Author: Minervacat
Fandom: Band RPS/college sports RPS
Pairing: Pete/Connor Barth; Pete/Patrick
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Dubious sexual ethics.
Spoilers: Um, for the fact that the Carolina football team sucks? Is that a spoiler, or is that fact?
Summary: "People in North Carolina are narrow-minded homophobic fuckers," Pete said. "No." 5100 words.

In the middle of November, almost at the end of the tour, the envelope turned up with a batch a mail from sometime in mid-September, forwarded by the label after they'd gone through all of it to make sure that nobody was trying to blow Andy up or poison Joe or send dirty underwear to Patrick. (Pete always wanted them to forward the dirty underwear he got, because it would be funny as hell, but Island's mail people, whoever it was who went through their mail, had a strict no-underwear policy for everyone. Pete tried not to be totally bummed about this.) So it was opened, but the original postmark was still on the envelope, which is what Patrick ended up looking at when Pete dumped the contents of the package -- a bunch of computer-printed designs and a t-shirt -- onto Patrick's laptop.

He said, "What the fuck?"

Patrick took the envelope out of Pete's hand, squinted at the postmark, and said, "You know somebody in North Carolina?"

"People in North Carolina are narrow-minded homophobic fuckers," Pete said. "No."

Patrick said, "Probably not all of them."

"They want to kill me," Pete said, which was patently not true but sounded good.

"They sent you," Patrick said, and stopped to flip through the papers. "They sent you, I think North Carolina sent you t-shirt designs, Pete. And I don't think that it's all of North Carolina behind this, I think it's just -- " He paused and flipped through again, extracting a single sheet of paper with typing on it. "One kid named Connor Barth. Who did these designs. And sent them to you because, I'd assume, he likes your stuff."

"I'm not putting just anybody on my label," Pete said, and Patrick snorted back a laugh.

Patrick said, "You flew to Nevada because Ryan Ross sent you .mp3s and naked pictures."

"There aren't any naked pictures in this package," Pete said loftily, and then he scooped up the designs and the t-shirt and left Patrick snorting with laughter over his laptop.

Pete tried to find the kid on Facebook, but his profile was all locked down and there was nothing but a name and an age and a blurry picture that didn't tell Pete anything about whether or not the kid was as hot as Ryan Ross naked, and he tried to find the kid on MySpace but he wasn't there at all. Patrick was walking through the lounge when Pete made a noise of distress and said, "Why don't you just Google him?"

So Pete did, and that was the motherload -- page after page after page of news stories, about this kid on the North Carolina football team who could kick a field goal 55 yards with his eyes closed, who was a finalist for national awards, who was the only reason the North Carolina football team wasn't even worse than they already were.

Also, if it didn't work out for him in the NFL, he wanted to design clothes.

Pete kind of liked the kid already, and that was before he clicked on the image search results.

He couldn't tell if Barth was actually skinny, tall and skinny and all arms and legs like Beckett was, or if he just looked that way standing next to his teammates, but, whatever, whichever, the kid was hot in a clean-cut college athlete sort of way. Tiny hips and broad shoulders and thighs that looked strong enough to hold you -- just a generic you, not specifically Pete, not at all -- up against a wall. And then there was one picture, smeared with a watermark across the center, of Barth just after a kick, perfect moment of follow through, knee practically up against his forehead, and Pete had to slam his laptop shut and lock himself in the bathroom with a hand down his pants, jerking off frantically without any kind of thought in his head beyond Jesus fucking Christ, athletes.

He jerked off thinking about Connor Barth because he could, because Barth needed something from Pete and there was a hell of a lot that appealed to Pete about people who needed shit from him. All that power -- he'd never admit it in an interview, but he fucking loved having that kind of power.

Of course it was an athlete who sent Pete the best looking designs he's seen in ages. Because Pete gave that up, gave it up for Patrick and the band and this life he's living, and he didn't really miss it, much. College had just been something to do in between gigs, soccer had been a better-than-homework something to do in high school, in college. His energy started going other places. Political science was going to change the world a lot slower than the band with Joe and Patrick and Andy was going to. He didn't miss it much. The first year, he told himself that a lot. He wouldn't have wanted a normal life. He wouldn't have wanted this kid's life.

