Fic: "Heads Up, Hearts Down" (bandom)
This was supposed to be for 
getmikeylaid, but I am a failbot of the highest order. The prompt was Pete/Mikey, soulbond, and
green, who is possibly evil, suggested a high-school AU on top of that when I whined at her about being stuck.
Somehow that actually worked.
So, yes. High-school AU with soulbonds. Title from I Fight Dragons. Thanks to
sionnain and
romanticalgirl for reading this over at various points.
High school sucked before Pete Wentz, and Mikey's pretty sure it would have continued to suck without him, but there is a special elevated level of suck to be considered with the situation as it is. He can't get Pete out of his head.
Literally.
**
It starts the second week of school, with Mikey standing outside in the rain, trying to retrieve his backpack from a tree. There's no good reason for his backpack to be up there, but there are a lot of fucking annoying, stupid reasons, and since high school politics are fucking annoying and stupid enough on their own...well. In the tree it is.
His hair is plastered down over his face, his t-shirt is soaked through, and he's just about ready to give the whole thing up and walk home without it when he gets hit from behind by the soccer team.
Not by a soccer ball. By the team, as they stampede down the sidewalk for a conditioning run or whatever the fuck people who engaged in physical activities for fun called it.
The third or fourth guy who hits him with his shoulder as he passes actually looks back and yells "Sorry!" Mikey looks at him with pure, absolute loathing.
When their eyes meet it feels like somebody hit Mikey in the back of the head with a two-by-four.
He doesn't really have time to sort that out, though, because just then Saporta comes out of the building with his crew of ridiculously tall people and says "Mikey Way, what are you doing standing under a fucking tree in a storm? You're asking for it, man," rescues his backpack, and gives him a ride home.
He has a headache for the next three days.
**
On Friday, he sees Running Soccer Guy again, and learns his name, because the team is doing some kind of shirts and skins drill when Mikey walks past the field and the coach has a lot of opinions about a shot that Pete misses at that particular moment.
That weekend he has a lot of weird, intense dreams that he can't really remember in the morning, except that they featured a lot of naked skin, his and someone else's, and that someone else was faceless but definitely not handless, or lacking in other departments, no.
**
On Monday, he sits down in the cafeteria, looks at his tray, and realized that instead of mac 'n cheese, he has six individual cups of Jello.
Mikey's pretty sure he still hates Jello. He always did before, anyway.
He looks around the cafeteria and sees that there was one other tray in the room entirely occupied by green Jello cups. The one in front of Soccer Guy, Pete, who looks absolutely ecstatic about what he is about to consume.
That's when Mikey begins to suspect he might be in trouble. Just a hunch.
**
Mikey doesn't have access to a library of mystical tomes or anything--this isn't Buffy, as much as he keeps hoping--but he does have the combined libraries of the Friday night D&D group that meets in his basement. All of the relevant genre fiction he can shake a bottle of Boone's Farm at.
Consulting the books leads pretty firmly to a conclusion of "soulbond." Which has about six different definitions, from what he can tell, and an equal number of resolutions ranging from death to being broken upon consummation.
That kind of lingers in his head, he has to admit. The one with consummation. Especially since the dreams aren't showing any signs of easing up, and in fact are getting more intense with every detail he's been able to gain by watching Pete out of the corner of his eye in the cafeteria. And the hallways. And when he lingered around the soccer fields or outside the locker rooms before walking home after school.
"You're turning into quite the stalker, Mikey Way," Saporta tells him one afternoon, after a month of this, when the ridiculously tall crew has dragged him away from the locker room door and carried him off to the nearest McDonalds.
Mikey just shrugged and bought everyone a round of chicken nuggets, which he stupidly thought would distract them into forgetting the whole thing.
**
He didn't know that Ryland was Pete's chem lab partner. Sneaky, tall bastards.
Pete sits down across from him in the cafeteria a few days later, setting his try down with an energetic crash. "So. You're Mikey."
Mikey looks up from his math book and pushes his glasses up. "Yeah."
"I'm Pete."
"I know that."
"Oh. Cool." Pete is apparently giving the stroganoff a try today. Mikey could've told him that was a bad idea, but he's been bringing his own lunch ever since the Jello incident in an attempt to avoid the most visible weirdness. "So, Ryland told me you're stalking me."
Mikey looks over at the far corner of the room, where Ryland and Saporta are giving him matching idiot grins and miming a high five. He hates everything about this school. "Ryland's misinformed."
"See, I don't think he is." Pete digs at his stroganoff for a minute, then pokes Mikey in the hand with his fork. "I think you've got the same thing going on about me that I've got going on about you."
Mikey swallows hard and crumples his lunchbag. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"I can't stop listening to the Misfits."
"So you have good taste in music."
