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schmericaYou realize the sun doesn't go down
by Pearl-o
R. 5500 words. Pete/Mikey. Not real at all! Title from "Do You Realize??" by the Flaming Lips.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
impertinence and etben for encouragement and bexless for excellent beta. ♥
Full disclosure: Nobody dies in this story, but minor characters are dead before it begins. There's bad sex. Gerard and Mikey are kind of mean to each other. Some of the facts are probably far off accurate. Also, it's another goddamn high school AU.
Summary: Mikey's slogging through high school, Gerard's working for the man, and neither of them are fine. God only knows what's going on with Pete Wentz.
******
Mikey's not sure how much of it is due to the orgasm and how much due to the pot, but he doesn't particularly feel like moving ever again. Even talking seems like a lot of effort at this point. Mikey settles for keeping his eyes open, watching Pete sitting up against the headboard, playing a little with the pipe between his hands.
Mikey put his boxers and glasses back on a good fifteen minutes ago, but Pete's still naked, lying on top of the comforter too. He seems like a little guy at school, with his big sweaters and tight jeans, but naked you can see how well he's built, how all his muscles fit together perfectly. His skin's real smooth, too, almost perfect except when you get to that ugly tattoo in the middle of his back and the raised scarred skin. That's where Pete let him jerk off, rubbing his dick against Pete's back until he came, spurts of white against Pete's tanned skin.
Mikey could reach out and touch him there now, right where it's dried and sticky. But that would require moving.
Whatever's caused Mikey's languor, Pete seems free from it. He's practically thrumming with energy. Mikey can almost see it, right beneath his skin, and it makes him tired just thinking about it.
There's a noise from outside, and Mikey can identify it immediately as Gerard's car in the driveway. It sounds even worse than it looks, and it's a pretty ugly heap of junk, tiny and rusty and covered in dirt.
"Oh, hey," Pete says, glancing over at him with a slight frown, "is that your folks?"
Mikey knows there's not a hint of expression in either his voice or his face when he says, "No. My brother."
Pete relaxes a little at that, just the smallest bit. "Oh. I didn't know you had a brother."
Mikey nods.
"So is he cool, or what?"
That question, Mikey thinks, would have been a hell of a lot easier to answer six months ago. "He's Gerard," he says.
"I know what you mean," Pete says, "I got a little brother and a little sister, and I love them and all, but siblings can just be--"
Mikey isn't listening to Pete, not really. He's busy tuning into the sounds of Gerard downstairs -- front door, shuffling around the kitchen, and now he here is on the stairs, calling up.
"Hey, Mikey, you home?"
It's not like Mikey bothered to even close the door to his room. As soon as Gerard gets up the stairs and turns he's in Mikey's doorway, with a clear view of Mikey in bed, the naked guy, pipe and his stash still on the bed stand.
For a second, Gerard's face just falls, he looks sad, and for that second Mikey feels maybe a little guilty -- but then it's gone and Gerard just looks pissed, and any guilt Mikey would feel goes away.
"Hey," says Pete, "I'm Pete Wentz," and Pete actually stands up and crosses the room and offers his hand to Gerard to shake, still naked. Mikey could laugh, almost. Naked Pete and Gerard in his stupid business clothes and his stupid short hair, straight from his stupid cubicle.
Gerard actually takes it, too, and shakes, but his eyes are still on Mikey the whole time. "Gerard Way. Look, Pete, I think you should go, me and Mikey have a lot to talk about."
Pete looks back at Mikey, raising an eyebrow, and Mikey shrugs, rolls his eyes a bit, indicating to Pete to yeah, go. Pete grabs his clothes off the floor and then surprises Mikey by coming back to the bed and leaning over to kiss Mikey soft on the mouth. Pete hadn't struck him as the kind of dude who'd kiss the guy who had just blown him.
"I'll call you," Pete says, and then he's gone and it's just Mikey and Gerard.
Gerard's arms are crossed and he's still leaning against the door frame. "What the fuck do you think you're doing, Mikey?"
"What does it look like?" Mikey says.
"It looks like you're being a fucking idiot," Gerard says, "but that's just from here."
Mikey closes his eyes. "Maybe I just wanted to feel good for a little while."
"Maybe you want to get taken away and put into the fucking system. Maybe you want them to decide I'm not a fucking good enough guardian and separate us. Maybe you want to test me and see what I'll fucking do because you're that fucking selfish."
"That's a lot of maybes," says Mikey. He opens his eyes lazily.
Gerard's face is bright red. He says, "You know I'm going to have to punish you, right?"
"Yeah?" Mikey says, and he's proud of how blank his voice still is. "So how much of a hypocrite are you, exactly, Gerard?"
"You're fucking grounded," Gerard says, and when he leaves, he slams the door shut behind him.
If Gerard had more practice at this, Mikey thinks, staring up at the ceiling, he probably would have thought to take the pot with him.
*****
Mikey sneaks out of the house around midnight. Gerard is still up, he knows, but he's down in the basement, working on his comic. And drinking, of course, because that's where Gerard keeps his booze, in the little cabinet under the bed. It's the same place Gerard always kept it before, when they used to get drunk together and talk about everything. The only difference is now he keeps it locked up, like he thinks Mikey would steal it. Like Mikey's ever stolen from Gerard, ever, in his entire fucking life. That's what Gerard thinks of him now.
It's cold outside, dark between the streetlights that have half-burnt out. Mikey keeps his fists deep in his pockets and his hoodie zipped up to his chin and walks to the park. His favorite place here is still the swings, has been since he was five and Gerard used to push him higher and then challenge him to contests of who could jump farthest.
He sits in the highest one and has to fold his legs carefully under him, scraping in the sand. He texts Frank, but he's not surprised when no answer comes. Frank's been sick again lately, and he's keeping old lady hours as a consequence, asleep by nine.
Even if Frank was up, he'd probably just tell Mikey to give Gerard a break, that Mikey's being too hard on him. It'd still be better than being out here alone.
There is a new text on his phone, but it's from Pete, wanting to know what's up, saying that he had a fun time and they should get together again soon. Mikey deletes it without replying.
He twirls in the seat, letting the chain wind up all the way to the top as he turns. When he lets go he spins around, faster and faster till everything's back to normal. When he was a kid, it would make him dizzy, but now it doesn't seem so impressive.
Mikey lights a cigarette and stares up at the sky while he smokes. He can't see any stars. The entire park's covered with cigarette butts already, so when he's finished, he drops it to the ground and crushes it beneath his heel.
*****
He heads back home around five. He comes in carefully, quietly, but Gerard's still up.