But sometimes he thought about how having teammates was different than having bandmates -- neither of them bad, just different. For one thing, sometimes his teammates had blown him; Pete's bandmates never blew him. When he emerged from the bathroom, Patrick just shook his head in Pete's direction, and Pete said, "If you ever blew me, this wouldn't be a problem."

"I," Patrick said, and blushed furiously. "There's not even logic in that sentence, Pete. Not even a little."

Pete still had one of the designs clutched in his hand. He looked down at it, swallowed hard, and waved it at Patrick. "He'd blow me," he said.

Patrick just blinked at him. "I think that's coercion, Pete. Or something. Something bad. Just because it worked with Ross -- "

"Stop implying that Ryan Ross blew me to get me to sign him!" Pete said. Ryan had blown him, but it wasn't so Pete would sign him. It was just because Ryan was willing to blow Pete, because it was something Pete could have.

Patrick raised an eyebrow that meant, Ryan Ross didn't? Pete hated everyone in the world in that moment, up to and including kickers from North Carolina who sent Pete so-ugly-they-were-awesome t-shirt designs in the mail.

"This kid can kick a football farther than you," Pete said.

Patrick looked unimpressed. "Pete, pretty much everybody on the planet could kick a football farther than me."

"I'm going to go down to North Carolina and meet him when we're done touring," Pete said.

Patrick looked a little more impressed. "They might try to kill and eat you," he said dryly. "I hear they like a good human barbecue down there."

"That's why you're going with me," Pete said.

Patrick grinned. "Okay," he agreed happily. Pete looked at him suspiciously; nobody should be that excited to go to North Carolina. "Chapel Hill has a really great scene," Patrick explained. "You can molest underage kicker-people, and I can go see a couple of local shows."

"Don't get eaten by homophobes," Pete said.

"I won't," Patrick promised sincerely. Pete went back to his laptop and looked at the picture of Barth bent in half for a long, long time.

They had to go through the athletic department at North Carolina for Pete to talk to Barth, something about NCAA regulations that Pete could probably have remembered from DePaul if he cared enough to bother, but he just waved a hand at the publicist who was setting it all up and trusted them to get it right. Pete went back to L.A. for a couple of days after the tour and Patrick went back to Chicago, and then Pete and Charlie flew to Chicago -- cold, so fucking cold, and Pete almost missed it when he was in L.A., but not really -- and then they flew to North Carolina from O'Hare.

Large parts of North Carolina were still eerily green in early December, and the sun was bright and the breeze cool but not cold. Pete put on sunglasses and said, "Somebody turned all the colors up here."

Patrick said, "It's nice. My nose hasn't frozen yet."

Charlie said, "Can we just get the car and go?"

Chapel Hill was one of those towns that just looked like it should have a big state university in it, but it was prettier than Urbana and Champaign -- "Everywhere's prettier than Urbana," Patrick said -- and the hotel they were booked into was swanky for such a backwater nowhere town.

Pete threw himself onto one bed in the room he and Patrick were sharing and said, "Let's go eat somewhere college kids do."

Patrick looked vaguely appalled, and Pete said, "Come on, they won't bite."

"I know," Patrick said. "I'm just not sure that college kids eat good food."

"That's the point," Pete said, because, okay, sometimes he felt a little guilty that Joe and Patrick didn't get the same kind of normal person experience that everyone else in the world got. Patrick would have been awesome at college, is all. Mostly, though, Pete was glad he had Patrick, full stop, whatever he'd deprived Patrick of. Patrick probably didn't think about not going to college.

Charlie went down to the front desk and asked where they should have dinner. "Some place in an alley called 'The Rat'," he reported back. Patrick looked skeptical.

"I bet it's awesome," Pete said, and so they walked the couple of blocks, past the dark, quiet campus, to what Charlie said was the main drag in the town. It was the Wednesday before Christmas so Pete had sort of expected that the whole place would be empty, college kids gone home for the holidays, but all the stores were still lit up bright at 7:30 and the sidewalks were jammed with people -- college kids and old people and tiny children riding on parents' shoulders -- all wearing the same bright shade of blue. "What the hell?" Pete said, when they saw the line streaming out of the place they were headed.

"They're seating pretty fast, but you probably won't make it to the Dome for tip," the guy standing in front of them said.

Pete had no idea what the guy was talking about and Patrick was making a vaguely appalled face under the brim of his cap, so Pete just said, "Okay."