"This is sudden-onset good taste, though." Pete's staring at him all intensely. It makes Mikey want to fidget, or maybe blush, and both of those impulses make him want to be somewhere else. "I also can't stop thinking about licking you right...there."
Thank God Pete points to the spot on his own neck, not Mikey's. It still makes him jerk back in his seat, because licking and right there feature prominently in the dreams he's been having, very prominently, oh goddamn it.
"I wish you would stop making me dream about running," he says.
Pete takes a sip of his drink and shrugs. "I don't mind if you keep making me dream about dragons."
Mikey watches him for a minute, frowning slightly. "This is weird."
"Not that weird."
"It's pretty fucking weird, dude."
"Okay, yeah." Pete shrugs again and grins. "But shared weird is better than being weird alone."
**
Mikey knows that Pete intended that lunch as a moment, a dramatic gesture. He appreciates the impulse, but he also really, really hates the feeling that things are out of his control. If other people or weird supernatural forces are going to steer his life, they're going to have to work for it.
He starts eating his lunch in the library, and getting detention a few times a week to keep himself away from the soccer field and the locker-room door. The only way to dodge the dreams is to stay awake as much as possible. Horror movies and the trashy genre fiction library plus coffee to push himself through the day work all right, even if a headache does take up residence behind his eyes and never leaves. He makes his own choices, damn it. And if his choices leave him in pain and with a slowly-growing hysterical fear that the world is going to be destroyed by tentacled space aliens armed with lasers, well, that's his own business.
It isn't even 100% effective. He still finds himself lingering at the senior lockers, or taking the route to the library that goes past the English classes, where he can hear Pete's loud laugh even through the door.
Not to mention that when he does slip up and fall asleep, the dreams are constant. And detailed. Holy hell.
The ridiculously tall crew is openly taking bets on the whole situation, both when Mikey will end up going out with Pete, and when he'll have a psychotic break, with William holding out for the two things being simultaneous. Mikey finds the whole thing more than a little tacky. It's their fault this is so awkward anyway. Mikey tries to avoid them, too. He keeps adding to his list of things to avoid until honestly what he wishes he was doing is just hiding in his bedroom with his head under the pillow.
And his hand down his pants, because lack of sleep is making his dreams spill over into the day until all he can think about half the time is Pete, Pete's skin and how it would feel under his hands, how it would taste, what it would be like to hold Pete down and just lick him all over, lick and suck and taste until Pete flipped them over and straddled Mikey's hips, pinning him and grinning down and saying my turn with his eyes all alight and--
Mikey is not letting this take over his life, but goddamn it, it wants to.
**
"We need to talk."
Mikey refuses to look up from his lunch, even though every nerve ending in his body is screaming at Pete's proximity. He feels like he's on fire. "No, we don't."
"Isn't it killing you?"
Mikey bites down on his tongue and takes a breath before he answers. "You're very dramatic."
"Everybody says that." Pete circles around him and Mikey fights not to shiver. Pete's moving like a predator, but Mikey isn't scared.
He's kind of desperate to be caught.
"It aches," Pete whispers, suddenly really close, right there in Mikey's ear. Mikey looks up despite himself, meeting Pete's eyes. They're fever-bright and frantic, a hunger in them that Mikey recognizes because it's gnawing on him, too.
"Don't you feel it?" Pete asks, an edge of desperation in his voice. "Seriously, don't you?"
"Yes."
"I knew it." Pete grabs the edge of the table, holding on until his knuckles turn pale. "I knew you did."
"But I'm not going to do anything because you tell me to, or because I feel like I have to." Mikey takes a drink, closing his eyes tight and fighting the desire to lean into Pete's body. No. "I don't have to do anything."
Pete doesn't move an inch. He's still so close, close enough that Mikey can feel his breath hot on his neck. "Maybe you would like me if you got to know me."
Mikey swallows, his eyes opening without conscious effort, his head turning on its own to look at Pete. "I do know you." He has Pete's dreams, for fuck's sake. He knows him like a shadow self.
"And?"
"I do like you."
He sees the flash of irritation cross Pete's face just ahead of the small smile, can almost hear him snap then what's the problem?, but instead Pete catches himself, takes a breath, and reaches out to brush his fingers lightly along Mikey's jaw. "Stubborn."
Mikey shrugs. "I guess."
Pete leans in slowly, but Mikey feels like he doesn't have time to pull away before Pete's mouth is pressed to his. The contact sends a shock through Mikey's whole body, white light going off behind his eyes, and he moans a little, lost before he even stood a chance while Pete licks into his mouth, warm and determined.
"There's stubborn and then there's stupid," Pete says a few minutes later, his lips soft against Mikey's chin.
Mikey laughs, the sound raw and breathless, but before he can answer, the bell rings and the librarian starts calling for everyone to go to class. Pete slips away from him, his hand catching Mikey's own and squeezing fast and light before he's gone.
