(no subject)
disputing madness and burlesque bars
pete/mikey, (mikey/alicia), time traveling, pg-13, 6035 words
a big thank you to idktbh who's the reason i didn't pull out of this. thank you maryam, for everything. big big big thank you to eternelle for checking through my chaotic mess of writing. ♥♥
warnings: gross historical inaccuracies, plot?, THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN. I AM OUTRAGED., and cliche galore. oh, my.
for bandom_solstice.
disputing madness and burlesque bars
It starts with a slight tremor, just a fault in the system, a skip in a heartbeat. Mikey blinks and the world falters to the distance before it comes flashing back again, too loud and too bright and too intense to handle all at once.
"You okay?" Pete asks, voice tinged with concerned, an abrupt dose of reality once more, reaching out a hand to place on Mikey's shoulder. It feels too heavy, sitting there, and so very hot, as if there is no fabric separating the two, just the bare skin of Pete's hand against the bare skin of Mikey's shoulder. There is a ringing in his ears as if he has just been inside of a train in of a tunnel when another slides past it, a sudden burst of tense pressure, and everything feels too thick around him.
There's a dull ache that shakes through his entire body. "Yeah, I’m. I’m fine."
Somewhere merged in the distance, there is the background clatter of porcelain being dropped against the tiled flooring. An embarrassed waitress readjusts the strap of the apron fastened around her waist and sweeps the broken plate back onto the tray, cheeks tinging red from the occasional whoop whistles and applaud from customers in the cafe.
Reality flutters back. Mikey wonders if perhaps he was imagining that anything happened at all. He sips his coffee and smiles at whatever Pete is saying.
*
The first time it happens (or perhaps it's the second, Mikey is still unsure whether he can count the first flicker of traveling. That was just the aftermath, none of the experience) he only lands a day back in the past.
It is the fourth of April. It is a day that he has already lived.
He wakes up in Pete's bed, just like the previous morning, Pete curled into his side, just like the previous morning, and the morning sinks into the room the same way. He’s pretty sure that even the bed sheets have twisted and twirled into the exact same position, each strip of slightly curled fabric mimicking the past, or perhaps it's the current now. Mikey is not sure anymore.
It’s an unsettling feeling of déjà vu -- the way that Mikey knows how Pete will wake up no longer then a minute after he does, the way Pete looks up at him and blinks stupidly whilst mumbling a content,
"Morning, tiger."
It’s a ridiculous nickname and Mikey can't help but smile, corners of his lips upturning in just the same way they did yesterday (today, now, currently, whenever.)
He settles for déjà vu. It seems plausible, somehow, allowing him to not have to over think each action that he knows has already happened every time it repeats itself, and that night he is content to sleep the same way he already had done before.
It’s only the next morning when Mikey wakes in a different bed opposed to the one he fell asleep in, his own bed this time rather then Pete's, that he realises that perhaps it wasn't déjà vu after all.
His alarm clock is loud and unforgiving, so so very loud, in his right ear.
Today is the seventh of April.
He blinks and rubs his eyes, feeling a stretch pull through his body, his blood dancing a little frantically around the course of his veins. He has already turned his alarm clock on snooze yet the ringing refuses to cease, repercussions of the shrills playing over and over on repeat through Mikey's mind.
"Fuck." he murmurs to himself, sitting himself upright in bed and running a hand through his unwashed hair.
He stumbles around to find his sidekick in his pants pocket, each sleep induced footstep more slurred then the previous. There are six messages, each from Pete, gradually processing to more frantic until finally, they stop.
They begin with, "heymikeymikey, where you up to? werent there when I woke up. call me" and each one is typed in the exact way Pete types to everyone, lack of capitalisation and no real grammar. Fast fingers against the keys. He scrolls down a little further, until finally, they end with, "fuckyou mikey, if youre gonna brake up with me at least do it to my face."
Mikey groans and begins to furiously type out an apology.
He’s going to need answers to questions he doesn't even know how to begin thinking up.
*
He tells Gerard first because it's Gerard, and if anyone else would understand this then it would be him.
The walls of the cartoon network staff room are just that little bit off white, all that less pristine and bright with age. Across them is an array of posters pinned up, designs, those cartoons that made it to the screens and the ones That Never Were, but the creators still hold close to their heart. Vibrant marker pens and sketchy outlines and the 2D characters watch him from every angle. From beside Gerard's head, just behind him, Mikey can see an old movie poster, paper corners frayed and curled with the strain of being moved around so much, probably.
"So what's up? Thought you hated coming down here." Gerard asks, blunt fingernails pushing against the empty styrofoam cup as he talks, layering the white material with different thicknesses that makes the surface look endless, rolls and rolls of inconsistent waves like the ocean.
That was, in actual fact, not strictly true. It wasn't that he hated coming down here, he just wasn't particularly fond of the people who worked here. They all seemed to be thinking thoughts against of him, a collective group of disliking to Mikey. Gerard always told him that he was crazy, no one where he worked hated him, told him that no matter what he thought they weren’t all vampires eyeing up their new fresh meal, but even Gerard’s vampire jokes didn't assure Mikey anymore. He was always reluctant to come down here, but he was desperate today.
Mikey sighs. There is no one else in the room but them, just the hungry thrum and whirr of the coffee machine and press press press of Gerard's finger tips indenting the cup. He could afford to be honest right now, perhaps, but the words seem to hesitate leaving the comfortable realms of Mikey's mind into the real world, the cool surroundings of the air-conditioned staff room.
"So it seems that I have been time traveling, or whatever."
Gerard blinks, but he seems relatively unfazed. Mikey works it out to be because Gerard’s the type of person who prepares himself for the unexpected, always was and always will be, and even the flicker of surprise leaves as abruptly as it arrived. His grip leaves the cup and it comes to rest at last onto the table between them, plastic surface scratched with a variation of white lines.
"Dinosaur time traveling?"
Mikey laughs. It’s a typical thing for Gerard to say, and the slight upraised corners of Gerard's lips shows that he probably knows it is too.
"Not really, no. I don't know how I would survive being chased by a dinosaur."
"Yeah. Those mother fuckers are huge," and then Gerard shifts in his seat, eyes resting on Mikey's seriously for a second. "How often has it happened?"
His voice seems to have softened, and Mikey's not sure why. He’d rather have Gerard have a sharp tone, sharp words, loud and disbelieving, because then perhaps this wouldn't seem as frighteningly real. As if he could have someone else tell him he's being crazy, he hasn't had enough sleep recently and his mind probably isn't in the best of states, then perhaps it would all stop for a second. But it doesn't.
The coffee machine's whirls in the background cease. The quiet is unsettling.
"A few times, now. I don't know when they're going to happen, I can't feel it. There’s no warnings signs. Just the after effects."
"After effects?"
"Yeah, um. Ringing in my ears. Everything feels intensified, each of my senses. It’s like I'm living in my own heart beat, you know? The blood travel round my body. It’s... I can't describe it."
"You get nose bleeds?"
"No," Mikey pauses. "I don't think so, not yet. Why? Should I be getting them?"
