Fic: Love means never having to say "You're lyrics"
So there was this conversation a while back...
Says I: “The constant banter between Mikey and Pete [on Twitter] about smuggling ewoks and cloning chocolate easter bunnies and paying pro wrestlers to put them in various holds kind of makes me doubt the whole Summer of Like theory. I'm not convinced either of them have the attention span for a doomed romance, frankly.”
Says apiphile: “Either that or that is exactly what they were like at the time and they're continuing an affair having got over their song-inducing hiccup?”
Says I: “Man, get on this, fandom! Less soulful-gazing, sunset-watching angst fics and more "We're making out because our attempts to build a death-ray out of water bottles and socks didn't work".”
I’ll let you be the judge of how well that worked out.
Title: Love means never having to say “You’re lyrics”
Fandom: Bandom RPS (MCR, FOB)
Word Count: 8700
Rating: R
Pairing: Pete/Mikey
Disclaimer: This didn’t actually happen, kids. That’s why it’s fanfiction. Historical/geographical facts may have been tinkered with slightly. Concrit welcome, as always!
* * *
That summer back in ’05 had been one long blur of hot empty evenings that went on forever, when was Pete just moving moving moving to stay ahead of the soul-killing boredom and his own time bomb of a brain. But he remembered exactly when things had changed because he’d been in the middle of counting down their newly constructed Death Ray™ when it happened.
Up until right then, Mikey had been tucked away in Pete’s thoughts as a buddy of the highest caliber. Mikey Way the party dude, of the perpetual mild inebriation and the glasses and the hair and the smile that never seemed to fit on his face quite right.
But somewhere in the midst of “five… four… three”, Pete happened to glance over the Death Ray™ at Mikey to catch the full force of an uncharacteristically focused gaze, and that was the exact moment when Pete had been struck with this unexpected, stomach-flipping realization that he…
Well, that Mikey was…
Okay, so it was kind of a vague, unexpected, stomach-flipping realization. But the end result was that by the time Pete had reached zero and the trailer door swung open, Mikey had smoothly ambled from one category in Pete’s mind over to something new.
“FIRE AT WILL!” Pete yelled, and Mikey whooped and cranked the dial on the Death Ray™.
There was a sizzling crackle, a seriously impressive spray of sparks, and then the smell of singed socks.
“Hi,” Brian said from the doorway, “So. What the fuck?”
“Death Ray,” Mikey explained sadly, standing up and nudging their failed experiment with his foot. “Tee-Em.”
“It doesn’t work,” Pete added, just in case Brian was the sort of guy who took offense to people firing death rays at him. He scuffed at the floor, putting out a particularly tenacious spark that was slowly melting into the dirty carpet.
Brian stared at them with a look that Pete decided to interpret as awe.
“That’s probably because it looks like you made it out of garbage and Bob’s socks and… oh god,” Brian said faintly, in the tones of someone who had just spotted road-kill wearing the markings of a beloved family pet, “Is that the mini-amp? Was that the mini-amp?”
Pete made the executive decision to grab Mikey’s hand, dodge past Brian, and make a break for the door.
“We’re really sorry!” Mikey yelled back as they clattered down the trailer stairs and hit the ground running, a terminal case of the giggles doing nothing for his sincerity.
Pete didn’t think that Brian was actually going to come after them. He’d always struck Pete as a ‘stealthy ninja revenge later when you least expect it’ kind of guy. Still, Pete didn’t stop running until they were halfway across the grounds and safely lost in the maze of tech vans, even when Mikey wasn’t running with him so much as being dragged along for the ride. Their palms were glued together with sweat by the time that Pete remembered to let go of his hand.
“All those sparks! I was like ‘Holy shit, it’s going to work!’,” Mikey said, panting and immediately dropping into a crouch like he was going to pass out. “Oh god, it’s too hot for speedy getaways.”
“Maybe we just got the wiring backwards.” Pete nudged Mikey in the ribs with his sneaker just hard enough make him flail and topple over, because it was funny and because Mikey never really complained. “We shoot it at someone and they kill us.”
“What’s the opposite of a death ray?” Mikey wondered, propping himself back up and making an idle grab for Pete’s ankles. “Like, a life ray?”
“A love ray,” Pete decided, twirling out of Mikey’s reach and laughing before his words looped back up from his mouth to his brain and sunk in.
Oh, he thought, startled, Oh shit.
*
From then on, Pete was just playing a protracted game of chicken with his own admittedly minimal powers of resistance. It was trickier with Mikey than it ever had been with Patrick, if only because losing this game wouldn’t mean taking a metaphorical wrecking ball to everything good that he had going for him in his life.
“Look up,” he said, and Mikey did, compliant and trusting.
Pete ran the tip of the eyeliner pencil under Mikey’s eye, tracing a smooth dramatic line despite being close enough to feel Mikey’s breath against his own mouth.
It was the weirdest thing, because Pete hadn’t seen this coming, but there was no arguing with it now that it was here. Whatever it was.
Mikey wasn’t hot-hot like Travis, or even as pretty-hot as Beckett. He couldn’t pull off Gabe’s swagger if he tried, and Pete didn’t feel the same protective/possessive this is mine rush around him like he did with Patrick. He just knew that catching sight of Mikey’s unmistakably angular silhouette in the crowd next to the stage did something to him that was about as indefinite as it was intense. It was a scary combination.
“You’re all serious,” Mikey said.
“The sacred art of good eyeliner is serious shit. Hasn’t your brother taught you anything?”
Mikey sucked his lower lip into his mouth, ineffectively hiding a grin.
Pete knew that it was only a matter of time before he lost at his own game, but at least he wasn’t bored.
*
“I’m going to write a song about how people in horror movies always run up the stairs and get trapped on the roof,” Pete said, balling his discarded tee-shirt into a more comfortable pillow under his cheek. The afternoon sun beating down on his back was so hot that it almost had actual weight, like if he just held still long enough he’d melt right into the surface of the roof like one of those droopy Dali watches.
“That’d be cool,” Mikey decided, “I’d still run upstairs though.”
“Really?”
“Hell yeah. I don’t want to get trapped in the basement.”
Mikey was tucked into the narrow strip of shade from the short concrete wall at the edge of the roof, smoking and sweating. He still had his thick black hoodie on and it was making Pete queasy just looking at him.
“You’re going to get heatstroke,” Pete mumbled, rubbing his face on his forearm, “And then I’m going to laugh my ass off. And then I’m going to take pictures so everybody else can laugh at you too.”
“I’m comfortable,” Mikey insisted primly. His bangs were lank with sweat and his glasses made a break for the end of his nose when he looked down to stub out his cigarette.
“You’re a freak,” Pete corrected. He sat up and regarded Mikey seriously. “Maybe that’s my purpose in life. I’ve been put on this earth to write songs and laugh at Patrick and un-freakify you, Mikeyway.”
“Good luck with that,” Mikey said, and reached for a fresh cigarette.
So Pete pounced.
“Assault! Security! Help!” Mikey yelped, all elbows and knees as Pete tackled him. Pete sat on Mikey’s legs and scrambled for the zipper of the hoodie, but Mikey kept twisting and scratching like a trapped cat, so Pete gave up on the zipper and just yanked the whole thing up over Mikey’s head instead.
“FREAK, FREAK, FREAK,” he chanted, staggering to his feet and bringing the inside-out hoodie with him with a wild yank that sent Mikey’s glasses skittering across the roof. “FREAK, FREAK, FREAK…” He charged to the edge of the roof, dancing impatiently in place while Mikey groped around for his glasses and, oh man, this was so much fun that Pete suddenly wanted to steal everything Mikey owned just to watch him spazz out.
Mikey located his glasses, grumpily yanked his tee-shirt back down over his skinny hips, and caught sight of Pete dangling his hoodie off the roof like a hostage. His eyes went very wide.
“Wentz, don’t you fucking...”
“Victory is mine!” Pete crowed, and flung it into space.
Mikey made a noise like ‘augh!’ and dashed over in time to watch it get tangled in the uppermost branches of one of the big trees next to the building.
“That wasn’t even mine,” he said sadly, “You giant douche.”
Pete laughed and laughed, vibrating with energy, feeling overcooked and crazy. “What are you gonna do about it, huh?” He feinted towards Mikey, who clutched protectively at his tee-shirt.
“I’m going to throw you off the roof,” Mikey threatened sulkily, but slumped against the guard wall in defeat, crossing his pale arms over his chest.
“No way…” Pete crept up into his personal space. “You’ll let me get away with anything.”
Mikey pouted at him. His shirt was soaked through with sweat, sticking to his chest, and he stunk… Jesus, he stunk… and if Pete touched him, he was going to have Mikey-smell on him all day, and Pete’s brain was clearly all fucked up from too much sun, because the idea was weirdly appealing.
“Won’t you, Mikey?” Pete prompted, looking at him from under his eyelashes, looking at Mikey like he was the most important camera in the world. “You’d let me get away with murder.”
Mikey sighed and looked at his feet. He shifted them self-consciously so his toes didn’t point in towards each other.
“Whatever,” he said, “Don’t let it get around.”
Pete laughed, opened his mouth to say something like ‘Scout’s honor’, and then kissed Mikey instead. Fast and inelegant and kind of weird because there wasn’t anyone else around to laugh it off and make it harmless.
Mikey froze. His mouth was dry and bitter from all those cigarettes. Pete pulled away a second too late to pretend that it hadn’t happened, his heart pounding so hard that it kind of hurt, feeling naked in a way that had nothing to do with shirtlessness.
“Oh,” said Mikey, and made a funny little gesture like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. “I thought… huh. I thought it was just me.”
“Sor… What?”
“I wasn’t ready,” Mikey said, “Um. Do it again and I’ll actually do something?”
“What?” Pete said again, helplessly, and stood there like a moron until Mikey leaned in and kissed him, sweet and tentative. And that was… oh, it was really kind of awesome.
Pete grabbed onto Mikey’s damp tee-shirt and kissed him back maybe a little too hard, but his mind was three steps behind and his knees didn’t even exist anymore. Mikey’s hands skimmed hesitantly down Pete’s back and it was only a stray thought about telephoto lenses and very public rooftops that finally made Pete pull back.
Mikey stared at him. Pete stared at Mikey. Within five seconds, they were both grinning like idiots.
“We could do this all the time,” Pete said.
Mikey nodded enthusiastically. “I think we should. Practice makes perfect.”
“And we’re already pretty good,” Pete concluded.
He wanted to dance, or break something, or drag Mikey somewhere a little more private. Just as soon as he stopped shaking. Mikey had taken a half-step back to lean against the guard wall in a way that made Pete think he might be having a little problem with a case of non-existent knees himself.
“Does this mean you’re going to help me get Bob’s hoodie out of the tree?” Mikey asked.
“Fuck… alright, yeah. I don’t want Bob to kill me in my sleep,” Pete said, “I think I’ve got an idea anyway.”
“If it involves a fishing rod, I’m right there with you,” Mikey said cheerfully, and Pete snorted.
I’m going to write a song, he decided, about being on cloud nine and familiar ground all at the same time.
*
The awesome part was that it didn’t really change anything at first, except that Pete discovered Mikey’s ghost-pale skin was pretty much made for hickeys and now they had something else to do in the empty spaces between adventures.
ur cute. want 2 make out? Pete typed, hitting send and tilting his head back to lean against Mikey’s shoulder. He could feel Mikey’s shoulder blades move as he shifted to brace Pete’s weight, back to back on the trailer floor.
ha ha netime, Mikey texted back.
i know u didn’t really laugh, Pete pointed out reasonably. (He could tell exactly when his words bounced off some distant satellite or whatever to fly back down to Mikey’s phone, because this time Mikey did chuckle out loud.)
i smiled. u didnt c.
