of sight of the webcam, Pat shoots him an encouraging thumbs-up and Brian smiles, ducking his head. It's easier than he thought, affecting Pat's mannerisms—probably not a great thing, that apparently he's observed Pat close enough that it seems to come easily.

He must have a reason. Like maybe he can tell you're way more into him than he is you.

At Pat's slow pace and the naturally asynchronous nature of interacting with chat, he ends up shooting the breeze for over fifteen minutes before it feels like any time has passed at all. "Alright, so, here's what I'm thinking… I know I said it was gonna be a chill stream, but like… maybe a speed run. I really think this… Dark Souls Valley idea is pretty good," he says, while customizing his farmer. "I'm gonna go, just, pure combat, I think.” He checks the chat. “Oh, shit, no, Soulsdew Valley, that's so much better, thanks rintintimmy for that."

Someone asks him if he's going to fix the community center or side with Joja. "Man, fuck Joja," he replies, "Fuck Joja. They're not your friends. No. In this stream we culturejam. Black spot sneakers only. Farm crimes. Fuck Joja."

Beside him, Pat puts his head in his hands and shakes with quiet laughter, and Brian shoots him a little smile before turning back to chat. "Alright. Alright. What do we… what do we name our farm, guys?"

---

At some point, he starts singing. It's not… it's not that weird; Pat sings all the time on stream, but he's usually just singing along to the background music. Brian, though, can't keep himself from being… himself, even under the circumstances.

At first he doesn't even notice he's doing it, which is just typical for him; it's chat that points it out, as he's running back and forth between his farm and the shop for, like, the goddamn eighth time, that he's been singing Rocket Man under his breath, changing the lyrics to be about a farming man.

From there, all bets are off. Chat's delighted by this change of character, and starts making song requests in the form of cheers that get outrageously more generous as the stream goes on.

It's weird, singing in Pat's voice. When he actually thinks about it, instead of just singing whatever pops into his head, it takes a while to find his natural range, and there are some genres that just aren't happening. But, Brian's mind remembers, and even when he starts feeling the strain in Pat's untrained body, it's still worth it to see the heady mixture of mortification, pride, and relief it puts on Pat's face.

—

Just over an hour into the stream, Brian's feeling Pat's mannerisms sink into his bones like a hot bath. It's a fun exercise, forcing himself to slow down and let himself be quiet for long periods of time while people are watching him—silence not just being okay, but expected, is a nice change of pace. Brian's perfectly capable of being quiet, obviously, but when performing? No, no, that's not a place he's usually comfortable. He prefers to be in control, not passively observed.

He's most of the way through Spring by the time Pat gets up, dislodging Charlie. He mimes asking Brian if he wants a drink, then mouths 'beer?'

Brian tries to keep it subtle, but of course a few people in chat notice that he's communicating with someone outside the range of the camera, only compounded when Pat sets down an open beer bottle and Brian picks it up, seemingly producing it from 'nowhere' on camera.

"Well, the jig is up," Brian confesses, beckoning Pat over. "Most of you probably know Brian. He's been over hashing out some stuff with me for work."

"Hello," Pat calls, leaning into the picture and waving.

Chat is extremely excited about this development. Brian sits through about a minute of people just typing BRIAN!!!!! and making Unraveled references while he continues to click around in the game. Someone asks what they're working on, on a weekend.

"Aw, I don't like to talk about work on the stream, y'all," Brian covers, but chat is insistent. "I seriously can't talk about it, but, uh… it's gonna be great."

In the webcam output window, he watches Pat visibly war with his options before climbing onto his bed and pulling out his laptop, probably figuring if the illusion's been shattered then he should at least be comfortable. Charlie follows close behind, curling up in the crook of his arm.

Chat's ecstatic. Brian squirms through a few unsavory minutes of people enthusing how comfortable "he" looks in Pat's bed, how he's using Pat's laptop, how much Charlie loves his other dad, stuff like that. There's also a sizeable number of people who try to keep the others in check, insisting Pat's clearly straight, that he and Brian are just good friends. A few messages instantly get zapped by the auto-censor. He hopes Pat hasn't opened the stream on his laptop, because… because it's a lot.

But he has to admit: the view in the webcam window is compelling. Pat inhabits Brian's body in his own bed like he absolutely belongs there, because he does, and even though everything's all mirrorverse and weird, the camera captures what it captures. It's not hard to look at that image and feel a sense of longing, a pang of innocent desire that pierces Brian right through the chest. It's not hard to imagine curling up in that bed, invited. Beloved.

He's never said anything. He's never even hinted. Even if he feels this way too, he's decided he doesn't want it.

Brian unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth. Someone's cheered two thousand bits to get him to sing Total Eclipse of the Heart, and he does love a challenge.

—

Two hours is over before he knows it. Brian bids farewell to Pat's fans and thanks them, again, for their generosity, but not too much, because he's still Pat, and they're still veritable strangers. Enthusiastic, horny strangers with deep pockets, but still.

He ends the stream and lets out a big sigh, feeling Pat's mannerisms seep out of him. "Well," he says, slowly, "I don't think you'll have to worry about rent for a while."

Pat puts down his laptop and scoots down to the end of the bed. "Holy shit," he breathes, when Brian clicks over to Pat's revenue tab. "Brian, you're a genius. I— I don't know what to say."

Brian shrugs. "All you had to do was sing, apparently."

"Thank you," Pat says, with feeling. "Jesus, thank you. Thank you for doing that for me.”

"I'd say anytime," Brian says, leaning back in Pat's chair and gesturing between them, "but honestly, I'm really hoping I won't have to."

"Yeah, speaking of," Pat says, "We should… we should try to, uh, to touch again. You felt it, right?"

