fic time!
Fandom: QaF
Title: Just Another Light In The Eyes
Characters: Michael, Brian, Justin (B/J)
Thanks to my beta for finally doing her job *cough * :P
a/n: This is a Michael-centric fic. Kind of a gap-filler for the episode where Captain Astro dies.
After the sudden tragic death of Captain Astro, Michael finds it impossible to keep his fingers from gripping the first issue of the comic, pressing it tightly against his chest. He takes to glaring at random spots on the store wall, feeling quite aimless like he doesn’t really know what’s supposed to happen next; what he’s supposed to do next.
This isn’t Michael The Grownup; this is Mikey The Mousy Kid With Thick Black Hair and Scrawny Body, the one who would lock himself up in his room for hours every Wednesday afternoon after getting a new issue of his favourite comic book.
And somehow the faded, downy t-shirt with an Astro patch still fits like a glove, like he hasn’t grown an inch in fifteen years. And it just figures.
Then there’s Brian, beside him, just like he used to be in every important moment of little Mikey’s life, knowing just what to do. He says, ‘I know just the thing you need,’ murmurs it softly against Michael’s face, standing among layers of comic books, forehead pressing against forehead like something familiar.
Flicking his lighter, Brian lights a joint, says it’s time to pay their respects, takes a hit; holds the smoke in his lungs for longer than Michael ever could before exhaling white smoke through his nose.
Michael can almost feel the tarry taste of Brian’s tongue in his sinuses as he watches the acme of inner peace softening Brian’s face.
Then he joins him.
Debbie seems to think that dead boys in dumpsters matter more than dead superheroes in comic strips. And maybe it is so, but this superhero mattered something to Michael, a whole lot of something, and she should have known that.
All Michael gets from her are hard smacks at the back of his head, cheap diner wisdoms about bad karma, and how one day it’ll end up biting him in the ass if he isn’t careful.
So Michael gets high with Brian because Brian understands, because Brian’s maybe a little sad, too.
Brian could care less about the actual death of Captain Astro, Michael knows this, but he also knows that Brian cares about the hours spent with him in his old room talking about superheroes and superpowers and how great it would be to know one, to be one.
‘Hey, Mikey,’ Brian chuckles around the smoke. ‘Remember that gobblehead -Sandy…Candy… whateverthefuck- remember when she dropped her ice cream on Captain Astro’s head?’ he titters at the memory of a ridiculously butch girl with metal in her sneer, how she always had some kind of snack with her, and how she once made a swipe at Brian with the notorious cone only to drop the chocolate ball directly on Michael’s comic book.
Michael snorts irritated, says, ‘It took a fucking forever to get the dark blotch somewhat invisible.’
And maybe it’s a little bit ridiculous how big an influence a comic book character has had on Michael, but it’s made him Michael and somehow that makes it okay.
It’s him.
It’s him and he would be someone completely different had he never picked that comic, stuffed it inside his shirt and run. And that means Brian would be different, too, because there hadn’t been a day in Brian’s life when he wasn’t affected by Michael some way or another, but also vice versa.
They both know it like they know to breathe. For the most part, it’s unacknowledged, but it’s as simple as it can be.
They form a fucked up capital-l on the floor with Michael’s head on Brian’s chest, popping in the rhythm of Brian’s soft laughter.
‘Somehow I can’t seem to let go of this one,’ Michael whispers fingering the worn paper of one of the comic books. ‘It’s the first one I ever read. The one I stole from the store, remember?’
‘Yeah, I remember.’ Brian smiles, eyelids half-mast, no doubt feeling that wonderful mellow peace cruising in his mind. Michael feels it too, for now.
And for a while it’s Brian and Mikey back together again, a textbook duet where only two can exist but it’ll be enough.
Just Brian and Mikey up in Mikey’s room, sprawled out on the bed-for-one, noses pressed together like something sweet and juvenile.
Eskimo kisses and half-innocent palms on hips.
It makes Michael’s breath catch because he had almost forgotten how his life used to be, when years and educations, babies and backrooms, and boyfriends hadn’t come between them yet.
But when Justin opens the door two minutes later, high cheekbones crinkling around the eyes from something he can only guess, the moment is lost for him, and he’s Michael again.
‘Why are you closed?’ Justin asks shrugging his bag off a shoulder and over his head, pointing a finger at the sign on the door. “Scratch that, why are you lying on the floor? It looks dirty,” he scrunches up his nose, Michael thinks overacting, but it makes Brian laugh.
