Red Light Go, Green Light Stop
Title: Red Light Go, Green Light Stop
Author:
ladyblahblah
Fandom: I Want To Go Home! - Gordon Korman
Pairing: Rudy Miller/Mike Webster
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Clearly I own none of this. I can't even imagine a world in which I would be able to make any profit off of something like this. I have nothing, and make no claim to anything but the story itself. Please don't sue me. Pretty please.
Summary: Back from their first year at university, Mike and Rudy have had too much to drink. Sexy things happen. All relationships have their rough patches.
Author's Note: So, first of all, I would like to blame this completely on ninjaboots. To be fair, that's only because it is demonstrably all her fault. (It figures that the first thing I write for this fandom turns out to be unrepentant angsty porn. XD) We had a chat (or twelve) about a ridiculous three-way crossover, part of which involved Mike and Rudy who, after several years of terrible UST, finally hook up and have sexytiems. This is the backstory to that madness. XD Please be advised that while this does not exactly have a happy ending, there is one in my head, I promise!
The walk home was a terrible cliché. The whole night had been one, really: a drunken party at the end of the summer, with all the frivolity and drama of every bad teen movie since the invention of the genre. And while normally Rudy Miller didn't do clichés, Mike Webster was taking a sort of perverse, drunken pleasure that nevertheless, they were stumbling down the sidewalk together at half-one in the morning.
“That was a great party.” Mike giggled, though he wasn't entirely sure why. He'd been doing that for the past hour or so; for some reason, everything just seemed incredibly funny tonight. Probably, he reflected, it was the beer. That definitely made the most sense. “Admit it.,” he said, nudging Rudy's shoulder with his own. “You had a good time.”
Rudy's arm wrapped around Mike's waist as a misstep nearly sent them both falling. “I admit nothing,” he said placidly.
“Oh come on! I saw you almost smile at least twice.” Mike wriggled his arm out from between the two of them and slung it around Rudy's shoulders. “You had fun.”
“I suppose it may not have been a complete waste of time.”
“That's as good as I'm gonna get, isn't it?”
“Wise of you to realize that.”
“I guess I'll take it, then.” Mike giggled again, but cut off to blink in surprise at the door he would swear had just appeared out of nowhere in front of them. “We're home,” he said in surprise. Rudy just gave a sort of assenting hum and leaned a little more heavily on him. “Mm'kay. Keys. Um.”
“In your pocket,” Rudy reminded him with a little sideways nudge of his hips.
“Right.” Mike fumbled in his pocket for a moment, scowling at the way the keys kept sliding through his grasp. “Damn slippery-” He was just about to break down and ask Rudy for help when he finally managed to grab hold of them. “Hah! Got 'em.”
It didn't occur to him until they were already inside and heading upstairs that he had almost asked Rudy to grope around inside his jeans.
Oops.
“I can't believe your parents left you here alone.” Rudy was holding on to the bannister, which left Mike still holding on to him as they climbed the stairs. “You'd think they'd know better by now.”
“Hey, I'm not the troublemaker here,” Mike said indignantly. “And, um, I also may have sort of gotten the dates wrong when I told them when I'd be coming back from my summer job?”
Rudy made a noise that might've been something close to a laugh, and Mike glanced over to see his friend looking at him with an expression of mild approval.
“Positively devious, Webster. I'm impressed.”
Mike snorted. “It was mostly an accident. I really did just get the dates wrong.” They staggered into Mike's room, still supporting each other. “Besides, I think my mom felt better when she-woah!”
Mike tripped on what was might've been a shirt, or possibly a pair of pants, but was most likely his own feet, and between his drunken (lack of) equilibrium and still being half-twined around Rudy, sent them both tumbling to the floor in a graceless tangle of limbs. He started giggling as soon as he began to get his breath back, though the attempt resulted in little more than a sort of gasping wheeze. Unfortunately, the sound of it only made him try to laugh harder, and he was doubled up by the time Rudy managed to clamber off of him and haul them both upright.
“How on earth did you manage to keep from breaking your neck without me around at school?” Rudy grumbled, yanking on Mike's arm until they were both leaning back against the side of the bed.
“It wasn't easy,” Mike managed to gasp out, his voice still threaded with thin, reedy laughter. “Though I'm usually not this buzzed. 'S probably why Mom felt better when I said you'd be here, too.”
“Did she now.”
“Don't be smug.” Mike nudged his shoulder against Rudy's. “It's just because she doesn't know you very well.”
“Are you insinuating I'm not to be trusted?” Rudy asked.
Mike turned his head and found that his friend's face was closer than he'd anticipated, close enough for him to be able to make out the flecks of color in Rudy's eyes, close enough to notice just how ridiculously long his eyelashes really were, close enough to-
“You're absolutely not,” Mike grinned, turning away again, and Rudy let out a sigh, dropping his head back to rest on the bed.