He's sitting at the kitchen table with an ashtray and a mug of coffee. The ashtray's pretty full and the coffee's pretty empty. There's a half-smoked cigarette in his free hand. His eyes are red.
Mikey stops, just inside the room, and looks at Gerard and waits, but Gerard doesn't say anything at all, just takes another sip of his coffee and a drag on his cigarette.
So what are you going to do about it? Mikey thinks, but he doesn't say it.
Gerard looks away from him, finally, and says, "I don't have anything to say to you right now."
Mikey rolls his eyes and heads back up to his room and his bed. He hasn't slept in twenty four hours and he's not going to sleep now, but he can turn on his stereo, stare at the ceiling and listen to the same song on repeat until his alarm goes off.
*****
"You're being too hard on him," Frank says bluntly, that day at lunch, and Mikey shakes his head and pushes the limp spaghetti around his plate.
"It's just, like. I don't know if he even listens to what he's saying."
"He's doing his best."
"There's nothing I'm fucking doing that he didn't do, too. Fuck, we did this all together."
Frank snorts. "Yeah, I forgot about all the jocks Gerard was banging in your room in high school."
Mikey snorts at that, too. "Oh, Christ. This morning at breakfast he tried to give me a heart-to-heart."
"Yeah?"
"He wanted me to know it's okay to be gay."
"Oh, man," Frank says, laughing. "What did you say?"
"I told him I wasn't gay," Mikey says. He takes a bite of his spaghetti and glances across the cafeteria to where Pete's sitting with some of his soccer buddies. Pete seems to spend half his time with them, and half his time with some of the losers by the band room. It's funny, because both groups always look at him the exact same way. Like they're not totally sure what he's doing there, anyway.
"What the fuck do you call it, then?" Frank says. "Bisexual?"
"I don't call it anything," Mikey says, looking back down at his plate. "Anyway, then he starts talking about how he questioned his sexuality a couple times in high school, and I should just be happy with who I am, and then he had to leave for work." Gerard was running late, again -- big surprise, when he stayed up all night working on art -- and he'd just grabbed his coffee and kissed Mikey on the brow and left, while Mikey stayed back and finished his cereal slowly. For a minute or two it was just like last year, Gerard heading out to art school in the city while Mikey trudged through high school.
"I love him," Mikey says, more to his spaghetti than to Frank. "I mean, he's my best friend. I just can't fucking deal with him like this. He's my brother, not my parents."
"It sounds like you're being a dick to him just to be a dick," Frank says, and it's a little quieter than Frank usually talks, a little more serious, and that's how Mikey knows he's probably right.
The thing is, though, he doesn't know how else to act, so he just spends the rest of lunch period poking silently at his plate until the bell rings.
*****
Mikey walks home alone, because Frank's got detention again for skipping gym class. It's raining out, not hard, but steady, all the fallen leaves on the ground turning into pulp as he shuffles through them. He's listening to his Discman, one of the CDs Gerard passed to him last spring, some local punk band. They're not amazing but they're not bad, either, and they're loud.
The rain gets more intense as he walks. The last three blocks or so it's pouring, and he's soaked through when he gets home. He kicks off his sneakers right inside, strips off his hoodie and wet jeans and leaves them in a pile by the door next to his backpack.
He checks his phone while he walks to the kitchen. There's another text from Pete -- which makes four since he left yesterday, which seems a little overkill, since Mikey hasn't responded once. It doesn't say anything important, either, just greetings and asking what's up. There's a message from Gerard, too, this one saying he has to stay late at the office tonight, and he won't be home until at least seven.
Mikey makes a sandwich of peanut butter and marshmallow fluff and grabs a can of Coke from the fridge and eats standing over the sink. He stands there a couple minutes after he's done, staring out the window into the gray street outside.
What the fuck, he thinks, and he picks up his phone again and texts Pete back.
*****
Mikey changes his clothes and goes outside to wait on the porch. It's not even fifteen minutes before Pete shows up. He drives a big orange SUV, about ten years old, not clean but not filthy either. Probably passed down from his mom, Mikey thinks. Pete honks twice and Mikey lets himself in.
"Where to?" Pete says as Mikey clicks in the seatbelt. "You wanna get some ice cream or something?"
"Let's just go for a drive, maybe," Mikey says. He slinks down in his seat, letting the back of his head mold against the headrest. The windshield wipers make a soft clicking noise, syncopated against the patter of the raindrops as Pete drives. It's kind of nice.
"So what happened yesterday?" Pete says, glancing over at him with open curiosity. "Your brother looked pretty pissed. Did he get you in trouble with your parents?"
"Our parents are dead," Mikey says, and he's not looking at Pete but he can guess Pete's expression, the widening of the eyes, the sudden oh-shit awkwardness of saying the wrong thing, like it even makes a difference. "Car accident, last spring. Gerard's my legal guardian."
Pete is quiet for a couple of seconds. "I'm sorry, dude."
Mikey just nods once. It still feels weird to say, and the weirdest thing about that is that he's said it so many times before. He spent half his childhood following Gerard around and supporting Gerard's weird lies; he couldn't begin to count how many times they convinced strangers they were sweet, innocent orphan brothers. They got candy out of it sometimes, or comic books, but a lot of the time he thinks Gerard just got pleasure out of telling a story and being believed -- and Mikey just got the pleasure out of being in on it with Gerard.
Sometimes he thinks he must be a pretty crappy son because he doesn't miss them as much as he thinks he should. Elena went about two months before they did, but she's the one he still expects to see at home every night, the one he starts collecting tiny stories for during the day whenever he sees something weird or funny.
The road they're on is empty and the rain's hard enough now you can barely see a couple inches in front of you. "Why don't you pull over?" Mikey says, and Pete comes to a stop, alongside a grove of trees.
Mikey unclicks his seatbelt and says, "Do you want to fuck around?"
Pete says, "Yeah."
The backseat's pretty fucking spacious, compared to any other cars Mikey's fooled around in. He braces one foot against the floor and wraps the other around the back of Pete's legs as he pulls Pete down onto him. Pete's fucking hard already, as soon as they touch, and Mikey doesn't know what to think about that. Yesterday he just wanted to kiss for a really long time first, before anything else, barely touching anywhere but hands and lips, just kissing in Mikey's bed for an hour.
Pete stops suddenly from where he's sucking on Mikey's neck, like he just remembered something. "Can I give you a hickey?" Pete says, and to tell the truth, Mikey's not sure if he's already too late anyway, but--
"Yeah," Mikey says. "Do it." He arches his neck up to give Pete better access and stares up at the ceiling. His hard-on is getting uncomfortable, and he shifts a little, moving up against Pete, and he can feel the exact moment when Pete realizes it, because Pete goes absolutely still for just a split second.
