fic: These Elegant Crimes (1/2)
Title: These Elegant Crimes
Word Count: 9,972
Rating: NC-17...ish.
Pairings: Pete/Ryan (but really, Pete/Mikey as well)
Disclaimer: I have no claim to any part of this other than my own words.
Warning: My beta says I have to warn you guys for angst. So...it's there. A LOT OF ANGST, OKAY? Yup.
Summary: After his Summer of Like ends, Pete convinces himself that Ryan is what he needs. Pete's still got a few hang-ups, however, and that's made clearest when Infinity on High is produced. In other words: No one is getting what they need.
Notes: So, after listening to Infinity on High countless times, I got it into my head that it was about...well...what's written in this story. So this is kind of an explanation of the entire album. Thank you,
monanoche for not only betaing, but putting up with countless, "Hey, so, I was going through that story again, and changed something yet again. And then researched EVEN MORE and changed another thing! Will you read over the changes again?" as well as the epiphany one night that gasp! There are B-sides I can use! You have been very indulgent with me in regards to this fic and my obsession with it.
These Elegant Crimes
i
Crowds are won and lost and won again
But our hearts beat for the diehards
So long live the car crash hearts
Cry on the couch all the poets come to life
Fix me in 45
Pete really liked Ryan from the first time that they met.
That didn’t mean that he wanted to fuck him, because he didn’t. Not then, anyway. Ryan was so young and fresh-innocent-and Pete wasn’t into that, no matter what his obsession with Jeanae made people think. She was a special case. No, Ryan was just this kid who apparently idolized Pete, and was surprisingly mature for his age once you got past that. He had a vision for himself and his friends, and Pete respected that.
When he flew out to Vegas, Ryan opened the door for him looking like he was going to pass out, and Pete just grinned until Ryan relaxed a little and invited him in. Pete signed Panic! at the Disco without a single thought in his mind about fucking Ryan.
They texted back and forth throughout the summer, while Pete was playing Warped Tour, and Ryan kept him caught up with all that he was doing. They had a mutual countdown to when Panic’s first album was going to drop, and occasionally they exchanged photos.
By the time they actually saw each other again in the autumn, Pete was a little heartbroken, and Ryan was a little older. Still, it surprised Pete when he was watching Ryan from backstage (a real venue, with amenities that made it feel like a palace, unlike Warped, which he’d just put behind him), and he went from noticing how the stage lights made Ryan more yellow and ethereal to instead admiring and…wanting. When Ryan finished his set and passed by Pete, heading for the showers, Pete grabbed him on impulse and pulled him into a tight hug.
“You were great,” he murmured into Ryan’s ear, and Ryan replied, “Thanks,” with real enthusiasm. Pete drew back a little to look at him, past the ridiculous hat, pinstriped pants, and too-long hair, instead focusing on his tall, slender, slightly gangly frame. Ryan, he realized, was gorgeous.
“You look great too,” he said, still softly, and ran a hand along Ryan’s arm. The other boy was clearly surprised but pleased, and he chewed on his lip gently as he looked at Pete.
“Thanks,” Ryan said again, eyes cutting over to where Pete’s hand had made itself at home on Ryan’s hip. One eyebrow quirked.
Steeling himself, Pete hurried to say, “Tell me if I’m wrong about this, Ryan.” Then he carefully cupped a hand behind Ryan’s head, pulling his face down until they were less than an inch apart.
“You’re not wrong,” Ryan breathed, so Pete closed the last little distance and kissed Ryan softly, tongues sliding together in unfamiliar patterns that made Pete inexplicably sad. They stayed like that for long minutes, exploring one another’s mouths, and Pete could just taste how much Ryan had wanted this-it wasn’t a new desire.
Confidently, he kissed harder, backing Ryan up against a wall and pressing his hips forward so that Ryan gasped and cast his eyes up, mumbling, “God, Pete.” They licked and bit at each other until they were both thrusting shallowly, helpless, until Ryan wrenched himself away and caught Pete’s wrists.
“We can’t,” he said, breathless, “You’re onstage in…I don’t know. Soon. We can’t right now.”
Pete hadn’t really planned ahead at all-he hadn’t planned for anything other than heavy making out, but the long lines of Ryan’s body in the poor light changed his mind even more completely than the hope that Ryan was radiating-so he took a step back and nodded. “Yeah. Come to my bus later?”