"The… spark? Yeah, I did," Brian answers, feeling his stomach drop at the prospect of touching Pat, even in the wrong body. "I— how do you wanna do this?"

Pat raises his hand, palm facing Brian. Slowly, Brian lifts his own hand to mirror him, holding his breath until their fingertips touch, then their palms. Like Kirk and Spock, but with less radiation and death—hopefully.

There's—there's something, like the ache in a muscle a day after you've strained it, only radiating up his whole arm like a bruise. Pat sucks in a breath through his teeth and, typical Pat, visibly steels himself and leans into the feeling. Their eyes meet as Pat interlaces their fingers, squeezing Brian's hand in his. Squeezing his hand in—squeezing his hand in his own hand—the illusion of space between their cells dropping away like—

—it's a vibration. The feeling is a vibration, buzzing behind Brian's teeth like how he'd used to hear about people picking up radio frequencies with their metal fillings. It's not unpleasant, but it certainly crests, in a great wave that breaks over him and leaves his whole body thrumming with an unknown energy.

"Fuck," Pat whispers. The space between their skin prickles with sweat.

Just as quickly and as silently as it crashed over him, the vibration fades away. In its yawning absence Brian feels wrung out and heavy, so heavy that he slumps forward as his vision spins. Pat meets him halfway, resting heads on shoulders as Brian struggles with vertigo that makes his stomach drop out from underneath him.

He's still Pat—Pat is still Brian—and between them, their hands are still clasped.

Pat's other hand comes up to clutch Brian's upper arm. "Jesus, Brian, are you okay?"

"Feel like… the world's loudest ambulance just went past me," Brian groans, and Pat lets out a shaky laugh.

"Yeah, me too," he says. "I'm still you, though."

Brian groans again, this time in the affirmative, and forces himself to raise his head from Pat's shoulder. It's fiercely disorienting, but he manages. "I think… I think my soul is angry?"

"As a good Catholic boy, I relate to that sentiment," Pat replies. He shoots Brian a rueful look, then drops his eyes to stare down at their hands.

Brian follows his gaze until they're both quietly contemplating their interlaced fingers. He's certainly not going to be the first to break contact. Brian's hand—his actual hand, not the one his consciousness has been shoved into like a cruel puppet—is warm and damp, slim-fingered in Pat's just slightly larger one.

Brian licks his lips. "You've… picked off all of my nail polish," he observes.

Pat slips his fingers from Brian's hold, twisting them together with his other hand. Brian feels the loss. "Yeah, I did," Pat mutters.

Brian can feel his brow cinch. "Did you not like it?"

"No!" Pat replies, quickly. "I… I really like it, actually. On you, I mean," he clarifies, gesturing between them in a way that seems to encompass the whole fuckery. "I just… needed something to do with my hands. I was…"

He trails off, unsure of the word that comes next.

"...anxious?" Brian supplies, and Pat breathes out a long lungful of air as he nods. The look of frustration Brian watches splash across his own face is achingly, exquisitely familiar. "That's why I started doing it," Brian continues, "I used to bite my nails in high school, so Laura painted them with clear polish to get me to stop. Eventually I figured that if I was gonna do it, I should do it with style. It's like a… haters chew toy, it gives them something to focus on so they don't rip up the couch. But it works, too."

"Didn't work this time," Pat laughs, self-deprecating.

Brian's hands twitch with the desire to take Pat's hands again, to make Pat's fingers stroke soothingly over Brian's tortured cuticles. "You don't have the same mental scaffolding I do," he says, instead. "It's a signal for me to stop picking at my nails and try to figure out what's wrong. You don't make the same connection."

"Yeah," Pat says, looking down at his nails. "Sorry I wrecked your mani, man."

"It's fine. It's not fancy; I'll just do it again next time I'm in the neighbourhood of my body."

Pat swallows, audibly. "I'd do it," he says, quietly. "We don't know how, or even if we're gonna switch back, and… we have to go to work tomorrow, and it's important to your whole brand, but... I don't know how to—"

This time, Brian does take Pat's hand, before the anxiety train leaves the station. And this time, the thrill of energy that passes between them is entirely earthly in nature. "It's fine, really," he repeats. "You can leave it."

"No, I should…" Pat pauses to sigh. "I can't. I'm responsible for, uh, you."

Brian laughs, a short wisp of a thing, teetering on the edge of too much information. "I had the same thought, earlier. In the bathroom."

"Christ," Pat hisses, emphatically. He covers his face with his palm, the one not in Brian's hand. "I'm just... so fucking sorry for, uh, everything about that."

"Yep! Same!" Brian exclaims, "I don't know about you, but I could sure use a shower right now."

"Okay. Okay," Pat braces himself, "We're going to have to learn how to deal with it."

"Three, two, one," Brian counts, pressing down on their hands and then releasing them like they're cheering before a play, "'Not awkward!' All right! Go team!"

Pat holds his newly-released hand to his heart. "I promise I will shake it no more than three times."

"Three whole times," Brian sing-songs, despite himself, "A generous lover."

Brian's never seen himself truly blush before, but Pat makes a decent go of it. "That's…!" he laughs, "Brian! This isn't funny!"

Brian makes the a little bit, though gesture with his thumb and forefinger, which only makes Pat laugh harder. He throws himself back onto his bed and wraps the comforter around his face, and—look, Brian's had some emotional struggles, these past twelve hours, but seeing himself wrapped up in Pat's blankets and incandescent with delight and perfectly lit with golden hour sunset is… it's just the icing on top, really, and he's glad that Pat's laughing too loud for Brian to get a word in edgewise, because he doesn't think he could manage around the feeling knotting in his chest.