Oh, for fuck's sake, Mikey thinks, and maybe he's not popular or cool or anything, but a person has to have some standards, right? And as these things go, "being willing to touch my dick" isn't such a picky requirement.
He shifts again, and this time it's on purpose, slow and deliberate against Pete's thigh, and Pete bites down on his shoulder. Not just a nip, either, a bite, and it hurts a little.
"Pete," Mikey says, in his softest voice that isn't a whisper. Pete makes a sound in response, a quiet mumble. "Pete," Mikey says again, "I want you to suck my dick."
And Pete bites down on his shoulder again, even harder, and then he's shuddering and shuddering and creaming his pants and collapsing, a heavy solid weight on Mikey's body.
"Shit," Pete says, really loudly.
Mikey can't blame him; he's thinking the same thing.
"Shit fuck," Pete says. He shifts his weight off of Mikey and rolls off onto the floor, kneeling up in the small space between the rows of seats. "Sorry, fuck--"
"Whatever, it doesn't matter," Mikey says, cutting off him off, and he close his eyes and gets his own hands to his belt buckle. His own grip on his dick, familiar, comfortable, but the rhythm goes all out of whack when Pete adds his hand, dry and callused and awkward. "Don't," Mikey says, and his eyes are still closed but he reaches out blindly with his free arm and pulls Pete closer toward him. "Just kiss me, okay?"
"Yeah," Pete breathes against Mikey's lips, and it turns out that's something Pete can do just fine.
*****
Gerard's car is parked in the driveway when Pete drops Mikey off, but it's totally dark by now and none of the lights are on inside. It looks like a ghost house. Not like the cool kind of ghost house, but the kind where people still live, some 80-year-old lady who polishes the picture on the piano every day of her fiancé who died in the war. It's depressing but Mikey goes inside anyway.
When he gets inside and locks the door behind him, he realizes there is one light on, after all, one of the lamps in the living room. There's noise coming from there, too, and Mikey follows it through the hall.
The lamp next to the couch is on, and the noise is coming from the TV, light flickering and blinking from there, too. Galaxy Quest is on, and it's still near the beginning, so Gerard can't have been out for long, but he looks dead to the world. curled up on the couch in the ratty Transformers fleece blanket, mouth ajar and hair in his eyes. It's not even eight yet.
The blanket's big enough for Mikey to squeeze underneath, too, leaning his head in against Gerard's shoulder. It's a good movie. He watches it to the end.
*****
Pete texts him again the next morning. Mikey waits an hour before he responds.
*****
On Friday afternoon he walks home with Frank. He's half-listening as Frank talks about the band he's thinking of starting and the party they're going to this weekend and how Mikey should come over on Sunday to play video games. Mikey agrees with all these things in the abstract.
Frank turns onto Maple Drive, promising to email Mikey later, and Mikey waves him goodbye and keeps going straight. He waits half a block before he checks his phone again, reads the latest message Pete's sent him. It's poetry, maybe, or a song lyric, or maybe Pete just can't write coherently. Mikey doesn't know. It feels like it means something, though, like it's not a totally stupid response to what Mikey had just said.
He almost walks by his own house. Even when he realizes what he's doing, there's a moment when he almost keeps walking anyway. It's weird: Mikey's lived in this house his entire childhood, his whole life, and it looks like every other house on the block.
He takes the stairs down to the basement, on the side of the house where it opens to the outside. Gerard has it locked three different times. Mikey does each one of them back up as soon as he's inside.
The basement smells like dirty socks and mold and paint. It should be gross, and it is a little, but it's a comforting smell, too, somehow. It smells like Gerard's room is supposed to smell.
Mikey drops his backpack on the floor by the couch and sits down. Gerard's papers are in piles all over the place. He grabs a folder off the desk and folds his legs up underneath himself.
He's still reading when Gerard gets home, climbing down the steps from the house. "Hey," Gerard says. His voice sounds careful, like he's afraid of saying the wrong thing.
"Hey," Mikey says, but he doesn't look over at him yet, not while Gerard's still in his fucking khakis and business casual button-down. When he does look up, it's after Gerard's changed into his threadbare Madonna tee and sweats. He looks like Gerard again.
"This is really good," Mikey says, nodding down towards the comic in his lap.
He remembers when Gerard first started talking about Anna the were-gazelle -- it must be almost a year ago, now. She runs away from home and joins the circus, falls in love with the Bearded Lady. "The transformation happens at first just when she's scared," Gerard had said, gesturing so emphatically he'd almost knocked a coffee mug to the floor. "It's about survival, you know? Because there's more than one way to survive, Mikey... And then she learns how to do it on purpose, too. Survival and controlling your own life. That's what it's about."
"Thanks," Gerard says now. He sits down on the other end of the couch, facing in toward Mikey. He brings one hand up to his face, gnawing absently at a fingernail while he looks at Mikey with a half-frown.
"It's really good," Mikey repeats, and he closes the file back up and sets it back on the desk. "That's what you should be doing, Gerard, you know. Not sitting in a cubicle and listening to assholes whine at you on the phone all day."
"Yeah, well." Gerard shrugs. 'It doesn't matter, anyway."
Mikey folds his arms across his chest. "I never asked you to quit art school," Mikey says, and there's a waver to his voice he wasn't planning on and he's not even sure he recognizes.
Gerard looks confused, too. "What are you talking about? You never had to ask me."
"No," says Mikey. "Don't do that." He keeps his gaze steady and straight. "Don't make it my fault you did. I don't want--" he falls silent, not sure how -- if -- to finish what he was trying to say.
"What the fuck would you have done in my place, Mikey Way?" Gerard says, and his voice is getting louder. Mikey goes silent, but Gerard always get loud, loud and full of words. "What should I have done?"
It wouldn't have been the same if it was him, Mikey thinks. He's not the talented one. "You shouldn't have done it," he says stubbornly.
"Fuck you," Gerard says. "You don't have any right to say that, you don't-- I had to take care of you, keep us together."
"You don't have to take care of me," Mikey says.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Gerard's face is getting red again and his hands move in two different directions, like they're not even connected to each other. "Of course I have to take care of you, you're my brother, my little brother, you're Mikey. We're all we've fucking got."
Mikey can't think of a single fucking thing to say. He wants to hit something but there's nothing close and he's pretty sure he'd just end up hurting his hand anyway. "Fuck you," he manages, just barely, through the lump in his throat. He stares fixedly at the ugly owl figurine on the bookshelf across the room and nothing else.