Trying and failing to not smile, Ryan ducked his head and replied, “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
Last summer we took threes across the board
But by fall we were a cover story "now in stores"
Make us poster boys for your scene
But we are not making an acceptance speech
I found the safest place to keep all our old mistakes
Every dot com's refreshing for a journal update
ii
Baby, seasons change but people don't.
And I'll always be waiting in the back room.
I'm boring but overcompensate with
Headlines and flash, flash, flash photography.
After a summer of secrets, one of Pete’s favourite things about Ryan was that he could pull him by the shoulders into a picture, and Ryan never resisted. Pete loved camwhoring, everyone knew it, and Ryan was so willing and pliant under his fingers. He pressed the two of them together beneath the eyes of the public, and no one was ever any the wiser to the way that just out of the frame, Pete’s fingers were brushing Ryan’s belt.
He loved being able to post pictures of Ryan on all his blogs, and if anyone had ever asked (they didn’t) and Pete had been willing to tell the truth (he wasn’t), he would’ve said that it made it real. It gave him proof. He could look at the pictures and know for a fact that they had actually happened, and that Ryan wasn’t afraid to admit to it. He would have said, with too much venom, that if you refused any pictures, you were refusing to own up to your actions.
(He never told anyone that with Mikey, it had been a mutual decision. That there were some pictures, but he kept them under tight lockdown, because they’d decided together that public pictures were just that much glamour, and they didn’t want glamour. It was enough for just them to know. Not even Patrick had seen the pictures, and Pete didn’t think Gerard had either.
It was easier to just let people think that Mikey had been the one to insist on having no pictures taken together.)
Pete took as many photographs with Ryan as he could, and if they wound up in public places where anyone could see, then that wasn’t his fault.
They say your head can be a prison.
Then these are just conjugal visits.
People will dissect us till
This doesn't mean a thing anymore.
Don't pretend you ever forgot about me.
Don't pretend you ever forgot about me..
iii
Crashing not like hips or cars,
No, more like p-p-p-parties
This ain't a scene, it's a goddamned arms race
Ryan was spread out beneath Pete, arms tossed carelessly up over his head so that his fingertips brushed against the bedposts, and Pete was pretty sure that this hotel night was actually going to mean something. Up to that point it had been all ordering room service while Brendon or Spencer or Brent was going to be out for a few hours, watching a crappy TV movie, and eventually sliding into heated kisses that seemed to inevitably end with them both unfulfilled as Pete mumbled, “I should go.”
There had been a few hand jobs, crammed uncomfortably into bunks, and even an enthusiastic, though messy, blowjob that Ryan had given Pete in the bathroom of one venue, head bent and hair falling all around his face, too nervous to look up and let Pete see him. Somehow, though, at a hotel it would be different, so Pete had been holding off.
Tonight, when he’d made to leave, Ryan had stopped him with guitar-calloused fingers around his wrist, and peered up through his bangs when he asked, “Stay?”
So Pete had stayed, sliding his hands under Ryan’s T-shirt and stripping it off over his head. He’d sucked at Ryan’s nipples until the younger boy moaned aloud, and then there was a flurry of both of them getting naked and Ryan promising, “Brendon’s not going to come back, he-he’s drinking with-oh god, Motion City and he-said he was going stay the night probably. So don’t worry.”
His voice was broken up by deep breaths as Pete slid a thigh between Ryan’s and rocked against him. Pete was only slightly ashamed to realize that it hadn’t crossed his mind to worry.
“So pretty,” he said, and he meant it, he did, as he rolled away from Ryan and went to Ryan’s bag, looking through it until he found lube and a condom. “Gonna fuck you,” he added, and was rewarded with Ryan’s breath hitching.
“Have you ever…?” he asked, and Ryan was shaking his head before Pete could finish.
“No,” he replied, “But I want to. I want to with you.”
Pete bit his lip. Ryan sounded sure, and he looked sure, already parting his knees and reaching for Pete. Opening his mouth to say no, instead Pete found himself asking, “How do you want to do it?”
“Facing you. If you don’t mind. I know it’s a little harder, but I want to be able to see you.”
Fitting a hand against the sharp dip just to the side of Ryan’s hipbone, rubbing his thumb over the pale skin, Pete nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. I’ll be careful with you. Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you.”
He was less certain of his promise than he sounded, possibly.
Ryan nodded and bent his knees, tossing his arms back so that he was completely and utterly open beneath Pete. Pete planted a hand on either side of his stomach, kissing his way down until he could take the head of Ryan’s cock into his mouth and suck.
