Fic: "you were throwing pebbles" (bandom)
Pete/Mikey, high school AU.
For pearl_o. ♥ Thanks to anoneknewmoose for beta'ing. Title from Taylor Swift. Whatever. They would totally sing Taylor Swift to each other and you know it. (Also, I again feel the need to reiterate my desire for William Beckett to cover that song. ANYWAY.)
Pete fidgeted, his hand coming up close to touching his hair and then dropping to his lap again. "How does it look?"
Mikey stepped back and tilted his head, considering. "Um."
"Is that good or bad?"
"It's..." Mikey cleared his throat and stepped back again. "It's sort of green?"
Pete frowned. "I don't think it's supposed to do that."
"No. Probably not."
Pete stood up and moved over to look in the mirror. "Well. Shit."
Mikey nodded. "What did you have in there before we put the bleach on?"
"I don't know. Stuff." Pete chewed on his lower lip and tilted his head back and forth. "Yeah, I totally can't go home like this."
"I'll go find the clippers. Sorry, dude."
"Not your fault." Pete sat down on the edge of the tub again. "And a buzzed head will look totally badass, right?"
"Um." Mikey thought about that for a minute. "Sure. Totally."
He left Pete there in the bathroom and hurried downstairs, dodging past his mom in the living room and heading for the mudroom. He was pretty sure the clippers were in the cabinet above the washing machine. Donna hadn't used them since he and Gerard both got old enough to refuse to have their hair cut at home anymore.
He climbed awkwardly up onto the washer and balanced on his knees, digging through the cabinet. "Fuck you," he muttered, "where the fuck...fucking fuck."
"Language, Michael."
He jumped, banging his head against the cabinet door. "Ow. Mom."
"What are you looking for?"
"The clippers." He rubbed the back of his head and looked over at her just in time to catch the slow raise of an eyebrow. "We sort of messed up Pete's hair."
"Doing what?"
Mikey shrugged and poked through the cabinet some more. "He wanted to try blond."
She sighed and shook her head. "They're in the back, there. Am I going to get a phone call from his parents about this?"
"Probably not?" He found them and slid down off the washer, catching himself with his hands and attempting a push-up that totally failed. "I mean, you've never gotten a call about anything else."
"True." She walked back to the living room and Mikey followed, unwinding the cord from the clippers. "Is he going to stay for dinner?"
"I think so."
"I'm making hamburgers."
"Cool."
She picked up her cigarette from the ashtray and blew a puff of smoke at him. "I only mention it because if I remember right, last time he was here he was a vegetarian."
The vegetarian phase was more like two months ago, not the last time Pete was over, but Mikey couldn't fault his mom for not keeping track. It was hard enough for him to keep track. "He's back on meat."
She blinked at him slowly and he willed himself not to blush. It was very important to pretend double entendres didn't happen when talking to your mom. "So I'm going to go shave his head now."
"Have fun." She picked up the remote and he booked it up the stairs, hoping Pete hadn't gotten bored and put anything else on his head.
He hadn't; he was still sitting on the edge of the tub, peeling the black nail polish off his fingers. "Mikey," he said, glancing up, "what about dreads? You think I could pull off dreads?"
"You'll have to wait until it grows back." Mikey plugged the clippers in and tested them, then stood in front of Pete, frowning a little. "What do you think is the best way to..."
"Shave it into a mohawk first. And take a picture."
Mikey curved his hand around the back of Pete's head, holding it against his stomach while he made the first pass up from the base of his skull to behind his ear. Pete sighed against him, warm and damp.
"Are your parents going to be pissed?" Mikey asked.
"Nah. They only asked me to hold off on permanent body alterations."
"Cool." Mikey kept clipping, making uneven rows and trying to ignore the way strands of Pete's hair were catching on his fingers and his clothes.
"Does it look badass?" Pete tilted his head enough to look up at Mikey and smile.
"Totally badass," Mikey said, and kissed him on the forehead.
**
Pete did go home after dinner, but Mikey left the mudroom door unlocked and propped open anyway, because it wasn't unusual for Pete to come back again in the middle of the night.