Gerard exhales, louder than air has any right to be. When he talks again, Mikey's counted up to fifty-five Mississippi already, and Gerard's voice sounds a little more together.
"I was gonna quit school anyway," Gerard says. "After Elena died. I promised Mom and Dad I would finish the term out."
Mikey doesn't say anything. He can tell Gerard believes it.
Gerard says, "I talked to Gigi earlier."
Gigi is Mikey's caseworker. She's blonde and tall and has really big breasts that she covers up by dressing like a sixty year old, probably because she has to deal with teenage boys like Mikey. Last time she took Mikey out to McDonald's and asked him leading questions about how he was adjusting in between bites of French fries.
"Shouldn't she be out saving crack babies from the gutter or something?" Mikey says, chewing his lip. That sounds bad, but he means it. There are plenty of people who need help. "Like, fuck, there are so many fucked up families out there, why does she have to bother with us? We're perfectly fucking fine. I get good grades, I don't get into fights. We're fine."
Gerard stands up and crosses the room to kneel by his bed. He drags the wooden case out from under the bed, unlocks it and removes a bottle of cheap vodka. He takes a swig, straight from the bottle, and then come back to sit next to Mikey on the couch again.
"We're not fine, Mikey," Gerard says, and he hands Mikey the bottle.
Mikey takes a long drink and breathes out, letting the warmth fill up his chest.
"She thinks maybe you should try therapy. It'd give you someone to talk to about things, you know?"
Mikey frowns and says, "But I have you to talk to."
Gerard laughs a little at that, even though Mikey was mostly serious. "I don't know, Mikey. I don't know how good either of us are doing right now, and if you can get it on the man's dollar, why not?" He reaches out and takes Mikey's hand, clasps it tight. Mikey tries to think, suddenly, when the last time they held hands like this was, and he can't.
"Two more years, Mikey. That's it. And nobody'll give a shit about either of us ever again," Gerard says, squeezing tight.
Mikey says, "You promise?"
"Stick a needle in my motherfucking eye, dog," Gerard says, and Mikey hands him the vodka.
*****
They're waiting before school, the fifteen minutes before the first bell rings, sitting at once of the benches in front of the school. Ugly yellow flowers bloom here in the spring, but right now it's all sludge and dirt. Frank is half asleep, still, yawning so wide it takes up half his face. Most of his weight's resting on Mikey. He's heavier than he looks, the fucker.
"He keeps texting me," Mikey says. "I don't get it."
"Mm-hmm," Frank says. Mikey would offer him some of his thermos of coffee if he thought it'd help, but it won't. Frank's not human until after ten, which is a shame since school starts at eight. Frank says it's a travesty, and he can prove it with science, but he's never actually done so.
"I mean. We're not friends or anything, you know? We hooked up twice. I have friends. I have you, and I have Gerard. I don't need more friends."
Frank makes a sleepy noise. It sounds a little disdainful.
"And, like. I have plenty of acquaintances," Mikey adds. "People who like me. You know what I mean. But they don't send me messages about their dogs or their dreams last night or how they used to be afraid of Jell-o, you know? What the fuck does he want?"
He can see Pete from here. It's weird how he can tell it's Pete, even from really far away. He's standing over near the drama wing, laughing and standing around with his band geek friends.
"Ask him, then," Frank says crankily. He rubs his face with the back of one hand.
"I did," says Mikey. Last night, right before he went to sleep. One sentence, that's all. What the hell do you want from me?
Pete hasn't responded yet.
Mikey's still watching him from across the front of the building. Pete's patting people on the shoulder and laughing some more, and then he's moving away from his friends. Heading to the jocks now, Mikey figures, but instead Pete stops right in the middle of the pathway, totally alone among all the cliques fanned out in every direction.
He's taking something out of the pocket of his hoodie, and staring down at his hands, and Mikey knows what's coming even before his phone starts buzzing.
What the fuck do you think I want, Mikey Way?
"Fuck him," Mikey says. "Fuck him, Frank."
"No thanks," Frank says, and Mikey pushes him away gently so he doesn't fall over as Mikey stands up.
He's not even sure why he's so angry, but he can't think clearly, and Pete is watching him with dark eyes and a blank face for every step Mikey walks toward him. Mikey doesn't even know what he's going to do until he's right there, until Pete is right in front of him.
"Hi," Pete says, and it's the first word they've said out loud to each other since sitting together in Pete's car last week, after all the hundreds of things Pete has written to him without saying anything.
Mikey places his hands on Pete's face, closes his eyes, and kisses him.
It's supposed to embarrass him, maybe, or punish him, or maybe just test him. Mikey kisses him there in front of the school, in front of all their classmates, and his eyes are still closed but he can hear the whispering starting already all around them. He holds it a little longer than he has to, just because he can, and then he steps back and opens his eyes and stares back at Pete like a challenge.
The whispering's louder -- not even whispering anymore. There are girls behind him talking so high pitched he can't even make it out. There's cat calls somewhere. Out of the corner of his eye, Mikey can see the band geeks, split halfway between nauseated and confused. He can hear the jocks making comments about faggots already, too.
And Pete isn't turning away, or making a face, or freaking out, or laughing it off.
Pete is staring right back at Mikey, and he's fucking beaming, his smile conquering his whole entire face like there's nothing else anywhere.
Mikey can't hear anything but his own breath rushing through his ears.
But Pete's not saying anything, just stepping forward and lacing their fingers together, and he's still smiling like that.
Sometimes, Mikey thinks, he's wrong about things. About people. Completely, totally wrong in every way possible.
"Yeah," Mikey says, "yeah, okay."
*****
Over dinner, Mikey says, "So, like. I guess I have a boyfriend now."
Gerard's in the middle of a huge bite of pizza, catching at the greasy cheese before it can fall all the way to the plate. He chews furiously for a minute, staring into space, before he swallows and looks back to Mikey and says, "Hey, awesome."
Mikey shrugs, but he can't help smiling just a tiny bit.
"No, really," Gerard says, "I'm really happy for you. I mean, I'm not judging you, there's nothing wrong with just hooking up and stuff, but, like. It's not the same as having this real connection with a person, you know? There's nothing like that."
Mikey is pretty sure he knows exactly how much experience Gerard's had with either casual sex or relationships, and the answer is not a lot, either way, but it doesn't really matter. "Thanks," Mikey says, and he takes another bite of pizza.
"Oh, hey," Gerard says, like it's just occurring to him this moment, "is it that guy from your room? Naked guy?"
Mikey nods once, and Gerard laughs, a great honking bray. "Nice. That guy's body was fucking amazing, Mikey, nice fucking catch."