“I'm hurt, Mike.”
Mike snorted. “I'm sure.”
“You're just lucky I'm magnanimous enough to overlook it. Who knows what trouble you would've gotten yourself into tonight if I hadn't been there.”
“Hey!” Mike turned back to Rudy, frowning. “Once again, I have to point out that I'm not the troublemaker here. I'm not the one who made half the counselors at Algonkian Island quit halfway through our second summer there.”
“Ah, memories,” Rudy sighed fondly, still staring up at the ceiling. “And I'm not saying you make trouble; you just have a certain knack for finding it.”
“That's ridiculous.”
“You found me, didn't you?”
“Well.” Mike couldn't help the grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah. I guess I did.” After a moment, however, he remembered his original point and marshaled his face back
into a frown. “But I don't need a babysitter. And besides, Diane was there; she'd have made sure I was okay.”
“I know.” Rudy's voice was as flat as ever, but Mike had years of experience in reading Rudy's non-expressions, and he recognized all the tell-tale signs of mild annoyance. “She told me so.”
“Rudy,” Mike sighed. “Is that why you went to the party? Honestly, whatever this grudge of yours is all about, it's ridiculous.”
“There's no grudge. I think she might be a witch, though,” Rudy said mildly, and Mike rolled his eyes.
“Right. Well, whatever the reason, I'm glad you went tonight. And neither of you had to worry, did you?” There was a worn hole in the knee of Mike's jeans, and he picked idly at a trailing bit of string at its edge. “I didn't get into any kind of trouble.”
Rudy lifted his head to stare quizzically at Mike. “You sound almost . . . disappointed about that.”
“No! Well. Maybe a little?” Mike jerked a shoulder in a shrug. The alcohol in his system seemed to be weighing him down all of a sudden. “I don't know. I'd just sort of hoped . . .” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Never mind what?”
“It's stupid.”
“I'll be the judge of that; I have years of experience, after all.”
“I dunno, I'd just sort of thought . . . well, I'd kinda hoped I might hook up with someone tonight. Or kiss someone, at least.”
“Oh.” Rudy considered that for a moment. “That is stupid.”
“It is not!” Mike protested, and Rudy just raised an eyebrow.
“Changing your tune now, Webster?”
Mike glared. “You're an ass sometimes, you know.”
“Wow.” Rudy's other eyebrow winged up to join the first. “I actually wasn't aware that you knew how to insult someone without using the word 'twit'.”
Mike kept up his glare for two seconds, three, four, but eventually he couldn't hold back the laugh that bubbled out of his throat. “Yeah, well. You learn stuff at university, you know. I hear that's the whole point.” He leaned his head back the way Rudy had done earlier. “Maybe it is stupid. Just, I haven't actually kissed anyone since Katie and I broke up, and that was practically at the beginning of the year.” He sighed morosely. “I'm never going to get to kiss anyone again.”
“So?”
“So? So?” Mike gaped at him. “Oh, right. Easy for you to say, with your . . .” Mike swept his hand through the air in a gesture that was supposed to be expressive but ended up just looking flaily, “. . . your youness. You could've had practically anyone in that party just for asking.”
Rudy looked as imperious as Mike had ever seen him when he said, flatly, “I don't kiss.”
Mike just snorted, because he'd heard that song before. He'd known Rudy long enough to know that don't and can't had nothing to do with each other, and that more likely than not Rudy was as brilliant at kissing as he was at everything else.
“Sure you don't. Just like you don't play soccer, or swim, or dance. You're probably, like, the captain of the Greater Toronto Freestyle Kissing Squad or something, aren't you?”
The slightest of lines appeared between Rudy's eyebrows. “Is that really a thing?”
Mike giggled again. “No, it's not really a thing. Twit.”
“Well. Never can be sure.”
Mike blinked at him for a moment, staring at the faint tinge of red at the tops of Rudy's ears that was almost certainly not alcohol-induced. It was the sort of thing that Mike had gotten used to noticing, because it was the only way to tell when Rudy was something like embarrassed, and because Mike knew him better than anybody else and wait . . . wait.
“Wait,” he said aloud. “You really . . . don't kiss? Like . . . ever?” He knew he was gaping, could feel his mouth actually hanging open, but he couldn't seem to do anything about it, even when Rudy favored him with a positively withering glare.
“I don't even like to get close enough to talk to most other people. What would make you think I'd be interested in kissing them?”
He was close to another person now, though, Mike thought faintly. Close to Mike; so close, in fact, that their shoulders were still pressed together, and Mike could feel the heat of Rudy's body warming his. As ever, though, he was too chicken to point that out, so what he said instead was:
“But kissing's fun.”