The guy turned around further, frowning, and said, "You're not going to the game?"

"Uh," Pete said. "We don't have tickets!"

The guy laughed. "Whatever, man," he said. "Just go up to the corner of Columbia, plenty of people are selling. No problem."

"Awesome," Pete said.

Patrick leaned over to Pete, shoulder pressing against Pete's chest, and said, "Do you know what he's talking about?"

"I have no idea," Pete said. Patrick laughed.

The food was pretty good and the place cleared out long before they were seated, streams of strangers in blue pushing past them. While Pete was digging into a huge bowl of lasagna and Patrick was peering skeptically at something that professed to be a salad but mostly seemed to be a big bowl of lettuce, one of the waiters leaned across their table and retuned the TV hanging from the ceiling. "Sorry," he said. "The game just started."

Patrick craned his neck back and stared at the TV. "I think it's basketball," he said solemnly.

"You think?" Pete said. He checked. Definitely basketball. "It's definitely basketball, Trick."

"Now I know," Patrick said. Pete squinted at him, tried for a long minute to picture Patrick in a crowd of students all painted bright orange, cheering for a basketball team, and failed.

Maybe it was better Patrick had never gone to college. Pete said, "Maybe it was better you never went to college."

"What?" Patrick said, distracted, and then he twisted around again, crawling half out of his seat to put his ear close to the TV, which was showing a band playing something that was vaguely recognizable. "They're playing us," he said. Pete listened harder -- and, huh, yeah, that was a song he wrote words for, a song Patrick wrote music for, played by a bunch of skinny college kids. Patrick said, "That arrangement is bad."

A couple of the people left in the restaurant turned and stared at them. Charlie frowned. Pete said, "Maybe you could call the music department and offer to do their arrangements."

Patrick made a face. Charlie said, "Can we just eat?"

After dinner, all the tiny stores along the main street were still open. Half of them were full of blue t-shirts and sweatshirts and shit like that, and Pete wanted to see if Barth's t-shirts were anywhere. Patrick groaned and sighed when Pete grabbed his wrist and tugged him into one called the Shrunken Head -- which was an awesome name, even if the interior of the store was sort of startlingly the color of the sky -- but Patrick went willingly. Pete bought a shirt that said, "Roy's Rules: We Play, We Win, You Go Home," on the back.

"Who's Roy?" Patrick said.

Pete said, "I don't know, but I like the way he thinks."

Charlie said, "Can we just go back to the hotel, please?"

"Please," Patrick said. "This place is sort of scary."

"I told you North Carolina was scary," Pete said, slinging an arm across Patrick's shoulders and tugging him up against Pete's side. "I think they're all in a cult."

"You want to take over the world," Patrick mumbled into Pete's shirt. Patrick wasn't much older than the kids who went to school here, was only a couple of months older than Barth, but Pete had co-opted Patrick's, like, whole life for his own purposes. He refused to feel bad about it, though. Even if Patrick wouldn't give Pete blow jobs, Patrick was still more awesome than just about anybody else Pete knew and Pete wouldn't have wanted Patrick to leave him for college.

"I could take lessons from this Roy guy," Pete said. Patrick laughed into Pete's shoulder.

Pete had to go to the football stadium the next day, to meet Barth. Charlie frowned and grumbled and said things like "Should you be walking on that foot?" when Pete said he wanted to go by himself, but he'd eventually agreed. He drew Pete a map of how to get there from where they were and said, "If you get kidnapped, I'm making Patrick replace you with this kid you're meeting."

Pete put on his new t-shirt and ambled through the empty, empty, empty campus by himself, and arrived half an hour late, because he got kind of turned around when there wasn't a sidewalk where there was supposed to be a sidewalk on Charlie's map. There was a lot of construction, too. The girl behind the desk glared at him and didn't offer him a cup of coffee and pointed him sulkily toward an open door halfway down the hall behind her. "Thanks," Pete said.

In person, Connor Barth had hair like Joe's, except blond and sort of surfer-looking, and he was actually really fucking tall. And built. And he definitely just looked skinny next to his teammates, one of whom was sitting next to Barth on a couch that was shockingly blue. Everything in this town was blue. The guy looked like he could eat Pete for dinner and still have room for Patrick afterwards for dessert. "Hi," Pete said, flopping down into chair behind the desk. "Can one of you guys tell me who the fuck Roy is?"