Mikey throws a napkin at him, but Gerard just lets it bounce off his head and keeps giggling.
by Pearl-o
R. 5500 words. Pete/Mikey. Not real at all! Title from "Do You Realize??" by the Flaming Lips.
Thanks to
impertinence and etben for encouragement and bexless for excellent beta. ♥Full disclosure: Nobody dies in this story, but minor characters are dead before it begins. There's bad sex. Gerard and Mikey are kind of mean to each other. Some of the facts are probably far off accurate. Also, it's another goddamn high school AU.
Summary: Mikey's slogging through high school, Gerard's working for the man, and neither of them are fine. God only knows what's going on with Pete Wentz.
******
Mikey's not sure how much of it is due to the orgasm and how much due to the pot, but he doesn't particularly feel like moving ever again. Even talking seems like a lot of effort at this point. Mikey settles for keeping his eyes open, watching Pete sitting up against the headboard, playing a little with the pipe between his hands.
Mikey put his boxers and glasses back on a good fifteen minutes ago, but Pete's still naked, lying on top of the comforter too. He seems like a little guy at school, with his big sweaters and tight jeans, but naked you can see how well he's built, how all his muscles fit together perfectly. His skin's real smooth, too, almost perfect except when you get to that ugly tattoo in the middle of his back and the raised scarred skin. That's where Pete let him jerk off, rubbing his dick against Pete's back until he came, spurts of white against Pete's tanned skin.
Mikey could reach out and touch him there now, right where it's dried and sticky. But that would require moving.
Whatever's caused Mikey's languor, Pete seems free from it. He's practically thrumming with energy. Mikey can almost see it, right beneath his skin, and it makes him tired just thinking about it.
There's a noise from outside, and Mikey can identify it immediately as Gerard's car in the driveway. It sounds even worse than it looks, and it's a pretty ugly heap of junk, tiny and rusty and covered in dirt.
"Oh, hey," Pete says, glancing over at him with a slight frown, "is that your folks?"
Mikey knows there's not a hint of expression in either his voice or his face when he says, "No. My brother."
Pete relaxes a little at that, just the smallest bit. "Oh. I didn't know you had a brother."
Mikey nods.
"So is he cool, or what?"
That question, Mikey thinks, would have been a hell of a lot easier to answer six months ago. "He's Gerard," he says.
"I know what you mean," Pete says, "I got a little brother and a little sister, and I love them and all, but siblings can just be--"
Mikey isn't listening to Pete, not really. He's busy tuning into the sounds of Gerard downstairs -- front door, shuffling around the kitchen, and now he here is on the stairs, calling up.
"Hey, Mikey, you home?"
It's not like Mikey bothered to even close the door to his room. As soon as Gerard gets up the stairs and turns he's in Mikey's doorway, with a clear view of Mikey in bed, the naked guy, pipe and his stash still on the bed stand.
For a second, Gerard's face just falls, he looks sad, and for that second Mikey feels maybe a little guilty -- but then it's gone and Gerard just looks pissed, and any guilt Mikey would feel goes away.
"Hey," says Pete, "I'm Pete Wentz," and Pete actually stands up and crosses the room and offers his hand to Gerard to shake, still naked. Mikey could laugh, almost. Naked Pete and Gerard in his stupid business clothes and his stupid short hair, straight from his stupid cubicle.
Gerard actually takes it, too, and shakes, but his eyes are still on Mikey the whole time. "Gerard Way. Look, Pete, I think you should go, me and Mikey have a lot to talk about."
Pete looks back at Mikey, raising an eyebrow, and Mikey shrugs, rolls his eyes a bit, indicating to Pete to yeah, go. Pete grabs his clothes off the floor and then surprises Mikey by coming back to the bed and leaning over to kiss Mikey soft on the mouth. Pete hadn't struck him as the kind of dude who'd kiss the guy who had just blown him.
"I'll call you," Pete says, and then he's gone and it's just Mikey and Gerard.
Gerard's arms are crossed and he's still leaning against the door frame. "What the fuck do you think you're doing, Mikey?"
"What does it look like?" Mikey says.
"It looks like you're being a fucking idiot," Gerard says, "but that's just from here."
Mikey closes his eyes. "Maybe I just wanted to feel good for a little while."
"Maybe you want to get taken away and put into the fucking system. Maybe you want them to decide I'm not a fucking good enough guardian and separate us. Maybe you want to test me and see what I'll fucking do because you're that fucking selfish."
"That's a lot of maybes," says Mikey. He opens his eyes lazily.
Gerard's face is bright red. He says, "You know I'm going to have to punish you, right?"
"Yeah?" Mikey says, and he's proud of how blank his voice still is. "So how much of a hypocrite are you, exactly, Gerard?"
"You're fucking grounded," Gerard says, and when he leaves, he slams the door shut behind him.
If Gerard had more practice at this, Mikey thinks, staring up at the ceiling, he probably would have thought to take the pot with him.
*****
Mikey sneaks out of the house around midnight. Gerard is still up, he knows, but he's down in the basement, working on his comic. And drinking, of course, because that's where Gerard keeps his booze, in the little cabinet under the bed. It's the same place Gerard always kept it before, when they used to get drunk together and talk about everything. The only difference is now he keeps it locked up, like he thinks Mikey would steal it. Like Mikey's ever stolen from Gerard, ever, in his entire fucking life. That's what Gerard thinks of him now.
It's cold outside, dark between the streetlights that have half-burnt out. Mikey keeps his fists deep in his pockets and his hoodie zipped up to his chin and walks to the park. His favorite place here is still the swings, has been since he was five and Gerard used to push him higher and then challenge him to contests of who could jump farthest.
He sits in the highest one and has to fold his legs carefully under him, scraping in the sand. He texts Frank, but he's not surprised when no answer comes. Frank's been sick again lately, and he's keeping old lady hours as a consequence, asleep by nine.
Even if Frank was up, he'd probably just tell Mikey to give Gerard a break, that Mikey's being too hard on him. It'd still be better than being out here alone.
There is a new text on his phone, but it's from Pete, wanting to know what's up, saying that he had a fun time and they should get together again soon. Mikey deletes it without replying.
He twirls in the seat, letting the chain wind up all the way to the top as he turns. When he lets go he spins around, faster and faster till everything's back to normal. When he was a kid, it would make him dizzy, but now it doesn't seem so impressive.
Mikey lights a cigarette and stares up at the sky while he smokes. He can't see any stars. The entire park's covered with cigarette butts already, so when he's finished, he drops it to the ground and crushes it beneath his heel.
*****
He heads back home around five. He comes in carefully, quietly, but Gerard's still up.