“What are you doing? I thought-”
“I know,” Pete cut in, “I’m just…relaxing you, first.” Ryan’s head dropped back onto the pillow, and Pete went about what he was doing, licking and then blowing cool air so that Ryan shuddered and went tight as a bowstring, obviously trying not to lift his hips off the bed. After a minute or two, Pete pulled off and crawled up, nudging Ryan’s legs a little further apart with his knees.
“Can you…just bend your knees, up like this,” he said, uncapping the lube and coating his fingers as Ryan obeyed. His middle finger came to rest at the base of Ryan’s spine, stroking down soothingly, but hesitating before pushing in.
When he did start to apply pressure, Ryan bit his lip and shut his eyes, looking for all the world like the virgin he was.
Pete shut his eyes too, and slipped in a second finger once Ryan’s breathing had stopped being so rough and stilted.
“Okay?” he asked, lining up a third finger, and opened his eyes to see Ryan nodding hard, hands gripping the bedposts behind him so hard that his knuckles were turning white. “We can stop if you don’t like it,” Pete told him, but Ryan just gritted his teeth and breathed out, “Will you just…keep going?”
Pete pushed in a third finger, stretching Ryan, scissoring his fingers a little until Ryan was moaning and writhing beneath him.
He opened his eyes a second time when he slid his fingers out and braced himself over top of Ryan. Ryan was watching him, and he nodded as Pete drew breath to ask if he was ready.
The entire time, sliding in inch by slow, tight inch, he could feel Ryan’s eyes on him, but kept his own shut tightly. Even when he was fully inside, he could barely move, nudging his hips forward a little and drawing back with Ryan’s muscles clenching almost unbearably. “Oh god,” Ryan was saying, “Oh god, ohgodohgod, Pete.”
Pete didn’t say anything, but he fumbled a hand around for a moment, finally finding Ryan’s cock and wrapping his hand around it, jerking roughly and out of synch with the rhythm of his thrusts. It was only the work of a few minutes before Ryan was gasping and coming over his fist, gasping for breath as he said, “Pete, come, please, come with me.”
He couldn’t, not quite, and finally he pulled out, flipped Ryan onto his stomach, and pushed back in in practically one motion. Ryan made a tiny noise that sounded suspiciously like a whimper, but let Pete fuck him from behind until he came, gasping, looking at the dark hair sticking up from the back of Ryan’s head at all angles.
From then on, they always fucked with Ryan on his stomach, and Pete always kept his eyes open.
I'm a leading man
And the lies I weave are oh so intricate,
Oh so intricate
iv
Last year's wishes
Are this year's apologies
Every last time I come home
“What do you tell Jac?” Pete asked idly, playing with a strand of Ryan’s hair. Ryan was talking about getting it cut, but he hadn’t settled into a style yet.
Stiffening, Ryan asked, “What do I tell Jac when?”
Pete scoffed. “When you’re always texting me, even with her.” He cut his gaze slyly over to meet Ryan’s carefully blank eyes. “When you show up to visit her already marked with bites and bruises.”
Ryan shrugged, rolling away, but Pete just followed. There wasn’t far to go in a bunk anyway.
“I don’t tell her anything. She doesn’t ask,” he replied, finally.
Snorting slightly, Pete said, “But she notices. She has to notice. I bet she thinks it’s Brendon.”
“Jesus, Pete,” Ryan said, and this time he actually sounded irritated, “What’s your problem? Is it Jac? Because I’ve been with her for over a month now, and you never cared before.”
“Fuck no,” Pete said, tracing slowly circles over the back of Ryan’s thigh, “I don’t care if you’re fucking Jac. She doesn’t matter.”
Ryan laughed, a hollow sound. “And you do?”
“Yes,” Pete replied, confidently.
Turning back over so that they were pressed fully together, Ryan looked at him, long and hard, searchingly. Finally he sighed and said, “Yeah. You do.”
For some reason, Pete’s heart was hammering in his throat, and he could tell Ryan wasn’t done.
Ryan’s breath ghosted over his lips as he whispered, “What about me, Pete? What do you tell Jeanae?”
Breath catching, Pete sat up, grabbing pajama pants. He yanked them on, unreasonably angry, and spat back, “Jeanae doesn’t matter either.”
Even in the front lounge he could hear Ryan yell, “Then who is it that does, Pete? Who does matter?”
