The Moment I Met You
Pete/Mikey
One-shot
They thought they had it all figured out... but Mikey realized something too late, and now their relationship is pretty much doomed. Rated PG-13 for uh... angst, mostly, and language. Yaye for non-fic100 fic!
3,457 words
Written January 1, 2006.
"This is bullshit," Pete says. "You are so full of bullshit."
Flash back to the day they met and Pete saying the same thing, except that time they were face-to-face and Pete was falling over laughing, hands braced against his thighs. He'd clung to Mikey's arm for support and looked at Mikey's unicorn pin and said, "No fuckin' way you seriously believe in unicorns," and Mikey said "Believe it" and Pete got horribly serious and said "I do".
That was pretty much when Mikey decided he and Pete should be friends. The "forever" bit didn't come in until Pete found a button-maker, and made him heaps of pins with tiny unicorn doodles. He made one with Mikey's face on it, too, and showed Mikey before pinning it to his hoodie.
Flash up to today and Pete's voice on the phone, and he is not laughing. Not one bit.
"Believe it," Mikey says, and it is the most feeble attempt he has ever made to cling to love. Worse than the time his girlfriend broke off their engagement, and he only sat on the front steps and shrugged and watched her car swerve off. At least then he just didn't care. Now he cares and now he is miserable, and all he can say is, "Believe it," and hope Pete gets it.
Pete's voice is cold when he says, "That doesn't mean I have to like it."
-----
Flash back to the Ferris wheels and the coffee cups and the eyeliner smudges on arches of cheekbones and the interlocked fingers, and the whole month Mikey said to Gerard, "But you know I'm not gay. You and I both know."
And jump forward a bit to Pete sitting on the counter, kicking his heels against the cabinet doors, and saying to Patrick, "Jesus, we're just friends! You of all people should know how that works - " and Mikey sitting on the couch in the next room, eyes closed, pretending he couldn't hear. And the whole time he never felt sick or sad or jealous, just... terribly forlorn because of the sheer beauty of their relationships. Him and Pete, and the way they shared clothes; Patrick and Pete, and the way Patrick slept with his back arched into Pete's stomach. And the way Pete still found time to meet some girl and start dating her and... all of that.
Flash back again to the second time they met, and the most awkward conversation they'd ever had. The kind of conversation where they referred to it incessantly - breaking every silence with, "Well, at least it's not like that one time!" It gained a title, even: That Awkward Thing When We Went Out For Lunch. The most absolutely confusing, uncomfortable conversation they'd ever had. Until now.
-----
"So," Mikey had said, and he'd hopped onto the edge of the Clandestine tent without even asking if it was okay. "You're working here for awhile?"
"Actually just dropping by, seeing what's up." Pete picked at a loose thread on a hat, and frowned, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You're... unicorn-boy, right? Mike?"
"Mikey, actually."
"My friends call me Petey sometimes."
There was a very long and awkward silence, and Mikey fiddled with the scarf around his neck. Pete looked at the hat for awhile and brushed some nonexistant dust off it. Finally, the guy working the merch tent looked up at them and said "Jesus, will you two fucking say something, you're scarin' off our customers," and Pete burst into that brash laughter of his.
"True fuckin' story! Mikey, let's go get something to eat, leave this poor dude alone."
They walked the three blocks to the nearest McDonald's, Mikey staring at the sidewalk beneath their feet. If he blurred his eyes well enough, the texture melted into a smooth rolling acid-trip pattern. "I like your hoodie," he said, more quietly than he was used to. He hated complimenting people on their clothing - it felt like such a fake, lying way to start conversation.
"I designed it," Pete said, and flashed him a huge grin.
"Oh." There was another brief silence, and then Mikey said carefully, "I like that you're wearing it in summer, too." It sounded stupid outside his head, and he rubbed his arm, frowning slightly. He wished he had a sweatshirt, too - hot as it was, he couldn't stand the texture of his skin. It felt pebbly and rough and weird and he wanted it covered up.
"You do that too?" Pete paused, then stripped the hoodie off, leaving his hair a rumpled mess. He grinned again. "Here, man. You look like you want this."