‘Nothing like some dirt under your elbows… Right Mikey?’ Brian says wistfully, like there’s a hidden message in his double Dutch and Michael should get it. But he doesn’t and it makes him feel worse than anything because maybe he’s losing the connection he thought they had. Maybe he doesn’t know how to read Brian anymore. Maybe he never really did.
Snickering, Justin kneels down next to Brian’s head, touches his face, says, ‘You’re high,’ and as an afterthought, ‘Hi Michael.’
He always seems to come as an afterthought to Justin.
And Michael maybe wants to hurt him a little bit for ruining something that was supposed to last forever. But then, he remembers the epilogue to prom and how it scared him, still scares him, to see Brian so-
So completely…
Drained.
And for once Michael didn’t know how to fix him, couldn’t offer him a bed to crash out on, couldn’t tell Debbie to cook them something you ate with a black eye and a broken smile, couldn’t- just couldn’t do a fucking thing.
And he knows he prefers this to that.
Michael can’t even really hate Justin because hating Justin isn’t what normal people do. Besides, it would be immature and he’s trying to be how people are supposed to be at his age, and yet he can’t help but feel inferior to an eighteen-year-old more often than not.
Justin is too brilliant for words, and Michael doesn’t mean it as a compliment.
He watches Brian sitting up to kiss the boy. The kiss isn’t soft and sweet like a childhood; it’s hard and intimate and filled with things Michael is sure he will never get from either of them. Like he’s become a third wheel somewhere along the road, like there’s no place for him in this weird, fucked up reality that he somehow allowed to happen, not really giving it enough thought when he should have, when he still could have done something about it. And that just figures, too.
The noise that rumbles from Justin’s mouth into Brian’s open one makes Michael’s stomach flip and he looks away.
Hours after Brian and Justin have left the store, Michael will find himself lying on his bed, Ben’s fingers tracing his spine. Arms still clutching the comic to his chest, he will think about heroism in 2D, and how the paper smells like melted ice cream and old.
He will not think about Brian or the way Brian’s fingers found their way to the soft scruff on the nape of Justin’s neck, unconscious thumb softly tracing the small hollow in the middle, something Michael never, not ever, even thought he had missed out on.
Not until…
He will think about how Ben and he had a moment above Babylon earlier in the evening, and how calm, how completely un-Brian, Ben is, and how maybe that’s exactly what he needs, as a matter of fact.
Title: Just Another Light In The Eyes
Characters: Michael, Brian, Justin (B/J)
Thanks to my beta for finally doing her job *cough * :P
a/n: This is a Michael-centric fic. Kind of a gap-filler for the episode where Captain Astro dies.
After the sudden tragic death of Captain Astro, Michael finds it impossible to keep his fingers from gripping the first issue of the comic, pressing it tightly against his chest. He takes to glaring at random spots on the store wall, feeling quite aimless like he doesn’t really know what’s supposed to happen next; what he’s supposed to do next.
This isn’t Michael The Grownup; this is Mikey The Mousy Kid With Thick Black Hair and Scrawny Body, the one who would lock himself up in his room for hours every Wednesday afternoon after getting a new issue of his favourite comic book.
And somehow the faded, downy t-shirt with an Astro patch still fits like a glove, like he hasn’t grown an inch in fifteen years. And it just figures.
Then there’s Brian, beside him, just like he used to be in every important moment of little Mikey’s life, knowing just what to do. He says, ‘I know just the thing you need,’ murmurs it softly against Michael’s face, standing among layers of comic books, forehead pressing against forehead like something familiar.
Flicking his lighter, Brian lights a joint, says it’s time to pay their respects, takes a hit; holds the smoke in his lungs for longer than Michael ever could before exhaling white smoke through his nose.
Michael can almost feel the tarry taste of Brian’s tongue in his sinuses as he watches the acme of inner peace softening Brian’s face.
Then he joins him.
Debbie seems to think that dead boys in dumpsters matter more than dead superheroes in comic strips. And maybe it is so, but this superhero mattered something to Michael, a whole lot of something, and she should have known that.
All Michael gets from her are hard smacks at the back of his head, cheap diner wisdoms about bad karma, and how one day it’ll end up biting him in the ass if he isn’t careful.
So Michael gets high with Brian because Brian understands, because Brian’s maybe a little sad, too.
Brian could care less about the actual death of Captain Astro, Michael knows this, but he also knows that Brian cares about the hours spent with him in his old room talking about superheroes and superpowers and how great it would be to know one, to be one.