Gerard shrugs. "It was just a guess. Happens in the butterfly effect, right?"
Mikey manages to a small laugh. Gerard loves that movie, and really, so does Mikey. The concept of it all; memories stitched together by words printed on a page, images in a photo, let your mind feed off of them and suddenly you're reliving the moment again. The past is about as steady and forgiving as the future, and every second can be changed, altered.
"I seem to be getting further and further in the past though, every time it happens. Is that normal?"
"I don't know. I don't think that time traveling happens consecutively, one period of time after another and you make your way across them gradually. Unless fiction has been lying to me all this time, it should be random outbursts of any time period."
"Well that hasn't been the case yet. Seems like Hollywood’s tricked you again."
Gerard smirks. "Perhaps I have a secret weapon. I’ll use it when they least expect it."
"I don't think that you no longer buying their movies isn't gonna do a whole lot."
"You see Mikes, that's just where you're wrong -- "
The air conditioning makes the room feel artificially light, summer breezes and thin veils of air too tangible to be real. Mikey shuts his eyes to the sound of Gerard talking and let's himself forget about it all for an instant, one beautiful moment where all he can see is light, and he feels tired, so very very tired.
When he opens his eyes, he's no longer opposite Gerard, in the uncomfortably bright and modern seats of Cartoon Network's staff room. Instead, he is situated in an unfamiliar living room, beige curtains drawn tightly shut so that the light in the room is stained, and the furniture is all dated, something out of his grandmother's house.
He blinks. These changes are getting more and more out of hand, he thinks.
*
The thing is, if he could just control this, perhaps it would be okay. If he could just know a little beforehand when it would happen, if he could know where he was going instead of having to work it out on arrival, if he could understand why this is happening.
If if if.
*
He travels to the future, one time, the week after he talks to Gerard.
The future feels perhaps more distant then the past; more changeable, more delicate, as if everything is dependent on him and every movement he makes. He is overly cautious and overly aware for every minute of the night he spends there.
After that, he doesn't ever travel to the future again. He’s surprisingly grateful.
*
He tells Pete next (yet then again, there aren’t a whole lot of people in Mikey’s life anymore to tell). It had to happen eventually, now with days and days spilling onto weeks of disappearing, and suddenly now, "I’ve just been really busy," doesn't seem to cut it anymore.
Pete doesn't seem to be angry or confused or worried. Not curious as much as realising, as if all the pieces have suddenly come together. He smiles a little, too forced to be real (and Mikey knows that smile, that fake smile he shines in the faces of others when he's leaving something behind), and his eyes are clouded with exhaustion and anxiety, too many thoughts layering upon one other, and Mikey wonders why he never noticed before just how tired Pete looks these days.
He considers that he is quite possibly the world's worst boyfriend (friend, lover, fuck mate, he still isn't completely sure what 'this' is, exactly). He’ll have to fix that, he thinks, after he manages to work this whole Time Traveling business.
"Just. Promise that you won't go sleeping round with the past?" Pete murmurs jokingly later that night, dim and dark air settling against his skin, riveting shadows past the covers and into the shaded contours of the room, but his voice's tone has a sharp edge of seriousness, heartbreakingly real. Mikey doesn't think that he has ever heard Pete sound genuinely concerned when it comes to his faithfulness, but suddenly he wants to promise it all, his fidelity, promise and promise and promise until the words wind into one like stretches of grey road in front of him.
"As long as you promise to not go fucking round in the modern day?"
Pete laughs a little, shuffles forwards. "Deal."
Pete's grin is bright in the darkness and Mikey feels his heart flutter inside of him at the sight. Presses a little closer, feels his heartbeat sing to Pete's.
*
The funny thing is, the most ironic, shining proudly on top of this all (irony's sin is pride, too boastful, just a little overbearing) is that perhaps, a time not so distant from now, Mikey would have wanted this. Overwrite the mistakes and errors, always thinking backwards, rewinding and rewinding until all the present are scenes that have already been lived, words recited and scenes unable to be changed, intangible through a glass screen.
But not like this. No, because this is different, this isn't a way of correcting his mistakes. He’s reliving it all, lives that he's never lived and days that he has, unable to control the inconsistent flickers between reality and present and past and future. Unobtainable and frustrating and the ringing in his ears is an almost permanent fixture, uncomfortably familiar, fragments of sound knotted together until it's all he can ever hear.
His body feels worn.
He feels older than he once was (but no more wiser).
*
Mikey was never a homesick child, not once (okay so perhaps this one time in camp, but he was twelve and the sound that the rain made when it threw itself against the roof of his tent made it seem like the world was ending. He can be forgiven for that) but now it seems to have developed inside of him, worming itself through his body, across the course of blood until everything aches with wanting.
He feels drowsy with worry.
It’s been one month since he arrived here. He has no idea how long it's been since he's been missing back home.
It happened during the afternoon of the twenty-eighth of August. Great pillars and rays of brilliant white flooding the room and suddenly the humid, sweltering air is replaced by chills of wind, uninviting in their appearance. The living room of his apartment where he was standing just minutes ago (seconds, hours, days) has reached inside of itself with long, needy fingers and pulled and pulled until it has successfully pulled itself inside out, skin lining the inside of its body and organs exposed for the whole world to feast its eyes on.
The uneven streets are lined with layers of crystal, sparkling white and falling from the sky in handfuls, and Mikey can't remember the last time he saw so much snow.
Nothing, here, seems to make any plausible sense. Everything he read in time traveling showed him that he should be flipping through time, past and future, for more regular periods of time, and he should be able to grasp more control then this, time more tangible. But nothing here is solid and nothing here seems real and it's as if Mikey's thoughts and dreams have emptied themselves into a blank white room until they have all materialised into 3D concepts.
And most importantly, if any of this would make sense, then he should most definitely not be wearing clothes.
But he is. Threads and fibers and cotton should not be able to travel here alongside him, yet they've traveled alongside him nonetheless. He needs Gerard here. He needs ridiculous words. He needs familiarity.
He needs Pete.
It takes him a while before he's willing enough to start making a move. Snow has already begun aligning the contours of his jacket and resting against the top of his head, threading between and melting into strands of his hair.
He wanders through a map of alleyways, crisscrossing through pathways of brick walls, dark settling against soft footsteps in the snow, and enters the first place that he can find.
(And really, he should be more surprised that in a Victorian alley the first place he enters is a burlesque house. but he's not, somehow. He remembers what Gerard used to say -- "those Victorians were kinky like fuck, man" -- and when he thinks about how much Gerard would love to be here right now, how ungrateful Mikey is actually being for all of this, his head starts to hurt.
Except for then he remembers that fuck, he doesn't want this. He doesn't want this at all, he shouldn't feel guilty for being ungrateful for something he doesn't want or need or asked for.
The headache doesn't disperse with the revelation.)
The club is owned by a blonde guy (and the word that comes to his mind when he sees him is 'burly', but it sounds too embarrassing to admit), who tends the bar and takes a liking to Mikey, luckily.