Mikey took it gratefully, holding it in his hands for a fraction of a second and just being aware of it before slipping it over his head. It smelled like sweat and the bottom of someone's closet, and mothballs very faintly. The kind of worn-in smell that Mikey was jealous of on other people. He hated that - how he couldn't smell himself, or his own clothes, and it meant he always felt like such a blank nothing. A big empty cipher. The hoodie got tangled on his glasses, and he stopped to flail with it; Pete said "shhh, calm down" and helped him untangle it.
When his head popped out, Mikey felt flustered and his face was red. He stared at Pete without moving and chewed on his lip.
"I," Pete said, swallowing hard. "Uh. I'm not..."
Mikey kept staring.
"This isn't. You know. A date. I mean I'm not totally against that shit, I mean, one of my best friends is gay - I just. We're not."
"Shit, no," Mikey said, stricken out of his shock. "It's food! We're just hanging out. I wouldn't think of asking - "
"Oh, no, exactly - we're not - "
"So there you go."
There was more silence, and more awkward staring and they kicked their toes into the loose dirt next to the sidewalk, and finally Pete deadpanned, "So as if that wasn't totally cliche enough..."
"Oh no," Mikey said lightly, turning to start walking again. "If it were really cliche, we'd fall totally in love but never realize it and then we'd be always pissed at ourselves for having this conversation, and we'd only realize we loved each other at some totally inopportune moment."
Pete started walking too, and his hand bumped against Mikey's. He smiled shyly. "I like that you know the word 'inopportune'," he said, and then the awkwardness vanished forever and Mikey was sure that this was how friendship was supposed to be. Easy and immediate and so... happy. So totally ecstatic.
-----
Jump forward to now, and Mikey thinks he maybe doesn't know what friendship is anymore. Or cliche. Or much of anything, really.
-----
Flash back to the photobooths.
Mikey found one in this dinky arcade and dug through his pocket until he found four dollars in change - he always paid for things in full dollars and it drove Pete crazy, because Mikey ended up with mass quantities of change that nobody wanted, and then he would plead for Pete to find an arcade so he could use up the quarters. But the photobooth - Pete looked at it, with the dirty striped curtain and the faded, retro photos on the outside, and he said "This totally makes it worth coming here." The girls in the demo photos all had bad 70's Farrah Fawcett hair, and were giving the camera peace signs. Pete made them take one with both of them mimicking the pose.
Because neither of them could stand tearing the strip of photos in half, Mikey found another four dollars and dragged Pete back in for a second set. The first had been mostly standard - smiling, giving each other bunny ears with their fingers, pretending to fight and pretending to make out. They started vamping on the second: being drag queens with swishy hands, and posing musclemen, and ditzy teenage girls twirling their hair.
"I want the second set," Pete said later. They were drinking Cokes and watching some tall, lanky guy kick his friend's ass at DDR, and Mikey pulled the strips out of his pocket, frowning.
"You would," he said. "Those are the flamboyant ones."
"Fuck you!" Pete punched Mikey's arm and laughed, teeth showing too large and white.
Mikey only smiled and sipped his Coke. "Isn't the first set so much more honest? The second is more fun, but..."
"First set is all yours," Pete said. He slung an arm around Mikey's shoulders in the exaggerated kind of way that meant it didn't mean a thing, and he leaned his head on Mikey's shoulder. "Don't show it to anyone. Okay?"
"Oh?"
"Honest things should be kept secret, don't you think?"
Mikey shrugged and closed his eyes. Pete felt warm and heavy and his jaw was digging into Mikey's shoulder, and his fingers felt sweaty on Mikey's arm, and Mikey thought how that was pretty gross and Pete's ear was probably getting crushed. But he didn't say anything except, "Isn't that guy really good? How the fuck do people do that?"
-----
Jump to Gerard lying on the floor of the bus, eyes half-closed, picking at a hangnail on his thumb. "So hey," he said, "hey, what do you think love is?" It was an open question, for the rest of them all.
Frank, who was in an obscene mood, said "Love is when someone likes you enough to... like, shave your balls, or something."
There were various murmurs of disgruntled disgust, and Bob said in an amused voice, "Well, now I can't look at Jamia the same ever again."
Ray said, "Oh, don't worry, I haven't been able to look at her since they started sleeping together." He paused before adding, "Not that I have a problem with that, or anything, just... She slept with Frankie, man. That's fucked up." Frank threw the X-Box controller at him but missed, and left a dent in the wall. Ray only laughed.