"Lord Almighty," Pat wheezes, from under a pile of blankets. He throws them back and takes a deep gulp of air, still lying on his back in bed. "Okay. Game plan. Your body needs to piss like a goddamn firehose because I got, like, performance anxiety earlier, and then I'm gonna wash your stinking carcass, and then I'm gonna learn how to paint your fucking nails."

"Sounds like a plan," Brian manages, rallying to fix a smile on his face as Pat wipes his eyes and sits up.

"I'm definitely, definitely going to fuck it up," Pat says, almost seriously.

"That's actually part of the charm," Brian replies. "Or…" he continues, worrying his bottom lip in his teeth, "...I could do it for you."

Pat seems to consider this for some time. "I don't even have nail polish," he says, eventually.

"Of course you don't," Brian mutters, narrowly correcting himself from referring to Pat as the straight man to Brian's whole schtick. Quinn innocently outing Pat earlier is a secret that sits heavy between his ribs: you could have told me.

Pat looks thoughtful. "I'll go. I'll go get some, and bring back some dinner too. And, uh, maybe a toothbrush or something. You're staying—" he pauses, just a single hitch in his breath, easy to miss, "I mean, of course you're staying. I should, though? I should stay."

"It's your house," Brian reminds him, but it's true. Separating overnight and staying in each other's apartments, with Pat under the scrutiny of Laura and Jonah the whole time, would be disastrous. Besides, at least one person in this apartment already believes they should be sleeping together, anyway. It's hardly a choice.

"Yeah, I'll stay," Pat decides, then stands up. "Okay. Back in a sec. Make yourself comfortable."

Brian puts his feet up on Pat's bedframe and pulls out his phone. "Remember," he says, wagging his finger at Pat, "No more than three times, mister."

Pat's smile on Brian's face is bright. "No more than three times," he repeats.

—

Pat's longer than a sec, obviously, but it's fine. Brian doesn't really exist on social media any more, so he just shoots some shower thoughts into the housemate groupchat—if all times and places exist simultaneously, your future self is talking shit about you right now—and opens the idle clicker that's been slowly siphoning his money away.

he's a dickhead. there, now we're both talking shit is Jonah's reply, eventually. Laura reminds them both that their future selves need to take out the garbage and do the dishes, respectively.

bri's at pat's Jonah replies, and Laura sends a string of ???????? into the chat, at least three messages worth.

The prospect of explaining that it's 'not like that' without actually being able to convey what it is like is exhausting, so Brian just silences his phone and closes his eyes until he hears the shower turn off and Pat start banging around in the bathroom.

Pat emerges a few moments later, freshly scrubbed and dressed again in Brian's clothing. "Shower's free," he says, unnecessarily. "And honour's intact."

"A gentleman bodysnatcher," Brian replies, rising from Pat's desk chair. When he passes Pat on his way out, the fresh smell he usually associates with Pat clinging to Brian's body is disorienting.

Pat's apartment is New-York-small, so their paths diverge from the bedroom quickly. "What do you want for din-din," Pat asks, stooping to put on his shoes.

"I'm easy," Brian replies.

Pat stands and holds up his bare nails. "And do you have any preference for this?"

"Surprise me, Pat Gill," Brian answers, and watches Pat stiffen all over before letting out a tense laugh.

"Never thought it'd be weird to hear you say my name," he mutters quietly, and puts on his coat. "I won't be long. Just, uh, do your thing."

"Roger," Brian cribs from Pat, who shoots Brian a warm smile as he leaves. "Bring it back in one piece, please. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

—

The prospect of taking clothes off of Pat's body is daunting, but Brian steels himself and remembers that he's bound by some sort of bro code, now that he's evoked go team over it. "Not awkward," he mutters to himself as he unbuttons his jeans. Pat's jeans, really, but he really shouldn't be processing the idea of unbuttoning Pat's jeans while preparing to platonically wash his balls for him. "Please just be fucking cool," he adds.

He shucks the rest of his clothes without looking at anything in particular, and turns the shower temperature to just above cold. Not enough to punish, but enough to give him something to think about, surely. He hisses as he gets into the shower, shimmying back and forth until he acclimates to the chill.

He figures out which bottles are Pat's by smell, and goes about washing. He's been doing pretty fine with code-switching the ownership of bodies and 'who's doing what with whose parts' so far, but stripped naked and vulnerable in the shower it's impossible to ignore the reality of the situation. He's washing Pat's body, no bones about it.

The hair is easy. Nothing weird about hair; Brian's got pretty much the same up top. Nothing weird about running your hands through your friend's hair in the shower. He even conditions, leaning into the idea that he's gonna wanna return Pat's body better than he found it.

He's thinking of mobility exercises as he soaps up, basic movement shit that always centers him in his body before performing. Ironic, now, but probably useful. Contact improvisation. Lots of slow movements, lots of touching. That's what he's thinking about as he scrubs Pat's arms and chest, down the fronts of his thighs, down to his feet. Movement stuff. How to make Pat's body move the way it should. Moving Pat’s limbs into various positions.

"Not fucking now, little Pat," he mutters downwards, perfunctorily scrubbing his groin. "This isn't for you or me."

Anyway, that's how he comes to sport the most uncomfortable shower boner he's ever experienced, and not even rushing through the black box bits of Pat's anatomy weakens the grip it has on his attention. He can't even bring himself to look—he already knows Pat's intact and doesn't trim, and that's like two thousand times more information than he's at liberty to know.

He hangs up Pat's scrubby thing and braces his hands on the cold shower wall, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth slowly. He watches the water run down Pat's toned arms, dripping off his elbows. He wipes his face where a trickle of conditioner has started to wind down his forehead. The pulse between his legs is insistent and all-consuming. "Fuck," he says, and rubs his face on his bicep.