"Bob." He introduces himself when he first sees Mikey, quirking a small smile when Mikey stumbles over a stool leg. His handgrip is firm but a steady, good warmth. Solid. It feels like a nice contrast to everything else; a sharp, deep difference that cuts jaggedly through the center of it all.
Bob dries glasses half heartedly whilst he talks to Mikey, tucked beneath his arm and drying them with a white rag that doesn't seem to have been cleaned since the first time it was bought. But then, Mikey doesn't really want to complain. The glasses seem to be the cleanest thing here.
"Well, you can always stay here if you want. I’ve got an extra room,” Bob says, stopping to slide a few more glasses beneath the shelf before he begins the whole process again. Pick up a wet glass. Dry. Tuck back in.
Mikey pauses, suddenly remembering where he is. The music plays loudly in the background and there is applause, laughter, and he feels oddly uncomfortable for an instant. It’s not sleazy exactly, just not perhaps the type of place where he would want to work to earn his stay. He fidgets uncomfortably with the rim of his glass.
"I’m not really the type of guy to, well, you know -- "
Bob raises an eyebrow not understanding, and then chokes with the comprehension. "No, no. God. No. You don't have to like," he moves his hands in the air to try get his point across, and he seems strangely reluctant to mention the subject considering he works in a burlesque house. "It’s just. I remember first coming to this city, I had no idea where to go. This real nice guy offered my place and I’ve always remembered that. I’ve always thought, 'damn, when I get the chance, I’ll do that too,' you know?"
Mikey has at least the courtesy to blush, pink tingeing on pale skin.
"Sorry," he murmurs into his glass, and Bob just laughs, reaches down to push another glass away, swipe marks sharp against the surface dull with dirty water. He grabs another glass, and they're almost all gone now, and for a second Mikey wonders what Bob will do when they're gone. It seems too routine now to suddenly end.
He bites his lip.
"How long you gonna be staying for, anyway?" Bob's voice brings him back, and Mikey glances back up to him as if only just remembering his presence.
Mikey shrugs. The stage behind him is currently home to stand up, and beautiful women stroll around the place, curling around the guests and asking if they need anything. One saunters their way over to him then, red corset glimmering in the lazy artificial light and smiling a little too hard, as if she's not completely comfortable with what she's wearing, with what's she's doing, or where she is. She settles herself in the stool beside him, long legs crossed, elbows perched on the bar with her back turned against it and head tilted curiously.
"I’m Alicia," she starts, smiling. It’s a little contagious. Mikey finds himself smiling back, and Bob grins knowingly before strolling over to where another customer is, leaving the two alone. "You need a top up?" she asks, nudging at a bottle of whiskey and glancing at Mikey's empty shot glass.
The air is hot and murky and this girl (Alicia, Mikey reminds himself) refuses to leave his side for the rest of the night.
Mikey doesn't object.
*
Mikey gets a job at the bar; and it's all frustratingly natural to him, this life, fate and destiny and everything he doesn't believe in. They almost get shut down by the cops at one time, and there was an incident where a customer got the wrong impression of what the girls actually did, but after Bob had tried to explain as politely as possible to him that no, these girls weren't hookers, he had been escorted off the premises with minimal fuss.
(He uses 'minimal fuss' vague in the loosest of terms. but then again, a little drunken thrashing and kicking around never really hurt anyone, right?)
Other then that, and perhaps all of this really just contributed to how well Mikey fit in here, this place is like a home (not first home, of course, this is like a second life, an afterlife that arrives before the person had left the realms of earth yet. premature. Mikey has experienced too much in too little).
Days are a blur of whiskeywinebeercider and a merge of color, shining in dim light as if it is fluorescent, as if this is all it has ever lived for, bright outfits and sparkling cloths attached to the girls with long legs and sharp smiles.
*
And really, it's been two months here, god knows how long it's been since he first went missing here back in the current (future, past, wherever Pete is right now), this can't really be considered cheating on Pete, not with Alicia’s lips tingling with too bright lipstick and arms wrapped around his shoulders.
Mikey sighs and tries not to think, tries and tries and tries until all he can see and feel and hear is Alicia.
Somewhere in the distance, the music flutters and his hands glide down lower her back.
*
The year is eighteen ninety-eight, and in a few moments time it will be eighteen ninety-nine.
It will be officially four months since he landed here.
He tips back his glass, feeling the bubbles and thin liquid swirl itself around his mouth. The glass feels too weak, too light, when it's empty and he places it back on the table beside him. The wine is just a little bitter, sharp against his dulled out senses. He shuts his eyes and chants to himself again and again and again.
He opens them up once more and Alicia is smiling at him, big eyes and big smile and he wants this, doesn't want this, wants something more.
When she disperses into the crowd he wishes again, just for an instant, but nothing happens and he's not quite sure why he really was expecting anything to take effect, why he let himself become deluded.
I wish I wish I wish.
That night the building is riddled with people, and Mikey's legs ache with the efforts of moving around so frequently and Alicia’s smile is so forced after a while the strain from the effect of having to constantly smile is visible by the time the doors have been shut closed with a flutter of noise and the last customer has shuffled out into the early hours of the next day.
When they get upstairs they go straight to bed wordlessly, sliding inside of the covers and rolling away from each other. They are not the only ones in this room, after all (Bob may get good business, yet he's still nowhere near vast wealth) and Mikey's exhausted, physically and mentally and everything in between the two.
He falls asleep to Alicia’s lulled breathing.
*
The wedding is really, well, as about as respectable as it can be with a man with no supposed identity and a woman working at a burlesque house during the night times, swooping around cat calls and serving over priced wine in grimy glasses who have been sharing a room together for the last eighteen months without the smallest of traces of commitment until recently.
Not that her parents know that, of course.
In the back of his mind, Mikey swallows down PetePetePete and tries to submerge the thoughts with smiles and white gowns and newly found relatives. Music plays somewhere in the background, silhouetted by the atmosphere, the steady encore of voices and guests.
It’s been eighteen months. Mikey has tried (and failed) to grow stubble, worn five new suits since then, been with Alicia for sixteen with them.
Eighteen eighteen eighteen.
It’s a big number. He can be excused for this, he thinks, because perhaps he'll just have to accept that he's never going to get home. Time and destiny and fate and whatever gods there are up there don't want him to go back to his time zone.
He is not sleeping round with the past.
He is not. He is not. He is not.
Mikey smiles and it seems perhaps more forced then the rest of this. He drains his drink and submerges himself back into the voices, allows his mind to switch off a little, thoughts fall away with the wine that he drinks, glass after glass of red and white and red until the colours mesh together, form one continuous row and suddenly thoughts don't hurt so much. He prefers it this way.
*
(And there are moments when Mikey dreams in such vivid color, so strong and immersed into the vibrancy it's as if his whole life has been a black and white movie, and this is all so new to him, he forgets where he is and where he's been and suddenly he's in places he's never been before. Or perhaps he has visited them before, but the memories seem distant, as if he's never actually been there, just seen the photos of himself in front of locations, hazy and unclear backgrounds, but he can't recall when.