**
Mikey takes the rest of the week off. He tells his mom he thinks he has mono. She informs him that he has grounded, due to way too much detention, but brushes her thumb over the dark circles under his eyes and says that if a few days of sleep will straighten his head out, he can have them.
Sticking his head under the pillow doesn't help, it turns out, but it doesn't hurt any worse, either.
Friday night his parents go out of town, and Mikey moves from his bed to the couch, staring blankly at Wheel of Fortune until someone knocks on the door. He peers out the window and sees the tall crew, all wearing suits, looking like a convention of undertakers. No way in hell is he opening the door for that.
"Suarez will pick the lock," Gabe informs him through the glass. "It's a very old lock. Open the door, Way. We're taking you to Homecoming."
Mikey cannot imagine anything more horrifying than that idea. But he knows exactly how futile it is to expect Gabe to take no for an answer.
"I don't have a suit," he says once he's opened the door and they're all crowded much too tightly in the entryway.
"Don't worry," Travis says, flashing a wide grin. "We'll make you look good. We can work with what we've got."
"Makeover time." Gabe rubs his hands together. "Get him, guys."
After a combined raid on his own, Gerard's, and their dad's closets, and a forcible shower that he's not entirely sure he enjoyed, Mikey finds himself in khakis, an untucked black button-down, and a red tie, with his hair slicked back in some kind of built-up structure that's 85% hairspray, 10% straightening iron, and tucked under his glasses on the sides.
"Hot," Gabe declares. "When the big group dance number breaks out, you're going to be the star."
**
Mikey is not the star. Mikey is vastly and epically uncomfortable, until the contents of the various flasks going around the group start to kick in.
"All right, Cinderella," Gabe says, holding the back of Mikey's collar and looking around the gym. "Where's your prince?"
Mikey sticks his hand out blindly until someone puts another flask in it. "He's probably not even here. You should've saved your makeover and kidnapping routine for him."
"You got in the car willingly." Gabe squints against the dim light and terrible atmosphere. "And I know he's here somewhere. They're doing a whole honoring the fall sports...thing, and he has to at least show up for that."
"And then what's your plan?"
"We're pretty much winging it from here on out."
That is not at all a surprise. Mikey takes a drink. "I can wing it on my own." He tucks the flask in his pocket and straightens Gabe's tie. "See you guys later. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
He wanders through the dance for an hour or so, sipping his way through the really cheap gin and waiting for the flare-up inside his head and under his skin that would mean Pete is nearby. He can't tell if he just keeps being in the wrong place at the wrong time or if Pete isn't here at all, meaning that he's wasting his time and wearing his brother's pants for no reason. There is not enough cheap gin in the world. He really should have fought harder and just stayed home.
The more he thinks about it, and drinks, and makes slow pointless laps around the gym, the more pissed off he gets. By the time he kills the flask and physically crashes into Pete and the rest of the soccer team, his chest is tight with something that it takes another minute to identify as belligerence.
"Mikey." Pete's face lights up, and so does the inside of Mikey's head. "Hey! I didn't expect to see you here. I thought you were sick or something. You weren't in the library or any of your classes."
Mikey licks his lips and steps closer. Pete grabs his arm, either because he can't help himself or to stop Mikey from falling forward, it's hard to say.
"I need to talk to you," Mikey says, and Pete's smile fades. He glances into the gym, then over his shoulder at the rest of the team, and Mikey belatedly realizes that they must be waiting to go out for their being-honored thing. That would explain why they were all wearing their jerseys.
Pete squeezes his arm lightly. "Can you give me like fifteen minutes?"
Mikey frowns and reaches for the flask again, remembering a moment too late that it's empty. He's drunk and hot and lightheaded and uncomfortable in these stupid clothes. "Give me your keys."
"I'm pretty sure you shouldn't drive, dude."
"I'm not going anywhere. I'll just wait in the car."
Pete looks skeptical, which makes Mikey want to punch him in the face. But that's probably the gin talking, because he also wants to lick his face, and his everything else, and he is really fucking off his game here, in so many ways.
"Okay," Pete says finally, tossing the keys over. "But seriously, don't go anywhere. I'll be out as soon as I can."
It's cooler in the parking lot; cold, actually. He's shivering by the time he finds Pete's car, which takes for goddamn ever because he didn't ask where it was parked in the first place and has to wander up and down the rows twice before he recognizes it. He unlocks the back door and stretches out across the seat, his feet dangling out above the pavement.
It's quiet out here, too, and he swallows against the sound of his heart thudding in his ears. The car is spinning slowly, or maybe the universe is. Maybe the tentacle aliens have finally showed up. Oh, God. He licks the echo of the gin off his lips and sternly tells himself to calm the fuck down.