He cranks the water to even colder and swears as the heat sputters out, buffeting him with pellets of glacial spray. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he chants, rinsing the conditioner out of Pat's hair as quickly as he can.

He's trembling by the time he turns off the water, teeth chattering, immensely grateful for the rush of heat that blankets him when he opens the shower curtain. He grabs the dry towel—sorry, Quinn—and wraps it around his shoulders, letting his wet hair plaster to his face and drip dry. Being covered is better. It puts a barrier between himself and the dull ache of a boner resisting arrest.

The thing is, once he's thought of it, he can't unthink of it. If someone tells you not to think about elephants, you're gonna think of elephants. Brian's always been crap at meditation; he could never fully release a thought. Instead, he does the mental equivalent of sticking it in his mouth and chewing on it until someone either yells at him to spit it out or it alchemizes into something he can throw up on the internet. This is what it's like, trapped in Pat's body, trying and failing to think about anything except how every beat of his heart is making the problem worse.

He thinks of his own flippant advice to Pat earlier: don't do anything I wouldn't do. The thing is, Pat wouldn't be white-knuckling the bathroom counter; he'd be like, huh, I got a shower boner, weird, and probably rub one out, and that errant thought makes his whole body twist in both embarrassment and a fresh rush of futile arousal. That's not an option—

—even if he did the mental gymnastics to justify it as taking care of Pat's body in his stead, he can't, now that he knows. Now that he knows Pat's explicitly chosen not to act on whatever's between them, the prospect of taking any pleasure from Pat's body turns his fucking stomach.

That thought's the one that finally does the trick. Brian breathes a sigh of relief as his body gets with the picture, and quickly towels off. He brushes his teeth again, for good measure, and even flosses, and looks around for more things to do to keep Pat's body in top condition. If he has to justify his existence in Pat's body, he's gonna commit.

—

"Hey," Pat greets him, when Brian leaves the bathroom. He's holding two bags of shawarma, going transparent with grease already, and a reusable tote from which Pat pulls out a couple colours of nail polish, a toothbrush, a pack of generic underwear, and a flat of beer.

"Good trip," Brian observes, vaulting the back of the couch with Pat's long legs and sitting down on the other side.

"Geez, Brian, easy," Pat admonishes him as he passes over a greasy bag. "Don't blow through my action points."

"You have a bad back," Brian points out, and Pat nods.

"And shitty knees, yeah," he adds. "Most of me's broken, pretty much. I've done a lot of stupid shit."

"You're gonna start stretching," Brian says.

Pat makes an amused noise. "I am? Alright."

Brian digs into his wrap. "Look, it's your bod," he says, around a mouthful of food, "but I am trapped in it, and I gotta move. And you," he swallows, "gotta keep up with my body, too."

"I know for a fact you haven't been to the gym in like four months," Pat grins, as he unwraps his shawarma and eats it from the wrapper, like a normal person. Brian gives him a look, and Pat laughs. "Okay, fine. I'm already painting my nails for you. Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it."

Brian lowers his wrap. "Really?"

"Of course," Pat says, like Brian's asked him if the sun's gonna rise tomorrow. It's funny, how they alternate between despair and acceptance at different times. "We don't know how long this is gonna last. We don't know if it's going to last forever. If I have to be you, literally… I don't know how to do it. But I'll learn."

Pat shrugs, and picks at his shawarma. "I'll take care of you, Brian," he finishes, simply.

Brian's eyes burn. "What the heck, Pat," he says, "That's the nicest thing you've ever said."

"Eat your shawarma before I shove it down my throat," Pat replies.

—

When dinner's done and hands are thoroughly de-greased, they retire back to Pat's bedroom to acquaint him with nail polish. It's dark outside, so Pat turns on his bedside lamp before sitting down at the edge of his bed, throwing the room into golden softness. Brian pulls the desk chair over and lays a towel over Pat's knees.

"I can't believe we didn't do something about makeovers for Gill and Gilbert," Brian muses, shaking the first bottle of polish. Pat'd bought black, teal, and gold, and Brian figures: well, it's not like he gets a lot of chances to really knock his nails out of the park, and being outside his body is probably one of them.

"Write it down," Pat replies. "You're fuckin' famous now; I'll bet if you asked for it, you could probably get it back on the air."

Brian ducks his head; his smile has a weird twist to it he certainly didn't authorize. "Would you do it again," he asks.

"Yeah, I think so," Pat replies, easily. He spreads his hands on his knees. "I think you could do better, though."

"Than you?" Brian says, shooting an incredulous look back up at Pat. Pat's gaze, even behind the familiarity of Brian's own eyes, is calm and non-judgemental. "No way, Pat Gill. We're a team."

Pat scoffs.

"Pat," Brian says, again. "You don't really think that, do you?"

Pat's quiet a long time, long enough that Brian silently opens the first polish and starts laying down the first coat.

When Pat talks, he takes a quick breath first and lets it out, like he'd meant to say something and then decided he needed just that little bit more time. "D'you think you'll leave Polygon," he finally asks.

Brian pauses, just a bit, between nails. "Sometimes," he answers, honestly. "There's always a right time to leave."

"Legs did," Pat replies.

"Yeah," Brian says, "And it was good for her. Heck, even Justin and Griffin left. No one's too big to leave, Pat. I can't say it won't be time someday for me. And even if that never happens, there's nothing saying we won't all get Buzzfed because some asshole wants a nicer private jet."

Pat makes a raised fist with his free hand, and Brian breathes out a quiet laugh. "I'll miss you when you leave, asshole," Pat says, after a beat.