Rudy looked at him skeptically. “That's the same thing they always said about sports. Be careful, you're starting to sound like a clone.”
“Rudy-”
“Mike, I'm not upset about it, which makes it absolutely ridiculous for you to be. Stop looking at me like I just got picked last for dodgeball.”
Mike managed a weak smile. “You've never been picked last for anything in your life; you wouldn't know that look if you saw it.”
“I can imagine,” Rudy countered archly. “The
point is, I really don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, so we can just-”
Mike honestly hadn't even considered kissing Rudy until he was already doing it. He had, in fact, spent several years now very carefully not thinking about doing just that. But all of a sudden there was a voice in his head saying that Rudy was his best friend, and that he should know what it was like to kiss someone just once, and if deep down Mike knew that it was really all about the heat of Rudy's skin and the way it felt to be trapped between his body and the floor and the feelings that Mike had been ignoring since they were fifteen years old . . . well. No one had to know but him.
Still, he didn't press his luck. The kiss barely lasted more than a moment, just enough for him to feel the softness of Rudy's lips slack with surprise beneath his. Just enough to get a hint of how he tasted. Then Mike pulled back, leaned away, trying to focus through the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.
Rudy's eyes were huge and startled, and even if he ended up throwing punches and stalking out and never talking to him again, Mike thought the whole thing might have been worth it just to see that.
Then slowly, gradually, Rudy's expression began to shift. Surprise gave way to a look that, just for a moment, made Mike feel like he was eleven years old again. He recognized it from that first summer at Alcatraz, and from every summer afterwards, when Rudy would look at a speedboat or an unguarded camp bus or a pile of logs that might be turned into a raft. That spark of interest, the slide into consideration as he measured the possibility that the crazy scheme hatching in his head might actually work.
Rudy's lips were damp and full and slightly parted.
The second time Mike kissed him, he didn't bother pretending to himself that it was anything other than what it was. Just wanting-three years' worth of wanting that wasn't going to be kept under wraps anymore now that he'd gotten a taste of what he'd been craving. His hands tangled in Rudy's hair, felt it thick between his fingers as his tongue slid over Rudy's lips. Lips which, to Mike's surprise, opened with a small, stunned noise that sent breath ghosting against Mike's mouth. Rudy's hands were clenched at the small of Mike's back, crushing Mike's shirt in his fists and pulling him closer.
He was clambering into Rudy's lap before he fully registered the desire to do so, and Mike, who had always keenly felt his own lack of coordination, the awkward clumsiness that comes of being composed entirely of skinny limbs and harsh angles, felt graceful for the first time in his life. Wrapped around Rudy, everything seemed to fit exactly as it should. His arms twined around Rudy's shoulders, thighs parted around his waist, and Rudy hauled him forward with strong, insistent hands until their hips crashed together and oh . . . god . . .
Rudy was as hard as Mike was.
“God,” Mike groaned, leaning back just far enough to gasp for breath. “God, please.”
He wasn't even sure what he was asking for, and he didn't wait for an answer, just sealed his mouth over Rudy's again, kissing him like he was Mike's last remaining source of oxygen. His hips started rocking on their own, grinding against his friend beneath him. Rudy yanked away from the kiss with a deep, desperate groan; Mike took the opportunity to trail his mouth over his jaw, down his neck, lips and tongue and the slightest hint of teeth until he could feel Rudy's body start to quake.
“Mike.” Rudy's lips found his ear, clumsy at first in a way that made Mike dizzy with something he couldn't quite name. “Mike,” he gasped again, and then abandoned speaking entirely, just tightened his grip around Mike's hips and surged up, fell back, sent both of them toppling back onto the bed still tangled up in each other.
Fingers threaded through Mike's hair, pulled him up for another kiss, and Mike's mind went entirely, blissfully blank. Clumsy he may have been at first, but Rudy had lived up to Mike's suspicions and was proving as much of a prodigy at this as at everything else he tried. All Mike could do was hold on, trying desperately to keep up as Rudy rolled them over until he was half-draped over Mike's body.
Mike felt sure that he couldn't survive this. It felt so good, almost too good, to have Rudy's hands gripping his ass, pulling him close as they thrust together. This was what he'd tried for so long now not to think about, not to want. Rudy in his bed, touching him, wanting him. The mere idea of it was nearly more exciting than the touches themselves, and Mike felt like he was going to burn alive. He was so hard he ached, and every new bit of friction sent electricity sizzling up and down his spine. He was rutting against Rudy's leg, into the hollow of his hip, and Rudy's answering thrusts felt every bit as frantic.
