charm the wolves with the eyes of a gambler, now I see it's a comfort to you
Bulk post from Black-Eyed Sinner's Pact, minor character's various POV's
I've known MikeyDay since I was seven. I've known Gerard and Billy Day for just as long, but right from the beginning I only had eyes for Mikey. Back then, of course, it was only because he looked the same age as me and was the owner of an awesome metallic blue bicycle that prompted me to go over to his front step and weasel my way into his life, but whether I knew it or not then, we were destined to be a forever kind of thing.
As Mikey might scathingly inform you, I'm a bit of a romantic.
Turned out, when I asked, no, he didn't want to ride bikes with me. He didn't know how. He did agree to walk with me to the corner store two blocks down, where I bought a pack of gum that I halved graciously with him. He didn't say thank you, but his offer to let me ride his blue bike whenever I wanted more than made up for it.
If I thought it was weird that he wandered away from his parents in a strange new city without telling them he was leaving, I chalked it up to a Mikey thing. An air of quiet, a streak of defiance, and raw, stretched out vowels.
The vowels, I was quick to find, were a Jersey thing. A lot of Mikey turned out to be Jersey things, as time wore on. The rest, though, were George and Harrison things.
Mikey didn't like to talk about George and Harrison things.
Spencer
I've watched them together. There's something between them. That, at least, let's me breathe a tiny sigh of relief. Brendon was using him in the beginning, and I was starting to think I was going to have to go all after-school special on him. Ryan has feelings, Brendon. He's bad with them because he's been knocked around all his life. He'd do anything to keep you from hurting him.
Brendon may have realized much the same, or he may have just realized that fucking Ryan as a substitute for Pete was a real shitty thing to do and tapped into his sense of Christian charity. Whatever the reason, Brendon pulls Ryan off into corners and just talks in his ear, closed off from the rest of us. Sometimes Ryan responds by shoving him away, sometimes by obliging and letting Brendon stay close. Sometimes, and this is what I like to see the most, Ryan smiles at something Brendon's said, let's his hand wander down to Brendon's waist. Pulls him in.
I breathe that tiny sigh of relief again, thinking, finally. Finally somebody else understands.
Jon
“Don’t look at me like that, Jon Walker.” Gabe orders, just this side of angry. “You’re not afraid of me.” He pulls away just enough to look me in the eyes and look at my mouth and look at my eyes and look at my mouth. “Let me kiss you.”
“Was that supposed to be a question?” I reply with a smile that would be wry if it weren’t shaky, in a tone that would be teasing if it weren’t wavering.
Gabe isn’t smiling; his dark charcoal eyes are boring intently at my parted lips. “Do you want me to kiss you or not?”
“Um.” I shift my gaze away from his face. “No.”
“Will you be honest with yourself for once, Jon, please?” Gabe urges roughly, in a low tone that sounds like sandpaper and cool water at the same time, needy and dangerous and quiet. It’s then, when he says the words Jon and honesty in the same breath like his own private religion that I crack. I need to be something he believes in if I ever want to believe in humanity again.
“I want you to kiss me.” I reply finally, unthinkingly, my mouth dry.
His arms wrap around my waist in the nanosecond interlude of a stalled breath, pulling me to him, against him, criminally close. The air between us tastes like salt and it’s burning my tongue, toes and fingertips in prickly sensation.
His lips touch mine gentle but urgent and I shiver convulsively. He tastes like tequila and everything that’s sweet and heart stopping. And my heart does stop and the pulse in his thumbs is the only thing keeping time as he touches me everywhere I once labeled void. Every inch of my skin is validated under strong hands and quick promises and lingering eyes. I don’t know how I thought I could live without this. I don’t know when the smacking sound of my back hitting a fold out table became romantic. I don’t know how some people thought romance could ever be dead.
Because I’ve become a secret cynic but I can still see the poetry in something simple and dirty; in our panted breaths and stolen doubts becoming something both wishful and passionate. Something in his crooked smile was beginning to remind me of the disenchantment of a sunset, and I saw spectacular potential for something either doomed to fail or doomed to succeed.