He feels like his skin is too tight, like he's about to burst at the seams. This is it. This has to be it.
"Mikey?" Pete's standing just past his knees, holding the car door in one hand and frowning. "Are you okay?"
"What do you think?" It's a smartass answer, but he's still all hot and tight with belligerence, underneath and alongside this other weirdness, the buzzing tension and ever-growing feeling of impending something.
"You avoid me like crazy for weeks and now you want to talk. And hang out in my car. And you're drunk at school. And you're wearing khaki. And you...feel weird in my head. And you're looking at me like you kind of want to bite me."
"No biting."
"Okay, but the rest of it."
"Here's the thing." Mikey sits up slowly, pointing at Pete with a finger that doesn't shake quite as much as he expects, given the lack of sleep and the gin situation. "I don't like being told what to do."
"Yeah, you've mentioned that."
"I've got this thing in my head for you, and I've got Saporta's guys playing dress-up with me and dragging me out here, and you, I've got you telling me I've gotta do this, I've gotta do it for you."
Pete sighs and looks away, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I'm sorry? I didn't really ask for this either, you know."
"So I'm going to do one fucking thing just for me. Because I want to. Not for any of you people, and I want you to know that before I do it."
"Okay," Pete says, still looking out across the parking lot.
"Acknowledge it. Formally."
Pete rolls his eyes. "I acknowledge that whatever you're about to do, it's for purely selfish reasons. Would you like that in writing, or..."
Mikey grabs the front of Pete's jersey and yanks him forward, into the car. Pete makes a really undignified noise--it's kind of a squawk--but Mikey doesn't care, because Pete's weight lands on top of him and he can wrap his legs around Pete's thighs to keep him still and he can kiss him, finally, again. He can taste his mouth and stop the itching under his skin and do something with all that tension.
"Mikey," Pete gasps. "Jesus. Finally."
Mikey kind of regrets saying he wouldn't bite, because he wants to, wants to sink his teeth into Pete's flesh and taste him more, taste the heat and blood and skin. He can still hear his own heart pounding in his head, his own breath ragged and loud and mixed with Pete's, and beyond that the echo of Pete's heart, which he probably isn't hearing with his ears at all.
Weird supernatural bullshit is a whole lot less upsetting when it's happening while he's in the backseat with a hot guy. Maybe he should have been trying it this way since the beginning.
Pete gets his hand down between them, fumbling with zippers and buttons, and Mikey thrusts up into the contact without thinking or control. He just wants. What's actually happening is mixed up and crossed over in his head with what he remembers from his dreams, and Pete's dreams, and the overwhelming feeling of yes and finally and completion.
Pete gets his hand past Mikey's boxers and wrapped around him, warm and just tight enough. Mikey's hips buck up hard and he bites his lip, wanting to hold back. He can't help it, it's too much after waiting this long, and he comes hot and messy all over Pete's hand and Gerard's pants.
Pete huffs a warm sound against his mouth that isn't quite a laugh--had better not be a laugh--and then kisses him again, deep and fierce like he's starving. He thrusts down against Mikey's thigh, and Mikey tightens his hands on Pete's hips, holding him down tight until Pete shudders and comes as well, gasping Mikey's name.
They lie there for a few minutes, slowly becoming aware of the distant noise spilling out of the dance, the awkward way they're contorted against the seat, and that it is pretty fucking cold. The windows are thick with steam, making Mikey want to write his name in it. Or maybe just Way was here, or a smiley face or the Batsignal. Something.
But Pete is heavy on top of him and he really doesn't want him to move. Maybe ever.
The bond is still there; he can feel it, but it doesn't hurt anymore. It's not driving him crazy or itching in his veins. It's still humming away under his skin, but contentedly. Things are good. He did what he was supposed to do, apparently.
He'll go back to having issues with that in the morning.
"We should probably move," Pete says, his breath tickling Mikey's neck. "Before someone comes out here and finds us with our pants down and starts taking pictures."
Mikey lets him up slowly, his hands lingering against Pete for as long as he can manage. "Now what?"
Pete zips up and shrugs. "You want to go to the dance?"
"Absolutely fucking not."
"Okay, then." Pete grins a little and runs his hand through his hair. "Um...I don't know, what do you want to do?"
Mikey squirms around to get his pants back on, frowning at the wet spot. "Sleep, mostly."
"You want me to take you home?"
"Only if you're going to stay the night."
Pete smiles, slow and wide. "Yeah. Definitely."
Mikey smiles back and gets out of the car, stretching slowly and looking out across the lot. "Should we tell Gabe and the guys?"
"No way." Pete catches Mikey's hand and squeezes. "Don't give them the satisfaction."
**
Mikey falls asleep before they're even out of the parking lot. He dreams about tentacle aliens fighting soccer-playing dragons.
