12. Confession

When Jimmy showed up back to school a couple of hours later, red-eyed and feeling exactly like he wanted a very serious nap, the last thing he expected was someone waiting for him, but then, he'd have been wrong. Pete must have been lurking somewhere in the common room, because there was no way he'd have known to get to Jimmy's door exactly thirty seconds after he walked through it.

"You're back kinda early," he declared, rather than starting with a 'hello' or anything like that.

"Am I?" Jimmy asked vaguely, grabbing a half-filled bottle of stale water and downing it. He'd dumped his haul of shopping for the day at the end of the bed, thankfully not forgetting it and leaving it out in Blue Skies under some car bumper... like last time.

"It hasn't been... well, I mean, I figured you were... it's still early," Pete mumbled incoherently, and Jimmy couldn't tell if it was because he was still a little high or Pete was just making fuck all sense.

"We were only chillin'," he answered vaguely. "It don't have to take all day."

"Oh, I suppose it doesn't," Pete echoed ineloquently, hovering like there was something bugging him.

"What is it?" Jimmy said bluntly, forgetting not to just speak his mind. "You've been bummed out since this mornin'."

"That's not true," Pete said with a sham imitation of truth.

"What is it? You got a problem with thrifting?" he queried, and Pete shook his head. "So it's Duncan?" he accused.

"No," Pete forced. "He's... nice, I guess."

"I know he ain't exactly polished, but neither am I," Jimmy retorted. "I didn't figure you for having a problem with someone like that."

"It's fine," Pete mumbled. "You can... with whoever you like, it's not my place to-"

"Wait, what?" Jimmy interrupted. Pete meant smoking weed together, surely.

"I said it was fine to, uh... you know," Pete fumbled. "Maybe it's just a bit weird if I'm there."

"For what?" Jimmy pressed. "There wasn't... isn'tanything to be weird." He could swear that it was almost as if Pete were jealous because he thought Duncan was his rebound fuck. Then again, he was probably just deluding himself.

"Oh, okay," Pete said weakly, eyes on his feet.

"Did you come here to find out if something was going on with him?" Jimmy found himself asking, like he could be dumb enough to push that boat out.

"Of course n-" Pete started, and glanced up long enough to see Jimmy was staring right at him. "I might've wondered."

"Wondered," Jimmy echoed. "If I'm screwing someone else?"

"Jimmy!" Pete brayed. It was fair; not like he'd been screwing anyone in the first place. But it was a guilty cry.

"Are you telling me you care?" he prompted.

"What?" Pete said like asking vague questions was going to get him out of it.

"If I'm getting with anyone else," Jimmy explained simply.

"That'd be crazy," Pete declared.

"That's not an answer," he pointed out.

"I was the one who said... you know... I said you should go any just do... whatever it is you want to," he babbled, and Jimmy was only half listening to him, the other half of his mind taken up trying to decide if this could actually be happening or if he was misreading the situation.

"You did," he confirmed. "But I asked if it bothers you."

"Just because I... whatever," he huffed. "It doesn't mean I'm going to be fine with someone just... there." Flirting in front of him; he was behaving almost like an ex, one who hadn't moved on.

"Duncan's always like that," Jimmy answered a little tartly. "He'd have been like it with you if you gave him the chance." And confuse the fuck outta Pete it would've done.

"Really?" he queried.

"Of course," Jimmy spat. "He's just a mate." In the platonic and not national geographic sense.

"Yeah, but... I... it seemed like-" Pete fumbled about as awkwardly as he'd handled pretty much everything. Jimmy was noticing a pattern.

"It seemed like I was flirting with someone else and that bothered you?" he questioned, getting a bit raw around the edges. "So just tell me if I'm being crazy or if you give a fuck, Pete, because I can't take this mind game bullshit again." All that not knowing and wondering and ripping himself apart every other move because he was thinking too much only to get let down.

"I'm not playing mind games," he defended cattily.

"I never said you were!" Jimmy snapped. "Look, would you answer the fucking question!" Temper officially a thing of the past, he noted.

"Okay!" Pete threw back at him equally furiously. "Yes! It bothers me! Are you happy now?" He turned away like he was going to storm out, but the door was shut and he didn't seem quite at the point of opening it and actually leaving.

"Really?" Jimmy asked, stilled like all the storm had been taken out of him.

"Of course," he said sadly. "You were the first person to... anything, basically."

