Ostinato (now press repeat)
When Mikey wakes up, his head kind of hurts and there's a crick in his neck. He groans at the light coming in through the window and pulls himself to his feet, and immediately wants to go back to bed.
He takes his meds and decides it's one of Those Days.
He calls in sick to work.
He makes it to about midday before he decides he's going stir-crazy and has to get out of the house. That's kind of weird. Mikey normally doesn't go stir-crazy. He's normally perfectly fine with sitting at home in front of his TV. It's one of Those Days, he reminds himself, and gets on the L train.
He'd forgotten that it's Valentines Day until he gets off the train and walks past a 99¢ store with loads of garish pink and red decorations in the window.
Valentines Day, Mikey thinks vaguely. It's a stupid holiday made up by greeting card companies to make everyone feel like shit, and he tries to ignore the way his stomach is twisting.
He's sitting in the corner of a Starbucks with a caramel macchiato when the bell tingles and this guy walks in. He's got his black hair spiked up on his head and he's wearing purple pants with his leather jacket. Mikey keeps glancing at him as he orders and pays. He can't help it. The guy's kind of gorgeous. Mikey wonders what his name is. He wonder if anyone's given him a valentine today.
The next time he glances up, the guy catches his eye and smiles.
Mikey gulps and looks down at his cup, cursing himself. He doesn't look up again.
He spends most of the rest of the day wandering around Brooklyn. He goes to check if anyone interesting is playing today at The Knitting Factory that he could get tickets for, but it's some indie band he's never heard of and he decides to just go home instead.
He's standing on the empty subway platform when Purple Pants Guy comes down the stairs next to him.
Mikey gulps and looks straight ahead. He can see the guy out of the corner of his eye and he frowns when he sees him wave.
He waves vaguely back, even though he's sure he doesn't know that guy. He'd definitely remember if he did.
They end up in the same train car. It's mostly empty aside from them- an old man with a scraggly beard is mumbling to himself in the corner and a young woman is standing near one of the doors with a bag of groceries. Mikey looks out the window at the tunnel lights flashing by. He jumps when a voice says “hi”.
He looks around. Purple Pants Guy is staring at him expectantly.
“What?” Mikey asks stupidly.
“I said... hi.” The guy waves. Mikey blinks.
“Oh, right. Hi.” Mikey waves back awkwardly and goes back to looking out the window.
He looks up again when he hears some scrambling. The guy is sitting right in front of him, turned around in his seat to grin at Mikey.
“Do I know you?” he asks.
“Uh... no?” It comes out sounding like a question, even though Mikey is totally sure that no, he doesn't know this guy.
“Really?” The guy squints. “Do you shop at The Academy?”
Mikey feels a bit dazed as he nods. “Yeah, I do.”
The guy positively beams, showing all his teeth. “I've seen you! I work there, man!”
“I haven't seen you,” Mikey blurts out. He doesn't mean to round rude. He's just sure he would remember seeing this man.
The guy frowns. “Huh. Maybe I'm always wearing long sleeves when you come in.”
“Long sleeves?”
“I'm a lot more distinctive without them.”
Mikey stares at him in confusion until he shrugs off his jacket, revealing a sleeve on one arm and a few scattered tattoos on the other. Mikey's eyes go wide. “Whoa,” he says. “Awesome.”
The guy points to an owl sitting on a book on his right forearm, still red around the edges. “This is my newest,” he says eagerly.
Mikey nods. “Awesome. They're awesome.”
The guy leans against the window and laughs. “You said that already.”
Mikey wants to smack himself.
The guy is examining the sleeve on his left arm. “I ink my personality onto my skin,” he says absently. “Probably gives some advance warning to people who aren't going to like me.”
“I don't know about that,” Mikey mumbles.
The guy looks irritated suddenly. “Well, you wouldn't, would you? Seeing as you don't know me.”
“Sorry.” Mikey looks out the window at the station they've just pulled into. He wonders if he should get off and wait for the next train.
“I'm Pete, by the way,” says the guy suddenly. “Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III.”
Mikey raises an eyebrow and tries to hold in a snicker. The guy- Pete- glares. “No jokes about my name,” he warns.
Mikey blinks. “I don't know any jokes about your name.”
“'That's a big name for such a little guy'? No?”
“Uh... no? I guess? I don't know?”
“Well, okay.” Pete leans over the back of the seat and looks at him expectantly.