Sure enough, he was stirred awake by his door creaking open and footsteps crossing the floor. His first sleepy thought was Gerard?, before he remembered that no, Gerard was at school, and also the figure crawling into bed with him was shorter and more muscular and going directly under the covers, which Gerard never did.
"Time's it?" he asked, hiding his face under the blanket as Pete pressed up beside him and wrapped his arms around his waist.
"Two-thirty." Pete threw one leg over Mikey's and rested his head on Mikey's chest.
"You're sweaty."
"I went for a run."
"At two AM?"
"One-thirty." Pete shrugged. "Needed to burn some energy."
"Should've just come here." Mikey yawned and turned on his side, facing Pete, shifting so Pete's leg slid between his thighs. "I was still awake at one-thirty."
"I just would've made you come running with me." Mikey didn't bother to dignify that with words, just shook his head, and Pete laughed. "Running is good for you, Mikeyway."
"Only if you're being chased."
"It gives you stamina."
"I don't want stamina."
Pete laughed and kissed him, teasing his tongue past Mikey's lips. Mikey pressed closer to him, rocking his hips slowly to rub against Pete's thigh. Pete sighed and turned onto his back, tugging Mikey on top of him.
"'s too goddamn early," Mikey whispered against his mouth, which made Pete laugh again. "Shh."
"You shh." Pete arched up and pushed his boxers down off his hips, then pulled Mikey down flush against him. Mikey could feel how hot Pete was, flushed and sweaty from running. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the heat and the taste of salt, rubbing down against Pete and getting lost in how it felt half like a dream, the two of them tangled up together in the dull blue-gray of the world under his blanket.
Pete caught Mikey's hand and pressed it over his mouth when he came, burying the sound he made in Mikey's palm. Mikey just bit his own lip and kept quiet, then collapsed down against Pete, tucking his face into the curve of Pete's neck and pressing a dry kiss to his skin.
"'m going back to sleep," he mumbled. "Stay and ride to school with me?"
Pete nodded and wrapped his arms around him without a word. Mikey never asked what he told his parents about the mornings he slept over, like asking might break something and make the sleepovers end.
**
They weren't out at school, exactly. They weren't exactly closeted, either, though. Mikey's philosophy on the whole thing was that nobody had ever asked him directly, to his face. If anyone ever did, he wouldn't lie.
He didn't know if anyone had asked Pete, or what Pete would say if they did. They didn't kiss at school, but Mikey wasn't really into PDA in general and he was pretty sure Pete wasn't, either. They met at each other's lockers between classes, and they walked everywhere together as much as they could, and they sat together at lunch and assemblies and every other goddamn thing. They were pretty much joined at the hip.
Maybe just nobody cared. Mikey couldn't really blame them. He and Pete were weird, but not in excessive or interesting ways. They were boring-weird.
Boring-weird was working out pretty well as far as Mikey was concerned. He didn't know what Pete thought, but he kept right on being joined at the hip with Mikey, and sometimes touching his hand when they walked through the halls, and smiling at him a lot.
So Mikey figured he probably he felt pretty good about it, and smiled back. But they never talked about it.
Which was why it was kind of a surprise when Pete turned to him abruptly that morning as they walked into school, ignoring all the questions about his hair from people passing by, and asked "Hey, Mikey, before I forget, you want to go to prom with me, right?"
Mikey stopped walking and looked at him for a minute. "I'm not much of a romantic, but that left a little to be desired."
"I thought about doing flowers and stuff, but, like, what would you even do with flowers?"
"You could have bought me beer."
Pete frowned. "And that would be more romantic?"
"Shut up." Mikey started down the hall toward his locker, not looking back but able to tell Pete was scrambling after him by the sequence of annoyed noises as he knocked people aside.
"Seriously, Mikey? You won't go with me?"
Mikey rolled his eyes and kicked his locker until it opened. "Of course I'll go with you, I just want you to know that you can't take me for granted, dipshit."
"I'm not taking you for granted! Dude. Come on. You know I always get a lot of shit when I try to buy beer."
Mikey hid a smile and shoved his backpack into his locker. "That's true."
