Antivenom (Peterick)

XI: sunday, cont'd: breaches and grudges

***A/N:  Can you believe it's been a year since I updated this?  Yeah, me neither.  Sorry for making you guys wait :p***

When Pete last saw Gabe Saporta, it wasn't on good terms.

It was with bruised necks and split knuckles, Andy and Hayley holding Patrick back while Pete heaved blood on the concrete outside HQ and Gabe cursed all of them out, black-eyed and bitter and more shitfaced than any of them had ever seen him. Names were called, insults hurled, tears shed and when the dust cleared, Pete had a bruised rib and Patrick was all too happy to tell Gabe to "fuck right on home to New York and never show your face here again, you piece of shit."

Enough time has passed that nobody really talks about it anymore, but then again, nobody talks about Gabe anymore. Vicky, Nate, and Ryland are the only ones who still keep in touch with him, but in the interest of maintaining neutrality, they never discuss it within earshot of Pete or Patrick.

Still—it's been long enough. Maybe Pete should be concerned that Gabe's name slipped so easily off his tongue, that his mind jumped so quickly to that conclusion based off a days-old eyewitness memory that could be fraught with misrecalled and misplaced features. He hasn't even thought about it in months. Maybe he should, as Joe would say, get over it.

But if there's anything Patrick's taught him, it's that there's something to be said for trusting your gut. Pete has a complicated relationship with his instincts, but thus far, even before he knew anything about Patrick and Lauren and the McEnroe case, they've been right about everything. And as he pulls into the parking lot, all the questions he'd been asking himself since Brendon first showed him the sketch are starting to resurface. He doesn't quite know what to make of it except it feels a lot like that night at the bar, Patrick's smile telling one story, Pete's incorrigible intuition feeding him another.

So when he gets Joe's text, telling him to head straight to Brendon's office, he doesn't think twice about the tugging feeling in his stomach, doesn't question the doubt and uncertainty and dread jostling for prominence in his brain.

He listens.

He runs.

[...]

Most days, the tech office is abuzz with the subdued hum of activity. The rhythmic click-clack of keyboard typing against a quiet backdrop of murmurs and musings, the occasional fist pound, a few sporadic curses sprinkled in for effect.

When Pete walks in, though, it sounds...off. Maybe it's the stress, or maybe it's the fact that he's been on high alert since he got Joe's text and is thus more attuned to weird disturbances than normal, but—something is definitely off.

"Hey, Bren," he calls out. No response except the frantic tapping of fingers against keys—and as Pete draws closer, he realizes the click-clacking is quicker than normal. Faster, more forceful, with no discernable sense of rhyme or reason behind the patterns.

"Bren?" Pete calls again. It's difficult enough to interrupt Brendon's focus on a normal day, but Pete has neither the time nor the patience. "Joe said you had something for me."

A final jab of the enter key, and Brendon's fingers go still. He sighs, leaning back in his chair and running a tired hand through his hair.

"So, uh," Brendon says. "We may have run into some complications."

Pete sighs. "Define complications, Bren."

"...Someone hacked Patrick's laptop."

Great. As if things couldn't get any worse. Patrick is going to kill him when he wakes up. "You had one job, man. One job."