Pete grinned and nuzzled awkwardly against Mikey’s neck. my thumbs r tired.
WEAK, Mikey fired back in about two seconds.
“Well they are,” Pete whined out loud. “I forfeit, you win. You’re the king of texting. You’re a legendary text machine, Mikeyway.”
“Awesome,” Mikey said. “I always suspected.” He collapsed sideways, causing Pete to fall over too, despite his windmilling effort to stay upright.
It took about three seconds of lying there to realize that there was nothing much to look at on the ceiling of the My Chem trailer. Also, it still smelled a lot like exploded Death Ray™.
“The king of texting is still bored,” Mikey announced. “Are you still bored?”
“Still bored,” Pete agreed.
He rolled over and got to his knees, crawling over to straddle Mikey’s chest because he could. Mikey just slow-blinked and watched him, letting Pete pin his hands without any fuss. Pete bent to kiss him, unhurried and leisurely like they could spend the rest of the afternoon just making out on the grimy trailer floor, if either of them actually had the attention span for that.
“You ever wonder,” Pete murmured against Mikey’s cheek, “if you could use a flat-iron to iron a tee-shirt?”
“Not after last February,” Mikey said grimly, and Pete burst out laughing, helpless to stop even when he accidentally bit his own tongue.
“Oh shit,” he snickered, in serious pain and not even caring, “You’re awesome, Mikey. You’re the fucking best. Can I just keep you forever?”
“I’m supposed to check with Ray before I let anybody keep me forever, but I like you, so it’s cool,” Mikey decided.
“Cool,” Pete echoed. (In his head, he’d started to think of this ragged kamikaze happiness as a distinctly Mikey-induced feeling.) “I guess you’re mine now.”
Mikey squirmed underneath him, looking vaguely concerned. “But not like Dirty’s yours, right?”
“Definitely not,” Pete murmured, and bent to kiss him again.
Then Mikey did that thing with his tongue that always made Pete’s brain grind to a halt and he had to lay down on top of Mikey and get their legs all tangled up like they were somewhere much more comfortable than a gritty trailer floor.
Mikey made a low noise in his throat and tried to tug his hands out of Pete’s grip, but Pete hung on, content to keep hands out of the picture for now. He slid down a little to bite at Mikey’s throat in that way that unfailingly drew a happy choked-off noise from Mikey and made him go utterly pliant underneath him. He pressed his hips lazily into Mikey’s, the jut of Mikey’s hipbones and the catch of their belt buckles already becoming familiar territory.
“Oh Jesus,” said a faint voice from behind them.
Pete scrambled off Mikey with a startled curse. Gerard stood in the doorway scrubbing at his eyes like his retinas had been physically burned.
“Everybody’s still dressed, Gee,” Mikey said, sitting up and brushing trailer-floor detritus out of his hair. He missed something above his ear that looked like part of a leaf and Pete made a motion to get it for him before deciding that he should probably just try to behave and keep his hands to himself for a minute.
“You could’ve put something on the door,” Gerard complained, crossing his arms.
“Oh, whoa, we weren’t doing anything sock-on-the-doorknob worthy, dude,” Pete blurted, drawing uncannily similar looks of disapproval from both Mikey and Gerard. Pete promptly took a mental vow of silence until further notice.
“Just not in the trailer, okay?” Gerard said.
Mikey looked at Gerard over his glasses. “You had you-know-who in my bed.”
Gerard grimaced and rubbed violently at the bridge of his nose. “You said it wasn’t like that, Mikey.”
“Fuck off, it’s not,” Mikey muttered. (Pete came to the conclusion that he didn’t have a single clue what they were talking about anymore.) “We’ll leave. I’ll be back at six, okay?”
“Look, you don’t have to…” Gerard started, but Mikey had already gotten to his feet. Pete scrambled up after him.
Gerard looked guilty as hell, but his expression went suspicious and kind of scary when he caught Pete’s eye. Just Pete’s luck that he had to go and fall in… something… with someone related to Gerard ‘you can’t touch my brother’ Way.
Outside, Mikey blinked in the bright sunlight before rambling aimlessly across the parking lot. Pete followed him, feeling clumsy and useless.
“Hey,” he hazarded, “If Gerard’s not cool with this…”
“I think he just wants to know what ‘this’ is,” Mikey said, trailing to a stop. “And fucked if I know. So it’s weird.” He shrugged and toed at the asphalt.
It would’ve been the perfect moment for Pete to say something. To offer a working definition of ‘this’ or even a stupid quip to make light of the fact that neither of them had any control over what they were doing anymore, dancing around in the space between friends and more-than-friends.
Pete shoved his hands into his pockets and watched Mikey’s restless feet.
“The king of texting could use a fucking drink,” Mikey sighed.
“I heard Sevenfold’s techs were selling vodka out of their van this morning,” Pete offered.
Sad as it was, it felt like the only useful thing he’d said all day.
*
“Yo, so Gee gave me a talk,” Mikey announced the next day, strolling into the FOB trailer without knocking. “And condoms. I think we’re cool now.”
Pete fumble-caught the box that Mikey tossed to him and grinned.
“Oh man,” he said with feeling. “You are thinking what I’m thinking, right?”
“Hell yes,” Mikey agreed. “That’s why I’m here.”
They were up on the roof within ten minutes and had bombed the entirety of Panic! and a couple of innocent bystanders with their makeshift water balloons before security caught up with them.
(It didn’t exactly clear anything up, but Pete still wasn’t bored.)
*
Mikey had this one pair of jeans with a ragged hole in the knee, and they were slowly driving Pete crazy. No matter where Pete was, if Mikey was around, the most comfortable position in the world seemed to be sprawling all over the guy, and Pete’s fingers were drawn to that tear like skin-seeking missiles, worrying at the frayed edges and pulling at loose threads until it was a wonder he hadn’t torn it wide open yet.
There was a bruise on Mikey’s knee visible through that tear today, which Pete was examining at close range while Mikey doodled on his back with a Sharpie marker stolen from somewhere.
(Pete would have to remember to leave his shirt on for the rest of the evening… He wasn’t sure what ‘improvements’ Mikey had made to his tattoos the last time that they did this, but Andy had taken one look and laughed until he couldn’t stand up.)
Pete ran his thumb over the small dark bruise, goosebumps shooting over his skin when Mikey made some careful little detail with the tip of the marker in the dip of his spine.
“Give that?” Pete murmured, and reached back for the marker. Mikey obediently put it in his hand and sat back to play with Pete’s hair instead.
Pete pushed the torn denim out of the way. blowjob, he wrote above the bruise, in tidy letters. bruise, he added underneath it, blowing on the ink to dry it before realizing the irony and breaking off snickering.
Mikey twisted around trying to read what Pete had written, huffing a laugh when he’d contorted enough to get it. “Nope. I got attacked by a bench. You can ask Frank.”
“Happens to the best of us,” Pete said, and kissed Mikey’s knee, probably getting ink all over his lips in the process. “You gotta watch those crazy ninja benches, man.”
Mikey trailed his fingers across Pete’s ribs, making him shudder again. “If you…” Mikey said, and broke off with a weird laugh.
“What?”
“Just… if you wanted to make some real ones some time, I’m up for that,” Mikey said in a quiet rush. “Blowjob bruises, not ninja benches. Obviously. Although ninja benches would probably be cool too.”
Pete pressed his forehead against Mikey’s thigh, shutting his eyes and pretending that just hearing Mikey talk about blowjobs didn’t do things to him.
“I don’t do that kind of stuff with guys,” he mumbled, and summoned his strength to push himself up and away from Mikey. “I told you that.”
“No, that’s cool,” Mikey said, restlessly finger-combing his bangs and not looking at Pete. “Me neither. I mean, I don’t go around offering to just anybody. Is. Is what I mean.”
“I’m glad,” Pete said, and the words came out a whole lot lower and more intense than he’d expected, surprising him.
Oh, he was so fucked.
*
“Do you guys think I’m a cock-tease?” Pete asked the rest of the band later that evening, morosely stealing fries off Joe’s plate out of habit rather than hunger.
The resulting chorus in the extreme negative had been a bit insulting.
“I’m sure everybody will miss your dick when you finally decide to put it away,” Patrick said reassuringly, and reached across the table to pat him on the shoulder.
*
With August came the realization that he’d started thinking about after-show parties strategically.
Pete had always made his own opportunities in life. Unfortunately, one of the major elements in this most recent plan involved getting drunk enough to do something more with Mikey than just kiss and grope, and his grand schemes generally tended to slide sideways on him whenever alcohol was involved.
Like tonight, he’d been keeping his eye on Mikey through the crowd, methodically matching him drink for drink as best he could, waiting for his moment in a way that he told himself wasn’t the least bit creepy… And then somebody went and set up a bonfire in the parking lot and Pete had run around for a good twenty minutes looking for something awesome to burn and had completely forgotten about his plan.
He didn’t remember the plan again until he ran into Mikey by one of the little wannabe fires that had sprung up around the big monster one, seemingly trying to light his own shoelaces on fire. Pete grabbed him around his skinny waist and hauled him back a few steps, tripping over someone else’s foot and just about sending them both to the ground.
“Hi, Mikey!” he yelled in Mikey’s ear, and bit his shoulder for the hell of it with much noisy growling. “Whatcha doing?”
“Trying to light my shoelaces on fire!” Mikey said happily, twisting to loop an arm around Pete’s shoulders for balance. “I think I’m very, very drunk.”
“Well, wait for me, fucker. I want to catch up,” Pete told him, dancing the awkward waltz of the drunk trying to hold up the drunk.
Mikey poked him in the chest. “You’re never gonna catch me, Pete Fuckin’ Wentz,” he said, and toppled backwards to ricochet off a dreadlocked dude in an Iron Maiden tee who helpfully shoved Mikey back into Pete’s arms like a ragdoll. Pete managed to stop them before they both stumbled into the fire, only just barely.
“Hey hey hey,” Mikey yelped, “Pete! You’re here! There’s this guy! This guy. We need to turn him into a Sweet Little Dude. I couldn’t remember the initiation ritual and I couldn’t find you and I was like ‘Oh shit!’.”
“We don’t have an initiation ritual,” Pete said, getting stuck on the word ‘initiation’ when a few unnecessary ‘ni ni’s tried to climb into it uninvited.
“S’probably why I couldn’t remember it,” Mikey decided. “He’s awesome. He’s got these tattoos…”
“I’ve got tattoos,” Pete said sadly.
“No, no, whoa, tattoos,” Mikey elaborated, with an all-encompassing gesture that nearly took Pete’s eye out. “And a fucking snake. Oh my god, we need to find him!”
“I kind of just want to get you alone,” Pete said. His guts gave a painful twist of protest; hard liquor and honesty didn’t mix well on an empty stomach.
Mikey narrowed his eyes at him. “Pete Mindfuckin’ Wentz. Alone for what?”
Pete hauled Mikey into a precarious embrace and, yeah, yeah, he wanted to do this tonight.
“For blowjob bruises,” he said into Mikey’s ear, a little less smoothly than he’d hoped when he lost his balance and got a mouthful of Mikey-hair.
“Seriously?”
“If you still want.”
“Yeah, I still want. Shit, I should…” Mikey squinted urgently through the crowd, swaying, then shook his head. “No, fuck it, let’s go.” He blinked at Pete helplessly. “Where do we go?”
“Trailers? Yours, mine?” Pete offered, already tugging Mikey into the cooler darkness away from the fires. Mikey tripped over a curb at the edge of the parking lot and pitched forward, clutching the back of Pete’s hoodie to save himself from a face-plant.
