YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO STOOP SO LOW { pat }

[noah everett cervantes]

he didn't know why barbra insisted on doing this to him. it was bad enough that she used to leave for new york all the time after he'd found her again. it was bad enough that she went out and slept with kendall when he told her not to. it was bad when the pair of them hooked up again. and again. and again. and it was bad enough that she now called kendall her god damn girlfriend of all things. but this? this was too much. she was in town. there was no reason for her to be gone for a week, no reason that he should have to sleep alone in his bed when he didn't want rhett to stay over. he was noah cervantes, god damn it. he should never have to sleep alone when his boyfriend had things to do the next day. ever. it wasn't the way things worked and really that was the mindset that had lost him gabe in the first place. if barbra didn't come home soon, noah was going to do something that he regretted. again. and honestly after the way gabe had looked at him the last time they'd been in the same room together, he didn't want that. not with rhett.

and he knew where he'd find her without having to ask. fucking kendall's house - who didn't congregate at kendall's house? honestly, it'd been a while since he'd been over there, what with gabe hanging around and all. but now he could really care less if he walked in to see gabe. he could take the hurt stares and the angry little man that still left him looking hotter than noah could sometimes stand to handle if he meant that he got to see his girl and get her to come home. he could handle being alone for so long. but when adaline kept leaving him for new york and icarus and rhett had his own things to do and couldn't stay in bed with him all day, he needed his barbra. and she wasn't fucking there. so he went to the wilson residence thinking that if kendall wasn't there, at least gabe might be and noah knew with his emotions high he might be able to get some angry closure sex out of him. and that was better than nothing.

he was able to walk into the wilson household without knocking. he always had that benefit, even if jagger always sneered when he walked in the door and jason always pulled in tighter to that fucking boyfriend of his that noah still hadn't forgiven for getting to wrap his mouth around jason's dick before he got the opportunity. noah was still a part of the family. the drunk uncle, kendall always joked, that ruined holidays by giving people lap dances and breaking all their tables. but a part of the family nonetheless and he took some happiness in that as he wiped his feet on the welcome mat and closed the door behind him. "ken," he called out, sticking his car keys into his pocket as he wandered into the living room. "i know you really like my girl and all but rhett still hasn't mastered making me coffee in the--." he cut himself off as he rounded the corner. he had looked up expecting to see kendall and barbra on the couch or maybe gabe or mickey even who was always nice to see even if he was refusing to let noah kiss him hello these days. instead he saw the last person he ever expected to see again. especially in kendall's house.

pat. his stomach twisted as his voice refused to work with him anymore and he stopped short, mouth gaping slightly in disbelief. he had to be dreaming - that was it. he was just having a really, really bad dream because pat couldn't be sitting there. pat was in los angeles. pat had left him for the university of california in los angeles and he had told him to go to yale because he wasn't wanted and he had told him...he had told him that he wasn't going to follow him, that noah didn't matter, and no, he refused to believe that that was pat, his pat, the pat that made him...him. he considered pinching himself to see if he was dreaming but the pit in his stomach let him know it was probably never the case. whenever he dreamed of pat it never felt like this. he could feel the familiar attraction, the burning lust those dreams usually entailed but it was mixed with...with pain, with humiliation, with the need to throw up. those dreams never entailed those. he was awake. he was seeing something real. he could feel his heart break all over again.

no. no this couldn't be happening. not to him. he was finally beginning to feel whole again, finally feeling worthy and deserving of something like a relationship, finally feeling like maybe...maybe he could find a forever with this man he had somehow captured, this beautiful man who found him worth it. he was just beginning to escape his insecurities. to believe in forevers and everything that he used to think was worth it. and now...now there was his biggest insecurity sitting right in front of him and he didn't know if he should laugh or cry or do something like in the many dreams he'd had containing the man sitting in front of him. he was leaning more toward crying. why? why was it that when he was finally getting his life straightened out with a job, a boyfriend he wanted to stay with, self-esteem that was sky-rocketing, pat had to show up out of fucking nowhere? why couldn't he just be left to his life? why did his past have to insist on coming back?

he felt like crying, he felt like turning around and running away he felt like...like what? like becoming pathetic? like letting everyone know that he wasn't that way because he was born a god but because some homely boy from back home didn't love him enough? but god he wasn't homely, he shouldn't be mean like that. he was gorgeous, the most beautiful man he'd ever known, and talented and he had treated him so well, like gold...no, he had to stop - that had been a lie. all of it. all four years of it. just a lie, a lie for sex, a lie so that no one had to know fucking noah cervantes was stupid enough to fall for patrick neil. no, he had to stop. to man up. to show pat who he was now, to show pat that he..he couldn't ruin his life. he couldn't crush him. so with that he shifted his features from shocked into more amused, his usual smirk sliding onto his features as he stepped further into the room. "well, well, well," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "look what the cat dragged in."