"So you'll go with me?"
"I already said I would." Mikey turned to face him and flicked him on the nose. "But you better fucking get me a corsage."
**
Pete did get him a corsage. He pinned it to the lime-green pinstriped blazer that Mikey was wearing over a Beetlejuice t-shirt and vintage--"fucking vintage, not old, Mom"--jeans and Docs.
Pete was wearing a complicated outfit he made himself by chopping up and stitching together two shirts and a jacket, along with jeans that looked painted on and shoes that he had pawned two soccer trophies to be able to buy off Ebay.
"You look like you escaped from the circus," Donna informed them as she took their pictures in the driveway.
"We look hot," Mikey said, and turned to Gerard for confirmation. Gerard gave him a halfhearted thumbs-up.
"Don't do anything stupid," Donna said, and kissed Mikey on the forehead. She reached over and corrected a smudge of Pete's eyeliner with the side of her thumb. "Or if you do, don't get caught."
**
"I can't believe they censored us." Pete flung himself down on the hood of the car, flinging his arms out spread-eagled.
"I don't think it's censorship."
"They kicked us out of the prom!"
"Technically they didn't let us in the door." Mikey nudged Pete with his knee until he sat up and took the ice-cream cone from Mikey's hand. "Anyway, this'll probably be more fun."
"Ice cream is awesome, Mikey, but if I was going to get banned from prom, I wanted it to be because I blew something up or punched a teacher, not because I was inappropriately dressed."
Mikey looked mournfully down at his Docs. "I know. This is totally formal."
"We look awesome." Pete licked aggressively at his cone. "Assholes."
Mikey sipped his milkshake. "Well, okay, let's be philosophical about this."
"Do we have to?"
Mikey ignored him. "What are we really missing out on, you know? What parts of the prom experience," he balanced the cup on his knee and made air quotes, "are really essential? I mean, in the greater scheme of things." Another sip. "The cosmic sense."
Pete looked at him for a minute and then shrugged, wiping a drip of ice cream on his jeans. "Well, I sort of wanted to dance with you."
Mikey jabbed himself in the nose with his straw. "You did?"
"I mean, whatever." Pete took a bite out of the side of his cone and chewed it, shrugging. "You're right. It's dumb."
Mikey was pretty sure he was on the precipice of something either awesome or really profoundly embarrassing. "It's not dumb."
"It's kind of dumb. Let's have our ice cream and go back to your house and get wasted and forget about it, okay?"
Mikey rolled his eyes and got up, grabbing the keys from beside Pete on the hood--not like they were going to fit in his pocket--and leaning in the driver's-side window of the car to jam them into the ignition. "Quit it."
"What are you doing?"
"Shush." He hit the seek button on the radio, worrying his lower lip between his teeth as he listened and rejected. Commercial, commercial, too uptempo, too old, boring, commercial, sports, disco--
He stopped on the next station and Pete frowned at him through the windshield. "Is that Aerosmith?"
"Yes."
"Is that the song from Armageddon?"
"Fuck yes."
"Ben Affleck is a misunderstood genius of our time."
Mikey smiled and stood up. "No, he isn't."
Pete slid off the hood and tossed the rest of his cone into the gravel. "May I have this dance, Mikey?"
Mikey straightened his jacket and took Pete's hand. "Only if you promise to cop a feel."
"Count on it." Pete slid his arms around Mikey's waist, and Mikey wrapped his around Pete's neck. They swayed across the parking lot, Pete humming along in Mikey's ear.
"You're, like, so horribly off-key," Mikey said after a few minutes.
"Bite me. And cooperate so I can dip you."
Mikey paused and dipped obediently. "Happy prom, Pete."
"Happy prom." Pete glanced up at him and grinned, then pressed a kiss to Mikey's jaw. "We're going to have an awesome summer."
"Hell yeah." Mikey caught Pete's chin and tilted it up so he could kiss him properly. "And we're going to dye your hair."
"I think I want to try gelling it into spikes."
Mikey nodded and dipped Pete back. "Badass."