It’s hot and the sun is hostile against his bare shoulders. The dusty air is scolding, uninviting, and it scratches at his skin bitterly with the isolation it presses on him. The sand beneath him is too orange, too red, too yellow, and it whips at his naked legs as he walks along down the side of the empty road. It’s too exposed here, in clear view for everyone and no one here to see it.
A car skids past, wheels rolling dust into the empty air, large and over towering. It casts no shadow against the ground. A darkened window rolls down an inch or two, and then halts in its movement, beckoning Mikey forwards with its sudden coma. Mikey scurries two steps forwards, balancing on tip toes and peering inside of the vehicle.
He is suddenly overwhelmed with a chorus of words, one single voice chanting and chanting, but multiplied, saying different sentences, tripping over itself.
" I want to fix this --
-- I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry --
-- I just don't know how to."
He knows that voice. He knows it like the hands that have traced every contour of his body, grown accustomed to every inch of him, knows it like those eyes and that smile and suddenly the familiarity is a burden, too much too much.
"Pete?" he asks gently, cautiously, and his voice almost cracks with the tension even with that single syllable.
There’s a split moment, a crack in the exterior, and Mikey is so sure he can see Pete's eyes, so so sure, and his stomach lurches at the familiarity, his heart singing and singing until all he can hear is its words, muffled beneath his ribcage.
The window rolls back up and the car leaves a trail of thick dusty air behind it.)
*
The air when Mikey wakes up is too cool, as if it had just moments before been too hot, and now it hasn't really grown accustomed to the change.
He is in his bed, his apartment.
He has no idea what date it is today.
He checks the blearing alarm clock beside him and the red smears in with the night air, just clear enough that Mikey can make out a rough 4:32.
"Huh." He grunts, voice deepened with sleep and he manages to push himself into the upright position, ringing ricocheting around the bedroom (it seems oddly unfamiliar now, these surroundings, not his anymore) and his body attempting to disobey every action his mind commands it to do, too sore to work properly.
And then it dawns on him, sudden and intense as he realises.
No more burlesque house, no more Bob, no more Alicia. The ache that grows in his chest is inordinately intense, and he has to settle back into the bed, close his eyes, try to make it hurt less. It’s not a relief, being back here, not even with every wish he made whilst he was back there. He wants what he can't have and his body and soul and heartache when it craves what it can't be granted.
He decides that he'll visit Pete in the morning, first thing. The clock beside him is taunting, flickering numbers inaudibly and too slow.
It’s a dreamless night.
*
When Pete opens the door the next morning, it strikes Mikey to just how much older he looks now, since he last saw him, different from each of his memories (and of course, he is, he must be older, it's been so long now). He resists the urge to lean forwards, pinch Pete's cheek and say, "my my, how you have grown!" like his aunt Christa used to do when he was younger. But he doesn't have to time to think, because Pete's hugging him then, hard and fierce and Mikey feels stupidly unstable, all fluid and no stability, beneath his touch. He leans into the contact.
"Fuck Mikey, fuck." Pete murmurs into his ear, voice more hoarse then he last remembered. Mikey wonders if his voice is any different, or perhaps it has stayed preserved over the last few years. "I searched everywhere for you, and I couldn't find you anywhere and -- "
Mikey smiles a little into Pete’s hair, and he can't help it, really, he can't, but it's all too much and Mikey craves more, needs this, more then he's ever needed anything in his whole life.
"Shut up, Pete." he laughs, and it feels strange to be using it, as if he hadn't been speaking in years and years. The sounds that leave his mouth are strangers to him. He pushes away from Pete's tight embrace, and Pete's rambling stops abruptly, instead eyes wide and curious and searching Mikey's for anything and everything and Mikey's not entirely sure what, exactly. "Let’s just. Let’s just go in, okay?" Mikey doesn't want to add the afterthought that this could quite possibly be the only time in a long time that they'll get to spend together, doesn't want to talk about what happened, not right yet, just wants to savour each of these moments. Each and every one of them.
Pete's apartment is almost no different to how it was before.
Mikey wasn't sure if he was expecting it to be (Pete was always afraid of change, too reluctant for 'new') and Pete's touch is still the same, soft and lingering and gentle against Mikey's skin, and he’d forgotten how much he missed this. He arches a little, and Pete presses desperate kisses against his neck, down his shoulder, across his forearm.
"Missed you," he murmurs between kisses, so frantic, and Mikey's heart is racing faster with every touch. "Missed you so fucking much," and he's pushing Mikey backwards into the apartment, straight into the direction of the bedroom.
Mikey wants to reply, tell Pete every single thought and every second he missed him but it's all consumed with time, rolling on and on and his thoughts are blurred and slurred with Pete's kisses and caresses and he thinks it can wait, it can definitely wait and finds Pete's lips once more.
Pete tastes of colour and time and just a little desperate, and it's everything familiar and everything Mikey once knew but all so new this time, all so unbearably alien and he is desperate to remember every movement, every sound.
He clings a little closer, so that there is no part of him that is not touching Pete, not one piece that isn't drowning in this, washing over him in seconds and minutes and time doesn't seem to have any substance now, not anymore.
The next morning comes too soon now, it seems, but Pete is still there, Mikey is still there, nothing has changed and everything is new and it's all ok. Mikey can breathe again.
He rolls the sheets off of him, settling them over onto Pete's side on his still form, and climbs out of bed with slow, unsteady movements. The light is overbearing and his eyes are unaccustomed to them, being shut for so long, as if months and months have passed away in dreams and he never really saw the light before this. He sits perched on the edge of the mattress, watching the air twist and turn, the sun rise steadily through the open window where they forgot to close the blinds the day before.
His heartbeat calms, descending to what seems like the first regular pace in years. He traces out invisible lines on his thighs with his fingertips, sketching out words that erase themselves as soon as he's brought them into existence, too short-lived to survive in this world. He writes pastpresentfuturehim and the letters curl around themselves until there's nothing there again.
He’s not sure how long it is exactly between the moment he wakes up to the moment where he feels hot breath steadied against the side of his neck, and when he turns he finds Pete smiling a little sheepishly, eyes dull with sleep induced fatigue.
"Morning, tiger," Pete murmurs, and Mikey can't help but laugh softly. In that moment, with the faint morning light casting the room and Pete inside it softer, as if the outlines of them have been blurred so that the contrast between the air and them has hardly any difference, he doesn't want to talk about Alicia or Pete's possible one night stands whilst he was away or more or about Bob and his burlesque house with the stained glasses, not right now.
He leans backwards to rest his head against Pete's shoulder, facing the ceiling until all he can see is the faint imperfections of the white surface above him. It feels almost claustrophobic, as if with every second longer he stares up at it descends just a little closer to him, being beckoned subconsciously and unwillingly, and Mikey's head is swimming, but not quite drowning. Just laying on the surface of the water, body flat and floating until he’s suspended in the pale blue. Blissful.
Somewhere, in the back of Mikey’s mind, he can almost hear a clock ticking, counting down in fractions of lives and seconds and days. It’s continuous and loud and lingers in the shadows of his mind, right where he can’t quite grasp it, wrap his fingers around it and flatten out the sound until it’s too obscure to make out properly.