It's awesome.
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comments. Comment there or here, as you like!
getmikeylaid, but I am a failbot of the highest order. The prompt was Pete/Mikey, soulbond, and
green, who is possibly evil, suggested a high-school AU on top of that when I whined at her about being stuck.
Somehow that actually worked.
So, yes. High-school AU with soulbonds. Title from I Fight Dragons. Thanks to
sionnain and
romanticalgirl for reading this over at various points.
High school sucked before Pete Wentz, and Mikey's pretty sure it would have continued to suck without him, but there is a special elevated level of suck to be considered with the situation as it is. He can't get Pete out of his head.
Literally.
**
It starts the second week of school, with Mikey standing outside in the rain, trying to retrieve his backpack from a tree. There's no good reason for his backpack to be up there, but there are a lot of fucking annoying, stupid reasons, and since high school politics are fucking annoying and stupid enough on their own...well. In the tree it is.
His hair is plastered down over his face, his t-shirt is soaked through, and he's just about ready to give the whole thing up and walk home without it when he gets hit from behind by the soccer team.
Not by a soccer ball. By the team, as they stampede down the sidewalk for a conditioning run or whatever the fuck people who engaged in physical activities for fun called it.
The third or fourth guy who hits him with his shoulder as he passes actually looks back and yells "Sorry!" Mikey looks at him with pure, absolute loathing.
When their eyes meet it feels like somebody hit Mikey in the back of the head with a two-by-four.
He doesn't really have time to sort that out, though, because just then Saporta comes out of the building with his crew of ridiculously tall people and says "Mikey Way, what are you doing standing under a fucking tree in a storm? You're asking for it, man," rescues his backpack, and gives him a ride home.
He has a headache for the next three days.
**
On Friday, he sees Running Soccer Guy again, and learns his name, because the team is doing some kind of shirts and skins drill when Mikey walks past the field and the coach has a lot of opinions about a shot that Pete misses at that particular moment.
That weekend he has a lot of weird, intense dreams that he can't really remember in the morning, except that they featured a lot of naked skin, his and someone else's, and that someone else was faceless but definitely not handless, or lacking in other departments, no.
**
On Monday, he sits down in the cafeteria, looks at his tray, and realized that instead of mac 'n cheese, he has six individual cups of Jello.
Mikey's pretty sure he still hates Jello. He always did before, anyway.
He looks around the cafeteria and sees that there was one other tray in the room entirely occupied by green Jello cups. The one in front of Soccer Guy, Pete, who looks absolutely ecstatic about what he is about to consume.
That's when Mikey begins to suspect he might be in trouble. Just a hunch.
**
Mikey doesn't have access to a library of mystical tomes or anything--this isn't Buffy, as much as he keeps hoping--but he does have the combined libraries of the Friday night D&D group that meets in his basement. All of the relevant genre fiction he can shake a bottle of Boone's Farm at.
Consulting the books leads pretty firmly to a conclusion of "soulbond." Which has about six different definitions, from what he can tell, and an equal number of resolutions ranging from death to being broken upon consummation.
That kind of lingers in his head, he has to admit. The one with consummation. Especially since the dreams aren't showing any signs of easing up, and in fact are getting more intense with every detail he's been able to gain by watching Pete out of the corner of his eye in the cafeteria. And the hallways. And when he lingered around the soccer fields or outside the locker rooms before walking home after school.
"You're turning into quite the stalker, Mikey Way," Saporta tells him one afternoon, after a month of this, when the ridiculously tall crew has dragged him away from the locker room door and carried him off to the nearest McDonalds.
Mikey just shrugged and bought everyone a round of chicken nuggets, which he stupidly thought would distract them into forgetting the whole thing.
**
He didn't know that Ryland was Pete's chem lab partner. Sneaky, tall bastards.
Pete sits down across from him in the cafeteria a few days later, setting his try down with an energetic crash. "So. You're Mikey."
Mikey looks up from his math book and pushes his glasses up. "Yeah."
"I'm Pete."
"I know that."
"Oh. Cool." Pete is apparently giving the stroganoff a try today. Mikey could've told him that was a bad idea, but he's been bringing his own lunch ever since the Jello incident in an attempt to avoid the most visible weirdness. "So, Ryland told me you're stalking me."
Mikey looks over at the far corner of the room, where Ryland and Saporta are giving him matching idiot grins and miming a high five. He hates everything about this school. "Ryland's misinformed."
"See, I don't think he is." Pete digs at his stroganoff for a minute, then pokes Mikey in the hand with his fork. "I think you've got the same thing going on about me that I've got going on about you."
Mikey swallows hard and crumples his lunchbag. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"I can't stop listening to the Misfits."
"So you have good taste in music."