The Dreamwidth copy of this post has
comments. Comment there or here, as you like!
For pearl_o. ♥ Thanks to anoneknewmoose for beta'ing. Title from Taylor Swift. Whatever. They would totally sing Taylor Swift to each other and you know it. (Also, I again feel the need to reiterate my desire for William Beckett to cover that song. ANYWAY.)
Pete fidgeted, his hand coming up close to touching his hair and then dropping to his lap again. "How does it look?"
Mikey stepped back and tilted his head, considering. "Um."
"Is that good or bad?"
"It's..." Mikey cleared his throat and stepped back again. "It's sort of green?"
Pete frowned. "I don't think it's supposed to do that."
"No. Probably not."
Pete stood up and moved over to look in the mirror. "Well. Shit."
Mikey nodded. "What did you have in there before we put the bleach on?"
"I don't know. Stuff." Pete chewed on his lower lip and tilted his head back and forth. "Yeah, I totally can't go home like this."
"I'll go find the clippers. Sorry, dude."
"Not your fault." Pete sat down on the edge of the tub again. "And a buzzed head will look totally badass, right?"
"Um." Mikey thought about that for a minute. "Sure. Totally."
He left Pete there in the bathroom and hurried downstairs, dodging past his mom in the living room and heading for the mudroom. He was pretty sure the clippers were in the cabinet above the washing machine. Donna hadn't used them since he and Gerard both got old enough to refuse to have their hair cut at home anymore.
He climbed awkwardly up onto the washer and balanced on his knees, digging through the cabinet. "Fuck you," he muttered, "where the fuck...fucking fuck."
"Language, Michael."
He jumped, banging his head against the cabinet door. "Ow. Mom."
"What are you looking for?"
"The clippers." He rubbed the back of his head and looked over at her just in time to catch the slow raise of an eyebrow. "We sort of messed up Pete's hair."
"Doing what?"
Mikey shrugged and poked through the cabinet some more. "He wanted to try blond."
She sighed and shook her head. "They're in the back, there. Am I going to get a phone call from his parents about this?"
"Probably not?" He found them and slid down off the washer, catching himself with his hands and attempting a push-up that totally failed. "I mean, you've never gotten a call about anything else."
"True." She walked back to the living room and Mikey followed, unwinding the cord from the clippers. "Is he going to stay for dinner?"
"I think so."
"I'm making hamburgers."
"Cool."
She picked up her cigarette from the ashtray and blew a puff of smoke at him. "I only mention it because if I remember right, last time he was here he was a vegetarian."
The vegetarian phase was more like two months ago, not the last time Pete was over, but Mikey couldn't fault his mom for not keeping track. It was hard enough for him to keep track. "He's back on meat."
She blinked at him slowly and he willed himself not to blush. It was very important to pretend double entendres didn't happen when talking to your mom. "So I'm going to go shave his head now."
"Have fun." She picked up the remote and he booked it up the stairs, hoping Pete hadn't gotten bored and put anything else on his head.
He hadn't; he was still sitting on the edge of the tub, peeling the black nail polish off his fingers. "Mikey," he said, glancing up, "what about dreads? You think I could pull off dreads?"
"You'll have to wait until it grows back." Mikey plugged the clippers in and tested them, then stood in front of Pete, frowning a little. "What do you think is the best way to..."
"Shave it into a mohawk first. And take a picture."
Mikey curved his hand around the back of Pete's head, holding it against his stomach while he made the first pass up from the base of his skull to behind his ear. Pete sighed against him, warm and damp.
"Are your parents going to be pissed?" Mikey asked.
"Nah. They only asked me to hold off on permanent body alterations."
"Cool." Mikey kept clipping, making uneven rows and trying to ignore the way strands of Pete's hair were catching on his fingers and his clothes.
"Does it look badass?" Pete tilted his head enough to look up at Mikey and smile.
"Totally badass," Mikey said, and kissed him on the forehead.
**
Pete did go home after dinner, but Mikey left the mudroom door unlocked and propped open anyway, because it wasn't unusual for Pete to come back again in the middle of the night.