He presses closer to Pete and tries to drown it out.
pete/mikey, (mikey/alicia), time traveling, pg-13, 6035 words
a big thank you to idktbh who's the reason i didn't pull out of this. thank you maryam, for everything. big big big thank you to eternelle for checking through my chaotic mess of writing. ♥♥
warnings: gross historical inaccuracies, plot?, THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN. I AM OUTRAGED., and cliche galore. oh, my.
for bandom_solstice.
disputing madness and burlesque bars
It starts with a slight tremor, just a fault in the system, a skip in a heartbeat. Mikey blinks and the world falters to the distance before it comes flashing back again, too loud and too bright and too intense to handle all at once.
"You okay?" Pete asks, voice tinged with concerned, an abrupt dose of reality once more, reaching out a hand to place on Mikey's shoulder. It feels too heavy, sitting there, and so very hot, as if there is no fabric separating the two, just the bare skin of Pete's hand against the bare skin of Mikey's shoulder. There is a ringing in his ears as if he has just been inside of a train in of a tunnel when another slides past it, a sudden burst of tense pressure, and everything feels too thick around him.
There's a dull ache that shakes through his entire body. "Yeah, I’m. I’m fine."
Somewhere merged in the distance, there is the background clatter of porcelain being dropped against the tiled flooring. An embarrassed waitress readjusts the strap of the apron fastened around her waist and sweeps the broken plate back onto the tray, cheeks tinging red from the occasional whoop whistles and applaud from customers in the cafe.
Reality flutters back. Mikey wonders if perhaps he was imagining that anything happened at all. He sips his coffee and smiles at whatever Pete is saying.
*
The first time it happens (or perhaps it's the second, Mikey is still unsure whether he can count the first flicker of traveling. That was just the aftermath, none of the experience) he only lands a day back in the past.
It is the fourth of April. It is a day that he has already lived.
He wakes up in Pete's bed, just like the previous morning, Pete curled into his side, just like the previous morning, and the morning sinks into the room the same way. He’s pretty sure that even the bed sheets have twisted and twirled into the exact same position, each strip of slightly curled fabric mimicking the past, or perhaps it's the current now. Mikey is not sure anymore.
It’s an unsettling feeling of déjà vu -- the way that Mikey knows how Pete will wake up no longer then a minute after he does, the way Pete looks up at him and blinks stupidly whilst mumbling a content,
"Morning, tiger."
It’s a ridiculous nickname and Mikey can't help but smile, corners of his lips upturning in just the same way they did yesterday (today, now, currently, whenever.)
He settles for déjà vu. It seems plausible, somehow, allowing him to not have to over think each action that he knows has already happened every time it repeats itself, and that night he is content to sleep the same way he already had done before.
It’s only the next morning when Mikey wakes in a different bed opposed to the one he fell asleep in, his own bed this time rather then Pete's, that he realises that perhaps it wasn't déjà vu after all.
His alarm clock is loud and unforgiving, so so very loud, in his right ear.
Today is the seventh of April.
He blinks and rubs his eyes, feeling a stretch pull through his body, his blood dancing a little frantically around the course of his veins. He has already turned his alarm clock on snooze yet the ringing refuses to cease, repercussions of the shrills playing over and over on repeat through Mikey's mind.
"Fuck." he murmurs to himself, sitting himself upright in bed and running a hand through his unwashed hair.
He stumbles around to find his sidekick in his pants pocket, each sleep induced footstep more slurred then the previous. There are six messages, each from Pete, gradually processing to more frantic until finally, they stop.
They begin with, "heymikeymikey, where you up to? werent there when I woke up. call me" and each one is typed in the exact way Pete types to everyone, lack of capitalisation and no real grammar. Fast fingers against the keys. He scrolls down a little further, until finally, they end with, "fuckyou mikey, if youre gonna brake up with me at least do it to my face."
Mikey groans and begins to furiously type out an apology.
He’s going to need answers to questions he doesn't even know how to begin thinking up.
*
He tells Gerard first because it's Gerard, and if anyone else would understand this then it would be him.
The walls of the cartoon network staff room are just that little bit off white, all that less pristine and bright with age. Across them is an array of posters pinned up, designs, those cartoons that made it to the screens and the ones That Never Were, but the creators still hold close to their heart. Vibrant marker pens and sketchy outlines and the 2D characters watch him from every angle. From beside Gerard's head, just behind him, Mikey can see an old movie poster, paper corners frayed and curled with the strain of being moved around so much, probably.
"So what's up? Thought you hated coming down here." Gerard asks, blunt fingernails pushing against the empty styrofoam cup as he talks, layering the white material with different thicknesses that makes the surface look endless, rolls and rolls of inconsistent waves like the ocean.
That was, in actual fact, not strictly true. It wasn't that he hated coming down here, he just wasn't particularly fond of the people who worked here. They all seemed to be thinking thoughts against of him, a collective group of disliking to Mikey. Gerard always told him that he was crazy, no one where he worked hated him, told him that no matter what he thought they weren’t all vampires eyeing up their new fresh meal, but even Gerard’s vampire jokes didn't assure Mikey anymore. He was always reluctant to come down here, but he was desperate today.
Mikey sighs. There is no one else in the room but them, just the hungry thrum and whirr of the coffee machine and press press press of Gerard's finger tips indenting the cup. He could afford to be honest right now, perhaps, but the words seem to hesitate leaving the comfortable realms of Mikey's mind into the real world, the cool surroundings of the air-conditioned staff room.
"So it seems that I have been time traveling, or whatever."
Gerard blinks, but he seems relatively unfazed. Mikey works it out to be because Gerard’s the type of person who prepares himself for the unexpected, always was and always will be, and even the flicker of surprise leaves as abruptly as it arrived. His grip leaves the cup and it comes to rest at last onto the table between them, plastic surface scratched with a variation of white lines.
"Dinosaur time traveling?"
Mikey laughs. It’s a typical thing for Gerard to say, and the slight upraised corners of Gerard's lips shows that he probably knows it is too.
"Not really, no. I don't know how I would survive being chased by a dinosaur."
"Yeah. Those mother fuckers are huge," and then Gerard shifts in his seat, eyes resting on Mikey's seriously for a second. "How often has it happened?"
His voice seems to have softened, and Mikey's not sure why. He’d rather have Gerard have a sharp tone, sharp words, loud and disbelieving, because then perhaps this wouldn't seem as frighteningly real. As if he could have someone else tell him he's being crazy, he hasn't had enough sleep recently and his mind probably isn't in the best of states, then perhaps it would all stop for a second. But it doesn't.
The coffee machine's whirls in the background cease. The quiet is unsettling.
"A few times, now. I don't know when they're going to happen, I can't feel it. There’s no warnings signs. Just the after effects."
"After effects?"
"Yeah, um. Ringing in my ears. Everything feels intensified, each of my senses. It’s like I'm living in my own heart beat, you know? The blood travel round my body. It’s... I can't describe it."
"You get nose bleeds?"
"No," Mikey pauses. "I don't think so, not yet. Why? Should I be getting them?"
Gerard shrugs. "It was just a guess. Happens in the butterfly effect, right?"