“Ours is no good. Gee’s having a sober-dude thing.” Mikey glanced back at the partiers silhouetted against the trashcan fires like something primal, and then reeled Pete in by his hoodie, kind of choking him before Pete turned around to get kissed full on the mouth.
Mikey tasted like hard liquor and something sugary, and Pete sunk into the blurry alcohol haze enough to relax and forget they were right out in the open, kissing Mikey back and curling his fingers into the pockets of his jeans until they needed to breathe again.
“My trailer,” Pete said, “Now. Come on.”
“Oh man, I’m going to be so pissed if I can’t remember any of this,” Mikey said, hooking his fingers through Pete’s belt and following him into the dark.
From then on, things got a little disjointed.
Pete remembered making it back to his trailer, because they had a run in with one of Mikey’s fucking ninja benches and the sharp crack on his shin temporarily sobered him up enough to steer them safely home. And he remembered hauling Mikey inside and thanking the god of drunken hook-ups that everybody was still out. And then there was some making out up against the trailer door, which he distinctly remembered because the fucking thing hadn’t shut properly and swung open unexpectedly when Mikey leaned up against it, dumping them both back out on their asses.
He wasn’t ever going to forget pushing Mikey onto his bunk, watching him sprawl all blurry-beautiful in the reading light, and thinking ‘this is it’ and ‘it’s worth it’.
But after that, when he crawled in with Mikey, everything got warm and hazy and comfortable, and the room kept spinning whenever Pete closed his eyes, but he sure as hell couldn’t keep them open, and then… and then…
“Guys? Hey, guys?”
Pete swallowed and unglued his tongue from the roof of his mouth, cracking an eye open. Which was pretty much when the light tried to eat his brain.
“Sorry,” Andy said, having the grace to look a bit repentant, from what Pete could see. “It’s ten a.m. Mikey’s got sound check.”
Mikey’s pitiful whimper from between Pete and the trailer wall helped Pete move a little quicker through the usual morning-after checklist: Where am I? Who’s that? Am I wearing anything?
The answer to the last question was actually kind of disappointing, because he was still completely dressed. They hadn’t even gotten their shoes off.
“Ow,” Mikey said tremulously into Pete’s pillow, before gingerly risking a peek and squinting at Andy like he’d never seen him before in his life. He had pillow lines running over his cheek and his hair was effectively defying all logic, which Pete probably would’ve found endearing if he wasn’t currently trying to prevent his brains from leaking out of his ears.
“Whoa,” Mikey said, “Where. What. Wrong bed.”
Andy… hang-over resistant bastard that he was… reached across both of them to rescue Mikey’s glasses from the space between the bunk and the wall, pressing them into Mikey’s hands. “Seriously, sorry I had to wake you up. You guys have early sound check, Mikey. Your brother’s looking for you.”
Mikey slowly put on his glasses, still staring at Andy in incomprehension.
“Sound check?” Andy tried again, helpfully air-guitaring in demonstration.
Mikey sat up abruptly, nearly braining himself on Joe’s bunk, and clutched his head. “Sound check! Oh, fuck me.”
Andy’s mouth twisted with amusement. “Well, I think Pete…”
“Bite me, Hurley,” Pete muttered, and dragged the pillow up over his head.
He felt Mikey crawl clumsily across him to half-topple out of the bunk.
“Hey, wait, wait…” Pete shoved the pillow aside, squinting against his ferocious headache and finding his emergency supply of pills mainly by feel, digging out a travel-sized bottle of painkillers. “Here. Merry Christmas.” He unthinkingly rattled them at Mikey, causing them both to flinch at the way-too-loud noise.
(Andy put his hand over his mouth and coughed in a way that didn’t sound very much like a cough at all.)
“Thanks,” Mikey said, managing a wan grin. He took the bottle, squeezing Pete’s fingers for a second before letting go. “Sorry. For… kind of nothing.”
“Not your fault,” Pete said, and groped for his brain-saving pillow again. It had escaped onto the floor, which just wasn’t fair. “I’ll come find you later, okay?”
Mikey nodded distractedly, struggling with the childproof cap until Andy took it out of his hands and popped it open for him.
“Thanks,” Mikey said. “You’re a good dude.”
Andy shrugged. “Nah, man, you guys just won me ten bucks,” he said serenely, “Frank Iero bet you’d at least get your pants off before you passed out.”
*
Even with all the fun that he kept having in spite of himself, that summer was still pretty rough mentally. Sometimes Pete found himself spinning his wheels, stuck in these bad moments where his sense of self felt too big for his body. Days when he just needed a fucking reaction from people to make sure that he still existed, but knew that he wasn’t going to be able to make contact without violence. He’d figured out that much by now.
On those days he would try to hole himself up in the trailer, staying very still and very quiet, clinging to the edge of the bunk like he could physically hold himself together, and just waiting for the feeling of nitroglycerine in his veins to pass.
So when Mikey crept in where even Hemmy knew better than to tread, it was mainly out of affection for the guy that Pete promptly told him to fuck off and leave him the hell alone.
Mikey hesitated for a moment before coming over to Pete’s bunk anyway, crouching down. He ran his fingers over Pete’s knuckles before taking hold of his wrist (like he knew exactly how close he was to getting punched) and brushed a gentle kiss against the back of his fist.
“Hi, Pete,” he whispered. “Breathe.”
Pete exhaled, relaxing his death-grip on the edge of the mattress enough to let Mikey twine his fingers through his own.
He ached. He fucking ached like he was on the brink of tears and this was all just… so stupid.
“So one of the sound guys was telling me,” Mikey said, like Pete wasn’t halfway to crumbling in front of him, “that the biggest statue of a horse in the whole country is only twenty minutes out from here.”
Pete frowned. “Yeah?”
Mikey nodded seriously, running his thumb over Pete’s fingers. “Yup. I’m gonna find it and climb that fucker and turn it into the world’s biggest unicorn. I just can’t think of what to use for the horn yet. It’s going to be legendary.”
Pete made a choked noise like the bastard cousin of a proper laugh and curled his fingers tight around Mikey’s. “Jesus Christ, you fucking freak. Just… come here, okay?” He gave Mikey’s hand a tug, shifting over to make some room for him in the bunk.
Mikey climbed in next to him and lay down with his shoes and jacket still on, not letting go of Pete’s hand. Pete tucked up against him and pressed his face against Mikey’s shoulder, shutting his eyes and breathing in the comfortable musty Mikey-smell.
“Sorry I told you to fuck off,” he mumbled. He still kind of felt like crying.
Mikey kissed the top of his head. “I’m a Way. We specialize in this shit.”
“If we were boyfriends, you’d be the best one ever,” Pete blurted. Which was just proof of how much he shouldn’t talk when he was in these moods.
“Yeah, well. I like you too, Pete,” Mikey said, putting his free arm around Pete and just hanging on to him. Just breathing with him like that.
It was still a miserable day, but nowhere near as bad as it could’ve been.
*
Because the world would end before any of the band managers had an easy time of getting across international borders without incident, everybody had suddenly taken it into their heads to switch up who was riding with whom somewhere around northern Montana. It was going to be a fucking gong show, but Pete had a general idea of where Joe, Andy and his own passport were, and had Patrick, Mikey and Hemingway within reach, so he was personally ready to rock.
He was writing in his journal, the dips and bumps in the road feeling more like a crazy universal rhythm than an annoyance today, and the sun was streaming in through the window to warm the back of his neck and everything was good.
“So I’m giving you an ultimatum,” Mikey announced out of the blue. “I think you should have sex with me.”
The line that Pete had been writing devolved into a startled scribble. “That’s… that’s not an ultimatum, Mikey.”
Mikey looked distinctly disappointed. “Why not?”
“An ultimatum has to have an ‘or else’ in it. That was just, like, a proposition.”
“Oh. Okay. I think we should have sex or else… I’ll… um…” Mikey trailed off, appearing to give the matter serious thought, his gaze lighting on Hemingway as he trundled into the back. “Or else I’ll totally kick your dog.”
“Shut up,” Pete scoffed, “You fucking love Hemmy.”
“Yeah, I do.” Mikey scooped the bulldog up onto his lap for a tight cuddle that made Hemmy whine in protest. “Shit, I don’t know. Help me think of a good ‘or else’.”
“I’m not helping you think up an ultimatum you’re going to use on me!”
“You suck,” Mikey muttered, and buried his face against the folds of Hemmy’s neck.
“We’ll be at the border in ten minutes,” Patrick called back from the driver’s seat. “If you two start screwing around at Customs, I’ll tie you both to the roof and we’ll drive the rest of the way to Calgary like that.”
“That was an ultimatum,” Pete was unable to resist pointing out.
Mikey shot him a miserable look over the top of Hemmy’s head. Pete bit his tongue and looked out the window.
*
In Calgary, it rained, just this constant warm downpour like the sky had decided to take a good long piss on all of them, turning moshpits into mud holes and wilting mohawks as far as the eye could see. Pete’s own hair hung lank and dripping in his eyes, but the audience looked like a goddamn battlefield and when Patrick told them they’d keep playing until they saw lightening, they roared.
“Gotta put on the speaker condoms,” Pete yelled to the crowd, stalling with banter while the techs ran out to throw tarps over the equipment, “Fall Out Boy always practices safe sets.” Andy hit a rim-shot right on cue.
Pete could’ve played forever.
He spun and screamed and threw himself around the stage like an exorcism in progress, but it felt like they were finished before they’d even really started, and it wasn’t enough. He came off the stage still buzzing with energy, his volume cranked high.
When he caught sight of Mikey and Ray having an animated conversation by the side of the stage, it seemed like the only possible option to scoop up a handful of thick mud, holler “I’M SO DIRTY, BABE!” and fling it at Mikey’s back. Except his foot slipped on the follow-through and he pretty much nailed Ray right in the ear. Ray’s head whipped around.
“Shiiit,” Pete said, shoving Andy towards Ray as a diversion and making a break for it, his sneakers slipping in the mud.
It was all over in about fifteen seconds, ending with a very disgruntled guitarist sitting on Pete’s back and Pete yelping apologies with his mouth half-full of mud. It wasn’t one of the most glamorous moments in his life.
“No more throwing mud,” Ray said, his even tone belied by the painful grip on the back of Pete’s neck. “Not at me, not at my friends.”
“Nope,” Pete agreed immediately. “Nope, nope. Ow.”
Ray got to his feet, allowing Pete to roll squelchily over and sit up. Patrick had his hand over his eyes and Mikey was, like, going through contortions to keep a straight face. Pete grumpily spat watery dirt out of his mouth, licking grit off his teeth.
“This is what happens when you sacrifice your buddies,” Andy decided sagely, offering Pete a hand. “Instant karmic bitch-slap.” Pete took a tiny bit of satisfaction in getting mud all over Andy’s arm getting up.
“Awesome set, was what I meant to come over and say,” Ray said to the guys, calmly finger-combing mud out of his rain-deflated fro. “I think you could’ve gone an hour, easy.”
Patrick, of course, lit right up, ready to talk set-lengths and playlists for days. Pete took the opportunity to wipe mud off his face, sneak past Ray, and drag his muddy fingers all down Mikey’s cheek like warpaint. Mikey screwed up his face and shut his eyes, but didn’t exactly move to stop him.
Ray made a noise of disbelief. “Seriously, Pete?”
“Well, I didn’t throw it…”
“S’true,” Mikey concurred, scrubbing at his face with a sleeve, “He didn’t. Hey, check it out!” He pointed at the ground where Pete had been flailing around under Ray. “Mud angels!”