He's sitting at the kitchen table with an ashtray and a mug of coffee. The ashtray's pretty full and the coffee's pretty empty. There's a half-smoked cigarette in his free hand. His eyes are red.
Mikey stops, just inside the room, and looks at Gerard and waits, but Gerard doesn't say anything at all, just takes another sip of his coffee and a drag on his cigarette.
So what are you going to do about it? Mikey thinks, but he doesn't say it.
Gerard looks away from him, finally, and says, "I don't have anything to say to you right now."
Mikey rolls his eyes and heads back up to his room and his bed. He hasn't slept in twenty four hours and he's not going to sleep now, but he can turn on his stereo, stare at the ceiling and listen to the same song on repeat until his alarm goes off.
*****
"You're being too hard on him," Frank says bluntly, that day at lunch, and Mikey shakes his head and pushes the limp spaghetti around his plate.
"It's just, like. I don't know if he even listens to what he's saying."
"He's doing his best."
"There's nothing I'm fucking doing that he didn't do, too. Fuck, we did this all together."
Frank snorts. "Yeah, I forgot about all the jocks Gerard was banging in your room in high school."
Mikey snorts at that, too. "Oh, Christ. This morning at breakfast he tried to give me a heart-to-heart."
"Yeah?"
"He wanted me to know it's okay to be gay."
"Oh, man," Frank says, laughing. "What did you say?"
"I told him I wasn't gay," Mikey says. He takes a bite of his spaghetti and glances across the cafeteria to where Pete's sitting with some of his soccer buddies. Pete seems to spend half his time with them, and half his time with some of the losers by the band room. It's funny, because both groups always look at him the exact same way. Like they're not totally sure what he's doing there, anyway.
"What the fuck do you call it, then?" Frank says. "Bisexual?"
"I don't call it anything," Mikey says, looking back down at his plate. "Anyway, then he starts talking about how he questioned his sexuality a couple times in high school, and I should just be happy with who I am, and then he had to leave for work." Gerard was running late, again -- big surprise, when he stayed up all night working on art -- and he'd just grabbed his coffee and kissed Mikey on the brow and left, while Mikey stayed back and finished his cereal slowly. For a minute or two it was just like last year, Gerard heading out to art school in the city while Mikey trudged through high school.
"I love him," Mikey says, more to his spaghetti than to Frank. "I mean, he's my best friend. I just can't fucking deal with him like this. He's my brother, not my parents."
"It sounds like you're being a dick to him just to be a dick," Frank says, and it's a little quieter than Frank usually talks, a little more serious, and that's how Mikey knows he's probably right.
The thing is, though, he doesn't know how else to act, so he just spends the rest of lunch period poking silently at his plate until the bell rings.
*****
Mikey walks home alone, because Frank's got detention again for skipping gym class. It's raining out, not hard, but steady, all the fallen leaves on the ground turning into pulp as he shuffles through them. He's listening to his Discman, one of the CDs Gerard passed to him last spring, some local punk band. They're not amazing but they're not bad, either, and they're loud.
The rain gets more intense as he walks. The last three blocks or so it's pouring, and he's soaked through when he gets home. He kicks off his sneakers right inside, strips off his hoodie and wet jeans and leaves them in a pile by the door next to his backpack.
He checks his phone while he walks to the kitchen. There's another text from Pete -- which makes four since he left yesterday, which seems a little overkill, since Mikey hasn't responded once. It doesn't say anything important, either, just greetings and asking what's up. There's a message from Gerard, too, this one saying he has to stay late at the office tonight, and he won't be home until at least seven.
Mikey makes a sandwich of peanut butter and marshmallow fluff and grabs a can of Coke from the fridge and eats standing over the sink. He stands there a couple minutes after he's done, staring out the window into the gray street outside.
What the fuck, he thinks, and he picks up his phone again and texts Pete back.
*****
Mikey changes his clothes and goes outside to wait on the porch. It's not even fifteen minutes before Pete shows up. He drives a big orange SUV, about ten years old, not clean but not filthy either. Probably passed down from his mom, Mikey thinks. Pete honks twice and Mikey lets himself in.
"Where to?" Pete says as Mikey clicks in the seatbelt. "You wanna get some ice cream or something?"
"Let's just go for a drive, maybe," Mikey says. He slinks down in his seat, letting the back of his head mold against the headrest. The windshield wipers make a soft clicking noise, syncopated against the patter of the raindrops as Pete drives. It's kind of nice.
"So what happened yesterday?" Pete says, glancing over at him with open curiosity. "Your brother looked pretty pissed. Did he get you in trouble with your parents?"
"Our parents are dead," Mikey says, and he's not looking at Pete but he can guess Pete's expression, the widening of the eyes, the sudden oh-shit awkwardness of saying the wrong thing, like it even makes a difference. "Car accident, last spring. Gerard's my legal guardian."
Pete is quiet for a couple of seconds. "I'm sorry, dude."
Mikey just nods once. It still feels weird to say, and the weirdest thing about that is that he's said it so many times before. He spent half his childhood following Gerard around and supporting Gerard's weird lies; he couldn't begin to count how many times they convinced strangers they were sweet, innocent orphan brothers. They got candy out of it sometimes, or comic books, but a lot of the time he thinks Gerard just got pleasure out of telling a story and being believed -- and Mikey just got the pleasure out of being in on it with Gerard.
Sometimes he thinks he must be a pretty crappy son because he doesn't miss them as much as he thinks he should. Elena went about two months before they did, but she's the one he still expects to see at home every night, the one he starts collecting tiny stories for during the day whenever he sees something weird or funny.
The road they're on is empty and the rain's hard enough now you can barely see a couple inches in front of you. "Why don't you pull over?" Mikey says, and Pete comes to a stop, alongside a grove of trees.
Mikey unclicks his seatbelt and says, "Do you want to fuck around?"
Pete says, "Yeah."
The backseat's pretty fucking spacious, compared to any other cars Mikey's fooled around in. He braces one foot against the floor and wraps the other around the back of Pete's legs as he pulls Pete down onto him. Pete's fucking hard already, as soon as they touch, and Mikey doesn't know what to think about that. Yesterday he just wanted to kiss for a really long time first, before anything else, barely touching anywhere but hands and lips, just kissing in Mikey's bed for an hour.
Pete stops suddenly from where he's sucking on Mikey's neck, like he just remembered something. "Can I give you a hickey?" Pete says, and to tell the truth, Mikey's not sure if he's already too late anyway, but--
"Yeah," Mikey says. "Do it." He arches his neck up to give Pete better access and stares up at the ceiling. His hard-on is getting uncomfortable, and he shifts a little, moving up against Pete, and he can feel the exact moment when Pete realizes it, because Pete goes absolutely still for just a split second.