"But really," Gerard said, tugging at Ray's jeans. "Answer!"
So Ray said "I don't know... just being comfortable with someone I guess", and Bob said "someone who doesn't ask stupid questions like that," and Gerard said "well I think it's when someone likes you enough to put up with anything stupid you say." Mikey pondered all their answers quietly and picked at his shoe. When Gerard pinched his side, he didn't even jump.
"Well," he said, very slowly. "Love is when... you don't mind someone seeing you at your worst."
Frank sighed dramatically, rolling his eyes. "That's what I said, dork."
"Sure," Mikey said. He gave Frank a complacent smile. "You think that." And the others laughed, but he felt terribly filled up with the truth of what he'd said, and he didn't even realize the significance of it, except to maybe think I am pretty damn smart sometimes.
-----
Jump forward to now and Mikey realizing exactly how smart he is. And exactly how stupid he is, because he overlooked every fucking thing.
And flash back to Mikey scared and shaking and curled tight in his bed crying, and every time Gerard asks what's wrong all Mikey can say is leave me alone. And when Gerard asks are you sick Mikey says I'm in love and that is all the answer he needs.
Flash forward a tiny bit more to Gerard asking for the story, and Mikey not being able to tell him.
-----
Forward a tiny bit more, to when Ray kneels next to the bunks and asks, and Mikey says, "Well I can tell you, I just... I really can't say this to Gerard."
"That bad?"
Mikey turns into his pillow and covers his face and tries not to sob. "I'm in love with a guy who fucking hates me now and has a girlfriend and never wants to talk to me again and he used to love me but I didn't figure it out in time and I'm stupid and no wonder he hates me, does that answer your fucking question, Toro?"
Ray sighs and strokes Mikey's back like he is a kitten. Mikey can feel his fingers tracing the places where his shoulderblades stick out, and the bumps in his spine. It soothes him a little. Ray bends down and whispers, very softly, "Pete...?" Mikey sniffles and nods. He feels five years old. He hasn't cried about love since he was that young, really, and Gerard ran away from home to live in the tunnels at the nearby playground. Mikey was scared Gerard would never come home and he cried in his mother's lap until he thought he'd throw up.
"Tell me about it," Ray says. He brushes his fingers across Mikey's cheeks and doesn't even seem to mind that Mikey is all wet and messy and sobbing.
"It sounds stupid and it's kind of embarrassing."
Ray shrugs.
Mikey nods, acquiescing. "I... guess. I, um. So the other night I... y'know, I was jerking off, and - " He pauses, glaring at Ray. "Not that it's that kind of story! I mean, I, um. So I finished and I was really tired and didn't wanna get up or anything, and so I just kind of lay there, and - " Ray is snickering now, though he hides it graciously behind one hand. "Fuck you! I mean it, it's not like that!"
"Then how come you're telling me? This is nasty shit, man." Ray smiles in the gentle kind of way that means I'm only protesting because otherwise it really will be pretty nasty. Mikey sighs.
"Anyway. So, um, I decided to call Pete and y'know, see if he wanted to talk or something, and... I don't know. I just..." Mikey finds himself short of words, hands fluttering helplessly in the air. "It was like, I just realized if I didn't mind talking to him while I was all messy and shit, and I was totally fine with it... Maybe that said something, y'know? And I thought, well, it'd be different if he were physically around these days - but then I realized I still wouldn't care. And I mean. That's... something."
Ray looks at him for a long time, and his hand is still rubbing Mikey's back, but something is different in the air. Finally, he says, "Sometimes I forget you're grown up. Like... not just you, I mean everyone. You know? I forget everyone else knows about love."
"It'd be easier if they didn't, I think," Mikey says. "Then we could just brush it off as psychosis."
Ray kisses Mikey's forehead and stands up. "I'm sorry he flipped out at you."
"So'm I," Mikey says. It is a self-pitying, vicious response, but Ray only pats the top of his head and goes off to... do something inane. Mikey curls into the blankets and wants to cry more, but it feels stupid, crying on his own.
Gerard comes by later and says, "You could've just left out the part about touching yourself," and Mikey laughs so hard he cries. Gerard holds him then, and they sit like that for awhile until Mikey says, "Coffee?" and Gerard sighs in relief, saying, "I thought you'd never ask."