The best way
To make it through
With hearts and wrists intact
Is to realize
Two out of three ain't bad
v
It's all a game of this or that, now versus then
better off against worse for wear
And you’re someone who knows someone who knows someone I once knew
And I just want to be a part of this
Dipping an Oreo into his milk, Pete watched as a few dark crumbs broke off and skated across the bright white surface, swirling gently until they were sucked under and dropped towards the bottom. Outside it was cloudy and gray, teetering on the edge of rain, maybe, and Pete was curled up inside wearing a hoodie that used to belong to Patrick and pajama pants that were, at one time, Andy’s. Somehow both things had accidentally been taken home with Pete.
There was a pile of mail on the counter beside him, including a red envelope from Mikey’s address that could have been a Christmas card, but that Pete suspected wasn’t. Pete had been studiously ignoring it for the last hour, but after he jammed his cookie into his mouth, he picked it up and ripped it open, disregarding the milk from his fingers that splotched it.
He reached in for the card, then stopped, and picked up his Sidekick instead. Scrolling through the numbers, he went with Ryan’s.
“Hey,” Ryan answered, monotone.
“Hey!” Pete said cheerfully, cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder as he pulled out the contents of the envelope, “What are you up to?”
“I’m at Spencer’s,” he said, and then laughed. Pete could hear him covering the mouthpiece as he called to someone in the background, “I am not, fucker!” Then, to Pete, he said, “Spencer was telling me not to have phone sex while he’s in the room.”
The card had white writing on black paper, evenly lettered, and a fancy red border that Pete was almost certain Gerard had drawn. He flipped it open, barely even glancing at the front, which read Happy holidays from Mikey Way and Alicia Simmons…
“Sounds fun. I’m having Oreos and milk.”
Inside, the script continued, …soon to be Mikey and Alicia Way. We’re engaged! Don’t worry, it’s a long engagement, so you all have plenty of time to make sure your calendars will be clear in March, 2007.
There was more, a summing up of events from the last couple months, but Pete didn’t bother to read it, because on the facing page, there was a note taped on, in Mikey’s own scrawl. As he read over it, he dipped another Oreo into the milk, getting his fingertips wet again. He and Mikey had had Oreos and milk once, over the summer, and Pete had teased Mikey mercilessly when he’d admitted that his favourite part was the sludgy chocolate at the bottom of the glass.
“Oh man. I haven’t done that since…I don’t even know. Ages ago. It just always seemed so messy, you know?” Ryan said.
On the paper, Mikey had written, Hey Pete. Just wanted to leave you a personal note and wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and all that. It’s fucking cold here in Jersey…it seems like we were just complaining about how hot it was over the summer, on tour. Now I actually kind of miss it. Oh yeah, I talked to Gabe the other day. He said that William said you and Ryan Ross are together, so congratulations. I’m happy for you. I even listened to Panic! at the Disco’s album a few times, and it was pretty good. Hope you’re doing well, and I’ll talk to you sometime, okay? XOXO, Michael Darling
“Yeah, it’s pretty messy,” he said into the phone, touching the card with wet fingers and leaving more spots on it.
“Also, I always hated how the milk got,” Ryan said, and as Pete thought wrong wrong wrong, Ryan started laughing again, telling someone, “Stop! Stop!”
Pete dropped three Oreos straight into the milk, poking at them as they started to fall apart in the liquid.
Ryan, sounding breathless now, came back to the phone, saying, “Hey, Pete, I have to go. We’re making gingerbread houses with Spence’s little sisters, and they’re trying to tickle me into submission. Text me, okay?”
“Okay,” Pete said, and hung up.
Then he flung the glass-milk, Oreos, and all-across the room so that it shattered and spilled in a glorious, dark brown mess.
He thought, I miss Ryan.
I thought I loved you
It was just how you looked in the light
A teenage vow in a parking lot
"Till tonight do us part"
I sing the blues and swallow them too
vi
How cruel is the golden rule?
When the lives we lived are only golden-plated
And I knew that the lights of the city were too heavy for me
Though I carried karats for everyone to see
When Pete asked Patrick to fly to Las Vegas with him to visit the boys, just for a couple days, Patrick refused. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said flatly, looking over his glasses at Pete as Pete vibrated in place.
“Please?” he whined, “I don’t want to go and stay in a hotel room all by myself.”
Patrick rolled his eyes. “Like you’ll be in a hotel at all.”
“What are you implying, you dirty-minded boy?” Pete asked, grinning. Patrick didn’t smile back.