It was almost embarrassing when he came with a shuddering cry, hot and messy and he was still wearing all his clothes because he hadn't been able to let go of Rudy long enough to even try to get them off. Even now he couldn't stop holding on; his arms were still pulling Rudy close as the other boy moved against him, thrusting hard, and Mike was so sensitive now it almost hurt but it didn't matter, because when Rudy shook and cried out, Mike was right there. When they collapsed, hot and sticky, it was together, with sweat dampening the hair at their foreheads and the air between them thick with their shared, ragged breaths.
He didn't realize he was dozing off until he was already nearly asleep, too far gone to fight against it, and too warm and sated to care very much that he couldn't.
When Mike finally woke his room was too bright, his head hurt too much, and his pants and shorts were stiff and stuck to his skin. He hauled himself upright through a supreme force of will and immediately winced as his stomach roiled in protest. He didn't think he'd had that much to drink. Then again, he hadn't exactly bothered to make sure he was hydrated before he fell asleep, since-
Mike abruptly went very still.
Aside from him, his bed was empty.
He wasn't up to thinking about that yet, not with his head pounding like a bass drum and the morning sunlight spearing into his eyes like needles. Moving carefully, he stood up and staggered his way into the bathroom. Peeling off his clothes made him wince and hiss as the material stuck to his skin. Forget washing his shorts; he was probably going to have to burn them. He didn't want to think about that yet either, though, so instead he just turned the shower on as hot as he could stand it, and climbed in to let the water rinse away the sweat and salt crusted over his skin.
By the time he dried off and downed two glasses of water from the bathroom sink, he thought he might be feeling human enough to face things. He was trying to decide if he should call Rudy or just head over to his house when he walked out of the bathroom and was hit with the smell of brewing coffee. Well, that made things easier.
Maybe.
He managed to make it down to the kitchen without feeling like he was in immediate danger of vomiting, which he counted as a point in the pro column on the list he'd started keeping in his head. When he stepped inside, Rudy was sitting at the table, staring at the steam spiraling up out of the mug in front of him, and didn't so much as glance up at Mike. Another point for the con column, then.
“How's your head?”
Rudy's voice sounded the way Mike's throat felt-rough and scratched and abused. It caught Mike off-guard, and he stopped just inside the kitchen door.
“Um. Better, I guess.” He lifted a hand, dropped it again. “I, uh. Took a shower.”
Rudy nodded. “Here,” he said, and pushed the mug of coffee across the table towards Mike before he stood up abruptly. “Sit. What do you want to eat?”
“Uh.” Mike stepped forward and pulled out a chair. “Aren't you going to drink that?”
“No.” Rudy's eyes flicked up, but they darted away before he actually looked at Mike. He turned and walked to the fridge. “Food, Webster. What do you want?”
“I'm, um, not really hungry.” Mike sat, wrapped his hands around the mug and let the warmth sink into his palms. “My stomach's still kind of unsteady.”
“I'm sorry.”
Mike stared at the patterns in the rising steam, watching them shift and swirl until he felt reasonably sure he could speak without his voice breaking. “I actually think that might be the first time I've ever heard you say that,” he said glibly. He glanced over at Rudy's back, stiff and tense as he stood with one hand on the refrigerator door. “I think we're probably both feeling kind of crappy this morning. You should sit back down.”
Rudy walked slowly back to the table. Mike thought he might be looking at him now, but wasn't willing to lift his own eyes to be sure.
“I am, though.” Rudy lowered himself back into the chair he had vacated. “What happened last night was wrong, and I'm sorry. Really.”
Mike nodded, a little more spastically than he'd intended. “Sure. Yeah. I mean, I was drunk, so.”
“I know.” Rudy's voice dropped to a near-whisper.
“So it doesn't have to be a big thing.” Mike raised his head and managed to smile, knew he'd managed at least an approximation of normal by the way the tension on Rudy's face eased just a tiny bit. “Or, you know. These things happen all the time. I mean, not to me, but I know people. I hear things. It's not like it happens all the time, but it still-”
“You're babbling, Webster,” Rudy said with something closer to his customary dryness.
“Pancakes,” Mike blurted out. “I could really go for some pancakes.”
“Pancakes,” Rudy nodded, and stood again. “Okay.”
“Rudy?”
“Yes?”
“It's fine.” Mike smiled again, a little bit more easily this time. “Really. Let's just pretend it didn't happen, okay?”
Rudy stared back at him for a moment, his face so still that even Mike couldn't read it.
“Okay,” he finally said.
It would be, Mike thought, sipping at still-too-hot coffee and wincing at the way it scalded his tongue. Things would probably be a little weird for a while, but in the end they would still be friends.