[/justify]

[patrick james neil]

he was still having trouble believing the turn that his life had taken. the way that it was going now. not but a few weeks ago he was standing on the edge of a building ready to jump off of it, and now he was staying in the house of barbra's girlfriend. he hadn't touched an intoxicant in weeks and there were moments where he could still feel the shivers of withdrawls. but the desire to use, something about that was gone. he'd known a lot of people who had gotten sober and were tortured every day with the overwhelming desire to go find a fix, but, well, he just didn't have that. maybe he didn't have as much of an addictive personality as he thought he did. maybe it wouldn't have been as hard for him to quit on his own as he thought it would've been. though, if he were to be honest with himself, having a support system helped when it came to this shit. just having barbra and kendall at the very least there to keep him from doing something stupid, it was something that he hadn't had in years. people that seemed to really care about him.

it wasn't just babs and kendall, though, even if those were the two that he really had to thank for saving his life. jason was helping in a way that he couldn't even describe. the kid was going to make a great shrink one day. and the sunny disposition that alec had about him was just great to be around if only because he was always smiling. he always saw the brighter side of things and fuck if that wasn't nice to be around. and sure, jagger and his boyfriend both seemed to be pretty much ass holes, but they didn't seem to be full of hate either. just more to themselves. in all truth every person that kendall and barbra had brought into pat's life were good people. all the way to gabe. who for as far as he knew was a good guy that had just gotten his heart broken. though, he had no clue who had shatted that sweet man's heart into a million pieces and there was a huge part of pat that just wanted to take all of his pain away. but the neil boy had enough of his own pain to worry about. enough of his own heartache and worry. that worrying about someone else, well, he didn't have it in him even if he wanted to have it in him.

he'd gotten himself a good friendship with gabe over the time that he had known him though. and fuck if having friends wasn't something that he'd been missing in the past years of his life. and just having friends was enough to keep him from doing something stupid. at least for the time being. and that was good enough. there was the impending possibility of noah showing up though. barbra had warned him about it just trying to give him a head's up. so far so good though. and they were just about to find him a place of his own, or well, a place to borrow at least until babs felt that he was good enough to be on his own again. until then he was on some sort of barbra planned suicide watch. and if he were to be perfectly honest he was pretty sure that it was worse than any suicide watch in the world. babs wasn't the sort of women who did anything half assed especially not when it came to the people that she cared about. so if there was one thing that pat knew, it was that he wasn't going to be leaving hartford until barbra said it was okay.

the day had been uneventful thus far, just a normal day between barbra and pat. he appreciated everything about her, every damn little thing. even the way that she would make breakfast and coffee for him and bring it to him on a tray. no matter how many times he told her that she didn't have to do that, she still did. he'd stopped arguing her about it after the first couple of days. because arguing with barbra helen was futile at best. the sound of the front door opening caused his head to perk up and a small smile sit on his face. he was more than a little sure that it was going to be gabe. and he would be happy to see that boy's face again. something about the other man just made him feel calm and at peace. but the person that came into the house, the all too familiar voice that started going through the place, it caused his heart to stop. and the day he had hoped wouldn't come had.

for a long moment, he just stared at noah. his heart picked up pace and god if he hadn't gotten more gorgeous over the years that he had been apart. and the pain, god, the pain that was growing in his chest was almost more than he could handle. he still loved him as much as he had all those years ago and for several moments, he just forgot how to breathe. he was more than a little sure that he was shaking, literally trembling. and his teeth sunk into his bottom lip for a moment to try to keep it from trembling. he wanted to run over to him. he wanted to gather that beautiful man into his arms and kiss him. he wanted to go back to those high school years and know that noah cervantes was his again. but he couldn't have any of that. he couldn't. because noah wasn't his. before he could even get a word out barbra rounded the corner. "patty cake i hope you're hungry because i made a lot of pancakes," and then her eyes lifted to rest on that best friend of hers and her brows shot to her hair line. "Oh......noah....what are you doing here?" she asked in the most casual tone that she could possibly muster.