Barth and his buddy exchanged glances that looked sort of like Patrick when Pete forgot to put pants on in the morning -- appalled but also sort of in awe. Barth said, "He coaches the basketball team?", like maybe it was in question.

"Okay," Pete said. "Is he, like, God or something?"

"Uh, yeah, pretty much," Barth said.

"Awesome," Pete said, and then, "Your shirts are pretty cool."

Barth was wearing one, with the note sprawled across his shoulder and the material clinging kind of appealingly against his hips. He blushed furiously, and his buddy smirked at Pete. Barth's buddy's arms were pretty much bigger around than Pete's thighs, but Pete just smirked back -- Pete didn't get denied stuff, much, and if he wanted to screw around with Barth, he was going to. If he wanted to screw around with Barth for no other reason than he was pretty sure that he could, he was definitely going to. "Uh, thank you," Barth said. "You -- I mean. Thank you. I own, like, a million Clandestine shirts."

"Awesome," Pete said again. "Look, if I wanted to buy your designs, sell them through Clandestine, would you sell them to me?"

Barth made a little choked off noise, and then turned even redder and grinned, hugely, ducking his head sort of like Patrick did when Pete said something that made Patrick happy and furiously embarrassed at the same time. Except that Barth was, like, a foot taller than Patrick, and kind of looked at Pete like he wasn't exactly real, like Barth had dreamed him up. Pete felt that way about Patrick, not the other way around. "Yeah, Jesus Christ, fuck, yes," Barth said.

"Okay," Pete said. "I want to buy your designs. I think we have to go through the, like, the athletic department? Or fucking something like that, but that's something my manager and shit will deal with. We'll make it a fair deal, you'll totally get paid what you're worth."

Barth's buddy was still smirking at Pete like he knew that Pete kind of wanted to pin Barth on his knees and twist his fingers in Barth's hair and do really fucking dirty things to Barth's mouth, but Barth was just staring at Pete like Pete was a mirage.

"So, hey, you gonna get drafted?" Pete said. Barth's mouth moved but no sound came out, and Pete shifted his eyes over to Barth's buddy. "I'm not going to, like, break his knees or anything, you can get out of here if you want."

"It's okay, Rell," Barth said quietly, and his buddy just stared at Barth for a long minute before he nodded and unfolded himself from the couch. Dude was even scarier standing up. If he didn't get drafted, maybe he'd come work security for the band. He glared at Pete long and hard, and Pete just smirked back. The guy shook his head at Pete, made some kind of communicating face at Barth, and walked out without saying a word. Scary, scary fucker.

"Awesome," Pete said, scrambling out of the chair, knocking the door shut with his hip, and flopping next to Barth on the couch. Barth looked a little startled at Pete up in his space, but then he just ducked his head and licked his lips and reminded Pete of Patrick all over again. "So, seriously, you gonna get drafted? The internet says you are."

"I don't know," Barth said. "Maybe, I mean, probably."

"That's cool," Pete said. "So, hey, if I kiss you, that's cool, right?"

When Pete put his hand on Barth's thigh, Barth didn't jerk away or anything, so Pete leaned in and kissed him full on the mouth, twisting his other hand into Barth's hair. Barth sucked in a breath against Pete's lips and then opened his mouth against Pete's, leaning his weight against Pete's chest.

Barth kissed him kind of desperately, so after a couple of minutes, Pete was pretty sure he could get away with whispering, "You could suck me off and that would be pretty amazing." Barth twitched under Pete's hands but his breathing sort of sped up, too, and Pete had done a lot of crazy stupid wild things in his life but getting head from a football player in an athletic office wasn't even a new thing. One of the guys from the Northwestern team had totally blown him while he was still at DePaul, right before Pete met Patrick.

"Yeah, okay," Barth said against Pete's mouth, and then there was some rearranging, Barth folding himself down onto his knees in between Pete's thighs, Pete scrambling up to lean against one of the ugly sofa arms.

Barth had long fingers and broad palms, and the muscles in his arms flexed when his hands shook against the button on Pete's jeans, which was kind of unreasonably hot. Pete squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, Barth was tugging at his hips, getting Pete to raise up so Barth could tug Pete's jeans, his boxer-briefs, down along his thighs. Pete watched the curve of Barth's back when the kid wrapped his hand around Pete's dick, thought about the way Barth's thighs were working to keep him balanced between Pete's legs, and when Barth bent his head and licked a line up Pete's dick, Pete just reached out and twisted both hands in Barth's hair, pulling a little harder than he maybe should have, but he didn't really care.