Sure enough, he was stirred awake by his door creaking open and footsteps crossing the floor. His first sleepy thought was Gerard?, before he remembered that no, Gerard was at school, and also the figure crawling into bed with him was shorter and more muscular and going directly under the covers, which Gerard never did.
"Time's it?" he asked, hiding his face under the blanket as Pete pressed up beside him and wrapped his arms around his waist.
"Two-thirty." Pete threw one leg over Mikey's and rested his head on Mikey's chest.
"You're sweaty."
"I went for a run."
"At two AM?"
"One-thirty." Pete shrugged. "Needed to burn some energy."
"Should've just come here." Mikey yawned and turned on his side, facing Pete, shifting so Pete's leg slid between his thighs. "I was still awake at one-thirty."
"I just would've made you come running with me." Mikey didn't bother to dignify that with words, just shook his head, and Pete laughed. "Running is good for you, Mikeyway."
"Only if you're being chased."
"It gives you stamina."
"I don't want stamina."
Pete laughed and kissed him, teasing his tongue past Mikey's lips. Mikey pressed closer to him, rocking his hips slowly to rub against Pete's thigh. Pete sighed and turned onto his back, tugging Mikey on top of him.
"'s too goddamn early," Mikey whispered against his mouth, which made Pete laugh again. "Shh."
"You shh." Pete arched up and pushed his boxers down off his hips, then pulled Mikey down flush against him. Mikey could feel how hot Pete was, flushed and sweaty from running. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the heat and the taste of salt, rubbing down against Pete and getting lost in how it felt half like a dream, the two of them tangled up together in the dull blue-gray of the world under his blanket.
Pete caught Mikey's hand and pressed it over his mouth when he came, burying the sound he made in Mikey's palm. Mikey just bit his own lip and kept quiet, then collapsed down against Pete, tucking his face into the curve of Pete's neck and pressing a dry kiss to his skin.
"'m going back to sleep," he mumbled. "Stay and ride to school with me?"
Pete nodded and wrapped his arms around him without a word. Mikey never asked what he told his parents about the mornings he slept over, like asking might break something and make the sleepovers end.
**
They weren't out at school, exactly. They weren't exactly closeted, either, though. Mikey's philosophy on the whole thing was that nobody had ever asked him directly, to his face. If anyone ever did, he wouldn't lie.
He didn't know if anyone had asked Pete, or what Pete would say if they did. They didn't kiss at school, but Mikey wasn't really into PDA in general and he was pretty sure Pete wasn't, either. They met at each other's lockers between classes, and they walked everywhere together as much as they could, and they sat together at lunch and assemblies and every other goddamn thing. They were pretty much joined at the hip.
Maybe just nobody cared. Mikey couldn't really blame them. He and Pete were weird, but not in excessive or interesting ways. They were boring-weird.
Boring-weird was working out pretty well as far as Mikey was concerned. He didn't know what Pete thought, but he kept right on being joined at the hip with Mikey, and sometimes touching his hand when they walked through the halls, and smiling at him a lot.
So Mikey figured he probably he felt pretty good about it, and smiled back. But they never talked about it.
Which was why it was kind of a surprise when Pete turned to him abruptly that morning as they walked into school, ignoring all the questions about his hair from people passing by, and asked "Hey, Mikey, before I forget, you want to go to prom with me, right?"
Mikey stopped walking and looked at him for a minute. "I'm not much of a romantic, but that left a little to be desired."
"I thought about doing flowers and stuff, but, like, what would you even do with flowers?"
"You could have bought me beer."
Pete frowned. "And that would be more romantic?"
"Shut up." Mikey started down the hall toward his locker, not looking back but able to tell Pete was scrambling after him by the sequence of annoyed noises as he knocked people aside.
"Seriously, Mikey? You won't go with me?"
Mikey rolled his eyes and kicked his locker until it opened. "Of course I'll go with you, I just want you to know that you can't take me for granted, dipshit."
"I'm not taking you for granted! Dude. Come on. You know I always get a lot of shit when I try to buy beer."
Mikey hid a smile and shoved his backpack into his locker. "That's true."