“We could build a mudman!”
“A mudicorn,” Mikey amended dreamily.
Ray threw up his hands and Patrick shot him a look of soulful commiseration, which Pete felt was entirely unwarranted.
“Please, please, just wash off before either of you go in the trailer again, okay?” Ray pleaded. “It’s enough of a disaster in there without mudmen running around. Frank’s going to lose it if it gets any worse.”
“There’s that hose over by the parking lot,” Pete suggested.
Mikey gave a shudder of revulsion. “I know somewhere better. Come on.”
‘Somewhere better’ turned out to be a little outdoor washroom near the edge of the concert grounds like the kind you’d find in a campground, just a couple of stalls and a darkly stained sink. There was a gap between the top of the walls and the roof where natural light filtered in, and the usual smell of sewage was washed away by the rainy air and the sharp scent of damp wood so that it almost felt more like a tiny cabin that just had a disproportionate amount of toilets than a proper outhouse. The rain hissed against the roof in wild bursts with the wind.
“Dude,” Pete pronounced, admiring the collage of graffiti that covered nearly every inch of the walls, right up to the spiderweb tangles in the corners.
“It’s pretty weird, isn’t it?” Mikey said, looking so pleased with himself that Pete didn’t point out that the rain had taken care of the worst of the mud on his clothing already.
“Deeply weird,” Pete said, digging through his pockets for the Sharpie he’d been signing autographs with earlier. He uncapped the marker, located a relatively bare spot on the wooden wall next to the cracked mirror, and hesitated.
“So I was thinking earlier, when you were on,” Mikey said, quietly, like he was just talking to himself. “I thought of an ‘or else’.”
Pete drew a slightly lopsided heart, in thick looping lines.
“Thing is, we’ve got two cities left after this and that’s it. Tour’s over. Summer’s over. Gerard says we’re probably going to Miami to film the next video.”
P.W. + M.W. Pete wrote inside the heart. Summer ’05. Limited Run.
“So that’s the ‘or else’, I guess. Or else we never will.”
Pete clicked the lid back on the marker and put it in his pocket. He swallowed hard, turned and brushed past Mikey, walking to the door.
He slid the deadbolt closed and turned back to Mikey. “Good ultimatum.”
Mikey smiled his awkward smile. “Thanks. I thought so.”
Pete moved forward to kiss him and Mikey met him halfway, his arms going tight around Pete in that way that always gave Pete the urge to fight against the embrace and turned him the hell on all at once.
“You totally still have mud in your mouth,” Mikey mumbled between kisses.
“Sorry...”
“I don’t care.”
Mikey’s hands were cold when he shoved them under Pete’s grubby tee-shirt and Pete jumped, then laughed. He was struck with the sudden revelation that sex with Mikey would probably be just like everything else that he did with Mikey. Strange and a little bit ridiculous and something to remind Pete that being alive was generally pretty amazing.
He yanked at Mikey’s belt with shaky hands, the part of his brain that hung back to watch this sort of thing wondering why this was so different. Shit, they’d gone further than this before, hadn’t they? They’d practically gotten each other off fully clothed with the good old-fashioned high school bump and grind, pretending to watch movies together in Pete’s bunk…
“Are you scared?” Mikey whispered, leaning back against the little counter, watching Pete’s hands on his belt.
“I don’t know.” Pete shook his head. “I don’t think so. Are you? If you change your mind now, I’ll flush you down the fucking toilet.”
“Shut up, shut up,” Mikey pleaded, fighting against a clear case of nervous giggles. “Oh god, I’ve been jerking off thinking about this for weeks.”
And while Pete was still reeling from that bit of fantasy-inducing information, Mikey turned them around, pressed Pete up against the sink, and dropped to his knees in front of him.
“Fuck, Mikey,” Pete said weakly. It actually kind of reminded him of their very first kiss, the way his own knees just went right out of commission, all the feeling in his legs heading straight to his dick in a hot rush. Mikey fumbled with Pete’s fly and Pete wasn’t making it much easier for him, unable to keep from shoving forward at each incidental touch.
“Let me,” he muttered, and yanked open his belt and fly, shoving his jeans down to about mid-thigh before realizing that mud-soaked pants that were already pretty tight to begin with weren’t going to go much further than that without a struggle. It was okay though, since Mikey promptly leaned forward to mouth almost delicately at Pete’s dick through his underwear and Pete was suddenly busy scrambling to brace himself against the sink.
Mikey moved upwards to lick at his tattoo, just rubbing Pete’s hard-on with the heel of his hand, slow and leisurely, up and down, and Pete’s head was suddenly filled with terrible images of Mikey getting distracted by graffiti or something and wandering off in the middle of this.
“Please,” he blurted, “Come on, do it. Please.”
“No,” Mikey said against his belly, giving Pete’s cock a squeeze with his long fingers that made Pete jerk like he’d been shocked. “Be patient.”
Pete made a strangled noise.
“If you’re only ever letting me do this once, it should count,” Mikey added sagely. “You look really silly right now, by the way.”
Pete shut his mouth and mustered a glare. “Do something and we’ll talk about repeat performances.”
“Fuck off,” Mikey said, but tugged Pete’s underwear down, wrapping his hand around his erection, skin on skin at last.
Pete… letting his head fall back and mouthing a silent ‘Fuck’ up to the weird angled roof… suddenly realized that he should’ve spent a lot more time fantasizing about this over the summer than he had. Because Mikey seemed to know what he was doing, while Pete was stuck making embarrassing needy noises and groping at the counter when Mikey thumbed at the head of his cock, sliding through precome and smearing wetness down the shaft. It didn’t help when Pete looked and got to see Mikey breathe over his dick, putting out his tongue for a tentative lick.
“You win,” Pete croaked. “Okay. You fucking win. Just.”
Mikey glanced up at him and smiled, clearly confused. “I wasn’t playing anything,” he said. He shrugged and slid his lips over the head of Pete’s dick, shutting his eyes and taking him in.
Pete jerked forward slightly before he could stop himself and Mikey choked a little, but recovered before Pete had even muttered an apology. His blood was pounding in his ears, mixing with the sound of the wind still hissing through the walls, and everything felt out of control and overwhelming as Mikey eased his mouth along Pete’s erection, rubbing kind of aimlessly with his tongue as he went.
Pete had had better blowjobs before, sure, but this was Mikey, and that alone made it hot and inexplicably intense. Pete let go of his white-knuckled grip on the counter to run his hand over Mikey’s rain-wet hair, brushing it back from his face, petting convulsively at Mikey’s cheek and forcing himself to enjoy the slow build instead of shoving hard and fast into Mikey’s mouth.
But, oh fuck, the thought that he could…
“’kay,” he panted after a minute, “That’s good, I’m going to… Mikey, I’m gonna come…”
And Mikey just kept going, looking at Pete with his glasses slipping down, and pressed his tongue up under the head of Pete’s cock.
“Nrrghfffuck,” Pete said, grabbing a handful of Mikey’s hair and losing the rhythm and coming hard in Mikey’s mouth.
He was numb when it was over, or maybe just so hypersensitive that his nerves had gone on strike, shivering as Mikey kept licking at his softening cock, playing around in the space between best-feeling-in-the-world and okay-ow-stop-now. When Pete licked his lips, there were dents in the skin where his teeth had been.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice gone all after-sex raspy.
“Mmhm.” Mikey brushed his wet mouth over Pete’s tattoo again, then wiped absently at his lips, looking a little dazed. “That was kind of whoa.”
“Very fucking whoa,” Pete agreed. He tugged at Mikey’s shirt, failing to support Mikey when he stumbled to his feet and lost his balance. They fell against the sink together, just kind of clinging to each other.
“My turn?” Mikey asked hopefully, sounding more undone than Pete had ever heard him. Which wasn’t, you know, ragged or anything, because it was Mikey, but it was nice knowing that he wasn’t the only one falling apart here.
“Turn around,” Pete said, untangling himself from Mikey and letting him stand against the sink. He plastered himself against Mikey’s back… It was a lot easier getting Mikey’s pants down at this angle, easier rubbing at Mikey’s erection through his shorts like he was touching himself. He wrapped an arm around Mikey’s chest, taking a second to lick his own palm (and wow, he really did have a lot of mud still on him) and got his wet hand around Mikey’s dick.
Mikey gave a shuddering exhale and pressed into Pete’s grip, so Pete started moving his hand, hard hot Mikey-dick sliding through his fist. Jesus Christ. A dick in his hand was a dick in his hand, but he could do things to Mikey like this, making his breath hitch and catch like that; he could take him apart.
“Is it okay?” Pete whispered against the back of Mikey’s neck, earned another full-body shiver.
“Yeah,” Mikey groaned, “Yeah. Just… just like you do. Fucking awesome, Pete.”
So Pete just kept stroking and twisting like he would do to himself, shutting his eyes and losing himself in the feeling of Mikey’s back against his chest and the broken little sounds Mikey kept making like Pete’s hand was fucking magical. Mikey didn’t make much noise when he came though, just a sharp hiss of breath through his teeth, and then Pete’s hand was a whole lot wetter than it had been and Mikey was twisting around to kiss him again, with the taste of Pete’s dick still in his mouth.
Shaky with endorphins and sensory overload, Pete kissed him back, getting jizz all over Mikey’s shirt when he wrapped his arms around him. He probably could’ve wiped it on the edge of the counter or something, but it was a scary fucking moment in spite of the no-knees good feeling, and Pete really needed the hug.
“Oh man, we’re them,” Mikey said suddenly.
“Huh?”
“We’re the people who make public bathrooms so groddy,” Mikey said with mild awe, “I always wondered who that was.”
Pete buried his face against Mikey’s shoulder and grinned.
*
So fooling around with Mikey in the serious sense was probably a really bad idea.
In theory, Pete knew what an enormous tool he was being, drawing these lines based on where you let your hands wander when your heart had already gone all the way. But he and Mikey had such a clusterfuck of neuroses between them that the odds of this not screwing with their heads were essentially next to nil. The sooner that Pete could figure out how to gracefully call it off and go back to being just friends, the better it would be for both of them.
Unfortunately, like so many of the things that weren’t particularly good for Pete’s head, it was also incredibly fun.
Anyway, Frank had picked up this fucking monster bag of candy and Bob had pretty much ordered him to share it on account of Iero being liable to destroy the universe with that much sugar in him alone. So Mikey and Pete were hanging around mooching, and Mikey kept sticking his tongue out, trying to see if it had changed colour, and Pete was getting antsy in a way that didn’t have much to do with sugar at all.
When Mikey started licking his fingers, Pete mentally declared game over.
“Hey, want to go grab a smoke?”
“Nah,” said Mikey, tying knots in a gummi worm with great intensity, “I’m good.”
Pete coughed and made a Significant Face when Mikey glanced at him.
“Oh,” said Mikey. “Oh, yeah. Definitely. Direly in need of a smoke. Bye, Frank.”
Frank frowned at them as Mikey got to his feet. “Shit,” he muttered through a mouthful of something blue, “Now I owe Hurley twenty.”
*
The closer they got to San Francisco, the more the atmosphere changed, like the magic was draining out of the tour with the end in sight. You couldn’t go half an hour without somebody moaning about getting back to their family and their own bed and real food and personal space.
Pete had found a fallen leaf at the last pit stop, russet and perfect, and was twirling it in his fingers as they drove. Mikey was tucked up next to him in the backseat, half-dozing in the afternoon sunshine.
“I think I’m going to write a song about you,” Pete told him.
Mikey blinked sleepily. “That’s cool. Can it have pirates?”
“Totally,” Pete said, smiling. “Totally.”