And that, he assured himself, was a check for the pro column big enough to balance out all the rest.
Author:
ladyblahblah
Fandom: I Want To Go Home! - Gordon Korman
Pairing: Rudy Miller/Mike Webster
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Clearly I own none of this. I can't even imagine a world in which I would be able to make any profit off of something like this. I have nothing, and make no claim to anything but the story itself. Please don't sue me. Pretty please.
Summary: Back from their first year at university, Mike and Rudy have had too much to drink. Sexy things happen. All relationships have their rough patches.
Author's Note: So, first of all, I would like to blame this completely on ninjaboots. To be fair, that's only because it is demonstrably all her fault. (It figures that the first thing I write for this fandom turns out to be unrepentant angsty porn. XD) We had a chat (or twelve) about a ridiculous three-way crossover, part of which involved Mike and Rudy who, after several years of terrible UST, finally hook up and have sexytiems. This is the backstory to that madness. XD Please be advised that while this does not exactly have a happy ending, there is one in my head, I promise!
The walk home was a terrible cliché. The whole night had been one, really: a drunken party at the end of the summer, with all the frivolity and drama of every bad teen movie since the invention of the genre. And while normally Rudy Miller didn't do clichés, Mike Webster was taking a sort of perverse, drunken pleasure that nevertheless, they were stumbling down the sidewalk together at half-one in the morning.
“That was a great party.” Mike giggled, though he wasn't entirely sure why. He'd been doing that for the past hour or so; for some reason, everything just seemed incredibly funny tonight. Probably, he reflected, it was the beer. That definitely made the most sense. “Admit it.,” he said, nudging Rudy's shoulder with his own. “You had a good time.”
Rudy's arm wrapped around Mike's waist as a misstep nearly sent them both falling. “I admit nothing,” he said placidly.
“Oh come on! I saw you almost smile at least twice.” Mike wriggled his arm out from between the two of them and slung it around Rudy's shoulders. “You had fun.”
“I suppose it may not have been a complete waste of time.”
“That's as good as I'm gonna get, isn't it?”
“Wise of you to realize that.”
“I guess I'll take it, then.” Mike giggled again, but cut off to blink in surprise at the door he would swear had just appeared out of nowhere in front of them. “We're home,” he said in surprise. Rudy just gave a sort of assenting hum and leaned a little more heavily on him. “Mm'kay. Keys. Um.”
“In your pocket,” Rudy reminded him with a little sideways nudge of his hips.
“Right.” Mike fumbled in his pocket for a moment, scowling at the way the keys kept sliding through his grasp. “Damn slippery-” He was just about to break down and ask Rudy for help when he finally managed to grab hold of them. “Hah! Got 'em.”
It didn't occur to him until they were already inside and heading upstairs that he had almost asked Rudy to grope around inside his jeans.
Oops.
“I can't believe your parents left you here alone.” Rudy was holding on to the bannister, which left Mike still holding on to him as they climbed the stairs. “You'd think they'd know better by now.”
“Hey, I'm not the troublemaker here,” Mike said indignantly. “And, um, I also may have sort of gotten the dates wrong when I told them when I'd be coming back from my summer job?”
Rudy made a noise that might've been something close to a laugh, and Mike glanced over to see his friend looking at him with an expression of mild approval.
“Positively devious, Webster. I'm impressed.”
Mike snorted. “It was mostly an accident. I really did just get the dates wrong.” They staggered into Mike's room, still supporting each other. “Besides, I think my mom felt better when she-woah!”
Mike tripped on what was might've been a shirt, or possibly a pair of pants, but was most likely his own feet, and between his drunken (lack of) equilibrium and still being half-twined around Rudy, sent them both tumbling to the floor in a graceless tangle of limbs. He started giggling as soon as he began to get his breath back, though the attempt resulted in little more than a sort of gasping wheeze. Unfortunately, the sound of it only made him try to laugh harder, and he was doubled up by the time Rudy managed to clamber off of him and haul them both upright.
“How on earth did you manage to keep from breaking your neck without me around at school?” Rudy grumbled, yanking on Mike's arm until they were both leaning back against the side of the bed.
“It wasn't easy,” Mike managed to gasp out, his voice still threaded with thin, reedy laughter. “Though I'm usually not this buzzed. 'S probably why Mom felt better when I said you'd be here, too.”
“Did she now.”
“Don't be smug.” Mike nudged his shoulder against Rudy's. “It's just because she doesn't know you very well.”
“Are you insinuating I'm not to be trusted?” Rudy asked.
Mike turned his head and found that his friend's face was closer than he'd anticipated, close enough for him to be able to make out the flecks of color in Rudy's eyes, close enough to notice just how ridiculously long his eyelashes really were, close enough to-
“You're absolutely not,” Mike grinned, turning away again, and Rudy let out a sigh, dropping his head back to rest on the bed.