"This is sudden-onset good taste, though." Pete's staring at him all intensely. It makes Mikey want to fidget, or maybe blush, and both of those impulses make him want to be somewhere else. "I also can't stop thinking about licking you right...there."
Thank God Pete points to the spot on his own neck, not Mikey's. It still makes him jerk back in his seat, because licking and right there feature prominently in the dreams he's been having, very prominently, oh goddamn it.
"I wish you would stop making me dream about running," he says.
Pete takes a sip of his drink and shrugs. "I don't mind if you keep making me dream about dragons."
Mikey watches him for a minute, frowning slightly. "This is weird."
"Not that weird."
"It's pretty fucking weird, dude."
"Okay, yeah." Pete shrugs again and grins. "But shared weird is better than being weird alone."
**
Mikey knows that Pete intended that lunch as a moment, a dramatic gesture. He appreciates the impulse, but he also really, really hates the feeling that things are out of his control. If other people or weird supernatural forces are going to steer his life, they're going to have to work for it.
He starts eating his lunch in the library, and getting detention a few times a week to keep himself away from the soccer field and the locker-room door. The only way to dodge the dreams is to stay awake as much as possible. Horror movies and the trashy genre fiction library plus coffee to push himself through the day work all right, even if a headache does take up residence behind his eyes and never leaves. He makes his own choices, damn it. And if his choices leave him in pain and with a slowly-growing hysterical fear that the world is going to be destroyed by tentacled space aliens armed with lasers, well, that's his own business.
It isn't even 100% effective. He still finds himself lingering at the senior lockers, or taking the route to the library that goes past the English classes, where he can hear Pete's loud laugh even through the door.
Not to mention that when he does slip up and fall asleep, the dreams are constant. And detailed. Holy hell.
The ridiculously tall crew is openly taking bets on the whole situation, both when Mikey will end up going out with Pete, and when he'll have a psychotic break, with William holding out for the two things being simultaneous. Mikey finds the whole thing more than a little tacky. It's their fault this is so awkward anyway. Mikey tries to avoid them, too. He keeps adding to his list of things to avoid until honestly what he wishes he was doing is just hiding in his bedroom with his head under the pillow.
And his hand down his pants, because lack of sleep is making his dreams spill over into the day until all he can think about half the time is Pete, Pete's skin and how it would feel under his hands, how it would taste, what it would be like to hold Pete down and just lick him all over, lick and suck and taste until Pete flipped them over and straddled Mikey's hips, pinning him and grinning down and saying my turn with his eyes all alight and--
Mikey is not letting this take over his life, but goddamn it, it wants to.
**
"We need to talk."
Mikey refuses to look up from his lunch, even though every nerve ending in his body is screaming at Pete's proximity. He feels like he's on fire. "No, we don't."
"Isn't it killing you?"
Mikey bites down on his tongue and takes a breath before he answers. "You're very dramatic."
"Everybody says that." Pete circles around him and Mikey fights not to shiver. Pete's moving like a predator, but Mikey isn't scared.
He's kind of desperate to be caught.
"It aches," Pete whispers, suddenly really close, right there in Mikey's ear. Mikey looks up despite himself, meeting Pete's eyes. They're fever-bright and frantic, a hunger in them that Mikey recognizes because it's gnawing on him, too.
"Don't you feel it?" Pete asks, an edge of desperation in his voice. "Seriously, don't you?"
"Yes."
"I knew it." Pete grabs the edge of the table, holding on until his knuckles turn pale. "I knew you did."
"But I'm not going to do anything because you tell me to, or because I feel like I have to." Mikey takes a drink, closing his eyes tight and fighting the desire to lean into Pete's body. No. "I don't have to do anything."
Pete doesn't move an inch. He's still so close, close enough that Mikey can feel his breath hot on his neck. "Maybe you would like me if you got to know me."
Mikey swallows, his eyes opening without conscious effort, his head turning on its own to look at Pete. "I do know you." He has Pete's dreams, for fuck's sake. He knows him like a shadow self.
"And?"
"I do like you."
He sees the flash of irritation cross Pete's face just ahead of the small smile, can almost hear him snap then what's the problem?, but instead Pete catches himself, takes a breath, and reaches out to brush his fingers lightly along Mikey's jaw. "Stubborn."
Mikey shrugs. "I guess."
Pete leans in slowly, but Mikey feels like he doesn't have time to pull away before Pete's mouth is pressed to his. The contact sends a shock through Mikey's whole body, white light going off behind his eyes, and he moans a little, lost before he even stood a chance while Pete licks into his mouth, warm and determined.
"There's stubborn and then there's stupid," Pete says a few minutes later, his lips soft against Mikey's chin.
Mikey laughs, the sound raw and breathless, but before he can answer, the bell rings and the librarian starts calling for everyone to go to class. Pete slips away from him, his hand catching Mikey's own and squeezing fast and light before he's gone.