Mikey is torn over whether to bring his cell on the drive to Starbucks. He thinks Pete might call but that makes him unsure of whether or not he wants the cell with him. And then he realizes Pete is not calling, and will not call again, and he leaves the cell behind because it doesn't matter if anyone else wants to call. Suddenly nobody else matters. He thinks being in love sucks dick.
-----
Flash back to water parks and sunsets and holding hands and sharing clothes and this is just what they've told the world.
Flash forward to what they never told anyone.
To what they never told each other: Pete on the phone, screaming, "Fuck you, I was so in love with you I couldn't fucking stand it! How come you only figure it out now, asshole? We could've been fucking happy - "
Pete on the phone, whispering, "I don't love her a fucking bit and I never will and don't tell me to leave her because I'll never do that either."
Jump back to the place where they visited the fortuneteller in Wisconsin and she said they had "old souls" and promised they would be connected forever. Jump forward to Mikey wanting to cut up the phone lines and the cables on the computer, and snap all the tendons in Pete's wrists and ankles. Scratch out the roads connecting them on the maps, dig out their heartstrings.
-----
Skip back to Mikey flipping through AP magazine while they were on tour once, and looking at some single-column article and frowning and saying, "Man, is it just me, or is that dude from Fall Out Boy a total douche?"
Skip forward to Mikey collecting old magazines and cutting out the pictures of Pete to make a collage. Polaroids of himself mounted on yellow construction paper, and glossy shiny photos of Pete (with Patrick's arm at the edge) on blue paper. The two of them and sunrise bursts of red as the background. Photographs of Hawaii sliced apart to form a montage of maybe someday and rollercoasters swooping like DNA helixes around them.
And jump back to Gerard saying "I don't know he seems okay," and jump forward to him saying "I don't know if you should spend so much time with Pete, maybe."
And Mikey saying, "I like having friends on Warped, okay? It's nice. I haven't just hung out with new people in awhile."
Jump forward to Mikey looking at every second of every conversation and basically feeling like the biggest fucking idiot on the planet.
-----
Fall back into the proper timeline where Mikey is sitting at a Starbucks with Gerard and drinking some mocha-latte-cappucino-whipped-cream-no-foam-extra-espresso type confection, the sort of thing that gets barked out in rapid-fire by yuppies with hands-free cell phones. He's drinking and smiling at Gerard and all of a sudden Gerard's phone goes off in his pocket, and he nearly drops his coffee and says, "Fuck! Remind me not to leave it on vibrate!"
He looks at the phone, and he says, "I... think this is probably for you."
When Mikey flips it open, the voice on the other end says, "I don't know why I yelled at you."
Mikey wants to cry again, inexplicably. He thinks crying is a bit addictive like that. "Pete," he says, "how'd you know he'd give me the phone right away?"
"I don't know. You believe hard enough..." Mikey can hear the expansive shrug of his shoulders in the words, and he can see the way Pete is closing his eyes. He wants to stretch out his fingers and touch, instead of Gerard's face, the soft tiny wrinkles of Pete's eyelids.
But all he says is, "I believed you'd love me back."
There is something very delicately broken in Pete's voice when he says, "But I do love you."
"I'm in the middle of a fucking Starbucks. This isn't the place to be having this conversation." As Mikey says this, Gerard gives him a look and shoos him out towards the door with one hand, but Mikey feels helpless and pinned down by Pete's voice. The way his words curl out:
"Call me back? I miss you. I'm an asshole."
"This is too cliched," Mikey says. He feels like an asshole too. Sitting in the middle of a public coffee shop and talking to someone he loves, and making it blatant that they are arguing, and that something is irreparably wrong - they shouldn't be like this. But he hopes that Pete gets what he means when he says cliche.
And Pete says, "I like the word 'inopportune', don't you?" Mikey feels filled with... something indefinable but infinitely wonderful, and bright, and glowing. He can feel it: even if this all goes downhill and they end up mere friends, exchanging monthly IMs to keep each other up to date with whatever the other hasn't read in Kerrang... Even if all this happens, Mikey is sure they've been something good. Just for this split second they have glowed and been happy and oh they are so intended for each other: for this moment. The lines are all weaving together and they are "forever". They are.
"I'll call you back," Mikey says. "I promise. Promise."
He doesn't know what he will find on the other end of the phone lines and heartstrings, but he is sure it will be exactly what he has earned.