"Well, I don't have any plans for it," Brian reassures him. Well, he hopes he's being reassuring. He probably could have led with the fact that being a part of Polygon has literally changed his life, and it'd take wild horses to drag him away from his partner in Patrick at this point.

"Tell me. When you think you might. Before you start looking," Pat asks of him, head bowed, and Brian nods.

"I will. I promise."

—

The silence stretches between them for a long time after that, companionable but a little somber anyway. Brian finishes the first and second coats of the teal, and takes a break to let it dry. "D'you want a beer?"

"Yeah, please," Pat replies, so Brian grabs two cans from the fridge, cracks them, and helps Pat get his into his hand so it doesn't mess up his nails. He sits back when he's done, one foot up on Pat's bedframe. There's no label on canned beer, so he doesn't even have anything to fidget with while he waits for the polish to dry.

He looks around Pat's room. It's been an illuminating day; he never thought he'd spend so much time in here. "We're gonna know all of each other's secrets pretty soon, huh," he wonders, out loud.

Pat laughs as he takes a sip. "I had to take a shit earlier. You don't have any fuckin' secrets from me, man."

"God," Brian groans, rubbing the heel of one hand into his eye. "I'm sorry."

Pat's smile is amiable, half-hidden behind his can. "It's fine. It's just you."

Brian doesn't know how to respond to that, so he doesn't; he just nurses his beer and tries not to think too hard.

Quinn's making noise out in the kitchen, microwaving something or other. The fridge opens. "Hey, beer!" his voice rings through the walls, "Is this house beer?"

"Sure," Brian calls back, while Pat mouths really at him. Brian shrugs, and Pat rolls his eyes.

"Sweet, thanks," Quinn calls back, and goes back to cooking his dinner.

"You have roommates," Pat reminds Brian.

"Yeah, my sister and my best friend since our dorm room days," Brian says, "You get used to sharing. How do those feel," he asks, indicating Pat's nails.

"Heavy?" Pat replies, gently touching his thumb to one of his nails. "Dry, I guess."

"Good enough," Brian says, putting his can on the side table and sitting forward again to do the same for Pat. He picks up the black polish. "Assume the position, please," he orders.

Pat's smirking as he puts his hands back on his knees. Brian leans in and starts swiping broad black swatches over the teal, just basic geometric designs.

"You're getting it on the skin," Pat observes.

"It comes off when it's dry, don't worry," Brian assures him. "I'd look like a serious fuck-up all the time, if it didn't."

"Hate to break it to you…" Pat drawls, and Brian giggles and fucks up one of the nails. Oh, well, that one's all black, now.

"Thanks, Pat. Keep me humble."

"Any time."

—

This part goes faster; Brian's giving a second coat to some of the less confident strokes before he breaks the silence. He's gotta ask. "Pat?"

"Hmm?"

"Why didn't you tell me you're bi?"

Pat doesn't freeze so much as he goes still, the even cadence of his breathing pausing for a moment before he takes in one longer one. "I'm…" he starts, too high, then clears his throat. "I'm still figuring it out."

Brian mmhmms noncommittally, hoping Pat will elaborate. He doesn't, though: "How did you find out," Pat asks, instead.

"Oh. Quinn told me," Brian says, capping the black polish and setting it aside.

Brian's never seen anyone actually embody consternation, but Pat's probably pretty close. "What? Why?" he asks, aghast.

"Well, that's a whole question," Brian says, sitting back and taking a big pull from his can. "He, uh, might have told me he was happy that you finally asked me out."

"Fuck me," Pat moans. His face, like, literally drains of colour, and Brian has to jerk forward in a hurry to grab his hands before they go up to his face and polish gets in his hair.

"Hey, easy," Brian soothes, pulling Pat's hands back down.

Pat looks miserable. "Fuck, I'm sorry," he bites out.

"It's okay," Brian says, swallowing. No putting the lid back on this box. "I figured… I mean, you probably had your reasons. For not."

Pat's hands flex, like he wants to clench them into fists. "Brian… I'd never ask you out," he says, fiercely.

"Gee, Pat," Brian winces. His heart does a weird stutter that kicks him like a horse. "You don't have to sell it."

"No, I—" Pat says, too quickly, and then curses. "Fuck, I—I wish I could fucking—hold your hand or something, god."

Brian's body doesn't blush, but lord, does it ever cry. Brian watches in agony as Pat's eyes go red and wet, and his lips start trembling with the effort of forming words. "Hey, geez, all right, hold on," he says, pulling the towel off Pat's lap to press it to Pat's face instead. "Here."

Pat lets out an embarrassed laugh. "Jesus, is this normal for you?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Brian admits. "It's healing. You should try it some time."

"Fuck, no thanks, I'll keep the depression," Pat replies, sniffling into the towel.

Brian waits until Pat's breathing seems a little more under control. He gently dabs Pat's eyes with the towel, and pulls it away. "D'you think we can go back to the part where you wanted to hold my hand?"

Pat's eyes are red, but dry. He sniffles, and turns his hand so that Brian can carefully interlace their fingers. That curious buzz races through Brian again, raising the hairs on his arm, but stopping short of crashing over him and washing him away. He strokes the side of Pat's hand with his thumb.

"I could never ask you out," Pat says, finally, "because it wouldn't be right to put you in that position at work."

"What, seriously—?" Brian sputters.

Pat raises his other hand, as if he wants to tick off with his fingers. "Think about it, Brian. It's your first job as a video producer. You're younger than me, you're dependent on this job to be able to stay in New York, and until pretty recently, it probably would have been hard to find another one, especially if you were worried I'd undermine you for trying." Brian opens his mouth to protest, but Pat shakes his head. "And I'm not your actual boss, but I've still got seniority, and I make a lot of decisions about content, including yours."