Oh, for fuck's sake, Mikey thinks, and maybe he's not popular or cool or anything, but a person has to have some standards, right? And as these things go, "being willing to touch my dick" isn't such a picky requirement.
He shifts again, and this time it's on purpose, slow and deliberate against Pete's thigh, and Pete bites down on his shoulder. Not just a nip, either, a bite, and it hurts a little.
"Pete," Mikey says, in his softest voice that isn't a whisper. Pete makes a sound in response, a quiet mumble. "Pete," Mikey says again, "I want you to suck my dick."
And Pete bites down on his shoulder again, even harder, and then he's shuddering and shuddering and creaming his pants and collapsing, a heavy solid weight on Mikey's body.
"Shit," Pete says, really loudly.
Mikey can't blame him; he's thinking the same thing.
"Shit fuck," Pete says. He shifts his weight off of Mikey and rolls off onto the floor, kneeling up in the small space between the rows of seats. "Sorry, fuck--"
"Whatever, it doesn't matter," Mikey says, cutting off him off, and he close his eyes and gets his own hands to his belt buckle. His own grip on his dick, familiar, comfortable, but the rhythm goes all out of whack when Pete adds his hand, dry and callused and awkward. "Don't," Mikey says, and his eyes are still closed but he reaches out blindly with his free arm and pulls Pete closer toward him. "Just kiss me, okay?"
"Yeah," Pete breathes against Mikey's lips, and it turns out that's something Pete can do just fine.
*****
Gerard's car is parked in the driveway when Pete drops Mikey off, but it's totally dark by now and none of the lights are on inside. It looks like a ghost house. Not like the cool kind of ghost house, but the kind where people still live, some 80-year-old lady who polishes the picture on the piano every day of her fiancé who died in the war. It's depressing but Mikey goes inside anyway.
When he gets inside and locks the door behind him, he realizes there is one light on, after all, one of the lamps in the living room. There's noise coming from there, too, and Mikey follows it through the hall.
The lamp next to the couch is on, and the noise is coming from the TV, light flickering and blinking from there, too. Galaxy Quest is on, and it's still near the beginning, so Gerard can't have been out for long, but he looks dead to the world. curled up on the couch in the ratty Transformers fleece blanket, mouth ajar and hair in his eyes. It's not even eight yet.
The blanket's big enough for Mikey to squeeze underneath, too, leaning his head in against Gerard's shoulder. It's a good movie. He watches it to the end.
*****
Pete texts him again the next morning. Mikey waits an hour before he responds.
*****
On Friday afternoon he walks home with Frank. He's half-listening as Frank talks about the band he's thinking of starting and the party they're going to this weekend and how Mikey should come over on Sunday to play video games. Mikey agrees with all these things in the abstract.
Frank turns onto Maple Drive, promising to email Mikey later, and Mikey waves him goodbye and keeps going straight. He waits half a block before he checks his phone again, reads the latest message Pete's sent him. It's poetry, maybe, or a song lyric, or maybe Pete just can't write coherently. Mikey doesn't know. It feels like it means something, though, like it's not a totally stupid response to what Mikey had just said.
He almost walks by his own house. Even when he realizes what he's doing, there's a moment when he almost keeps walking anyway. It's weird: Mikey's lived in this house his entire childhood, his whole life, and it looks like every other house on the block.
He takes the stairs down to the basement, on the side of the house where it opens to the outside. Gerard has it locked three different times. Mikey does each one of them back up as soon as he's inside.
The basement smells like dirty socks and mold and paint. It should be gross, and it is a little, but it's a comforting smell, too, somehow. It smells like Gerard's room is supposed to smell.
Mikey drops his backpack on the floor by the couch and sits down. Gerard's papers are in piles all over the place. He grabs a folder off the desk and folds his legs up underneath himself.
He's still reading when Gerard gets home, climbing down the steps from the house. "Hey," Gerard says. His voice sounds careful, like he's afraid of saying the wrong thing.
"Hey," Mikey says, but he doesn't look over at him yet, not while Gerard's still in his fucking khakis and business casual button-down. When he does look up, it's after Gerard's changed into his threadbare Madonna tee and sweats. He looks like Gerard again.
"This is really good," Mikey says, nodding down towards the comic in his lap.
He remembers when Gerard first started talking about Anna the were-gazelle -- it must be almost a year ago, now. She runs away from home and joins the circus, falls in love with the Bearded Lady. "The transformation happens at first just when she's scared," Gerard had said, gesturing so emphatically he'd almost knocked a coffee mug to the floor. "It's about survival, you know? Because there's more than one way to survive, Mikey... And then she learns how to do it on purpose, too. Survival and controlling your own life. That's what it's about."
"Thanks," Gerard says now. He sits down on the other end of the couch, facing in toward Mikey. He brings one hand up to his face, gnawing absently at a fingernail while he looks at Mikey with a half-frown.
"It's really good," Mikey repeats, and he closes the file back up and sets it back on the desk. "That's what you should be doing, Gerard, you know. Not sitting in a cubicle and listening to assholes whine at you on the phone all day."
"Yeah, well." Gerard shrugs. 'It doesn't matter, anyway."
Mikey folds his arms across his chest. "I never asked you to quit art school," Mikey says, and there's a waver to his voice he wasn't planning on and he's not even sure he recognizes.
Gerard looks confused, too. "What are you talking about? You never had to ask me."
"No," says Mikey. "Don't do that." He keeps his gaze steady and straight. "Don't make it my fault you did. I don't want--" he falls silent, not sure how -- if -- to finish what he was trying to say.
"What the fuck would you have done in my place, Mikey Way?" Gerard says, and his voice is getting louder. Mikey goes silent, but Gerard always get loud, loud and full of words. "What should I have done?"
It wouldn't have been the same if it was him, Mikey thinks. He's not the talented one. "You shouldn't have done it," he says stubbornly.
"Fuck you," Gerard says. "You don't have any right to say that, you don't-- I had to take care of you, keep us together."
"You don't have to take care of me," Mikey says.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Gerard's face is getting red again and his hands move in two different directions, like they're not even connected to each other. "Of course I have to take care of you, you're my brother, my little brother, you're Mikey. We're all we've fucking got."
Mikey can't think of a single fucking thing to say. He wants to hit something but there's nothing close and he's pretty sure he'd just end up hurting his hand anyway. "Fuck you," he manages, just barely, through the lump in his throat. He stares fixedly at the ugly owl figurine on the bookshelf across the room and nothing else.
Gerard exhales, louder than air has any right to be. When he talks again, Mikey's counted up to fifty-five Mississippi already, and Gerard's voice sounds a little more together.