Barth groaned a little and then opened his mouth and swallowed Pete all the fucking way down, Barth's nose pressed up against Pete's stomach. He pulled off and Pete jerked his hips up, wanting more, wanting all of it, and Barth just went right back down, wet and sloppy but fucking enthusiastic, and he didn't even pull back when Pete tugged harder on his hair, pulling Barth's mouth down and shoving his own hips up, fucking the kid's mouth without a second thought. Barth had one hand on Pete's hip but he wasn't holding Pete down, not like some of the other guys who've blown Pete in his long and illustrious career of getting blowjobs, and then he slid his other hand between Pete's legs, long fingers brushing against Pete's balls and then sliding behind them, pressing firmly while Barth sucked Pete all the way down and held him there, tongue flat against Pete's cock.

Pete jerked and twisted his fingers in Barth's hair hard enough that it had to hurt and came so hard he saw stars, although it might just have been an after-image of the ugly blue couch.

After a couple of minutes, Pete looked down. Barth was still crouched between Pete's legs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and looking a little wide-eyed and shell-shocked. Pete still had a hand in his hair, so he kind of patted the kid on the back of the neck and said, "Awesome, that was awesome."

Pete had to wiggle around the kid to yank his jeans back up, and then he crouched down the best he could with his foot still in the stupid boot and said, "You're gonna be famous, kid. I'll let myself out." Barth blinked at him, and then smiled, a little slow and maybe a little scared, but real. Pete kissed him one more time, hard, and left Barth sitting on the floor in the office. He stopped at the front desk long enough to tell the sullen girl there to have someone from PR call Clandestine's contract people and to get the evil eye from Barth's buddy, who was sprawled on a couch out there, with two added enormous teammates.

Pete didn't want to get beat up, so he got out of there fast as he could.

Pete was kind of a jerk, but he knew it and he worked with it and he was going to make this kid rich, whether or not he got drafted, so Pete didn't really care.

He made it back to the hotel without getting lost. Patrick was sitting at the desk in the corner, headphones on, when Pete banged the door open, shouting that Charlie needed to call management and get them to negotiate a contract for Barth's designs with the athletic department or the coach or who the fuck ever, and Patrick looked up sharply at the noise. "Did you fuck him into submission?" Patrick said mildly.

"Of course I did," Pete said. "Then I took fucking naked pictures." Patrick snorted, but he took his headphones off and closed his laptop. Pete flopped backwards onto the bed, closing his eyes, but he could feel Patrick watching him from across the room. "Trick, are you sad that I made you not go to college?"

Patrick didn't answer, but there was rustling movement from across the room and then the bed dipped next to Pete, and Patrick's warm solid body pressed up against Pete's side. Usually Pete had to go to Patrick for cuddles, so this was new and different. Patrick pressed his face into Pete's neck and said, "I'm only sad when you think you let me down, okay?"

Pete kept his eyes closed and twisted his arm around until he could put his hand on the back of Patrick's neck. "You didn't need to go to college," he said. "You're a fucking genius without it."

Patrick patted Pete's stomach awkwardly. "I'm just lucky," he said. "This guy I know? He made fun of my clothes, and then made me join a band where I get to write music and play music and help other people make music. It's a rough life."

"Fuck you," Pete said, and Patrick laughed against his neck, warm damp breath against Pete's skin. Pete pressed his fingers into a knot in Patrick's neck and Patrick hummed, low and content-sounding, and drummed his fingers on Pete's stomach.

Then Patrick shifted, pulling away from Pete, and when Pete opened his eyes, Patrick was sitting up, staring down at Pete. "Did you really fuck that poor kid?"

"No," Pete said, as magnanimously as he could manage. Patrick raised an eyebrow. "I let him blow me, though."

Patrick made a face. "Of course you did," he said, but then he grinned at Pete, bright and unexpected.

"What?" Pete said, and he knew he sounded cranky. Patrick was making the face where he was trying not to laugh, or at least Pete thought that was the face he was making, except that then Patrick crowded closer, throwing one arm across Pete's chest and shoving his face up against Pete's neck. Pete said, "What?"