[noah everett cervantes]

he honestly felt like a part of him had just fallen off a cliff. like even though he was standing there in kendall's living room, staring at the face of the man that he'd spent the last years trying to forget, trying to prove to himself that he could get over, there was some piece of him that had actually just taken a giant leap off the side of the grand canyon and was now plummeting toward the center of the earth, waiting for certain death, for everything to crash and burn. he kept that confident, condescending cervantes smirk on his features in spite of that because he'd be damned if he went through all those years of theater work to let something as petty as heartbreak ruin his perfect act - the act that he'd spent seven years perfecting to a t so that not even the people who claimed they knew him best such as barbra and kendall could even tell that inside he was still hurting worse than anyone could ever tell. so even though he was hurdling toward certain death, he kept his cool demeanor. he could do this. he could prove to pat that he couldn't ruin him.

but then crash. around the corner came the last person he wanted to see when he was on the verge of a crisis. especially when she was calling the person putting him on the edge patty cakes and bringing him food and that was when it all sort of clicked in noah's mind. barbra had ditched him...for pat. patrick neil. the patrick neil who had left him an emotional wreck, who took his heart and smashed it, the one who had noah locked in his room for a month doing nothing but eating ice cream and watching breakfast at tiffany's while his mom packed up his shit for yale. he could feel that cool smirk fall as his jaw set and he cocked his head slightly to the side as he took in the pretty sight that was happening right in front of him. and just like seven years ago he felt that he had never been so totally and completely alone. because once again, barbra and pat where some place and he - he was some place else.

and that hurt. barbra talked a lot about being friends and he had done a lot for her. he had supported her and her stupid shit with jordan. he gave her a place to stay and bought her clothes and took her in again, welcomed her back into his life. he kept an eye on kendall and helped barbra with her auditions and made her coffee and tea and made room for her stupid clothes and opened himself back up to her even though she had ditched him just like pat had so many years ago. and he had been so gracious and so loving and this - this was how he was repaid? by her going behind his back and grabbing the person who ruined him and then what? ditching him again to make the damn guy pancakes? he was livid and he didn't care that his act was falling and he didn't care that it was obvious to anyone who were to venture in that noah cervantes was one misstated comment away from bursting. this - this he had a right to get emotional about because this was a familiar picture that he was not okay with walking in on again. he knew barbra and pat were friends. but he figured that their friendship had been more than that. evidently, he was wrong.

"well isn't this cozy?" he said, an incredulous smirk pulling on his features as he stepped further into the room. "we have another addition to the island of misfit toys that congregates here, it seems. you know the island i dragged your sorry ass into. the one that's uh...what's the word kendall likes to use? a sanctuary." he could almost feel the angry twitch of his eye, the way that his stare bore holes into his best friend's face, his ex-boyfriend all but forgotten as he rounded the room in an almost predatory way. there was a lot that he could handle. but this - this was his place. the wilson household was one that he had more of a claim on than barbra or pat or gabe or any of them and yet somehow it still felt like once more he was being systematically shut out. his mind flashed to the home he'd found with rhett, with icarus, with that entire clan and annika with that pretty little smirk on her face that liked to tell him he'd chosen the right side when he stayed by rhett's side as opposed to barbra's. but that home was new; that was disposable. this was seven years in the making. and leave it to barbra fucking stien to come in and take that away from him.

"you've got a really sick sense of humor, barbra," he told her and for a second, just a second, the anger fell and he could feel how upset and hurt and betrayed he felt come out in a sentence. but then he got himself a little bit more composed and decided to address the second part of her statement. "and as disturbing as that is, i did graciously allow the second half of my bed to you instead of to my boyfriend and i find it hardly fair that it's been vacated these past weeks. rhett's school gets out a lot later than mine. he's been busy. so i was just coming down to see where oh where has my little bitch gone?" his harsh gaze turned to pat then and he clicked his tongue lightly. "but i see you've been keeping secrets so uhm. that's fine." he turned back to her. "you can keep the island of misfit toys and uh, i'll enjoy the north pole." he winked and uncrossed his arms sticking his hands in his pockets. "unless you want to explain in the next five minutes what the fuck he's doing here, why you're making him pancakes, and why the fuck i shouldn't call up adaline's pyro older brother and get him to set fire to each and every one of your possessions which i have been so stupidly and graciously storing in my home while you stuck around here dealing with my sloppy seconds. then honestly. be my guest."

[/justify]