"So you'll go with me?"
"I already said I would." Mikey turned to face him and flicked him on the nose. "But you better fucking get me a corsage."
**
Pete did get him a corsage. He pinned it to the lime-green pinstriped blazer that Mikey was wearing over a Beetlejuice t-shirt and vintage--"fucking vintage, not old, Mom"--jeans and Docs.
Pete was wearing a complicated outfit he made himself by chopping up and stitching together two shirts and a jacket, along with jeans that looked painted on and shoes that he had pawned two soccer trophies to be able to buy off Ebay.
"You look like you escaped from the circus," Donna informed them as she took their pictures in the driveway.
"We look hot," Mikey said, and turned to Gerard for confirmation. Gerard gave him a halfhearted thumbs-up.
"Don't do anything stupid," Donna said, and kissed Mikey on the forehead. She reached over and corrected a smudge of Pete's eyeliner with the side of her thumb. "Or if you do, don't get caught."
**
"I can't believe they censored us." Pete flung himself down on the hood of the car, flinging his arms out spread-eagled.
"I don't think it's censorship."
"They kicked us out of the prom!"
"Technically they didn't let us in the door." Mikey nudged Pete with his knee until he sat up and took the ice-cream cone from Mikey's hand. "Anyway, this'll probably be more fun."
"Ice cream is awesome, Mikey, but if I was going to get banned from prom, I wanted it to be because I blew something up or punched a teacher, not because I was inappropriately dressed."
Mikey looked mournfully down at his Docs. "I know. This is totally formal."
"We look awesome." Pete licked aggressively at his cone. "Assholes."
Mikey sipped his milkshake. "Well, okay, let's be philosophical about this."
"Do we have to?"
Mikey ignored him. "What are we really missing out on, you know? What parts of the prom experience," he balanced the cup on his knee and made air quotes, "are really essential? I mean, in the greater scheme of things." Another sip. "The cosmic sense."
Pete looked at him for a minute and then shrugged, wiping a drip of ice cream on his jeans. "Well, I sort of wanted to dance with you."
Mikey jabbed himself in the nose with his straw. "You did?"
"I mean, whatever." Pete took a bite out of the side of his cone and chewed it, shrugging. "You're right. It's dumb."
Mikey was pretty sure he was on the precipice of something either awesome or really profoundly embarrassing. "It's not dumb."
"It's kind of dumb. Let's have our ice cream and go back to your house and get wasted and forget about it, okay?"
Mikey rolled his eyes and got up, grabbing the keys from beside Pete on the hood--not like they were going to fit in his pocket--and leaning in the driver's-side window of the car to jam them into the ignition. "Quit it."
"What are you doing?"
"Shush." He hit the seek button on the radio, worrying his lower lip between his teeth as he listened and rejected. Commercial, commercial, too uptempo, too old, boring, commercial, sports, disco--
He stopped on the next station and Pete frowned at him through the windshield. "Is that Aerosmith?"
"Yes."
"Is that the song from Armageddon?"
"Fuck yes."
"Ben Affleck is a misunderstood genius of our time."
Mikey smiled and stood up. "No, he isn't."
Pete slid off the hood and tossed the rest of his cone into the gravel. "May I have this dance, Mikey?"
Mikey straightened his jacket and took Pete's hand. "Only if you promise to cop a feel."
"Count on it." Pete slid his arms around Mikey's waist, and Mikey wrapped his around Pete's neck. They swayed across the parking lot, Pete humming along in Mikey's ear.
"You're, like, so horribly off-key," Mikey said after a few minutes.
"Bite me. And cooperate so I can dip you."
Mikey paused and dipped obediently. "Happy prom, Pete."
"Happy prom." Pete glanced up at him and grinned, then pressed a kiss to Mikey's jaw. "We're going to have an awesome summer."
"Hell yeah." Mikey caught Pete's chin and tilted it up so he could kiss him properly. "And we're going to dye your hair."
"I think I want to try gelling it into spikes."
Mikey nodded and dipped Pete back. "Badass."
The Dreamwidth copy of this post has
comments. Comment there or here, as you like!