"Wait," Jimmy intervened. "You dumped me."

"I didn't," he retorted. "I-"

"We were dating, then you said we were better off as friends," Jimmy paraphrased bluntly. "You pretty much dumped me."

"We went on two dates," Pete argued.

"Which changes what?" he spat. "If you'd given me a chance we would've had more."

"You just wanted to go round the back of the school and... and make out!" Pete burst.

"Yeah?" Jimmy bit. "So?"

"Well I... that's... not really me," he excused wanly.

"Right, so tagging along with me, but not saying anything or having fun or talking to anyone new is more you?" he suggested cruelly, and Pete looked like he could've hit him.

"That's not fair," he said. "I thought that... you and him-"

"Were what?" he challenged Pete to fess up.

"Were a better thing than we ever were!" Pete erupted, and the shock of that one caught Jimmy too.

"You really thought that?" he posed, and Pete shrugged.

"Seemed like it to me," he said glumly, hands in his pockets. He'd never even given them a chance, honestly, but Jimmy didn't feel like pushing that line was going to get them anywhere.

"It bugged you enough to come here and find out for sure?" he questioned, and Pete shrugged again.

"So?" he mumbled. "I didn't want to wonder." What would that be like, Jimmy thought to himself bitterly.

"I wanna know if you still care," he snapped back. "It's not that difficult to answer."

"I'm here, aren't I?" Pete admitted. "I said it bothers me."

"Because what?" Jimmy replied, dragging the truth out of him even if he had to dredge for hours. "Because you don't like him, or because you're jealous?"

"Of course," Pete returned faster than Jimmy expected. "I'm jealous that it's easy for you and everyone else. You think I like this? That I want to watch you move on after I ruined everything because I can't just do whatever it is that makes it easy and simple to just like someone else and want to do all the normal stuff." Jimmy had heard enough. He got to his feet, fists flexing.

"You haven't ruined anything," he said calmly, forcing it down like cod liver oil.

"I haven't exactly made it easy," Pete steamed on. "And the worst part is I think I do like you but I can't even-"

"Goddamit!" Jimmy snapped, deciding that he was just going to have to step up and accept that Pete might just need pushing sometimes. He stepped forward and raised his hands, one palm to each side of Pete's head as he took hold of him and moved properly close. "You like me?"

"I think so," he wavered, as he always did. "Thinking you and that Duncan guy were... it did make me.. you know."

"Jealous," Jimmy supplied.

"Jealous," Pete echoed like he was disappointed in himself.

At some point words were only words and weren't going to be enough, and he was never much of a guy for those anyway. He'd been holding Pete's face in his hands for the better part of a minute and Pete hadn't frozen up, he hadn't even gone the least bit cold, which he was taking as a good sign. Maybe he was waiting too.

So when Jimmy closed his eyes and just moved in for the kiss, he was somewhat relieved that he'd been right and Pete had in some part wanted it too – because he certainly didn't pull away, and in fact he was kissing back the way you could tell someone returned a kiss. If they didn't it felt like trying to french a wall, and this wasn't like that. Not at all. He could feel Pete moving into him, like he could flex the right way be even closer, but Jimmy broke the contact and moved back instead.

"Still gotta think?" he asked sceptically, Pete's face under his thumbs, looking up at him without fear or uncertainty for once. Like maybe he'd finally learned to enjoy it – that he wasn't meant to be overthinking everything every step of the way.

Why it'd happened for Pete now of all times he didn't know, something about not knowing what he had until it was gone, or poetic shit like that, but Jimmy didn't care any more.

Pete shook his head, and a heartbeat later Jimmy moved back in, this time at enough of an angle to get good and close, and even dare for a bit of open-mouth action. He could feel Pete's hands come up to his arms, the wetter parts of lips on his, while everything inside him twisted up and dissolved like he'd dropped his heart in acid. It was finally perfect.

He kissed Pete until he felt like he'd pass out without a break, and moved away to notice Pete's eyes had closed too, and he looked a good shade warmer.

"So, are we making this work now?" Jimmy asked tentatively, lowering his hands.

"I thi-" Pete started, and then stopped himself. "It looks like we are," he confirmed, and just to test it, he put a hand to Pete's neck and ducked in for one more peck, which he accepted, if a little quizzical.

"Good," Jimmy settled.