“Pete…do you even know what you’re doing?” he finally asked, sighing, and the grin slid sideways off of Pete’s face.
Defensively Pete wrapped his arms around his torso, denim whispering against itself, and petulantly replied, “Yes. What are you talking about?
Patrick lifted his hat from his head and ran a hand through his hair before replacing it. “Ryan’s just a kid, you know, and he’s smart. But he’s also always been a little bit starry-eyed when it comes to you.”
“What, so you’re saying I can’t be with him because he likes me too much? Is that it?” Pete snapped.
“Pete, you know that’s not-”
“Look, maybe for once I deserve to have someone who actually wants to be with me. Someone who’s going to love me. I know, I know, the lyrics come so much better when my heart’s being stepped all over, but maybe for once I need more than that.”
Patrick punched him in the face.
Pete didn’t end up going to Las Vegas, and never told Ryan he’d been planning to.
And all of the mothers raise their babies
To stay away from me
And pray they don't grow up to be...
vii
Been looking forward to the future
But my eyesight is going bad
And this crystal ball
It's always cloudy except for (except for)
When you look into the past (look into the past)
One night stand (one night stand off)
A month after the envelope showed up, once the card was taped inside the front cover of one of Pete’s thousand notebooks, he ended up sitting on the sink of a hotel bathroom, unable to sleep. His Sidekick was clutched in both hands as he texted Ryan and did not think about the engagement. He’d just sent hey, thnkng of you when an all-too-familiar ring jangled through the silence.
For a moment, Pete just stared at the phone, spinning it over in his hands and biting his lip as he contemplated letting it go to voicemail, just to see what the message would be. Halfway through a tinny verse, he flipped it open.
“Yeah?” he asked, voice sounding easy and familiar to his own ears, everything he wasn’t feeling.
Flatly, the voice over the line replied, “I’m in the lobby. Of your hotel.”
Pete’s breath stuttered and caught in his throat, and his grip on the phone tightened, pressing it against his cheek until he could feel the buttons and one of his nails digging into his skin.
After a long silence, he heard, “Pete?” Do you want me to leave? was the unspoken subtext.
Still without speaking, Pete slid off the counter, legs unfolding to catch him, and walked into the other room. Patrick was sleeping on top of the covers, hands resting on the keys of his laptop. Pete almost hung up then. Almost. Instead he sat down, cradling the cell phone between his cheek and shoulder, breathing harshly into the mouthpiece as he laced up his Converses.
It wasn’t until he was clicking the door shut, hand on the doorknob, that he whispered, “Don’t get off the phone. I’m-I’ll be down.”
The response was a soft, “Yeah,” and then they both lapsed into silence while Pete forewent waiting for the elevator and jogged down two flights of stairs, footsteps echoing loudly.
When he pushed open the door to the lobby, eyes already scanning, he found it completely empty except for the shape in the corner, wearing the hood of his sweatshirt up over a black knit cap. Into the phone, Pete breathed, “Look up.”
As commanded, Mikey raised his head, both of them looking across the distance separating them with their phones still raised to their ears. Neither of them smiled, but both started walking, Pete moving faster, until they met. Still into the phone, Pete said, “Hey, Mikeyway.”
He didn’t say, Why are you here? or How did you find me? or I still love you. None of that was important. Instead, he let Mikey reach out and flip his phone shut. Then, suddenly, they were face to face, nothing mediating as Mikey toed at the ugly peach carpet and said, “I have a room on the third floor. Come up with me and…catch up?”
There was no doubt in Pete’s mind that this was a bad idea, a terrible idea, but he nodded anyway. “Always. Gang meeting, right?” he replied, trying to smile-trying to make this into something other than what it was. Mikey offered a tiny quirk of his lips in return, and Pete’s gaze got stuck on them.
When he got caught back up to what was going on, Mikey had gestured in the direction of the elevator, and they walked toward it side by side. They were enclosed in the completely mirrored interior, so Pete edged slightly closer and hooked two fingers into the pocket of Mikey’s hoodie, just to see it reflected back at him again and again, eternally. Mikey stiffened, and Pete wondered for a hopeful, horrible moment if he’d misjudged why Mikey was here, a month after proposing.
Then Mikey breathed out a tiny sigh, sliding his own hand into his pocket so that their fingers touched, and Pete knew he hadn’t been wrong.