"Pat, you'd never—"

"Of course I wouldn't, Brian. Of course, god. But I still couldn't just—even if you felt the same way—no one could ever be sure. I could never be sure. And I have a responsibility to be professional, and to not fuck you up—"

Brian kisses himself.

He doesn't mean to. He's sitting, trying to understand the jumble of half-thoughts and wild mischaracterizations coming out of his own mouth, and then he's kneeling over Pat instead, one knee on the bed, his free hand cupping Pat around the back of the neck until he fumbles them into the right angle.

Now the buzz is insistent, like a swarm of wasps in his skull, so loud and so consuming that he almost doesn't hear Pat make any noise at all, and he certainly doesn't pick out the nuance. He does, however, realize when Pat pushes him away, one hand flat on his chest and pushing so hard that Brian stumbles back into, and almost out of, Pat's desk chair.

Pat wipes his mouth—Brian's mouth—and though he doesn't look disgusted, the look on his face is so transcendentally sad that Brian regrets everything immediately. Brian's heart's going a million in his chest. "I'm—so sorry—" he squeaks out, "Pat, I—"

"It's fine," Pat mutters. He doesn't meet Brian's eye. "It's fine. I just—I don't want it like this."

Brian gestures between them, that all-encompassing motion that still conveys all this fuckery, and Pat nods with a sigh that seems like it comes up from his toes.

"Just… do me a favour, and think on it," Pat says, "Think about how it's actually going to look. Think about how bad it would go for you, if you'd fallen in with any other asshole who just thinks you're hot."

"Pat…"

"People are shit, Brian," Pat says, emphatically. "The stories I hear curl my fucking hair, alright. Just… do me a favour, and think on it. So I know you're sure."

"Trust me, Pat, I have thought about it," Brian says, darkly, and he can see the edges of Pat's mouth curl into a smile, even though he's still not looking at Brian.

"Well, I still don't wanna kiss my ugly mug," Pat retorts, "so you're just gonna have to deal with an embargo until this sorts itself out."

Brian grabs Pat's hand again and pulls it to his lips, pressing a kiss to—yeah, his own knuckles, he guesses, but it's all for Pat's benefit. "Okay," he says. "Deal."

—

The rest of the night passes in an adrenaline-soaked blur for Brian. Sure, he does things, he finishes the gold accents on Pat's nails and keeps up conversation, but mostly his mind has been so colonized with the thought that Pat likes him that nothing's passing through the golden gates into memory.

"These are pretty good," Pat says when Brian's done, admiring his nails. "Why don't you do this more often?"

"Guess I just care about you more," Brian says, replacing the cap on the gold. Pat makes a soft little noise in the back of his throat, but lets it stand.

When Pat's nails are dry, he lets Charlie back into the room and disappears for a bit. Brian doesn't think Pat leaves the apartment, but he thinks he hears the window in the living room open wide, the one that leads to the fire escape. He's about the same, honestly, needing what little space he can carve out for himself inside of this forced intimacy.

He throws himself into Pat's bed, inhaling deeply of the grounding scent of him creased into every fold. It's calming, both to his mind and also, probably, to his body: the sense memory of comfort and solitude. Pat finds him like that probably fifteen minutes later. His face looks splotchy from the cold.

"You sleepy?" Pat asks, leaning against the doorframe. Still taking his space.

Brian turns his head to be able to speak. "I guess, yeah," he replies. He's not, really; it's only just after ten, so he'd usually have a few more hours of gas left in the tank, but honestly, sleep sounds like a fine option.

"D'you wanna watch something on Netflix," Pat asks, probably thinking the same thing.

"No chill?" Brian asks, and Pat shakes his head with a faint little smile. "Okay," Brian decides, and pushes himself up on the bed so that there's room for Pat. "You pick, though."

Pat hesitates when Brian pats the free side of the bed. "We should… how do you wanna do tonight?"

"Well, it'd probably look pretty weird if you slept on the couch," Brian muses.

"Weirder if you did, honestly," Pat replies, "And my back is not made for couches, trust me."

It's an unanswerable question, except for the obvious one. Brian sighs and extends his hand to Pat, who finally enters the room and—miracle of miracles, takes Brian's hand. The contact hums, soothingly. "Pat, can we please just not pretend?" Brian asks, staring at their joined hands. "I know it's seven kinds of fucked up right now, and I get that you don't want to do anything... dramatic… but I'm not gonna pretend like I don't wanna wake up next to you."

Pat lets himself be tugged onto the bed, first just a knee, then two, then by some sort of mutual silent agreement Brian just puts his arms around Pat and pulls him the rest of the way, until they're lying together with limbs intertwined. Pat's head fits perfectly against Brian's shoulder—a good thing to remember, for when Brian's back in his own body—and Brian can feel the hot gust of Pat exhaling into his neck.

"What is this," Pat asks, mostly muffled.

"It's a hug, fucker," Brian says, stroking his hands down Pat's back. "Don't tell me you didn't need one."

Pat's breath on his neck goes staccato with laughter, and he squeezes Brian lightly before pulling away. Brian whines, but Pat doesn't go far. "I'm just gonna get ready for bed, man."

Even though it's literally nothing Brian hasn't seen before, Pat still leaves the bedroom with a handful of sleeping clothes. Brian takes the chance to change out his jeans and sweater, putting an oversized shirt on over his boxers, kind of sweating it over how little clothing is too little clothing to sleep beside your mutual crush who doesn't want to kiss you because you're wearing his body like a kigurumi. He shoots off a text to the housemate groupchat—don't wait up, staying over at pats—and turns his phone to silent before the replies come in.