Mikey manages to a small laugh. Gerard loves that movie, and really, so does Mikey. The concept of it all; memories stitched together by words printed on a page, images in a photo, let your mind feed off of them and suddenly you're reliving the moment again. The past is about as steady and forgiving as the future, and every second can be changed, altered.
"I seem to be getting further and further in the past though, every time it happens. Is that normal?"
"I don't know. I don't think that time traveling happens consecutively, one period of time after another and you make your way across them gradually. Unless fiction has been lying to me all this time, it should be random outbursts of any time period."
"Well that hasn't been the case yet. Seems like Hollywood’s tricked you again."
Gerard smirks. "Perhaps I have a secret weapon. I’ll use it when they least expect it."
"I don't think that you no longer buying their movies isn't gonna do a whole lot."
"You see Mikes, that's just where you're wrong -- "
The air conditioning makes the room feel artificially light, summer breezes and thin veils of air too tangible to be real. Mikey shuts his eyes to the sound of Gerard talking and let's himself forget about it all for an instant, one beautiful moment where all he can see is light, and he feels tired, so very very tired.
When he opens his eyes, he's no longer opposite Gerard, in the uncomfortably bright and modern seats of Cartoon Network's staff room. Instead, he is situated in an unfamiliar living room, beige curtains drawn tightly shut so that the light in the room is stained, and the furniture is all dated, something out of his grandmother's house.
He blinks. These changes are getting more and more out of hand, he thinks.
*
The thing is, if he could just control this, perhaps it would be okay. If he could just know a little beforehand when it would happen, if he could know where he was going instead of having to work it out on arrival, if he could understand why this is happening.
If if if.
*
He travels to the future, one time, the week after he talks to Gerard.
The future feels perhaps more distant then the past; more changeable, more delicate, as if everything is dependent on him and every movement he makes. He is overly cautious and overly aware for every minute of the night he spends there.
After that, he doesn't ever travel to the future again. He’s surprisingly grateful.
*
He tells Pete next (yet then again, there aren’t a whole lot of people in Mikey’s life anymore to tell). It had to happen eventually, now with days and days spilling onto weeks of disappearing, and suddenly now, "I’ve just been really busy," doesn't seem to cut it anymore.
Pete doesn't seem to be angry or confused or worried. Not curious as much as realising, as if all the pieces have suddenly come together. He smiles a little, too forced to be real (and Mikey knows that smile, that fake smile he shines in the faces of others when he's leaving something behind), and his eyes are clouded with exhaustion and anxiety, too many thoughts layering upon one other, and Mikey wonders why he never noticed before just how tired Pete looks these days.
He considers that he is quite possibly the world's worst boyfriend (friend, lover, fuck mate, he still isn't completely sure what 'this' is, exactly). He’ll have to fix that, he thinks, after he manages to work this whole Time Traveling business.
"Just. Promise that you won't go sleeping round with the past?" Pete murmurs jokingly later that night, dim and dark air settling against his skin, riveting shadows past the covers and into the shaded contours of the room, but his voice's tone has a sharp edge of seriousness, heartbreakingly real. Mikey doesn't think that he has ever heard Pete sound genuinely concerned when it comes to his faithfulness, but suddenly he wants to promise it all, his fidelity, promise and promise and promise until the words wind into one like stretches of grey road in front of him.
"As long as you promise to not go fucking round in the modern day?"
Pete laughs a little, shuffles forwards. "Deal."
Pete's grin is bright in the darkness and Mikey feels his heart flutter inside of him at the sight. Presses a little closer, feels his heartbeat sing to Pete's.
*
The funny thing is, the most ironic, shining proudly on top of this all (irony's sin is pride, too boastful, just a little overbearing) is that perhaps, a time not so distant from now, Mikey would have wanted this. Overwrite the mistakes and errors, always thinking backwards, rewinding and rewinding until all the present are scenes that have already been lived, words recited and scenes unable to be changed, intangible through a glass screen.
But not like this. No, because this is different, this isn't a way of correcting his mistakes. He’s reliving it all, lives that he's never lived and days that he has, unable to control the inconsistent flickers between reality and present and past and future. Unobtainable and frustrating and the ringing in his ears is an almost permanent fixture, uncomfortably familiar, fragments of sound knotted together until it's all he can ever hear.
His body feels worn.
He feels older than he once was (but no more wiser).
*
Mikey was never a homesick child, not once (okay so perhaps this one time in camp, but he was twelve and the sound that the rain made when it threw itself against the roof of his tent made it seem like the world was ending. He can be forgiven for that) but now it seems to have developed inside of him, worming itself through his body, across the course of blood until everything aches with wanting.
He feels drowsy with worry.
It’s been one month since he arrived here. He has no idea how long it's been since he's been missing back home.
It happened during the afternoon of the twenty-eighth of August. Great pillars and rays of brilliant white flooding the room and suddenly the humid, sweltering air is replaced by chills of wind, uninviting in their appearance. The living room of his apartment where he was standing just minutes ago (seconds, hours, days) has reached inside of itself with long, needy fingers and pulled and pulled until it has successfully pulled itself inside out, skin lining the inside of its body and organs exposed for the whole world to feast its eyes on.
The uneven streets are lined with layers of crystal, sparkling white and falling from the sky in handfuls, and Mikey can't remember the last time he saw so much snow.
Nothing, here, seems to make any plausible sense. Everything he read in time traveling showed him that he should be flipping through time, past and future, for more regular periods of time, and he should be able to grasp more control then this, time more tangible. But nothing here is solid and nothing here seems real and it's as if Mikey's thoughts and dreams have emptied themselves into a blank white room until they have all materialised into 3D concepts.
And most importantly, if any of this would make sense, then he should most definitely not be wearing clothes.
But he is. Threads and fibers and cotton should not be able to travel here alongside him, yet they've traveled alongside him nonetheless. He needs Gerard here. He needs ridiculous words. He needs familiarity.
He needs Pete.
It takes him a while before he's willing enough to start making a move. Snow has already begun aligning the contours of his jacket and resting against the top of his head, threading between and melting into strands of his hair.
He wanders through a map of alleyways, crisscrossing through pathways of brick walls, dark settling against soft footsteps in the snow, and enters the first place that he can find.
(And really, he should be more surprised that in a Victorian alley the first place he enters is a burlesque house. but he's not, somehow. He remembers what Gerard used to say -- "those Victorians were kinky like fuck, man" -- and when he thinks about how much Gerard would love to be here right now, how ungrateful Mikey is actually being for all of this, his head starts to hurt.
Except for then he remembers that fuck, he doesn't want this. He doesn't want this at all, he shouldn't feel guilty for being ungrateful for something he doesn't want or need or asked for.
The headache doesn't disperse with the revelation.)
The club is owned by a blonde guy (and the word that comes to his mind when he sees him is 'burly', but it sounds too embarrassing to admit), who tends the bar and takes a liking to Mikey, luckily.
"Bob." He introduces himself when he first sees Mikey, quirking a small smile when Mikey stumbles over a stool leg. His handgrip is firm but a steady, good warmth. Solid. It feels like a nice contrast to everything else; a sharp, deep difference that cuts jaggedly through the center of it all.