“I'm hurt, Mike.”
Mike snorted. “I'm sure.”
“You're just lucky I'm magnanimous enough to overlook it. Who knows what trouble you would've gotten yourself into tonight if I hadn't been there.”
“Hey!” Mike turned back to Rudy, frowning. “Once again, I have to point out that I'm not the troublemaker here. I'm not the one who made half the counselors at Algonkian Island quit halfway through our second summer there.”
“Ah, memories,” Rudy sighed fondly, still staring up at the ceiling. “And I'm not saying you make trouble; you just have a certain knack for finding it.”
“That's ridiculous.”
“You found me, didn't you?”
“Well.” Mike couldn't help the grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah. I guess I did.” After a moment, however, he remembered his original point and marshaled his face back
into a frown. “But I don't need a babysitter. And besides, Diane was there; she'd have made sure I was okay.”
“I know.” Rudy's voice was as flat as ever, but Mike had years of experience in reading Rudy's non-expressions, and he recognized all the tell-tale signs of mild annoyance. “She told me so.”
“Rudy,” Mike sighed. “Is that why you went to the party? Honestly, whatever this grudge of yours is all about, it's ridiculous.”
“There's no grudge. I think she might be a witch, though,” Rudy said mildly, and Mike rolled his eyes.
“Right. Well, whatever the reason, I'm glad you went tonight. And neither of you had to worry, did you?” There was a worn hole in the knee of Mike's jeans, and he picked idly at a trailing bit of string at its edge. “I didn't get into any kind of trouble.”
Rudy lifted his head to stare quizzically at Mike. “You sound almost . . . disappointed about that.”
“No! Well. Maybe a little?” Mike jerked a shoulder in a shrug. The alcohol in his system seemed to be weighing him down all of a sudden. “I don't know. I'd just sort of hoped . . .” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Never mind what?”
“It's stupid.”
“I'll be the judge of that; I have years of experience, after all.”
“I dunno, I'd just sort of thought . . . well, I'd kinda hoped I might hook up with someone tonight. Or kiss someone, at least.”
“Oh.” Rudy considered that for a moment. “That is stupid.”
“It is not!” Mike protested, and Rudy just raised an eyebrow.
“Changing your tune now, Webster?”
Mike glared. “You're an ass sometimes, you know.”
“Wow.” Rudy's other eyebrow winged up to join the first. “I actually wasn't aware that you knew how to insult someone without using the word 'twit'.”
Mike kept up his glare for two seconds, three, four, but eventually he couldn't hold back the laugh that bubbled out of his throat. “Yeah, well. You learn stuff at university, you know. I hear that's the whole point.” He leaned his head back the way Rudy had done earlier. “Maybe it is stupid. Just, I haven't actually kissed anyone since Katie and I broke up, and that was practically at the beginning of the year.” He sighed morosely. “I'm never going to get to kiss anyone again.”
“So?”
“So? So?” Mike gaped at him. “Oh, right. Easy for you to say, with your . . .” Mike swept his hand through the air in a gesture that was supposed to be expressive but ended up just looking flaily, “. . . your youness. You could've had practically anyone in that party just for asking.”
Rudy looked as imperious as Mike had ever seen him when he said, flatly, “I don't kiss.”
Mike just snorted, because he'd heard that song before. He'd known Rudy long enough to know that don't and can't had nothing to do with each other, and that more likely than not Rudy was as brilliant at kissing as he was at everything else.
“Sure you don't. Just like you don't play soccer, or swim, or dance. You're probably, like, the captain of the Greater Toronto Freestyle Kissing Squad or something, aren't you?”
The slightest of lines appeared between Rudy's eyebrows. “Is that really a thing?”
Mike giggled again. “No, it's not really a thing. Twit.”
“Well. Never can be sure.”
Mike blinked at him for a moment, staring at the faint tinge of red at the tops of Rudy's ears that was almost certainly not alcohol-induced. It was the sort of thing that Mike had gotten used to noticing, because it was the only way to tell when Rudy was something like embarrassed, and because Mike knew him better than anybody else and wait . . . wait.
“Wait,” he said aloud. “You really . . . don't kiss? Like . . . ever?” He knew he was gaping, could feel his mouth actually hanging open, but he couldn't seem to do anything about it, even when Rudy favored him with a positively withering glare.
“I don't even like to get close enough to talk to most other people. What would make you think I'd be interested in kissing them?”
He was close to another person now, though, Mike thought faintly. Close to Mike; so close, in fact, that their shoulders were still pressed together, and Mike could feel the heat of Rudy's body warming his. As ever, though, he was too chicken to point that out, so what he said instead was:
“But kissing's fun.”