Pat returns wearing a t-shirt and plaid pajama pants, and doesn't seem weirded out by Brian in his boxers, so that's a win. They get into bed and bring up Netflix on Pat's laptop, and end up sort of balancing it across their thighs. It takes a little jockeying for position, but eventually Pat scoots down and Brian slings an arm over his shoulders, pulling him close.

"Is this okay," Brian asks, as Pat twists and turns his head to deal with the fluffiness that is Brian's hair right now.

"Yeah, of course," Pat says, and slings his free arm across Brian's stomach. "You?"

"Perfect," Brian replies, and hits play.

—

Pat falls asleep first, somewhere during the third episode, his breath even and wet against Brian's chest. Brian hadn't really been watching, honestly, so he just turns it off and puts the laptop on the bedside table, and turns off the light as smoothly as he can with Pat cradled in one arm. Everywhere they touch is just a pleasant hum, a little frisson of electricity that passes between them, as lazy as the night.

Pat makes a questioning, half-asleep noise as Brian carefully repositions them so they're lying down, Pat's head on his arm, and then drifts back to sleep. Brian studies his face in the blue light coming in through the window from the city outside—he's never seen himself asleep before. Without the spark of Pat's consciousness behind those familiar eyes, it really is like being outside his body, observing himself.

We'll figure it out, he thinks, as he tucks a stray lock of hair behind Pat's ear. Somehow.

—

Turns out, they don't have to do anything at all.

He wakes up the next morning with the sun in his face and the unpleasant but familiar certainty that he's beaten his alarm. He squints into the light, trying to bring his hands up to shield his eyes, but they're tucked against something, and then awareness swoops over him in a cold rush.

He can't help it: he laughs, loud and shrill even to his ears, at the sight of Pat in front of him—actually Pat, with the right face and everything. The light streaming in from the window rims his features in silver sunrise. He's the most beautiful man Brian's ever seen. His expression is serene in sleep, though at the sound of Brian's laughter his brow creases and his lips thin with the displeasure of being pulled from a dream.

"Pat!” Brian hisses, "Patrick! Wake up!"

Pat groans, immediately grumpy, wincing as he rubs his face into his pillow. "Brian, what the fuck," he mumbles, still clinging to the last bits of his sleep.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Pat," Brian whispers, "...but I'm really glad I'm not inside you right now."

That gets his attention. Pat's eyes slant open, just a sliver, enough to take in that Brian's in bed with him—blank confusion clouds his expression first, then surprise, then finally a relief that cracks his face open with a huge smile. "Holy shit," he breathes, "We're back?"

"We're back, baby!" Brian crows, drawing out the baby as obnoxiously as possible.

Pat laughs, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. The other arm's still tucked under Brian, warm and faintly tacky with drool and sweat. "My arm is numb," Pat says, between fits of giggles. "You've—you've got a heavy head."

Brian lifts his head and Pat groans as he flexes his arm, but he doesn't take it away, so Brian just repositions himself, even closer to Pat's gorgeous, sleep-creased face. "Hey, Pat," Brian leads.

"Hmm?"

"I still really wanna kiss you."

Pat stops laughing and considers Brian, seriously, for a few long seconds. "I haven't brushed my teeth yet," he says, eventually.

"Nothing about your body's gonna scare me off, Pat Gill," Brian murmurs, leaning in.

Pat meets him halfway, curling his hand around Brian's neck, his thumb on his jaw, tilting their faces so that when their lips finally meet, it's—just—utter perfection. A million times better than any stolen kiss, in any stolen face. Pat's lips are warm, and soft, and yielding, but most importantly: they're his, and he's putting them on Brian.

It's impossible to know who deepens the kiss; Brian only knows that once he's started, god, he doesn't want to stop. He takes and takes of Pat's mouth, and gives in return—long, meticulously slow kisses that send heat racing through Brian, igniting him. He shoves his hand up Pat's shirt—the one Brian had dressed himself in last night, what a mindfuck—to the sound of Pat's quick inhale against his lips when he reaches skin.

The feeling of touching Pat is so completely unlike any time he'd touched Pat's body yesterday, and Brian can't be sure if it's because of his newly correct frame of reference or because now he knows he's been invited to touch—to taste—to map out Pat's ribs under his hand like a lover, not as an itinerant caretaker. He traces that ladder of delicate bones upwards, spreading his hand wide: greedy, so greedy for every inch of him that reveals itself under his touch.

Pat kisses like he wants to climb back inside Brian's body, both hands tangled up in Brian's hair, kissing Brian's mouth deeply with not only lips but also with teeth and tongue: nipping, sucking, dipping his tongue into Brian's mouth to slide against his, a deeply messy and thorough plundering that steals Brian's breath, makes him hurt for air until Pat lets up to give it to him.

"Holy shit, that's so much better than the first time," Brian gasps, when he can.

"First time doesn't count," Pat says, and rolls them over a little so he can get Brian underneath him and dip his head to bite at Brian's neck. It makes him cry out—in pain, yeah, a little, but mostly in pleasure, and with surprise, for how much he wants it anyway. Pat soothes him with gentle sucking bites, pinning him down, raising up what Brian thinks must be bruises.

I don't care, he thinks, wildly, let the whole fucking world know.

Their legs tangle together under the covers, Brian's pajama-clad ones to Pat's bare legs. Brian hooks one ankle around Pat's thigh and it's—it's just the perfect angle, and Pat realizes it at the same time Brian does, because he drops himself down real close until they're pressed together along the whole length of their bodies, until every aching part of themselves comes into contact.

Pat bites down hard as Brian grinds against him, taking what little leverage he can get, and it raises a symphony of noises from them both—grunting, groaning, Brian's high pitched whine in the back of his throat as Pat sucks a deep bruise far too high to even have a hope of covering.