* * * * *
Says I: “The constant banter between Mikey and Pete [on Twitter] about smuggling ewoks and cloning chocolate easter bunnies and paying pro wrestlers to put them in various holds kind of makes me doubt the whole Summer of Like theory. I'm not convinced either of them have the attention span for a doomed romance, frankly.”
Says apiphile: “Either that or that is exactly what they were like at the time and they're continuing an affair having got over their song-inducing hiccup?”
Says I: “Man, get on this, fandom! Less soulful-gazing, sunset-watching angst fics and more "We're making out because our attempts to build a death-ray out of water bottles and socks didn't work".”
I’ll let you be the judge of how well that worked out.
Title: Love means never having to say “You’re lyrics”
Fandom: Bandom RPS (MCR, FOB)
Word Count: 8700
Rating: R
Pairing: Pete/Mikey
Disclaimer: This didn’t actually happen, kids. That’s why it’s fanfiction. Historical/geographical facts may have been tinkered with slightly. Concrit welcome, as always!
* * *
That summer back in ’05 had been one long blur of hot empty evenings that went on forever, when was Pete just moving moving moving to stay ahead of the soul-killing boredom and his own time bomb of a brain. But he remembered exactly when things had changed because he’d been in the middle of counting down their newly constructed Death Ray™ when it happened.
Up until right then, Mikey had been tucked away in Pete’s thoughts as a buddy of the highest caliber. Mikey Way the party dude, of the perpetual mild inebriation and the glasses and the hair and the smile that never seemed to fit on his face quite right.
But somewhere in the midst of “five… four… three”, Pete happened to glance over the Death Ray™ at Mikey to catch the full force of an uncharacteristically focused gaze, and that was the exact moment when Pete had been struck with this unexpected, stomach-flipping realization that he…
Well, that Mikey was…
Okay, so it was kind of a vague, unexpected, stomach-flipping realization. But the end result was that by the time Pete had reached zero and the trailer door swung open, Mikey had smoothly ambled from one category in Pete’s mind over to something new.
“FIRE AT WILL!” Pete yelled, and Mikey whooped and cranked the dial on the Death Ray™.
There was a sizzling crackle, a seriously impressive spray of sparks, and then the smell of singed socks.
“Hi,” Brian said from the doorway, “So. What the fuck?”
“Death Ray,” Mikey explained sadly, standing up and nudging their failed experiment with his foot. “Tee-Em.”
“It doesn’t work,” Pete added, just in case Brian was the sort of guy who took offense to people firing death rays at him. He scuffed at the floor, putting out a particularly tenacious spark that was slowly melting into the dirty carpet.
Brian stared at them with a look that Pete decided to interpret as awe.
“That’s probably because it looks like you made it out of garbage and Bob’s socks and… oh god,” Brian said faintly, in the tones of someone who had just spotted road-kill wearing the markings of a beloved family pet, “Is that the mini-amp? Was that the mini-amp?”
Pete made the executive decision to grab Mikey’s hand, dodge past Brian, and make a break for the door.
“We’re really sorry!” Mikey yelled back as they clattered down the trailer stairs and hit the ground running, a terminal case of the giggles doing nothing for his sincerity.
Pete didn’t think that Brian was actually going to come after them. He’d always struck Pete as a ‘stealthy ninja revenge later when you least expect it’ kind of guy. Still, Pete didn’t stop running until they were halfway across the grounds and safely lost in the maze of tech vans, even when Mikey wasn’t running with him so much as being dragged along for the ride. Their palms were glued together with sweat by the time that Pete remembered to let go of his hand.
“All those sparks! I was like ‘Holy shit, it’s going to work!’,” Mikey said, panting and immediately dropping into a crouch like he was going to pass out. “Oh god, it’s too hot for speedy getaways.”
“Maybe we just got the wiring backwards.” Pete nudged Mikey in the ribs with his sneaker just hard enough make him flail and topple over, because it was funny and because Mikey never really complained. “We shoot it at someone and they kill us.”
“What’s the opposite of a death ray?” Mikey wondered, propping himself back up and making an idle grab for Pete’s ankles. “Like, a life ray?”
“A love ray,” Pete decided, twirling out of Mikey’s reach and laughing before his words looped back up from his mouth to his brain and sunk in.
Oh, he thought, startled, Oh shit.
*
From then on, Pete was just playing a protracted game of chicken with his own admittedly minimal powers of resistance. It was trickier with Mikey than it ever had been with Patrick, if only because losing this game wouldn’t mean taking a metaphorical wrecking ball to everything good that he had going for him in his life.
“Look up,” he said, and Mikey did, compliant and trusting.
Pete ran the tip of the eyeliner pencil under Mikey’s eye, tracing a smooth dramatic line despite being close enough to feel Mikey’s breath against his own mouth.
It was the weirdest thing, because Pete hadn’t seen this coming, but there was no arguing with it now that it was here. Whatever it was.
Mikey wasn’t hot-hot like Travis, or even as pretty-hot as Beckett. He couldn’t pull off Gabe’s swagger if he tried, and Pete didn’t feel the same protective/possessive this is mine rush around him like he did with Patrick. He just knew that catching sight of Mikey’s unmistakably angular silhouette in the crowd next to the stage did something to him that was about as indefinite as it was intense. It was a scary combination.
“You’re all serious,” Mikey said.
“The sacred art of good eyeliner is serious shit. Hasn’t your brother taught you anything?”
Mikey sucked his lower lip into his mouth, ineffectively hiding a grin.
Pete knew that it was only a matter of time before he lost at his own game, but at least he wasn’t bored.
*
“I’m going to write a song about how people in horror movies always run up the stairs and get trapped on the roof,” Pete said, balling his discarded tee-shirt into a more comfortable pillow under his cheek. The afternoon sun beating down on his back was so hot that it almost had actual weight, like if he just held still long enough he’d melt right into the surface of the roof like one of those droopy Dali watches.
“That’d be cool,” Mikey decided, “I’d still run upstairs though.”
“Really?”
“Hell yeah. I don’t want to get trapped in the basement.”
Mikey was tucked into the narrow strip of shade from the short concrete wall at the edge of the roof, smoking and sweating. He still had his thick black hoodie on and it was making Pete queasy just looking at him.
“You’re going to get heatstroke,” Pete mumbled, rubbing his face on his forearm, “And then I’m going to laugh my ass off. And then I’m going to take pictures so everybody else can laugh at you too.”
“I’m comfortable,” Mikey insisted primly. His bangs were lank with sweat and his glasses made a break for the end of his nose when he looked down to stub out his cigarette.
“You’re a freak,” Pete corrected. He sat up and regarded Mikey seriously. “Maybe that’s my purpose in life. I’ve been put on this earth to write songs and laugh at Patrick and un-freakify you, Mikeyway.”
“Good luck with that,” Mikey said, and reached for a fresh cigarette.
So Pete pounced.
“Assault! Security! Help!” Mikey yelped, all elbows and knees as Pete tackled him. Pete sat on Mikey’s legs and scrambled for the zipper of the hoodie, but Mikey kept twisting and scratching like a trapped cat, so Pete gave up on the zipper and just yanked the whole thing up over Mikey’s head instead.
“FREAK, FREAK, FREAK,” he chanted, staggering to his feet and bringing the inside-out hoodie with him with a wild yank that sent Mikey’s glasses skittering across the roof. “FREAK, FREAK, FREAK…” He charged to the edge of the roof, dancing impatiently in place while Mikey groped around for his glasses and, oh man, this was so much fun that Pete suddenly wanted to steal everything Mikey owned just to watch him spazz out.
Mikey located his glasses, grumpily yanked his tee-shirt back down over his skinny hips, and caught sight of Pete dangling his hoodie off the roof like a hostage. His eyes went very wide.
“Wentz, don’t you fucking...”
“Victory is mine!” Pete crowed, and flung it into space.
Mikey made a noise like ‘augh!’ and dashed over in time to watch it get tangled in the uppermost branches of one of the big trees next to the building.
“That wasn’t even mine,” he said sadly, “You giant douche.”
Pete laughed and laughed, vibrating with energy, feeling overcooked and crazy. “What are you gonna do about it, huh?” He feinted towards Mikey, who clutched protectively at his tee-shirt.
“I’m going to throw you off the roof,” Mikey threatened sulkily, but slumped against the guard wall in defeat, crossing his pale arms over his chest.
“No way…” Pete crept up into his personal space. “You’ll let me get away with anything.”
Mikey pouted at him. His shirt was soaked through with sweat, sticking to his chest, and he stunk… Jesus, he stunk… and if Pete touched him, he was going to have Mikey-smell on him all day, and Pete’s brain was clearly all fucked up from too much sun, because the idea was weirdly appealing.
“Won’t you, Mikey?” Pete prompted, looking at him from under his eyelashes, looking at Mikey like he was the most important camera in the world. “You’d let me get away with murder.”
Mikey sighed and looked at his feet. He shifted them self-consciously so his toes didn’t point in towards each other.
“Whatever,” he said, “Don’t let it get around.”
Pete laughed, opened his mouth to say something like ‘Scout’s honor’, and then kissed Mikey instead. Fast and inelegant and kind of weird because there wasn’t anyone else around to laugh it off and make it harmless.
Mikey froze. His mouth was dry and bitter from all those cigarettes. Pete pulled away a second too late to pretend that it hadn’t happened, his heart pounding so hard that it kind of hurt, feeling naked in a way that had nothing to do with shirtlessness.
“Oh,” said Mikey, and made a funny little gesture like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. “I thought… huh. I thought it was just me.”
“Sor… What?”
“I wasn’t ready,” Mikey said, “Um. Do it again and I’ll actually do something?”
“What?” Pete said again, helplessly, and stood there like a moron until Mikey leaned in and kissed him, sweet and tentative. And that was… oh, it was really kind of awesome.
Pete grabbed onto Mikey’s damp tee-shirt and kissed him back maybe a little too hard, but his mind was three steps behind and his knees didn’t even exist anymore. Mikey’s hands skimmed hesitantly down Pete’s back and it was only a stray thought about telephoto lenses and very public rooftops that finally made Pete pull back.
Mikey stared at him. Pete stared at Mikey. Within five seconds, they were both grinning like idiots.
“We could do this all the time,” Pete said.
Mikey nodded enthusiastically. “I think we should. Practice makes perfect.”
“And we’re already pretty good,” Pete concluded.
He wanted to dance, or break something, or drag Mikey somewhere a little more private. Just as soon as he stopped shaking. Mikey had taken a half-step back to lean against the guard wall in a way that made Pete think he might be having a little problem with a case of non-existent knees himself.
“Does this mean you’re going to help me get Bob’s hoodie out of the tree?” Mikey asked.
“Fuck… alright, yeah. I don’t want Bob to kill me in my sleep,” Pete said, “I think I’ve got an idea anyway.”
“If it involves a fishing rod, I’m right there with you,” Mikey said cheerfully, and Pete snorted.
I’m going to write a song, he decided, about being on cloud nine and familiar ground all at the same time.
*
The awesome part was that it didn’t really change anything at first, except that Pete discovered Mikey’s ghost-pale skin was pretty much made for hickeys and now they had something else to do in the empty spaces between adventures.
ur cute. want 2 make out? Pete typed, hitting send and tilting his head back to lean against Mikey’s shoulder. He could feel Mikey’s shoulder blades move as he shifted to brace Pete’s weight, back to back on the trailer floor.
ha ha netime, Mikey texted back.
i know u didn’t really laugh, Pete pointed out reasonably. (He could tell exactly when his words bounced off some distant satellite or whatever to fly back down to Mikey’s phone, because this time Mikey did chuckle out loud.)
i smiled. u didnt c.