Rudy looked at him skeptically. “That's the same thing they always said about sports. Be careful, you're starting to sound like a clone.”
“Rudy-”
“Mike, I'm not upset about it, which makes it absolutely ridiculous for you to be. Stop looking at me like I just got picked last for dodgeball.”
Mike managed a weak smile. “You've never been picked last for anything in your life; you wouldn't know that look if you saw it.”
“I can imagine,” Rudy countered archly. “The
point is, I really don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, so we can just-”
Mike honestly hadn't even considered kissing Rudy until he was already doing it. He had, in fact, spent several years now very carefully not thinking about doing just that. But all of a sudden there was a voice in his head saying that Rudy was his best friend, and that he should know what it was like to kiss someone just once, and if deep down Mike knew that it was really all about the heat of Rudy's skin and the way it felt to be trapped between his body and the floor and the feelings that Mike had been ignoring since they were fifteen years old . . . well. No one had to know but him.
Still, he didn't press his luck. The kiss barely lasted more than a moment, just enough for him to feel the softness of Rudy's lips slack with surprise beneath his. Just enough to get a hint of how he tasted. Then Mike pulled back, leaned away, trying to focus through the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.
Rudy's eyes were huge and startled, and even if he ended up throwing punches and stalking out and never talking to him again, Mike thought the whole thing might have been worth it just to see that.
Then slowly, gradually, Rudy's expression began to shift. Surprise gave way to a look that, just for a moment, made Mike feel like he was eleven years old again. He recognized it from that first summer at Alcatraz, and from every summer afterwards, when Rudy would look at a speedboat or an unguarded camp bus or a pile of logs that might be turned into a raft. That spark of interest, the slide into consideration as he measured the possibility that the crazy scheme hatching in his head might actually work.
Rudy's lips were damp and full and slightly parted.
The second time Mike kissed him, he didn't bother pretending to himself that it was anything other than what it was. Just wanting-three years' worth of wanting that wasn't going to be kept under wraps anymore now that he'd gotten a taste of what he'd been craving. His hands tangled in Rudy's hair, felt it thick between his fingers as his tongue slid over Rudy's lips. Lips which, to Mike's surprise, opened with a small, stunned noise that sent breath ghosting against Mike's mouth. Rudy's hands were clenched at the small of Mike's back, crushing Mike's shirt in his fists and pulling him closer.
He was clambering into Rudy's lap before he fully registered the desire to do so, and Mike, who had always keenly felt his own lack of coordination, the awkward clumsiness that comes of being composed entirely of skinny limbs and harsh angles, felt graceful for the first time in his life. Wrapped around Rudy, everything seemed to fit exactly as it should. His arms twined around Rudy's shoulders, thighs parted around his waist, and Rudy hauled him forward with strong, insistent hands until their hips crashed together and oh . . . god . . .
Rudy was as hard as Mike was.
“God,” Mike groaned, leaning back just far enough to gasp for breath. “God, please.”
He wasn't even sure what he was asking for, and he didn't wait for an answer, just sealed his mouth over Rudy's again, kissing him like he was Mike's last remaining source of oxygen. His hips started rocking on their own, grinding against his friend beneath him. Rudy yanked away from the kiss with a deep, desperate groan; Mike took the opportunity to trail his mouth over his jaw, down his neck, lips and tongue and the slightest hint of teeth until he could feel Rudy's body start to quake.
“Mike.” Rudy's lips found his ear, clumsy at first in a way that made Mike dizzy with something he couldn't quite name. “Mike,” he gasped again, and then abandoned speaking entirely, just tightened his grip around Mike's hips and surged up, fell back, sent both of them toppling back onto the bed still tangled up in each other.
Fingers threaded through Mike's hair, pulled him up for another kiss, and Mike's mind went entirely, blissfully blank. Clumsy he may have been at first, but Rudy had lived up to Mike's suspicions and was proving as much of a prodigy at this as at everything else he tried. All Mike could do was hold on, trying desperately to keep up as Rudy rolled them over until he was half-draped over Mike's body.
Mike felt sure that he couldn't survive this. It felt so good, almost too good, to have Rudy's hands gripping his ass, pulling him close as they thrust together. This was what he'd tried for so long now not to think about, not to want. Rudy in his bed, touching him, wanting him. The mere idea of it was nearly more exciting than the touches themselves, and Mike felt like he was going to burn alive. He was so hard he ached, and every new bit of friction sent electricity sizzling up and down his spine. He was rutting against Rudy's leg, into the hollow of his hip, and Rudy's answering thrusts felt every bit as frantic.