It takes Mikey a moment to catch on. “Oh. I'm Mikey.”
“It's nice to meet you, Mikey.”
They shake hands.
When Mikey gets off the train, Pete gets off too.
He'd known that was going to happen- it had come up during their small talk. But he's a tiny bit surprised when they both start walking in the same direction. Pete's a few paces ahead of him; without thinking about it, Mikey hurries to catch up.
“Hey,” he says. “Mind if I walk with you?”
Pete gives him a slightly suspicious look out of the corner of his eye. “Why?”
That takes Mikey by surprise. He stumbles slightly over a crack in the pavement. “Um,” he says. “Well, we're walking the same way, and... I dunno. You seem nice.”
Pete groans. It's hardly the reaction Mikey was expecting, and he has to resist the urge to run away.
“Oh, great. I seem nice. God, I hate that word! I don't need nice. I don't need to be it and I don't need anyone to be it at me.”
Mikey falls back without saying anything else. Pete doesn't seem to mind.
They walk a few steps away from each other in the same direction for a few minutes before Pete suddenly stops and spins around.
“Sorry,” he says. “I'm sorry. I'm coming off as crazy. I'm not, really. I'm not crazy.”
Something about the way he says it makes Mikey walk forward to him. “It's, uh, it's okay,” he says.
“I'm just kind of fucked up today, you know?”
Mikey nods, because he does know. He's fucked up today, too.
They stop outside an old Brownstone and Mikey shuffles where he stands, not wanting to say goodbye yet but not wanting to come off as awkward and weird by not leaving.
“Do you want to come have a drink?” Pete blurts out. “I mean, like, I have lots of drinks. And it would be fun.”
He looks up at Mikey with hopeful eyes, and Mikey isn't thinking about how this is crazy, and he doesn't do this, and Pete's a stranger. He's thinking exactly what he says.
“Yes. Yeah, that would be fun.”
The inside of Pete's apartment is cluttered and cramped. There are CDs sitting on practically every surface, and Mikey nods approvingly at the names on some of the cases. Amongst the CDs there are comic books, novels, packages of guitar strings, and pages upon pages of loose-leaf paper, most of them covered in writing. It kind of reminds him of Frank and Gerard's house, except it's somehow kind of sexy.
“Make yourself at home,” Pete says, going into the kitchen and grabbing some bottles of vodka and drink mix. Mikey moves what appears to be a pile of dirty laundry off the couch and sits down.
Pete joins him a minute later with a drink in each hand and a smirk on his face. He hands a glass to Mikey and says, “Drink up, young man. It'll make the whole seduction thing a whole lot less sucky.”
Mikey stares at him. Pete's face slowly splits into a mischevious grin. “Kidding,” he says, and Mikey forces a laugh.
“You're not much of a talker, are you?” Pete says after a few minutes of silence. He says it like a question but it comes off more like a statement, and makes Mikey feel irrationally defensive.
“I don't have anything to say.”
“How?”
“I don't know? I go to work, I go home, I sleep, I wake up, I go to work. My life just isn't all that interesting.” He manages to refrain from adding a snarky comment to the end of his explanation.
“Really?” Pete looks genuinely curious. “Doesn't that make you sad? Or anxious? I mean, I'm always worried that I'm not living my life to the fullest, like, taking advantage of every opportunity.”
Mikey stares at him. Pete's just brought up the very things he tries to avoid thinking about. He doesn't say that, though. Instead, he tries to sound casual. “Really? You think about that?”
“All the time.”
They stare at each other for a long moment and burst out laughing.
“You're really nice!” Pete exclaims. “Shit, now you've got me saying it!”
He slumps against Mikey's shoulder, and Mikey smiles instead of tensing.
“Mikey,” he says excitedly. “You should come to Leow's 46th Street Theatre with me. It's this abandoned theatre in Brooklyn from the 1920s.”
Mikey chuckles awkwardly. “Sounds dangerous.”
Pete rolls his eyes, but not in a mean way. “I'll pack a picnic- a night picnic, it's different from a normal picnic. What do you say?”
Mikey is starting to feel a little overwhelmed. He stares down at Pete, who looks slightly wild in his excitement and is playing with Mikey's fingers, and feels a tiny stab of something he can't quite put his finger on. Inferiority, maybe. Mikey doesn't break into abandoned buildings to have night picnics. He wouldn't even think to, not anymore.