**
Mikey takes the rest of the week off. He tells his mom he thinks he has mono. She informs him that he has grounded, due to way too much detention, but brushes her thumb over the dark circles under his eyes and says that if a few days of sleep will straighten his head out, he can have them.
Sticking his head under the pillow doesn't help, it turns out, but it doesn't hurt any worse, either.
Friday night his parents go out of town, and Mikey moves from his bed to the couch, staring blankly at Wheel of Fortune until someone knocks on the door. He peers out the window and sees the tall crew, all wearing suits, looking like a convention of undertakers. No way in hell is he opening the door for that.
"Suarez will pick the lock," Gabe informs him through the glass. "It's a very old lock. Open the door, Way. We're taking you to Homecoming."
Mikey cannot imagine anything more horrifying than that idea. But he knows exactly how futile it is to expect Gabe to take no for an answer.
"I don't have a suit," he says once he's opened the door and they're all crowded much too tightly in the entryway.
"Don't worry," Travis says, flashing a wide grin. "We'll make you look good. We can work with what we've got."
"Makeover time." Gabe rubs his hands together. "Get him, guys."
After a combined raid on his own, Gerard's, and their dad's closets, and a forcible shower that he's not entirely sure he enjoyed, Mikey finds himself in khakis, an untucked black button-down, and a red tie, with his hair slicked back in some kind of built-up structure that's 85% hairspray, 10% straightening iron, and tucked under his glasses on the sides.
"Hot," Gabe declares. "When the big group dance number breaks out, you're going to be the star."
**
Mikey is not the star. Mikey is vastly and epically uncomfortable, until the contents of the various flasks going around the group start to kick in.
"All right, Cinderella," Gabe says, holding the back of Mikey's collar and looking around the gym. "Where's your prince?"
Mikey sticks his hand out blindly until someone puts another flask in it. "He's probably not even here. You should've saved your makeover and kidnapping routine for him."
"You got in the car willingly." Gabe squints against the dim light and terrible atmosphere. "And I know he's here somewhere. They're doing a whole honoring the fall sports...thing, and he has to at least show up for that."
"And then what's your plan?"
"We're pretty much winging it from here on out."
That is not at all a surprise. Mikey takes a drink. "I can wing it on my own." He tucks the flask in his pocket and straightens Gabe's tie. "See you guys later. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
He wanders through the dance for an hour or so, sipping his way through the really cheap gin and waiting for the flare-up inside his head and under his skin that would mean Pete is nearby. He can't tell if he just keeps being in the wrong place at the wrong time or if Pete isn't here at all, meaning that he's wasting his time and wearing his brother's pants for no reason. There is not enough cheap gin in the world. He really should have fought harder and just stayed home.
The more he thinks about it, and drinks, and makes slow pointless laps around the gym, the more pissed off he gets. By the time he kills the flask and physically crashes into Pete and the rest of the soccer team, his chest is tight with something that it takes another minute to identify as belligerence.
"Mikey." Pete's face lights up, and so does the inside of Mikey's head. "Hey! I didn't expect to see you here. I thought you were sick or something. You weren't in the library or any of your classes."
Mikey licks his lips and steps closer. Pete grabs his arm, either because he can't help himself or to stop Mikey from falling forward, it's hard to say.
"I need to talk to you," Mikey says, and Pete's smile fades. He glances into the gym, then over his shoulder at the rest of the team, and Mikey belatedly realizes that they must be waiting to go out for their being-honored thing. That would explain why they were all wearing their jerseys.
Pete squeezes his arm lightly. "Can you give me like fifteen minutes?"
Mikey frowns and reaches for the flask again, remembering a moment too late that it's empty. He's drunk and hot and lightheaded and uncomfortable in these stupid clothes. "Give me your keys."
"I'm pretty sure you shouldn't drive, dude."
"I'm not going anywhere. I'll just wait in the car."
Pete looks skeptical, which makes Mikey want to punch him in the face. But that's probably the gin talking, because he also wants to lick his face, and his everything else, and he is really fucking off his game here, in so many ways.
"Okay," Pete says finally, tossing the keys over. "But seriously, don't go anywhere. I'll be out as soon as I can."
It's cooler in the parking lot; cold, actually. He's shivering by the time he finds Pete's car, which takes for goddamn ever because he didn't ask where it was parked in the first place and has to wander up and down the rows twice before he recognizes it. He unlocks the back door and stretches out across the seat, his feet dangling out above the pavement.
It's quiet out here, too, and he swallows against the sound of his heart thudding in his ears. The car is spinning slowly, or maybe the universe is. Maybe the tentacle aliens have finally showed up. Oh, God. He licks the echo of the gin off his lips and sternly tells himself to calm the fuck down.