It was almost embarrassing when he came with a shuddering cry, hot and messy and he was still wearing all his clothes because he hadn't been able to let go of Rudy long enough to even try to get them off. Even now he couldn't stop holding on; his arms were still pulling Rudy close as the other boy moved against him, thrusting hard, and Mike was so sensitive now it almost hurt but it didn't matter, because when Rudy shook and cried out, Mike was right there. When they collapsed, hot and sticky, it was together, with sweat dampening the hair at their foreheads and the air between them thick with their shared, ragged breaths.
He didn't realize he was dozing off until he was already nearly asleep, too far gone to fight against it, and too warm and sated to care very much that he couldn't.
When Mike finally woke his room was too bright, his head hurt too much, and his pants and shorts were stiff and stuck to his skin. He hauled himself upright through a supreme force of will and immediately winced as his stomach roiled in protest. He didn't think he'd had that much to drink. Then again, he hadn't exactly bothered to make sure he was hydrated before he fell asleep, since-
Mike abruptly went very still.
Aside from him, his bed was empty.
He wasn't up to thinking about that yet, not with his head pounding like a bass drum and the morning sunlight spearing into his eyes like needles. Moving carefully, he stood up and staggered his way into the bathroom. Peeling off his clothes made him wince and hiss as the material stuck to his skin. Forget washing his shorts; he was probably going to have to burn them. He didn't want to think about that yet either, though, so instead he just turned the shower on as hot as he could stand it, and climbed in to let the water rinse away the sweat and salt crusted over his skin.
By the time he dried off and downed two glasses of water from the bathroom sink, he thought he might be feeling human enough to face things. He was trying to decide if he should call Rudy or just head over to his house when he walked out of the bathroom and was hit with the smell of brewing coffee. Well, that made things easier.
Maybe.
He managed to make it down to the kitchen without feeling like he was in immediate danger of vomiting, which he counted as a point in the pro column on the list he'd started keeping in his head. When he stepped inside, Rudy was sitting at the table, staring at the steam spiraling up out of the mug in front of him, and didn't so much as glance up at Mike. Another point for the con column, then.
“How's your head?”
Rudy's voice sounded the way Mike's throat felt-rough and scratched and abused. It caught Mike off-guard, and he stopped just inside the kitchen door.
“Um. Better, I guess.” He lifted a hand, dropped it again. “I, uh. Took a shower.”
Rudy nodded. “Here,” he said, and pushed the mug of coffee across the table towards Mike before he stood up abruptly. “Sit. What do you want to eat?”
“Uh.” Mike stepped forward and pulled out a chair. “Aren't you going to drink that?”
“No.” Rudy's eyes flicked up, but they darted away before he actually looked at Mike. He turned and walked to the fridge. “Food, Webster. What do you want?”
“I'm, um, not really hungry.” Mike sat, wrapped his hands around the mug and let the warmth sink into his palms. “My stomach's still kind of unsteady.”
“I'm sorry.”
Mike stared at the patterns in the rising steam, watching them shift and swirl until he felt reasonably sure he could speak without his voice breaking. “I actually think that might be the first time I've ever heard you say that,” he said glibly. He glanced over at Rudy's back, stiff and tense as he stood with one hand on the refrigerator door. “I think we're probably both feeling kind of crappy this morning. You should sit back down.”
Rudy walked slowly back to the table. Mike thought he might be looking at him now, but wasn't willing to lift his own eyes to be sure.
“I am, though.” Rudy lowered himself back into the chair he had vacated. “What happened last night was wrong, and I'm sorry. Really.”
Mike nodded, a little more spastically than he'd intended. “Sure. Yeah. I mean, I was drunk, so.”
“I know.” Rudy's voice dropped to a near-whisper.
“So it doesn't have to be a big thing.” Mike raised his head and managed to smile, knew he'd managed at least an approximation of normal by the way the tension on Rudy's face eased just a tiny bit. “Or, you know. These things happen all the time. I mean, not to me, but I know people. I hear things. It's not like it happens all the time, but it still-”
“You're babbling, Webster,” Rudy said with something closer to his customary dryness.
“Pancakes,” Mike blurted out. “I could really go for some pancakes.”
“Pancakes,” Rudy nodded, and stood again. “Okay.”
“Rudy?”
“Yes?”
“It's fine.” Mike smiled again, a little bit more easily this time. “Really. Let's just pretend it didn't happen, okay?”
Rudy stared back at him for a moment, his face so still that even Mike couldn't read it.
“Okay,” he finally said.
It would be, Mike thought, sipping at still-too-hot coffee and wincing at the way it scalded his tongue. Things would probably be a little weird for a while, but in the end they would still be friends.
And that, he assured himself, was a check for the pro column big enough to balance out all the rest.