Pete grinned and nuzzled awkwardly against Mikey’s neck. my thumbs r tired.
WEAK, Mikey fired back in about two seconds.
“Well they are,” Pete whined out loud. “I forfeit, you win. You’re the king of texting. You’re a legendary text machine, Mikeyway.”
“Awesome,” Mikey said. “I always suspected.” He collapsed sideways, causing Pete to fall over too, despite his windmilling effort to stay upright.
It took about three seconds of lying there to realize that there was nothing much to look at on the ceiling of the My Chem trailer. Also, it still smelled a lot like exploded Death Ray™.
“The king of texting is still bored,” Mikey announced. “Are you still bored?”
“Still bored,” Pete agreed.
He rolled over and got to his knees, crawling over to straddle Mikey’s chest because he could. Mikey just slow-blinked and watched him, letting Pete pin his hands without any fuss. Pete bent to kiss him, unhurried and leisurely like they could spend the rest of the afternoon just making out on the grimy trailer floor, if either of them actually had the attention span for that.
“You ever wonder,” Pete murmured against Mikey’s cheek, “if you could use a flat-iron to iron a tee-shirt?”
“Not after last February,” Mikey said grimly, and Pete burst out laughing, helpless to stop even when he accidentally bit his own tongue.
“Oh shit,” he snickered, in serious pain and not even caring, “You’re awesome, Mikey. You’re the fucking best. Can I just keep you forever?”
“I’m supposed to check with Ray before I let anybody keep me forever, but I like you, so it’s cool,” Mikey decided.
“Cool,” Pete echoed. (In his head, he’d started to think of this ragged kamikaze happiness as a distinctly Mikey-induced feeling.) “I guess you’re mine now.”
Mikey squirmed underneath him, looking vaguely concerned. “But not like Dirty’s yours, right?”
“Definitely not,” Pete murmured, and bent to kiss him again.
Then Mikey did that thing with his tongue that always made Pete’s brain grind to a halt and he had to lay down on top of Mikey and get their legs all tangled up like they were somewhere much more comfortable than a gritty trailer floor.
Mikey made a low noise in his throat and tried to tug his hands out of Pete’s grip, but Pete hung on, content to keep hands out of the picture for now. He slid down a little to bite at Mikey’s throat in that way that unfailingly drew a happy choked-off noise from Mikey and made him go utterly pliant underneath him. He pressed his hips lazily into Mikey’s, the jut of Mikey’s hipbones and the catch of their belt buckles already becoming familiar territory.
“Oh Jesus,” said a faint voice from behind them.
Pete scrambled off Mikey with a startled curse. Gerard stood in the doorway scrubbing at his eyes like his retinas had been physically burned.
“Everybody’s still dressed, Gee,” Mikey said, sitting up and brushing trailer-floor detritus out of his hair. He missed something above his ear that looked like part of a leaf and Pete made a motion to get it for him before deciding that he should probably just try to behave and keep his hands to himself for a minute.
“You could’ve put something on the door,” Gerard complained, crossing his arms.
“Oh, whoa, we weren’t doing anything sock-on-the-doorknob worthy, dude,” Pete blurted, drawing uncannily similar looks of disapproval from both Mikey and Gerard. Pete promptly took a mental vow of silence until further notice.
“Just not in the trailer, okay?” Gerard said.
Mikey looked at Gerard over his glasses. “You had you-know-who in my bed.”
Gerard grimaced and rubbed violently at the bridge of his nose. “You said it wasn’t like that, Mikey.”
“Fuck off, it’s not,” Mikey muttered. (Pete came to the conclusion that he didn’t have a single clue what they were talking about anymore.) “We’ll leave. I’ll be back at six, okay?”
“Look, you don’t have to…” Gerard started, but Mikey had already gotten to his feet. Pete scrambled up after him.
Gerard looked guilty as hell, but his expression went suspicious and kind of scary when he caught Pete’s eye. Just Pete’s luck that he had to go and fall in… something… with someone related to Gerard ‘you can’t touch my brother’ Way.
Outside, Mikey blinked in the bright sunlight before rambling aimlessly across the parking lot. Pete followed him, feeling clumsy and useless.
“Hey,” he hazarded, “If Gerard’s not cool with this…”
“I think he just wants to know what ‘this’ is,” Mikey said, trailing to a stop. “And fucked if I know. So it’s weird.” He shrugged and toed at the asphalt.
It would’ve been the perfect moment for Pete to say something. To offer a working definition of ‘this’ or even a stupid quip to make light of the fact that neither of them had any control over what they were doing anymore, dancing around in the space between friends and more-than-friends.
Pete shoved his hands into his pockets and watched Mikey’s restless feet.
“The king of texting could use a fucking drink,” Mikey sighed.
“I heard Sevenfold’s techs were selling vodka out of their van this morning,” Pete offered.
Sad as it was, it felt like the only useful thing he’d said all day.
*
“Yo, so Gee gave me a talk,” Mikey announced the next day, strolling into the FOB trailer without knocking. “And condoms. I think we’re cool now.”
Pete fumble-caught the box that Mikey tossed to him and grinned.
“Oh man,” he said with feeling. “You are thinking what I’m thinking, right?”
“Hell yes,” Mikey agreed. “That’s why I’m here.”
They were up on the roof within ten minutes and had bombed the entirety of Panic! and a couple of innocent bystanders with their makeshift water balloons before security caught up with them.
(It didn’t exactly clear anything up, but Pete still wasn’t bored.)
*
Mikey had this one pair of jeans with a ragged hole in the knee, and they were slowly driving Pete crazy. No matter where Pete was, if Mikey was around, the most comfortable position in the world seemed to be sprawling all over the guy, and Pete’s fingers were drawn to that tear like skin-seeking missiles, worrying at the frayed edges and pulling at loose threads until it was a wonder he hadn’t torn it wide open yet.
There was a bruise on Mikey’s knee visible through that tear today, which Pete was examining at close range while Mikey doodled on his back with a Sharpie marker stolen from somewhere.
(Pete would have to remember to leave his shirt on for the rest of the evening… He wasn’t sure what ‘improvements’ Mikey had made to his tattoos the last time that they did this, but Andy had taken one look and laughed until he couldn’t stand up.)
Pete ran his thumb over the small dark bruise, goosebumps shooting over his skin when Mikey made some careful little detail with the tip of the marker in the dip of his spine.
“Give that?” Pete murmured, and reached back for the marker. Mikey obediently put it in his hand and sat back to play with Pete’s hair instead.
Pete pushed the torn denim out of the way. blowjob, he wrote above the bruise, in tidy letters. bruise, he added underneath it, blowing on the ink to dry it before realizing the irony and breaking off snickering.
Mikey twisted around trying to read what Pete had written, huffing a laugh when he’d contorted enough to get it. “Nope. I got attacked by a bench. You can ask Frank.”
“Happens to the best of us,” Pete said, and kissed Mikey’s knee, probably getting ink all over his lips in the process. “You gotta watch those crazy ninja benches, man.”
Mikey trailed his fingers across Pete’s ribs, making him shudder again. “If you…” Mikey said, and broke off with a weird laugh.
“What?”
“Just… if you wanted to make some real ones some time, I’m up for that,” Mikey said in a quiet rush. “Blowjob bruises, not ninja benches. Obviously. Although ninja benches would probably be cool too.”
Pete pressed his forehead against Mikey’s thigh, shutting his eyes and pretending that just hearing Mikey talk about blowjobs didn’t do things to him.
“I don’t do that kind of stuff with guys,” he mumbled, and summoned his strength to push himself up and away from Mikey. “I told you that.”
“No, that’s cool,” Mikey said, restlessly finger-combing his bangs and not looking at Pete. “Me neither. I mean, I don’t go around offering to just anybody. Is. Is what I mean.”
“I’m glad,” Pete said, and the words came out a whole lot lower and more intense than he’d expected, surprising him.
Oh, he was so fucked.
*
“Do you guys think I’m a cock-tease?” Pete asked the rest of the band later that evening, morosely stealing fries off Joe’s plate out of habit rather than hunger.
The resulting chorus in the extreme negative had been a bit insulting.
“I’m sure everybody will miss your dick when you finally decide to put it away,” Patrick said reassuringly, and reached across the table to pat him on the shoulder.
*
With August came the realization that he’d started thinking about after-show parties strategically.
Pete had always made his own opportunities in life. Unfortunately, one of the major elements in this most recent plan involved getting drunk enough to do something more with Mikey than just kiss and grope, and his grand schemes generally tended to slide sideways on him whenever alcohol was involved.
Like tonight, he’d been keeping his eye on Mikey through the crowd, methodically matching him drink for drink as best he could, waiting for his moment in a way that he told himself wasn’t the least bit creepy… And then somebody went and set up a bonfire in the parking lot and Pete had run around for a good twenty minutes looking for something awesome to burn and had completely forgotten about his plan.
He didn’t remember the plan again until he ran into Mikey by one of the little wannabe fires that had sprung up around the big monster one, seemingly trying to light his own shoelaces on fire. Pete grabbed him around his skinny waist and hauled him back a few steps, tripping over someone else’s foot and just about sending them both to the ground.
“Hi, Mikey!” he yelled in Mikey’s ear, and bit his shoulder for the hell of it with much noisy growling. “Whatcha doing?”
“Trying to light my shoelaces on fire!” Mikey said happily, twisting to loop an arm around Pete’s shoulders for balance. “I think I’m very, very drunk.”
“Well, wait for me, fucker. I want to catch up,” Pete told him, dancing the awkward waltz of the drunk trying to hold up the drunk.
Mikey poked him in the chest. “You’re never gonna catch me, Pete Fuckin’ Wentz,” he said, and toppled backwards to ricochet off a dreadlocked dude in an Iron Maiden tee who helpfully shoved Mikey back into Pete’s arms like a ragdoll. Pete managed to stop them before they both stumbled into the fire, only just barely.
“Hey hey hey,” Mikey yelped, “Pete! You’re here! There’s this guy! This guy. We need to turn him into a Sweet Little Dude. I couldn’t remember the initiation ritual and I couldn’t find you and I was like ‘Oh shit!’.”
“We don’t have an initiation ritual,” Pete said, getting stuck on the word ‘initiation’ when a few unnecessary ‘ni ni’s tried to climb into it uninvited.
“S’probably why I couldn’t remember it,” Mikey decided. “He’s awesome. He’s got these tattoos…”
“I’ve got tattoos,” Pete said sadly.
“No, no, whoa, tattoos,” Mikey elaborated, with an all-encompassing gesture that nearly took Pete’s eye out. “And a fucking snake. Oh my god, we need to find him!”
“I kind of just want to get you alone,” Pete said. His guts gave a painful twist of protest; hard liquor and honesty didn’t mix well on an empty stomach.
Mikey narrowed his eyes at him. “Pete Mindfuckin’ Wentz. Alone for what?”
Pete hauled Mikey into a precarious embrace and, yeah, yeah, he wanted to do this tonight.
“For blowjob bruises,” he said into Mikey’s ear, a little less smoothly than he’d hoped when he lost his balance and got a mouthful of Mikey-hair.
“Seriously?”
“If you still want.”
“Yeah, I still want. Shit, I should…” Mikey squinted urgently through the crowd, swaying, then shook his head. “No, fuck it, let’s go.” He blinked at Pete helplessly. “Where do we go?”
“Trailers? Yours, mine?” Pete offered, already tugging Mikey into the cooler darkness away from the fires. Mikey tripped over a curb at the edge of the parking lot and pitched forward, clutching the back of Pete’s hoodie to save himself from a face-plant.