Bob dries glasses half heartedly whilst he talks to Mikey, tucked beneath his arm and drying them with a white rag that doesn't seem to have been cleaned since the first time it was bought. But then, Mikey doesn't really want to complain. The glasses seem to be the cleanest thing here.
"Well, you can always stay here if you want. I’ve got an extra room,” Bob says, stopping to slide a few more glasses beneath the shelf before he begins the whole process again. Pick up a wet glass. Dry. Tuck back in.
Mikey pauses, suddenly remembering where he is. The music plays loudly in the background and there is applause, laughter, and he feels oddly uncomfortable for an instant. It’s not sleazy exactly, just not perhaps the type of place where he would want to work to earn his stay. He fidgets uncomfortably with the rim of his glass.
"I’m not really the type of guy to, well, you know -- "
Bob raises an eyebrow not understanding, and then chokes with the comprehension. "No, no. God. No. You don't have to like," he moves his hands in the air to try get his point across, and he seems strangely reluctant to mention the subject considering he works in a burlesque house. "It’s just. I remember first coming to this city, I had no idea where to go. This real nice guy offered my place and I’ve always remembered that. I’ve always thought, 'damn, when I get the chance, I’ll do that too,' you know?"
Mikey has at least the courtesy to blush, pink tingeing on pale skin.
"Sorry," he murmurs into his glass, and Bob just laughs, reaches down to push another glass away, swipe marks sharp against the surface dull with dirty water. He grabs another glass, and they're almost all gone now, and for a second Mikey wonders what Bob will do when they're gone. It seems too routine now to suddenly end.
He bites his lip.
"How long you gonna be staying for, anyway?" Bob's voice brings him back, and Mikey glances back up to him as if only just remembering his presence.
Mikey shrugs. The stage behind him is currently home to stand up, and beautiful women stroll around the place, curling around the guests and asking if they need anything. One saunters their way over to him then, red corset glimmering in the lazy artificial light and smiling a little too hard, as if she's not completely comfortable with what she's wearing, with what's she's doing, or where she is. She settles herself in the stool beside him, long legs crossed, elbows perched on the bar with her back turned against it and head tilted curiously.
"I’m Alicia," she starts, smiling. It’s a little contagious. Mikey finds himself smiling back, and Bob grins knowingly before strolling over to where another customer is, leaving the two alone. "You need a top up?" she asks, nudging at a bottle of whiskey and glancing at Mikey's empty shot glass.
The air is hot and murky and this girl (Alicia, Mikey reminds himself) refuses to leave his side for the rest of the night.
Mikey doesn't object.
*
Mikey gets a job at the bar; and it's all frustratingly natural to him, this life, fate and destiny and everything he doesn't believe in. They almost get shut down by the cops at one time, and there was an incident where a customer got the wrong impression of what the girls actually did, but after Bob had tried to explain as politely as possible to him that no, these girls weren't hookers, he had been escorted off the premises with minimal fuss.
(He uses 'minimal fuss' vague in the loosest of terms. but then again, a little drunken thrashing and kicking around never really hurt anyone, right?)
Other then that, and perhaps all of this really just contributed to how well Mikey fit in here, this place is like a home (not first home, of course, this is like a second life, an afterlife that arrives before the person had left the realms of earth yet. premature. Mikey has experienced too much in too little).
Days are a blur of whiskeywinebeercider and a merge of color, shining in dim light as if it is fluorescent, as if this is all it has ever lived for, bright outfits and sparkling cloths attached to the girls with long legs and sharp smiles.
*
And really, it's been two months here, god knows how long it's been since he first went missing here back in the current (future, past, wherever Pete is right now), this can't really be considered cheating on Pete, not with Alicia’s lips tingling with too bright lipstick and arms wrapped around his shoulders.
Mikey sighs and tries not to think, tries and tries and tries until all he can see and feel and hear is Alicia.
Somewhere in the distance, the music flutters and his hands glide down lower her back.
*
The year is eighteen ninety-eight, and in a few moments time it will be eighteen ninety-nine.
It will be officially four months since he landed here.
He tips back his glass, feeling the bubbles and thin liquid swirl itself around his mouth. The glass feels too weak, too light, when it's empty and he places it back on the table beside him. The wine is just a little bitter, sharp against his dulled out senses. He shuts his eyes and chants to himself again and again and again.
He opens them up once more and Alicia is smiling at him, big eyes and big smile and he wants this, doesn't want this, wants something more.
When she disperses into the crowd he wishes again, just for an instant, but nothing happens and he's not quite sure why he really was expecting anything to take effect, why he let himself become deluded.
I wish I wish I wish.
That night the building is riddled with people, and Mikey's legs ache with the efforts of moving around so frequently and Alicia’s smile is so forced after a while the strain from the effect of having to constantly smile is visible by the time the doors have been shut closed with a flutter of noise and the last customer has shuffled out into the early hours of the next day.
When they get upstairs they go straight to bed wordlessly, sliding inside of the covers and rolling away from each other. They are not the only ones in this room, after all (Bob may get good business, yet he's still nowhere near vast wealth) and Mikey's exhausted, physically and mentally and everything in between the two.
He falls asleep to Alicia’s lulled breathing.
*
The wedding is really, well, as about as respectable as it can be with a man with no supposed identity and a woman working at a burlesque house during the night times, swooping around cat calls and serving over priced wine in grimy glasses who have been sharing a room together for the last eighteen months without the smallest of traces of commitment until recently.
Not that her parents know that, of course.
In the back of his mind, Mikey swallows down PetePetePete and tries to submerge the thoughts with smiles and white gowns and newly found relatives. Music plays somewhere in the background, silhouetted by the atmosphere, the steady encore of voices and guests.
It’s been eighteen months. Mikey has tried (and failed) to grow stubble, worn five new suits since then, been with Alicia for sixteen with them.
Eighteen eighteen eighteen.
It’s a big number. He can be excused for this, he thinks, because perhaps he'll just have to accept that he's never going to get home. Time and destiny and fate and whatever gods there are up there don't want him to go back to his time zone.
He is not sleeping round with the past.
He is not. He is not. He is not.
Mikey smiles and it seems perhaps more forced then the rest of this. He drains his drink and submerges himself back into the voices, allows his mind to switch off a little, thoughts fall away with the wine that he drinks, glass after glass of red and white and red until the colours mesh together, form one continuous row and suddenly thoughts don't hurt so much. He prefers it this way.
*
(And there are moments when Mikey dreams in such vivid color, so strong and immersed into the vibrancy it's as if his whole life has been a black and white movie, and this is all so new to him, he forgets where he is and where he's been and suddenly he's in places he's never been before. Or perhaps he has visited them before, but the memories seem distant, as if he's never actually been there, just seen the photos of himself in front of locations, hazy and unclear backgrounds, but he can't recall when.