"So you got blown," Patrick said, and there was something low and wicked in his voice that Pete had never heard before. "So I don't need to blow you now?"

Patrick's breath was warm on Pete's neck, and then Pete's brain just completely shorted out while his dick got suddenly, sharply hard. "Uh," Pete said. It was the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday, and a kid who designed t-shirts and played football had given him a blow job, and now Patrick was coming on to him. At least Pete thought Patrick was coming on to him.

It had been a really weird fall, between the rocker boot and unsolicited t-shirt designs and Patrick coming on to him. Because it wasn't like Pete hadn't thought about it before -- he just thought he didn't really have a chance.

Pete's mouth was still hanging open when Patrick leaned over and kissed him. Pete flailed a little, trapped on his back with Patrick bent over him, the weight of his stupid, stupid rocker boot and the taste of Connor Barth still on his tongue, and then Patrick sighed against Pete's mouth and ran his tongue across Pete's bottom lip. Pete's hands, all of their own free will, settled on Patrick's back, one twisted in his hair at the back of his neck, and it was nothing like fisting his hands in Barth's hair earlier. It was Patrick, Pete wasn't going to grab anything that wasn't offered.

Patrick stopped kissing Pete and looked down at him, face serious. "You don't have to fuck everyone into submission," he said.

"I know," Pete said.

Patrick rolled his eyes, but his voice was full of affection when he said, "Sometimes I think you don't."

"I do," Pete said, and Patrick laughed and leaned down, face against Pete's neck and arm warm across Pete's chest.

Pete did know. Sometimes he did it to fuck with the people who wanted things from him; sometimes he did it because he could, because he liked sex and he liked the power that sex gave him. Connor Barth had been pretty, pretty enough and needy enough -- he needed enough of what Pete had to give -- that Pete hadn't thought twice about talking him (not even having to talk him into it, just asking) into going down on Pete. Because he could. Because Connor Barth was pretty, and needy, and there.

Because Pete doesn't ever ask Patrick for that, because Pete has pushed Patrick to his limits on every other front, ever, but never that. He had always told himself he didn't need it from Patrick, because he got it everywhere else. Patrick's Patrick, and Pete pulled him out of high school and put him on the road and fucked up his life in immeasurable ways, but Pete had never asked Patrick to cross that last line.

Except Patrick was apparently offering, and Pete lay on the bed in their hotel room and listened to Patrick breathe against his neck, the brim of Patrick's hat digging into his skin, and thought, yes, okay, yes. Yes, this is something I can have, without asking, or taking. This is something that's being given, freely. Before he could say anything, Patrick mumbled something against Pete's neck, fingers twisting in Pete's t-shirt like he thought Pete was going to get up and run away. Pete said, "What?"

Patrick picked his head up, and he'd be meeting Pete's eyes if his hat wasn't pulled down over his face. He said, "All you had to do was ask."

"What?" Pete said.

Patrick shoved the brim of his hat back, met Pete's eyes, and said, "All you had to do was ask."

"Oh," Pete said. "Oh." And then, "You don't have to fuck me into submission, either."

Patrick laughed again and Pete spread his hand out across Patrick's back, just to feel the rumble of it. "I wasn't planning on it," Patrick said dryly, and he sounded like that was the truth. Pete had always gotten -- been given -- more from Patrick than he had from anybody else, without asking. Just because he could ask, now, didn't mean Pete would. But at least he knew -- maybe it wouldn't change anything, but maybe it would. "You should sleep," Patrick said, yawning against Pete's chest.

"I'm not tired," Pete said, and as soon as he said it, he was. It had been a long summer, a long fall, and a very exhausting afternoon screwing around with the heads of college kids. It was the middle of the afternoon, and neither of them had ever been much for napping, but Patrick was warm and solid and safe against him, and Pete was suddenly exhausted.

Patrick hummed a little under his breath, and Pete closed his eyes and said, "Okay." When he fell asleep, there was a strip of sunshine against the back of his wrist, draped across Patrick's back, and the familiar weight of Patrick curled up against his side.

author's notes: this is for shep., who i love best -- bb, i know this isn't the story you wanted, necessarily, but it's the only one i've got, and it's for you. m. talked me through fixing all the problems this had; all remaining mistakes are mine. title from kate campbell, "new south".