"I was gonna quit school anyway," Gerard says. "After Elena died. I promised Mom and Dad I would finish the term out."
Mikey doesn't say anything. He can tell Gerard believes it.
Gerard says, "I talked to Gigi earlier."
Gigi is Mikey's caseworker. She's blonde and tall and has really big breasts that she covers up by dressing like a sixty year old, probably because she has to deal with teenage boys like Mikey. Last time she took Mikey out to McDonald's and asked him leading questions about how he was adjusting in between bites of French fries.
"Shouldn't she be out saving crack babies from the gutter or something?" Mikey says, chewing his lip. That sounds bad, but he means it. There are plenty of people who need help. "Like, fuck, there are so many fucked up families out there, why does she have to bother with us? We're perfectly fucking fine. I get good grades, I don't get into fights. We're fine."
Gerard stands up and crosses the room to kneel by his bed. He drags the wooden case out from under the bed, unlocks it and removes a bottle of cheap vodka. He takes a swig, straight from the bottle, and then come back to sit next to Mikey on the couch again.
"We're not fine, Mikey," Gerard says, and he hands Mikey the bottle.
Mikey takes a long drink and breathes out, letting the warmth fill up his chest.
"She thinks maybe you should try therapy. It'd give you someone to talk to about things, you know?"
Mikey frowns and says, "But I have you to talk to."
Gerard laughs a little at that, even though Mikey was mostly serious. "I don't know, Mikey. I don't know how good either of us are doing right now, and if you can get it on the man's dollar, why not?" He reaches out and takes Mikey's hand, clasps it tight. Mikey tries to think, suddenly, when the last time they held hands like this was, and he can't.
"Two more years, Mikey. That's it. And nobody'll give a shit about either of us ever again," Gerard says, squeezing tight.
Mikey says, "You promise?"
"Stick a needle in my motherfucking eye, dog," Gerard says, and Mikey hands him the vodka.
*****
They're waiting before school, the fifteen minutes before the first bell rings, sitting at once of the benches in front of the school. Ugly yellow flowers bloom here in the spring, but right now it's all sludge and dirt. Frank is half asleep, still, yawning so wide it takes up half his face. Most of his weight's resting on Mikey. He's heavier than he looks, the fucker.
"He keeps texting me," Mikey says. "I don't get it."
"Mm-hmm," Frank says. Mikey would offer him some of his thermos of coffee if he thought it'd help, but it won't. Frank's not human until after ten, which is a shame since school starts at eight. Frank says it's a travesty, and he can prove it with science, but he's never actually done so.
"I mean. We're not friends or anything, you know? We hooked up twice. I have friends. I have you, and I have Gerard. I don't need more friends."
Frank makes a sleepy noise. It sounds a little disdainful.
"And, like. I have plenty of acquaintances," Mikey adds. "People who like me. You know what I mean. But they don't send me messages about their dogs or their dreams last night or how they used to be afraid of Jell-o, you know? What the fuck does he want?"
He can see Pete from here. It's weird how he can tell it's Pete, even from really far away. He's standing over near the drama wing, laughing and standing around with his band geek friends.
"Ask him, then," Frank says crankily. He rubs his face with the back of one hand.
"I did," says Mikey. Last night, right before he went to sleep. One sentence, that's all. What the hell do you want from me?
Pete hasn't responded yet.
Mikey's still watching him from across the front of the building. Pete's patting people on the shoulder and laughing some more, and then he's moving away from his friends. Heading to the jocks now, Mikey figures, but instead Pete stops right in the middle of the pathway, totally alone among all the cliques fanned out in every direction.
He's taking something out of the pocket of his hoodie, and staring down at his hands, and Mikey knows what's coming even before his phone starts buzzing.
What the fuck do you think I want, Mikey Way?
"Fuck him," Mikey says. "Fuck him, Frank."
"No thanks," Frank says, and Mikey pushes him away gently so he doesn't fall over as Mikey stands up.
He's not even sure why he's so angry, but he can't think clearly, and Pete is watching him with dark eyes and a blank face for every step Mikey walks toward him. Mikey doesn't even know what he's going to do until he's right there, until Pete is right in front of him.
"Hi," Pete says, and it's the first word they've said out loud to each other since sitting together in Pete's car last week, after all the hundreds of things Pete has written to him without saying anything.
Mikey places his hands on Pete's face, closes his eyes, and kisses him.
It's supposed to embarrass him, maybe, or punish him, or maybe just test him. Mikey kisses him there in front of the school, in front of all their classmates, and his eyes are still closed but he can hear the whispering starting already all around them. He holds it a little longer than he has to, just because he can, and then he steps back and opens his eyes and stares back at Pete like a challenge.
The whispering's louder -- not even whispering anymore. There are girls behind him talking so high pitched he can't even make it out. There's cat calls somewhere. Out of the corner of his eye, Mikey can see the band geeks, split halfway between nauseated and confused. He can hear the jocks making comments about faggots already, too.
And Pete isn't turning away, or making a face, or freaking out, or laughing it off.
Pete is staring right back at Mikey, and he's fucking beaming, his smile conquering his whole entire face like there's nothing else anywhere.
Mikey can't hear anything but his own breath rushing through his ears.
But Pete's not saying anything, just stepping forward and lacing their fingers together, and he's still smiling like that.
Sometimes, Mikey thinks, he's wrong about things. About people. Completely, totally wrong in every way possible.
"Yeah," Mikey says, "yeah, okay."
*****
Over dinner, Mikey says, "So, like. I guess I have a boyfriend now."
Gerard's in the middle of a huge bite of pizza, catching at the greasy cheese before it can fall all the way to the plate. He chews furiously for a minute, staring into space, before he swallows and looks back to Mikey and says, "Hey, awesome."
Mikey shrugs, but he can't help smiling just a tiny bit.
"No, really," Gerard says, "I'm really happy for you. I mean, I'm not judging you, there's nothing wrong with just hooking up and stuff, but, like. It's not the same as having this real connection with a person, you know? There's nothing like that."
Mikey is pretty sure he knows exactly how much experience Gerard's had with either casual sex or relationships, and the answer is not a lot, either way, but it doesn't really matter. "Thanks," Mikey says, and he takes another bite of pizza.
"Oh, hey," Gerard says, like it's just occurring to him this moment, "is it that guy from your room? Naked guy?"
Mikey nods once, and Gerard laughs, a great honking bray. "Nice. That guy's body was fucking amazing, Mikey, nice fucking catch."
Mikey throws a napkin at him, but Gerard just lets it bounce off his head and keeps giggling.
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