Upstairs, even though Mikey opened the door, Pete was the one to pull him inside, and couldn’t decide which of them was being taken advantage of. “Mikey-” he started, relieved when Mikey cut him off with a finger to his lips. Anything he might’ve said aloud (This is wrong, or You don’t want this, you have Alicia, or I still love you), he swallowed instead.
Rather than just kick off his shoes, Pete bent down, untying them slowly and collecting himself. From his vantage point on the ground, he watched Mikey toe off his Misfits shoes. Vaguely he wondered if they were actually his shoes. About sixty percent of the time, Mikey wasn’t wearing his own clothes, which Pete had loved over the summer. It meant that almost every time Mikey walked away from him, he was carrying a piece of Pete with him.
Maybe some things never changed.
After taking as long as he could shuffling his fingers around the laces of his shoes, slowly drawing them off and lining them up neatly, then “accidentally” knocking one over, he stood back up and met Mikey’s eyes again. Mikey had seated himself at the head of the bed, legs curving under him so that he formed an S. There was no question about what he was waiting for.
Swallowing hard, Pete climbed onto the bed, crawling across the covers between them, until he was right up next to Mikey, breathing hard. The last vestiges of his resistance were cracking, and tentatively, he reached out a hand to cup Mikey’s face.
He wanted.
One of Mikey’s hands came up to rest lightly at Pete’s waist like an invitation, and he fell into the taller boy, almost sobbing in relief as he buried his face in the hollow of Mikey’s throat and wrapping his arms around Mikey’s ribcage. He smelled like sweat and smoke, no hints of anything that wasn’t Mikey, and Pete didn’t realize until then that he’d been worried that there would be something else.
“I missed you,” he mumbled against the rise of Mikey’s collarbone, because he couldn’t help it, but quietly enough that Mikey could pretend to have not heard.
“How long are you staying?” he asked, more loudly, and raised himself up until his arms were bracketing Mikey’s shoulders, braced against the headboard.
Mikey shook his head. “I’m not. I mean, just the night. Then I have to get back home-Ali-Gerard doesn’t know where I am.”
Pete thought of sunsets over swimming pool water over an underwater kiss as he held Mikey’s eyes solemnly and pulled off the knit cap. He thought of the taste of dust and coffee when he closed the distance between them and pressed his mouth against Mikey’s.
He thought as he fumbled to unbutton Mikey’s jeans that he ought to feel like this was a goodbye, but he still didn’t.
He thought I don’t love you, but also that it might be a lie, because he couldn’t remember Ryan’s face.
After, when they were naked and (un)sated, curled up under the covers, Pete brushed the hair off of Mikey’s forehead and whispered, “Now what?”
Mikey shrugged. “I had to,” he said, and he sounded like he needed Pete to understand, so Pete listened. “I had to see-just one more time. You know?” Pete knew.
“Did you ever get over-this?” he asked, and held his breath.
“You’re with Ryan Ross now?” Mikey said, and suddenly Pete understood. He wished that he didn’t.
“I could’ve done worse,” he replied, defensively, picking out chords on Mikey’s sharp hipbones.
“Yeah, he could’ve,” Mikey answered.
Pete knew better than to linger too long, and getting out of bed might have been the first thing he’d done right all night. When he reached for his shirt, though, Mikey sat up too quickly and said, “Leave it?” Hesitating, Pete looked at the Clandestine sunset, running his fingers across the dark material before he sighed and set it at the foot of the bed, grabbing Mikey’s plain black shirt instead. Briefly he wondered if that was planned, but that was ridiculous, because Mikey couldn’t’ve known what he’d be wearing.
The last time he’d left Mikey, Mikey had been asleep, and Pete couldn’t decide if it was easier to leave then or now. Mikey watched him dress, eyes wide behind his glasses, and stood without covering up as Pete tied his shoes.
As Pete stood up again, Mikey sat down on the edge of the bed, and at the disconnect they looked at one another awkwardly for a moment. Then Mikey stood again, fluidly, and Pete moved into his arms.
“Hey, call me anytime,” Mikey whispered into his ear, and Pete nodded, holding on tight. Over Mikey’s shoulder he could see his shirt, and the way he was always leaving something of his with Mikey. They kissed once more, softly, but it was still less like a goodbye and more like an apology.
In the hallway outside of the room, Pete’s Sidekick vibrated against his hip and he dug it out of his pocket with a hammering heart.
Ryan’s message read, Sorry for the delay, but I’m thinking of you too.
One night and one more time
Thanks for the memories
even though they weren't so great
"He tastes like you only sweeter"
Part 2