‘Hey, Mikey,’ Brian chuckles around the smoke. ‘Remember that gobblehead -Sandy…Candy… whateverthefuck- remember when she dropped her ice cream on Captain Astro’s head?’ he titters at the memory of a ridiculously butch girl with metal in her sneer, how she always had some kind of snack with her, and how she once made a swipe at Brian with the notorious cone only to drop the chocolate ball directly on Michael’s comic book.
Michael snorts irritated, says, ‘It took a fucking forever to get the dark blotch somewhat invisible.’
And maybe it’s a little bit ridiculous how big an influence a comic book character has had on Michael, but it’s made him Michael and somehow that makes it okay.
It’s him.
It’s him and he would be someone completely different had he never picked that comic, stuffed it inside his shirt and run. And that means Brian would be different, too, because there hadn’t been a day in Brian’s life when he wasn’t affected by Michael some way or another, but also vice versa.
They both know it like they know to breathe. For the most part, it’s unacknowledged, but it’s as simple as it can be.
They form a fucked up capital-l on the floor with Michael’s head on Brian’s chest, popping in the rhythm of Brian’s soft laughter.
‘Somehow I can’t seem to let go of this one,’ Michael whispers fingering the worn paper of one of the comic books. ‘It’s the first one I ever read. The one I stole from the store, remember?’
‘Yeah, I remember.’ Brian smiles, eyelids half-mast, no doubt feeling that wonderful mellow peace cruising in his mind. Michael feels it too, for now.
And for a while it’s Brian and Mikey back together again, a textbook duet where only two can exist but it’ll be enough.
Just Brian and Mikey up in Mikey’s room, sprawled out on the bed-for-one, noses pressed together like something sweet and juvenile.
Eskimo kisses and half-innocent palms on hips.
It makes Michael’s breath catch because he had almost forgotten how his life used to be, when years and educations, babies and backrooms, and boyfriends hadn’t come between them yet.
But when Justin opens the door two minutes later, high cheekbones crinkling around the eyes from something he can only guess, the moment is lost for him, and he’s Michael again.
‘Why are you closed?’ Justin asks shrugging his bag off a shoulder and over his head, pointing a finger at the sign on the door. “Scratch that, why are you lying on the floor? It looks dirty,” he scrunches up his nose, Michael thinks overacting, but it makes Brian laugh.
‘Nothing like some dirt under your elbows… Right Mikey?’ Brian says wistfully, like there’s a hidden message in his double Dutch and Michael should get it. But he doesn’t and it makes him feel worse than anything because maybe he’s losing the connection he thought they had. Maybe he doesn’t know how to read Brian anymore. Maybe he never really did.
Snickering, Justin kneels down next to Brian’s head, touches his face, says, ‘You’re high,’ and as an afterthought, ‘Hi Michael.’
He always seems to come as an afterthought to Justin.
And Michael maybe wants to hurt him a little bit for ruining something that was supposed to last forever. But then, he remembers the epilogue to prom and how it scared him, still scares him, to see Brian so-
So completely…
Drained.
And for once Michael didn’t know how to fix him, couldn’t offer him a bed to crash out on, couldn’t tell Debbie to cook them something you ate with a black eye and a broken smile, couldn’t- just couldn’t do a fucking thing.
And he knows he prefers this to that.
Michael can’t even really hate Justin because hating Justin isn’t what normal people do. Besides, it would be immature and he’s trying to be how people are supposed to be at his age, and yet he can’t help but feel inferior to an eighteen-year-old more often than not.
Justin is too brilliant for words, and Michael doesn’t mean it as a compliment.
He watches Brian sitting up to kiss the boy. The kiss isn’t soft and sweet like a childhood; it’s hard and intimate and filled with things Michael is sure he will never get from either of them. Like he’s become a third wheel somewhere along the road, like there’s no place for him in this weird, fucked up reality that he somehow allowed to happen, not really giving it enough thought when he should have, when he still could have done something about it. And that just figures, too.
The noise that rumbles from Justin’s mouth into Brian’s open one makes Michael’s stomach flip and he looks away.
Hours after Brian and Justin have left the store, Michael will find himself lying on his bed, Ben’s fingers tracing his spine. Arms still clutching the comic to his chest, he will think about heroism in 2D, and how the paper smells like melted ice cream and old.
He will not think about Brian or the way Brian’s fingers found their way to the soft scruff on the nape of Justin’s neck, unconscious thumb softly tracing the small hollow in the middle, something Michael never, not ever, even thought he had missed out on.
Not until…
He will think about how Ben and he had a moment above Babylon earlier in the evening, and how calm, how completely un-Brian, Ben is, and how maybe that’s exactly what he needs, as a matter of fact.