It’s hot and the sun is hostile against his bare shoulders. The dusty air is scolding, uninviting, and it scratches at his skin bitterly with the isolation it presses on him. The sand beneath him is too orange, too red, too yellow, and it whips at his naked legs as he walks along down the side of the empty road. It’s too exposed here, in clear view for everyone and no one here to see it.
A car skids past, wheels rolling dust into the empty air, large and over towering. It casts no shadow against the ground. A darkened window rolls down an inch or two, and then halts in its movement, beckoning Mikey forwards with its sudden coma. Mikey scurries two steps forwards, balancing on tip toes and peering inside of the vehicle.
He is suddenly overwhelmed with a chorus of words, one single voice chanting and chanting, but multiplied, saying different sentences, tripping over itself.
" I want to fix this --
-- I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry --
-- I just don't know how to."
He knows that voice. He knows it like the hands that have traced every contour of his body, grown accustomed to every inch of him, knows it like those eyes and that smile and suddenly the familiarity is a burden, too much too much.
"Pete?" he asks gently, cautiously, and his voice almost cracks with the tension even with that single syllable.
There’s a split moment, a crack in the exterior, and Mikey is so sure he can see Pete's eyes, so so sure, and his stomach lurches at the familiarity, his heart singing and singing until all he can hear is its words, muffled beneath his ribcage.
The window rolls back up and the car leaves a trail of thick dusty air behind it.)
*
The air when Mikey wakes up is too cool, as if it had just moments before been too hot, and now it hasn't really grown accustomed to the change.
He is in his bed, his apartment.
He has no idea what date it is today.
He checks the blearing alarm clock beside him and the red smears in with the night air, just clear enough that Mikey can make out a rough 4:32.
"Huh." He grunts, voice deepened with sleep and he manages to push himself into the upright position, ringing ricocheting around the bedroom (it seems oddly unfamiliar now, these surroundings, not his anymore) and his body attempting to disobey every action his mind commands it to do, too sore to work properly.
And then it dawns on him, sudden and intense as he realises.
No more burlesque house, no more Bob, no more Alicia. The ache that grows in his chest is inordinately intense, and he has to settle back into the bed, close his eyes, try to make it hurt less. It’s not a relief, being back here, not even with every wish he made whilst he was back there. He wants what he can't have and his body and soul and heartache when it craves what it can't be granted.
He decides that he'll visit Pete in the morning, first thing. The clock beside him is taunting, flickering numbers inaudibly and too slow.
It’s a dreamless night.
*
When Pete opens the door the next morning, it strikes Mikey to just how much older he looks now, since he last saw him, different from each of his memories (and of course, he is, he must be older, it's been so long now). He resists the urge to lean forwards, pinch Pete's cheek and say, "my my, how you have grown!" like his aunt Christa used to do when he was younger. But he doesn't have to time to think, because Pete's hugging him then, hard and fierce and Mikey feels stupidly unstable, all fluid and no stability, beneath his touch. He leans into the contact.
"Fuck Mikey, fuck." Pete murmurs into his ear, voice more hoarse then he last remembered. Mikey wonders if his voice is any different, or perhaps it has stayed preserved over the last few years. "I searched everywhere for you, and I couldn't find you anywhere and -- "
Mikey smiles a little into Pete’s hair, and he can't help it, really, he can't, but it's all too much and Mikey craves more, needs this, more then he's ever needed anything in his whole life.
"Shut up, Pete." he laughs, and it feels strange to be using it, as if he hadn't been speaking in years and years. The sounds that leave his mouth are strangers to him. He pushes away from Pete's tight embrace, and Pete's rambling stops abruptly, instead eyes wide and curious and searching Mikey's for anything and everything and Mikey's not entirely sure what, exactly. "Let’s just. Let’s just go in, okay?" Mikey doesn't want to add the afterthought that this could quite possibly be the only time in a long time that they'll get to spend together, doesn't want to talk about what happened, not right yet, just wants to savour each of these moments. Each and every one of them.
Pete's apartment is almost no different to how it was before.
Mikey wasn't sure if he was expecting it to be (Pete was always afraid of change, too reluctant for 'new') and Pete's touch is still the same, soft and lingering and gentle against Mikey's skin, and he’d forgotten how much he missed this. He arches a little, and Pete presses desperate kisses against his neck, down his shoulder, across his forearm.
"Missed you," he murmurs between kisses, so frantic, and Mikey's heart is racing faster with every touch. "Missed you so fucking much," and he's pushing Mikey backwards into the apartment, straight into the direction of the bedroom.
Mikey wants to reply, tell Pete every single thought and every second he missed him but it's all consumed with time, rolling on and on and his thoughts are blurred and slurred with Pete's kisses and caresses and he thinks it can wait, it can definitely wait and finds Pete's lips once more.
Pete tastes of colour and time and just a little desperate, and it's everything familiar and everything Mikey once knew but all so new this time, all so unbearably alien and he is desperate to remember every movement, every sound.
He clings a little closer, so that there is no part of him that is not touching Pete, not one piece that isn't drowning in this, washing over him in seconds and minutes and time doesn't seem to have any substance now, not anymore.
The next morning comes too soon now, it seems, but Pete is still there, Mikey is still there, nothing has changed and everything is new and it's all ok. Mikey can breathe again.
He rolls the sheets off of him, settling them over onto Pete's side on his still form, and climbs out of bed with slow, unsteady movements. The light is overbearing and his eyes are unaccustomed to them, being shut for so long, as if months and months have passed away in dreams and he never really saw the light before this. He sits perched on the edge of the mattress, watching the air twist and turn, the sun rise steadily through the open window where they forgot to close the blinds the day before.
His heartbeat calms, descending to what seems like the first regular pace in years. He traces out invisible lines on his thighs with his fingertips, sketching out words that erase themselves as soon as he's brought them into existence, too short-lived to survive in this world. He writes pastpresentfuturehim and the letters curl around themselves until there's nothing there again.
He’s not sure how long it is exactly between the moment he wakes up to the moment where he feels hot breath steadied against the side of his neck, and when he turns he finds Pete smiling a little sheepishly, eyes dull with sleep induced fatigue.
"Morning, tiger," Pete murmurs, and Mikey can't help but laugh softly. In that moment, with the faint morning light casting the room and Pete inside it softer, as if the outlines of them have been blurred so that the contrast between the air and them has hardly any difference, he doesn't want to talk about Alicia or Pete's possible one night stands whilst he was away or more or about Bob and his burlesque house with the stained glasses, not right now.
He leans backwards to rest his head against Pete's shoulder, facing the ceiling until all he can see is the faint imperfections of the white surface above him. It feels almost claustrophobic, as if with every second longer he stares up at it descends just a little closer to him, being beckoned subconsciously and unwillingly, and Mikey's head is swimming, but not quite drowning. Just laying on the surface of the water, body flat and floating until he’s suspended in the pale blue. Blissful.
Somewhere, in the back of Mikey’s mind, he can almost hear a clock ticking, counting down in fractions of lives and seconds and days. It’s continuous and loud and lingers in the shadows of his mind, right where he can’t quite grasp it, wrap his fingers around it and flatten out the sound until it’s too obscure to make out properly.
He presses closer to Pete and tries to drown it out.