“Uh...” he says. He wants to say no, but Pete's looking at him so hopefully, and he doesn't even know why he cares when Pete's pretty much a stranger, but he does. Like, a lot. “Sounds great. But right now, I gotta get going...”
“You should stay,” Pete says.
Something in his voice makes Mikey pause, but he shakes his head and gets up. “No, seriously, dude, I have work tomorrow.”
Pete pouts like a child and something in Mikey's chest jumps.
“You gotta call me,” Pete says as Mikey pulls his jacket on. “I mean. Like.” His hands fumble in front of him for a moment before he gives up trying to convey meaning and grabs a sharpie off his kitchen counter instead. “Will you call me? I'd like it. A lot.”
Mikey ends up leaving the apartment with Pete's number and a little X scrawled on the inside of his right arm.
“Wish me a happy Valentine's day when you call!” Pete shouts from the window, and even though Valentine's Day is a pointless holiday created by greeting card companies, a grin bubbles up inside of Mikey and spills over the edges as he walks away.
When he gets home, he lasts 16 minutes and 5 seconds before he calls Pete.
“What took you so long?!” Pete asks as soon as he picks up.
“I just walked in,” Mikey says, setting into his armchair with a tiny smile on his face.
“Bullshit!” Pete exclaims, but he's laughing. “Do you miss me?”
“Oddly enough I do,” Mikey admits, and Pete laughs even more. Mikey feels inexplicably delighted at having been the one to cause that sound.
“Tomorrow night?” Pete asks. “The theatre?” and Mikey says, “Yeah.”
Pete picks the lock on the heavy metal door with surprising and somewhat worrying speed. “Come here often?” Mikey jokes drily as padlock falls open. Pete just nods solemnly and ushers him inside.
It's a bit hard to take in the full scope of it in the beam of Pete's flashlight, but Mikey kind of gets it, he thinks. Everything the light touches is faded and crumbly, with a haunting kind of beauty to it that's found only when things fall apart. He can see how it would be pretty stunning in the daylight.
“Are you sure it's like, structurally sound?” he can't help but ask. Pete snorts, and Mikey feels slightly ridiculous.
They make their way down the stairs to the floor in front of the stage. Pete immediately flops down onto his ass. “Ow,” he says, almost conversationally, and gestures for Mikey to join him.
Mikey sits down more carefully than Pete did. He settles next to him, their knees touching just enough to make Mikey blush.
“I think I just heard a ceiling beam crack,” Mikey says darkly, tucking his face into Pete's neck. “We're gonna die.”
“Jesus!” Pete whacks Mikey's arm lightly, giggling. “The roof's not gonna fuckin' collapse! It's safe, you're fine.”
Mikey huffs out a laugh against Pete's skin, and lets him take his hand.
“This is where I come when I run out of meds or something,” Pete says. Mikey can get that. He knows what that can be like. He can see how the atmosphere of this place affords a kind of calm that can sometimes be impossible to find inside your own head. It's nice. Mikey likes it.
Eventually, Pete asks him what his favourite song by The Smiths is, They end up murmuring to each other about metaphors until sunlight comes peeking through the cracked-open door.
Pete falls asleep on the drive home. Mikey has to work to focus on the road instead of the curves of Pete's lips and the look of peace on his face.
He doesn't want to wake him when they pull up outside the Brownstone, but he has to, of course. He shakes his shoulder gently and smiles softly as Pete grabs his hand.
“We're there,” Mikey says, and Pete blinks blearily at him.
“Right, yeah,” he mumbles, looking at the Brownstone unenthusiastically. “Can I come over to your place instead? To sleep? I'm so tired.”
Mikey doesn't ask why Pete can't sleep in his own bed. He just nods.
Pete goes inside to get his toothbrush and a change of clothes. Mikey sits back in his seat and closes his eyes. They snap open again when there's a tap on the window.
It's a guy, a young guy, younger than Mikey, with floppy brown hair and a frown on his face. Mikey rolls his window down. “Uh... yes?”
The guy fidgets. “Can I help you?”
“What?” Mikey can't help but feel like he should know what this guy is talking about, which is completely ridiculous because, what.
“Can I help you with something?” The guy says it like he expects the two extra words to clarify his meaning. Mikey just stares at him blankly.
“I'm sorry, I, uh. I don't know what you're asking me.”
“Oh.” The guy looks oddly relieved. “Okay. Have a nice day, sir.”
Mikey frowns in confusion and rolls his window back up.