"So... now what?" Pete asked like he wasn't sure what the next step after this was. Jimmy had had a whole list of things he couldn't wait to get started on, but this was still Pete and he was only on his third or so kiss of his life, so things were going to have to wait.

"Anything feel okay with, I guess?" he suggested, and Pete narrowed his eyes in thought, then smiled in a slightly unnerving way.

"Well..." he began craftily.

"Did I ever tell you that I hate you?" Jimmy remarked obnoxiously, even if Pete was draped over his shoulder with his chin hooked round Jimmy's collarbone and an arm coating his like a sleeve.

"Sure you do," Pete murmured lazily, eyes on the desk. "So just do the questions already." Of all the things to decide to do, Pete had wanted more fucking math homework. It made sense that nothing in Jimmy's life was going to go that well for too long.

"Why should I?" he challenged, and Pete sighed all down his neck. Which was a thing.

"Because you'll fail if you don't," he replied, and Jimmy turned to the side of his shoulder Pete was perched on like a parrot. Close enough to twist their mouths together for a stretched kiss that Pete only accepted in passing. Distraction tactics. Jimmy lobbied again, and Pete adjusted so it was no longer possible to drag him into any more of it. "That's not going to work," he commented, and Jimmy huffed. "How about," he suggested anew. "One for every question you actually stop procrastinating on and finish."

"One what?" Jimmy haggled, and didn't see Pete roll his eyes but expected him to have done it.

"Kiss," he specified, and actually hearing him say these words even did things to Jimmy. Like finally getting it together with his crush was going to make it any smaller, what insane logic had possessed him to think like that? He found himself trying not to think about anything to do with Pete and focus on the ridiculous arrangements of numbers in front of him. Substitute the symbols for numbers, or whatever the hell it'd been.

"Was that so hard?" Pete goaded as Jimmy finished the first set, and he sat up straight to turn with a wicked look in his eye.

"Wrong question," he retorted, palm heavy to his cheek as he sucked a kiss off his face; none of these pecks and messing around. Lucky he was sitting anyway, because with fourteen questions still to go he'd be packing by the end of it. Better not to mention that yet, he had a feeling that getting Pete into these things gradually would work much better that proverbially sticking erections in his face... not that the imagery was going to help him at all at a time like this.

"Back to work, Jimmy," Pete instructed when they parted; but it was really only half an instruction, and if he wasn't entirely losing his mind, the playful tone of the other was paramount to a flirt. As if Pete was finally learning how to flirt with him. Intentionally, at least.

"You drive a hard bargain," he insisted, facing back down into the work and happy to find Pete was resting over his shoulder again as he had before. Like maybe he wanted to, actually enjoyed it and all of that jazz.

Fourteen questions with fourteen escalating makeout sessions between them took approximately ten times as long as it'd have taken if Jimmy had been doing the work on his own and not with Pete slinking over his shoulder like a winter scarf, but he so far from not complaining he'd crossed state borders.

"Now what?" Jimmy proposed, tossing his pen away and half-turning to Pete.

"I've got stuff to do," Pete answered dutifully. "Scheduling prefect rosters, my homework..."

"Good," Jimmy declared, turning to face Pete, which also meant breaking contact. "Then go get them, and for everything you finish you get a wet one."

"When you say it like that, it sounds pretty gross," he commented haughtily.

"Then you get some hot-Hopkins-loving," he declared ecstatically. "I've got a weekend deal on."

"You've always got a deal on," Pete said with a laugh, and then backed his chair out and stood up. "But all right." He went off to get whatever diaries or Head Boy nonsense he needed for the job, while Jimmy talked his semi down a few notches and remarked to himself that if this was the way he was going to do all his homework from now on, he was on the road to becoming a highly productive and sexually frustrated honour student.

Well, he reflected as Pete returned with a comfortable grin that made it seem like maybe they'd finally cracked this one (and all it'd taken was an excruciating emotional roller-coaster), worse things had happened.

If there's such a thing as rage-finishing fanfic, this is it. Or 'vague discontent and wanting something to suddenly be done'-finishing at least.

Saving all the good stuff for last apparently, and with math homework we come full circle. Thanks for reading, and find me on tumblr to await for the slutty sequel I have planned 'The 4 Stages of Seducing Pete Kowalski', because post-get-together couple fics are actually my favourite.

Leave a review, or don't and have a nice day!

-Fear