“Ours is no good. Gee’s having a sober-dude thing.” Mikey glanced back at the partiers silhouetted against the trashcan fires like something primal, and then reeled Pete in by his hoodie, kind of choking him before Pete turned around to get kissed full on the mouth.
Mikey tasted like hard liquor and something sugary, and Pete sunk into the blurry alcohol haze enough to relax and forget they were right out in the open, kissing Mikey back and curling his fingers into the pockets of his jeans until they needed to breathe again.
“My trailer,” Pete said, “Now. Come on.”
“Oh man, I’m going to be so pissed if I can’t remember any of this,” Mikey said, hooking his fingers through Pete’s belt and following him into the dark.
From then on, things got a little disjointed.
Pete remembered making it back to his trailer, because they had a run in with one of Mikey’s fucking ninja benches and the sharp crack on his shin temporarily sobered him up enough to steer them safely home. And he remembered hauling Mikey inside and thanking the god of drunken hook-ups that everybody was still out. And then there was some making out up against the trailer door, which he distinctly remembered because the fucking thing hadn’t shut properly and swung open unexpectedly when Mikey leaned up against it, dumping them both back out on their asses.
He wasn’t ever going to forget pushing Mikey onto his bunk, watching him sprawl all blurry-beautiful in the reading light, and thinking ‘this is it’ and ‘it’s worth it’.
But after that, when he crawled in with Mikey, everything got warm and hazy and comfortable, and the room kept spinning whenever Pete closed his eyes, but he sure as hell couldn’t keep them open, and then… and then…
“Guys? Hey, guys?”
Pete swallowed and unglued his tongue from the roof of his mouth, cracking an eye open. Which was pretty much when the light tried to eat his brain.
“Sorry,” Andy said, having the grace to look a bit repentant, from what Pete could see. “It’s ten a.m. Mikey’s got sound check.”
Mikey’s pitiful whimper from between Pete and the trailer wall helped Pete move a little quicker through the usual morning-after checklist: Where am I? Who’s that? Am I wearing anything?
The answer to the last question was actually kind of disappointing, because he was still completely dressed. They hadn’t even gotten their shoes off.
“Ow,” Mikey said tremulously into Pete’s pillow, before gingerly risking a peek and squinting at Andy like he’d never seen him before in his life. He had pillow lines running over his cheek and his hair was effectively defying all logic, which Pete probably would’ve found endearing if he wasn’t currently trying to prevent his brains from leaking out of his ears.
“Whoa,” Mikey said, “Where. What. Wrong bed.”
Andy… hang-over resistant bastard that he was… reached across both of them to rescue Mikey’s glasses from the space between the bunk and the wall, pressing them into Mikey’s hands. “Seriously, sorry I had to wake you up. You guys have early sound check, Mikey. Your brother’s looking for you.”
Mikey slowly put on his glasses, still staring at Andy in incomprehension.
“Sound check?” Andy tried again, helpfully air-guitaring in demonstration.
Mikey sat up abruptly, nearly braining himself on Joe’s bunk, and clutched his head. “Sound check! Oh, fuck me.”
Andy’s mouth twisted with amusement. “Well, I think Pete…”
“Bite me, Hurley,” Pete muttered, and dragged the pillow up over his head.
He felt Mikey crawl clumsily across him to half-topple out of the bunk.
“Hey, wait, wait…” Pete shoved the pillow aside, squinting against his ferocious headache and finding his emergency supply of pills mainly by feel, digging out a travel-sized bottle of painkillers. “Here. Merry Christmas.” He unthinkingly rattled them at Mikey, causing them both to flinch at the way-too-loud noise.
(Andy put his hand over his mouth and coughed in a way that didn’t sound very much like a cough at all.)
“Thanks,” Mikey said, managing a wan grin. He took the bottle, squeezing Pete’s fingers for a second before letting go. “Sorry. For… kind of nothing.”
“Not your fault,” Pete said, and groped for his brain-saving pillow again. It had escaped onto the floor, which just wasn’t fair. “I’ll come find you later, okay?”
Mikey nodded distractedly, struggling with the childproof cap until Andy took it out of his hands and popped it open for him.
“Thanks,” Mikey said. “You’re a good dude.”
Andy shrugged. “Nah, man, you guys just won me ten bucks,” he said serenely, “Frank Iero bet you’d at least get your pants off before you passed out.”
*
Even with all the fun that he kept having in spite of himself, that summer was still pretty rough mentally. Sometimes Pete found himself spinning his wheels, stuck in these bad moments where his sense of self felt too big for his body. Days when he just needed a fucking reaction from people to make sure that he still existed, but knew that he wasn’t going to be able to make contact without violence. He’d figured out that much by now.
On those days he would try to hole himself up in the trailer, staying very still and very quiet, clinging to the edge of the bunk like he could physically hold himself together, and just waiting for the feeling of nitroglycerine in his veins to pass.
So when Mikey crept in where even Hemmy knew better than to tread, it was mainly out of affection for the guy that Pete promptly told him to fuck off and leave him the hell alone.
Mikey hesitated for a moment before coming over to Pete’s bunk anyway, crouching down. He ran his fingers over Pete’s knuckles before taking hold of his wrist (like he knew exactly how close he was to getting punched) and brushed a gentle kiss against the back of his fist.
“Hi, Pete,” he whispered. “Breathe.”
Pete exhaled, relaxing his death-grip on the edge of the mattress enough to let Mikey twine his fingers through his own.
He ached. He fucking ached like he was on the brink of tears and this was all just… so stupid.
“So one of the sound guys was telling me,” Mikey said, like Pete wasn’t halfway to crumbling in front of him, “that the biggest statue of a horse in the whole country is only twenty minutes out from here.”
Pete frowned. “Yeah?”
Mikey nodded seriously, running his thumb over Pete’s fingers. “Yup. I’m gonna find it and climb that fucker and turn it into the world’s biggest unicorn. I just can’t think of what to use for the horn yet. It’s going to be legendary.”
Pete made a choked noise like the bastard cousin of a proper laugh and curled his fingers tight around Mikey’s. “Jesus Christ, you fucking freak. Just… come here, okay?” He gave Mikey’s hand a tug, shifting over to make some room for him in the bunk.
Mikey climbed in next to him and lay down with his shoes and jacket still on, not letting go of Pete’s hand. Pete tucked up against him and pressed his face against Mikey’s shoulder, shutting his eyes and breathing in the comfortable musty Mikey-smell.
“Sorry I told you to fuck off,” he mumbled. He still kind of felt like crying.
Mikey kissed the top of his head. “I’m a Way. We specialize in this shit.”
“If we were boyfriends, you’d be the best one ever,” Pete blurted. Which was just proof of how much he shouldn’t talk when he was in these moods.
“Yeah, well. I like you too, Pete,” Mikey said, putting his free arm around Pete and just hanging on to him. Just breathing with him like that.
It was still a miserable day, but nowhere near as bad as it could’ve been.
*
Because the world would end before any of the band managers had an easy time of getting across international borders without incident, everybody had suddenly taken it into their heads to switch up who was riding with whom somewhere around northern Montana. It was going to be a fucking gong show, but Pete had a general idea of where Joe, Andy and his own passport were, and had Patrick, Mikey and Hemingway within reach, so he was personally ready to rock.
He was writing in his journal, the dips and bumps in the road feeling more like a crazy universal rhythm than an annoyance today, and the sun was streaming in through the window to warm the back of his neck and everything was good.
“So I’m giving you an ultimatum,” Mikey announced out of the blue. “I think you should have sex with me.”
The line that Pete had been writing devolved into a startled scribble. “That’s… that’s not an ultimatum, Mikey.”
Mikey looked distinctly disappointed. “Why not?”
“An ultimatum has to have an ‘or else’ in it. That was just, like, a proposition.”
“Oh. Okay. I think we should have sex or else… I’ll… um…” Mikey trailed off, appearing to give the matter serious thought, his gaze lighting on Hemingway as he trundled into the back. “Or else I’ll totally kick your dog.”
“Shut up,” Pete scoffed, “You fucking love Hemmy.”
“Yeah, I do.” Mikey scooped the bulldog up onto his lap for a tight cuddle that made Hemmy whine in protest. “Shit, I don’t know. Help me think of a good ‘or else’.”
“I’m not helping you think up an ultimatum you’re going to use on me!”
“You suck,” Mikey muttered, and buried his face against the folds of Hemmy’s neck.
“We’ll be at the border in ten minutes,” Patrick called back from the driver’s seat. “If you two start screwing around at Customs, I’ll tie you both to the roof and we’ll drive the rest of the way to Calgary like that.”
“That was an ultimatum,” Pete was unable to resist pointing out.
Mikey shot him a miserable look over the top of Hemmy’s head. Pete bit his tongue and looked out the window.
*
In Calgary, it rained, just this constant warm downpour like the sky had decided to take a good long piss on all of them, turning moshpits into mud holes and wilting mohawks as far as the eye could see. Pete’s own hair hung lank and dripping in his eyes, but the audience looked like a goddamn battlefield and when Patrick told them they’d keep playing until they saw lightening, they roared.
“Gotta put on the speaker condoms,” Pete yelled to the crowd, stalling with banter while the techs ran out to throw tarps over the equipment, “Fall Out Boy always practices safe sets.” Andy hit a rim-shot right on cue.
Pete could’ve played forever.
He spun and screamed and threw himself around the stage like an exorcism in progress, but it felt like they were finished before they’d even really started, and it wasn’t enough. He came off the stage still buzzing with energy, his volume cranked high.
When he caught sight of Mikey and Ray having an animated conversation by the side of the stage, it seemed like the only possible option to scoop up a handful of thick mud, holler “I’M SO DIRTY, BABE!” and fling it at Mikey’s back. Except his foot slipped on the follow-through and he pretty much nailed Ray right in the ear. Ray’s head whipped around.
“Shiiit,” Pete said, shoving Andy towards Ray as a diversion and making a break for it, his sneakers slipping in the mud.
It was all over in about fifteen seconds, ending with a very disgruntled guitarist sitting on Pete’s back and Pete yelping apologies with his mouth half-full of mud. It wasn’t one of the most glamorous moments in his life.
“No more throwing mud,” Ray said, his even tone belied by the painful grip on the back of Pete’s neck. “Not at me, not at my friends.”
“Nope,” Pete agreed immediately. “Nope, nope. Ow.”
Ray got to his feet, allowing Pete to roll squelchily over and sit up. Patrick had his hand over his eyes and Mikey was, like, going through contortions to keep a straight face. Pete grumpily spat watery dirt out of his mouth, licking grit off his teeth.
“This is what happens when you sacrifice your buddies,” Andy decided sagely, offering Pete a hand. “Instant karmic bitch-slap.” Pete took a tiny bit of satisfaction in getting mud all over Andy’s arm getting up.
“Awesome set, was what I meant to come over and say,” Ray said to the guys, calmly finger-combing mud out of his rain-deflated fro. “I think you could’ve gone an hour, easy.”
Patrick, of course, lit right up, ready to talk set-lengths and playlists for days. Pete took the opportunity to wipe mud off his face, sneak past Ray, and drag his muddy fingers all down Mikey’s cheek like warpaint. Mikey screwed up his face and shut his eyes, but didn’t exactly move to stop him.
Ray made a noise of disbelief. “Seriously, Pete?”
“Well, I didn’t throw it…”
“S’true,” Mikey concurred, scrubbing at his face with a sleeve, “He didn’t. Hey, check it out!” He pointed at the ground where Pete had been flailing around under Ray. “Mud angels!”