"Oh, god—oh, Pat—" Brian moans, reaching down to slip his hand into Pat's boxers and grab a handful of his firm ass, both holding on and encouraging him as they rut against each other, the discrete boundaries of their bodies melting away again, moving as one beast towards a single, inevitable conclusion.

"Fuck—touch me, Brian, please—" Pat gasps, coming up to bite into Brian's mouth again with a punishing, bruising kiss. Brian slides his hand under the band of Pat's boxers until he finds his goal, brushing against soft skin with knuckles first, then wrapping his fingers around Pat and giving him a few twisting, loving pumps of his hand.

Pat swears, a shudder rolling through his body at Brian's touch, and tucks his head into the hollow of Brian's throat just to breathe and gasp and moan his pleasure into Brian's skin. "Oh, fuck, yes—" he hisses, bracing his arms on either side of Brian's head and fucking into his hand, already lost to any sort of rhythm at all.

With his free hand Brian holds Pat's head close, tangled up in his hair, feeling the oil and the sweat and smelling the sweet sleep-drunk scent of him, every earthly thing that makes him Pat, every part of him that Brian's loved so intimately, as much as his own body and even more so, nothing between them but the polite fiction of being discrete bodies in space. He presses a kiss to Pat's sweat-dappled temple and keeps it there as within a minute more Pat gasps and swears into his release, slicking Brian's hand and the front of his pajamas and his shirt and god-knows-what-else under the covers.

Pat shudders as Brian soothes him through the aftershocks, rubbing his thumb through the mess of come dripping down his shaft as it slowly starts to soften in his hand. Pat lifts himself up to press trembling lips to Brian, all over his face, featherlight and clumsy, until he lands back on Brian's lips.

"Wow," he says, simply, when he pulls away again so just their foreheads are touching. His eyes are closed, and Brian can see every perfect individual eyelash, every pore of his flushed cheekbones. "Give me a… give me a minute…"

"Mmhmm," Brian hums, gingerly slipping his hand from Pat's boxers. He's not keen on wiping his hand on Pat's sheets—though they're a write-off anyway, probably—and there's one particularly adventurous drip winding down his wrist, so he brings it to his mouth and catches it with his tongue. Salt blooms across his tastebuds.

"Jesus," Pat swears, emphatically, knocking Brian's hand aside to shove his tongue in Brian's mouth. His hands tighten around Brian's waist, then jerk him downwards on the bed until his legs are splayed wide on either side of Pat, nearly up in the air, and Brian lets out a cackle as Pat hoists them up on his shoulders. "Minute's done. I'm gonna suck your dick now."

"Oh, are you no—oh!!" Brian breaks off as Pat makes good on his words, leaning in and fearlessly sucking the head of Brian's dick into his mouth. It's—oh, fuck, Brian's closer than he thought, because the hot wet heat of Pat's mouth almost undoes him right there, especially combined with Pat's broad hands rubbing possessively up and down his sides, squeezing, scratching, plucking at his nipples when they reach high enough.

Pat's mouth is—it's—Brian doesn't know if it's skilled or not, if Pat's admission that he was 'still figuring out' being bi meant he'd done a lot of book learning, or if he'd done this on the down-low, or if he's just a cocksucking asshole-savant, but whatever it is, it fucking works for Brian, every element in their chemistry fusing at once in one cataclysmic reaction. Every part of him sings with the pleasure of being joined with Pat.

"Oh, fuck, oh, hell, I'm not gonna last long, Pat," Brian stutters, gasping out his need between every word. Pat hums in response, sending vibrations rocketing into Brian's core, cinching him up tight, putting him on the path of no return. "Oh, hell, oh, hell, Pat, I'm—"

Brian comes with a shout that's like breaking the surface of the water after holding your breath, when your vision goes black with stars and you touch, for a moment, the face of the divine thing that exists in the space between every atom. He couldn't stop it if he tried, stumbling forward into it like he needs air, like he needs light, like he needs Pat in this moment.

Pat returns the favour paid to him before, sucking and licking Brian as he shudders through the lingering sensation, every filthy sacred movement of Pat's tongue sending new waves of pleasure coursing up his body.

When Brian's soft again, Pat lets his legs slip from his shoulders and tucks Brian gently back into his pajama pants. He wipes his glistening red mouth on his arm as he rises, then presses a chaste kiss to Brian's cheek. Brian turns his head lazily, making plaintive noises until Pat huffs and kisses him properly.

Eventually, Pat's elbows buckle and he lets himself topple over, slotting immediately against Brian's side with their legs intertwined. Brian turns a little so he can run his hands down Pat's chest, even over his shirt.

"I'm glad we waited," Brian admits, toying with a loose thread of Pat's shirt. Pat doesn't say anything, just leans in and kisses him again, sweet and slow.

They're still kissing when Pat's alarm goes off, making them both jump. "Fuck. Monday," Pat mutters, against Brian's lips.

"You got any sick days?" Brian asks. "Work from home?"

"They can't fire both of us," Pat mutters, darkly, and Brian laughs and kisses him again, whole-heartedly. He can't stop, now. The dam's broken.

A thought does occur to him, though. "Hey, we should… tell someone, right? HR? Tara, at least. I mean. If you wanna keep doing this, I just—"

Pat silences him with a gentle finger across his lips. "Tomorrow. We'll deal with it tomorrow, okay?" He traces Brian's cheekbone, up to his ear, where he tucks a rogue strand away. Brian grins at the familiarity.

"Yeah, man, fuck our future selves," he says, making Pat laugh.

"Yeah, fuck 'em," Pat repeats, "I got better things to do today."