He feels like his skin is too tight, like he's about to burst at the seams. This is it. This has to be it.
"Mikey?" Pete's standing just past his knees, holding the car door in one hand and frowning. "Are you okay?"
"What do you think?" It's a smartass answer, but he's still all hot and tight with belligerence, underneath and alongside this other weirdness, the buzzing tension and ever-growing feeling of impending something.
"You avoid me like crazy for weeks and now you want to talk. And hang out in my car. And you're drunk at school. And you're wearing khaki. And you...feel weird in my head. And you're looking at me like you kind of want to bite me."
"No biting."
"Okay, but the rest of it."
"Here's the thing." Mikey sits up slowly, pointing at Pete with a finger that doesn't shake quite as much as he expects, given the lack of sleep and the gin situation. "I don't like being told what to do."
"Yeah, you've mentioned that."
"I've got this thing in my head for you, and I've got Saporta's guys playing dress-up with me and dragging me out here, and you, I've got you telling me I've gotta do this, I've gotta do it for you."
Pete sighs and looks away, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I'm sorry? I didn't really ask for this either, you know."
"So I'm going to do one fucking thing just for me. Because I want to. Not for any of you people, and I want you to know that before I do it."
"Okay," Pete says, still looking out across the parking lot.
"Acknowledge it. Formally."
Pete rolls his eyes. "I acknowledge that whatever you're about to do, it's for purely selfish reasons. Would you like that in writing, or..."
Mikey grabs the front of Pete's jersey and yanks him forward, into the car. Pete makes a really undignified noise--it's kind of a squawk--but Mikey doesn't care, because Pete's weight lands on top of him and he can wrap his legs around Pete's thighs to keep him still and he can kiss him, finally, again. He can taste his mouth and stop the itching under his skin and do something with all that tension.
"Mikey," Pete gasps. "Jesus. Finally."
Mikey kind of regrets saying he wouldn't bite, because he wants to, wants to sink his teeth into Pete's flesh and taste him more, taste the heat and blood and skin. He can still hear his own heart pounding in his head, his own breath ragged and loud and mixed with Pete's, and beyond that the echo of Pete's heart, which he probably isn't hearing with his ears at all.
Weird supernatural bullshit is a whole lot less upsetting when it's happening while he's in the backseat with a hot guy. Maybe he should have been trying it this way since the beginning.
Pete gets his hand down between them, fumbling with zippers and buttons, and Mikey thrusts up into the contact without thinking or control. He just wants. What's actually happening is mixed up and crossed over in his head with what he remembers from his dreams, and Pete's dreams, and the overwhelming feeling of yes and finally and completion.
Pete gets his hand past Mikey's boxers and wrapped around him, warm and just tight enough. Mikey's hips buck up hard and he bites his lip, wanting to hold back. He can't help it, it's too much after waiting this long, and he comes hot and messy all over Pete's hand and Gerard's pants.
Pete huffs a warm sound against his mouth that isn't quite a laugh--had better not be a laugh--and then kisses him again, deep and fierce like he's starving. He thrusts down against Mikey's thigh, and Mikey tightens his hands on Pete's hips, holding him down tight until Pete shudders and comes as well, gasping Mikey's name.
They lie there for a few minutes, slowly becoming aware of the distant noise spilling out of the dance, the awkward way they're contorted against the seat, and that it is pretty fucking cold. The windows are thick with steam, making Mikey want to write his name in it. Or maybe just Way was here, or a smiley face or the Batsignal. Something.
But Pete is heavy on top of him and he really doesn't want him to move. Maybe ever.
The bond is still there; he can feel it, but it doesn't hurt anymore. It's not driving him crazy or itching in his veins. It's still humming away under his skin, but contentedly. Things are good. He did what he was supposed to do, apparently.
He'll go back to having issues with that in the morning.
"We should probably move," Pete says, his breath tickling Mikey's neck. "Before someone comes out here and finds us with our pants down and starts taking pictures."
Mikey lets him up slowly, his hands lingering against Pete for as long as he can manage. "Now what?"
Pete zips up and shrugs. "You want to go to the dance?"
"Absolutely fucking not."
"Okay, then." Pete grins a little and runs his hand through his hair. "Um...I don't know, what do you want to do?"
Mikey squirms around to get his pants back on, frowning at the wet spot. "Sleep, mostly."
"You want me to take you home?"
"Only if you're going to stay the night."
Pete smiles, slow and wide. "Yeah. Definitely."
Mikey smiles back and gets out of the car, stretching slowly and looking out across the lot. "Should we tell Gabe and the guys?"
"No way." Pete catches Mikey's hand and squeezes. "Don't give them the satisfaction."
**
Mikey falls asleep before they're even out of the parking lot. He dreams about tentacle aliens fighting soccer-playing dragons.
It's awesome.
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