“We could build a mudman!”
“A mudicorn,” Mikey amended dreamily.
Ray threw up his hands and Patrick shot him a look of soulful commiseration, which Pete felt was entirely unwarranted.
“Please, please, just wash off before either of you go in the trailer again, okay?” Ray pleaded. “It’s enough of a disaster in there without mudmen running around. Frank’s going to lose it if it gets any worse.”
“There’s that hose over by the parking lot,” Pete suggested.
Mikey gave a shudder of revulsion. “I know somewhere better. Come on.”
‘Somewhere better’ turned out to be a little outdoor washroom near the edge of the concert grounds like the kind you’d find in a campground, just a couple of stalls and a darkly stained sink. There was a gap between the top of the walls and the roof where natural light filtered in, and the usual smell of sewage was washed away by the rainy air and the sharp scent of damp wood so that it almost felt more like a tiny cabin that just had a disproportionate amount of toilets than a proper outhouse. The rain hissed against the roof in wild bursts with the wind.
“Dude,” Pete pronounced, admiring the collage of graffiti that covered nearly every inch of the walls, right up to the spiderweb tangles in the corners.
“It’s pretty weird, isn’t it?” Mikey said, looking so pleased with himself that Pete didn’t point out that the rain had taken care of the worst of the mud on his clothing already.
“Deeply weird,” Pete said, digging through his pockets for the Sharpie he’d been signing autographs with earlier. He uncapped the marker, located a relatively bare spot on the wooden wall next to the cracked mirror, and hesitated.
“So I was thinking earlier, when you were on,” Mikey said, quietly, like he was just talking to himself. “I thought of an ‘or else’.”
Pete drew a slightly lopsided heart, in thick looping lines.
“Thing is, we’ve got two cities left after this and that’s it. Tour’s over. Summer’s over. Gerard says we’re probably going to Miami to film the next video.”
P.W. + M.W. Pete wrote inside the heart. Summer ’05. Limited Run.
“So that’s the ‘or else’, I guess. Or else we never will.”
Pete clicked the lid back on the marker and put it in his pocket. He swallowed hard, turned and brushed past Mikey, walking to the door.
He slid the deadbolt closed and turned back to Mikey. “Good ultimatum.”
Mikey smiled his awkward smile. “Thanks. I thought so.”
Pete moved forward to kiss him and Mikey met him halfway, his arms going tight around Pete in that way that always gave Pete the urge to fight against the embrace and turned him the hell on all at once.
“You totally still have mud in your mouth,” Mikey mumbled between kisses.
“Sorry...”
“I don’t care.”
Mikey’s hands were cold when he shoved them under Pete’s grubby tee-shirt and Pete jumped, then laughed. He was struck with the sudden revelation that sex with Mikey would probably be just like everything else that he did with Mikey. Strange and a little bit ridiculous and something to remind Pete that being alive was generally pretty amazing.
He yanked at Mikey’s belt with shaky hands, the part of his brain that hung back to watch this sort of thing wondering why this was so different. Shit, they’d gone further than this before, hadn’t they? They’d practically gotten each other off fully clothed with the good old-fashioned high school bump and grind, pretending to watch movies together in Pete’s bunk…
“Are you scared?” Mikey whispered, leaning back against the little counter, watching Pete’s hands on his belt.
“I don’t know.” Pete shook his head. “I don’t think so. Are you? If you change your mind now, I’ll flush you down the fucking toilet.”
“Shut up, shut up,” Mikey pleaded, fighting against a clear case of nervous giggles. “Oh god, I’ve been jerking off thinking about this for weeks.”
And while Pete was still reeling from that bit of fantasy-inducing information, Mikey turned them around, pressed Pete up against the sink, and dropped to his knees in front of him.
“Fuck, Mikey,” Pete said weakly. It actually kind of reminded him of their very first kiss, the way his own knees just went right out of commission, all the feeling in his legs heading straight to his dick in a hot rush. Mikey fumbled with Pete’s fly and Pete wasn’t making it much easier for him, unable to keep from shoving forward at each incidental touch.
“Let me,” he muttered, and yanked open his belt and fly, shoving his jeans down to about mid-thigh before realizing that mud-soaked pants that were already pretty tight to begin with weren’t going to go much further than that without a struggle. It was okay though, since Mikey promptly leaned forward to mouth almost delicately at Pete’s dick through his underwear and Pete was suddenly busy scrambling to brace himself against the sink.
Mikey moved upwards to lick at his tattoo, just rubbing Pete’s hard-on with the heel of his hand, slow and leisurely, up and down, and Pete’s head was suddenly filled with terrible images of Mikey getting distracted by graffiti or something and wandering off in the middle of this.
“Please,” he blurted, “Come on, do it. Please.”
“No,” Mikey said against his belly, giving Pete’s cock a squeeze with his long fingers that made Pete jerk like he’d been shocked. “Be patient.”
Pete made a strangled noise.
“If you’re only ever letting me do this once, it should count,” Mikey added sagely. “You look really silly right now, by the way.”
Pete shut his mouth and mustered a glare. “Do something and we’ll talk about repeat performances.”
“Fuck off,” Mikey said, but tugged Pete’s underwear down, wrapping his hand around his erection, skin on skin at last.
Pete… letting his head fall back and mouthing a silent ‘Fuck’ up to the weird angled roof… suddenly realized that he should’ve spent a lot more time fantasizing about this over the summer than he had. Because Mikey seemed to know what he was doing, while Pete was stuck making embarrassing needy noises and groping at the counter when Mikey thumbed at the head of his cock, sliding through precome and smearing wetness down the shaft. It didn’t help when Pete looked and got to see Mikey breathe over his dick, putting out his tongue for a tentative lick.
“You win,” Pete croaked. “Okay. You fucking win. Just.”
Mikey glanced up at him and smiled, clearly confused. “I wasn’t playing anything,” he said. He shrugged and slid his lips over the head of Pete’s dick, shutting his eyes and taking him in.
Pete jerked forward slightly before he could stop himself and Mikey choked a little, but recovered before Pete had even muttered an apology. His blood was pounding in his ears, mixing with the sound of the wind still hissing through the walls, and everything felt out of control and overwhelming as Mikey eased his mouth along Pete’s erection, rubbing kind of aimlessly with his tongue as he went.
Pete had had better blowjobs before, sure, but this was Mikey, and that alone made it hot and inexplicably intense. Pete let go of his white-knuckled grip on the counter to run his hand over Mikey’s rain-wet hair, brushing it back from his face, petting convulsively at Mikey’s cheek and forcing himself to enjoy the slow build instead of shoving hard and fast into Mikey’s mouth.
But, oh fuck, the thought that he could…
“’kay,” he panted after a minute, “That’s good, I’m going to… Mikey, I’m gonna come…”
And Mikey just kept going, looking at Pete with his glasses slipping down, and pressed his tongue up under the head of Pete’s cock.
“Nrrghfffuck,” Pete said, grabbing a handful of Mikey’s hair and losing the rhythm and coming hard in Mikey’s mouth.
He was numb when it was over, or maybe just so hypersensitive that his nerves had gone on strike, shivering as Mikey kept licking at his softening cock, playing around in the space between best-feeling-in-the-world and okay-ow-stop-now. When Pete licked his lips, there were dents in the skin where his teeth had been.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice gone all after-sex raspy.
“Mmhm.” Mikey brushed his wet mouth over Pete’s tattoo again, then wiped absently at his lips, looking a little dazed. “That was kind of whoa.”
“Very fucking whoa,” Pete agreed. He tugged at Mikey’s shirt, failing to support Mikey when he stumbled to his feet and lost his balance. They fell against the sink together, just kind of clinging to each other.
“My turn?” Mikey asked hopefully, sounding more undone than Pete had ever heard him. Which wasn’t, you know, ragged or anything, because it was Mikey, but it was nice knowing that he wasn’t the only one falling apart here.
“Turn around,” Pete said, untangling himself from Mikey and letting him stand against the sink. He plastered himself against Mikey’s back… It was a lot easier getting Mikey’s pants down at this angle, easier rubbing at Mikey’s erection through his shorts like he was touching himself. He wrapped an arm around Mikey’s chest, taking a second to lick his own palm (and wow, he really did have a lot of mud still on him) and got his wet hand around Mikey’s dick.
Mikey gave a shuddering exhale and pressed into Pete’s grip, so Pete started moving his hand, hard hot Mikey-dick sliding through his fist. Jesus Christ. A dick in his hand was a dick in his hand, but he could do things to Mikey like this, making his breath hitch and catch like that; he could take him apart.
“Is it okay?” Pete whispered against the back of Mikey’s neck, earned another full-body shiver.
“Yeah,” Mikey groaned, “Yeah. Just… just like you do. Fucking awesome, Pete.”
So Pete just kept stroking and twisting like he would do to himself, shutting his eyes and losing himself in the feeling of Mikey’s back against his chest and the broken little sounds Mikey kept making like Pete’s hand was fucking magical. Mikey didn’t make much noise when he came though, just a sharp hiss of breath through his teeth, and then Pete’s hand was a whole lot wetter than it had been and Mikey was twisting around to kiss him again, with the taste of Pete’s dick still in his mouth.
Shaky with endorphins and sensory overload, Pete kissed him back, getting jizz all over Mikey’s shirt when he wrapped his arms around him. He probably could’ve wiped it on the edge of the counter or something, but it was a scary fucking moment in spite of the no-knees good feeling, and Pete really needed the hug.
“Oh man, we’re them,” Mikey said suddenly.
“Huh?”
“We’re the people who make public bathrooms so groddy,” Mikey said with mild awe, “I always wondered who that was.”
Pete buried his face against Mikey’s shoulder and grinned.
*
So fooling around with Mikey in the serious sense was probably a really bad idea.
In theory, Pete knew what an enormous tool he was being, drawing these lines based on where you let your hands wander when your heart had already gone all the way. But he and Mikey had such a clusterfuck of neuroses between them that the odds of this not screwing with their heads were essentially next to nil. The sooner that Pete could figure out how to gracefully call it off and go back to being just friends, the better it would be for both of them.
Unfortunately, like so many of the things that weren’t particularly good for Pete’s head, it was also incredibly fun.
Anyway, Frank had picked up this fucking monster bag of candy and Bob had pretty much ordered him to share it on account of Iero being liable to destroy the universe with that much sugar in him alone. So Mikey and Pete were hanging around mooching, and Mikey kept sticking his tongue out, trying to see if it had changed colour, and Pete was getting antsy in a way that didn’t have much to do with sugar at all.
When Mikey started licking his fingers, Pete mentally declared game over.
“Hey, want to go grab a smoke?”
“Nah,” said Mikey, tying knots in a gummi worm with great intensity, “I’m good.”
Pete coughed and made a Significant Face when Mikey glanced at him.
“Oh,” said Mikey. “Oh, yeah. Definitely. Direly in need of a smoke. Bye, Frank.”
Frank frowned at them as Mikey got to his feet. “Shit,” he muttered through a mouthful of something blue, “Now I owe Hurley twenty.”
*
The closer they got to San Francisco, the more the atmosphere changed, like the magic was draining out of the tour with the end in sight. You couldn’t go half an hour without somebody moaning about getting back to their family and their own bed and real food and personal space.
Pete had found a fallen leaf at the last pit stop, russet and perfect, and was twirling it in his fingers as they drove. Mikey was tucked up next to him in the backseat, half-dozing in the afternoon sunshine.
“I think I’m going to write a song about you,” Pete told him.
Mikey blinked sleepily. “That’s cool. Can it have pirates?”
“Totally,” Pete said, smiling. “Totally.”
* * * * *