I've known MikeyDay since I was seven. I've known Gerard and Billy Day for just as long, but right from the beginning I only had eyes for Mikey. Back then, of course, it was only because he looked the same age as me and was the owner of an awesome metallic blue bicycle that prompted me to go over to his front step and weasel my way into his life, but whether I knew it or not then, we were destined to be a forever kind of thing.
As Mikey might scathingly inform you, I'm a bit of a romantic.
Turned out, when I asked, no, he didn't want to ride bikes with me. He didn't know how. He did agree to walk with me to the corner store two blocks down, where I bought a pack of gum that I halved graciously with him. He didn't say thank you, but his offer to let me ride his blue bike whenever I wanted more than made up for it.
If I thought it was weird that he wandered away from his parents in a strange new city without telling them he was leaving, I chalked it up to a Mikey thing. An air of quiet, a streak of defiance, and raw, stretched out vowels.
The vowels, I was quick to find, were a Jersey thing. A lot of Mikey turned out to be Jersey things, as time wore on. The rest, though, were George and Harrison things.
Mikey didn't like to talk about George and Harrison things.
Spencer
I've watched them together. There's something between them. That, at least, let's me breathe a tiny sigh of relief. Brendon was using him in the beginning, and I was starting to think I was going to have to go all after-school special on him. Ryan has feelings, Brendon. He's bad with them because he's been knocked around all his life. He'd do anything to keep you from hurting him.
Brendon may have realized much the same, or he may have just realized that fucking Ryan as a substitute for Pete was a real shitty thing to do and tapped into his sense of Christian charity. Whatever the reason, Brendon pulls Ryan off into corners and just talks in his ear, closed off from the rest of us. Sometimes Ryan responds by shoving him away, sometimes by obliging and letting Brendon stay close. Sometimes, and this is what I like to see the most, Ryan smiles at something Brendon's said, let's his hand wander down to Brendon's waist. Pulls him in.
I breathe that tiny sigh of relief again, thinking, finally. Finally somebody else understands.
Jon
“Don’t look at me like that, Jon Walker.” Gabe orders, just this side of angry. “You’re not afraid of me.” He pulls away just enough to look me in the eyes and look at my mouth and look at my eyes and look at my mouth. “Let me kiss you.”
“Was that supposed to be a question?” I reply with a smile that would be wry if it weren’t shaky, in a tone that would be teasing if it weren’t wavering.
Gabe isn’t smiling; his dark charcoal eyes are boring intently at my parted lips. “Do you want me to kiss you or not?”
“Um.” I shift my gaze away from his face. “No.”
“Will you be honest with yourself for once, Jon, please?” Gabe urges roughly, in a low tone that sounds like sandpaper and cool water at the same time, needy and dangerous and quiet. It’s then, when he says the words Jon and honesty in the same breath like his own private religion that I crack. I need to be something he believes in if I ever want to believe in humanity again.
“I want you to kiss me.” I reply finally, unthinkingly, my mouth dry.
His arms wrap around my waist in the nanosecond interlude of a stalled breath, pulling me to him, against him, criminally close. The air between us tastes like salt and it’s burning my tongue, toes and fingertips in prickly sensation.
His lips touch mine gentle but urgent and I shiver convulsively. He tastes like tequila and everything that’s sweet and heart stopping. And my heart does stop and the pulse in his thumbs is the only thing keeping time as he touches me everywhere I once labeled void. Every inch of my skin is validated under strong hands and quick promises and lingering eyes. I don’t know how I thought I could live without this. I don’t know when the smacking sound of my back hitting a fold out table became romantic. I don’t know how some people thought romance could ever be dead.
Because I’ve become a secret cynic but I can still see the poetry in something simple and dirty; in our panted breaths and stolen doubts becoming something both wishful and passionate. Something in his crooked smile was beginning to remind me of the disenchantment of a sunset, and I saw spectacular potential for something either doomed to fail or doomed to succeed.