Taking Back Sunday -- Chapter 5
[Title] Taking Back Sunday
[Author] dejectedmadness
[Rating] Eventually NC-17. This chapter… PG-13 for boykissing/light touching.
[Chapter Listing] .:1:. .:2:. .:3:. .:4:. 5/?
[Disclaimer] I am posting fanFICTION. Neither the characters nor the ideas belong to me, just the plot specific to this story. No profit is being made off of this fiction, it is being written solely for my entertainment and for the entertainment of others as warped as I am. Don't sue.
[Band/Pairing]Brand New/Straylight Run, Jesse Lacey/Brian Lane, Jesse Lacey/John Nolan
[Summary] Jesse makes a new friend about whom John is not particularly fond for reasons as yet only speculated upon.
[X-Posted] rockinthebed, slashypunkboys, _brand_new_love, lacey_loves_jno
[Author’s Notes] This isn’t intended to be particularly AU, although it is a high school fic, and it has some anachronistic tendencies.
While writing this chapter I used the word Sofa. Then I worried that previously I had used the word Couch instead (Couch is Canadian for Sofa… that or Chesterfield, but I don’t know anyone who actually uses that word). So I checked back and miraculously I HAD used Sofa before. Weird.
This chapter, I sort of see it as a failure on the part of this story. It feels like filler for some reason, I think because I indulged myself a little bit, but it was meant to have a purpose. Well two purposes: Bringing the boys closer, and forming a new sort of bond between them musically. However, it still feels like filler to me. I am not happy with it. Comments are love. Sorry this took so long to post, I have been swamped with end-of-term work lately. The next one is already done, as well as the one after that. As soon as they are betaed, they'll be posted.
Sometime in the early morning, or what could likely have been mid-afternoon for all that Jesse’s perception of time could discern, having gone to bed at dawn, he was roused awake by movement next to him. In normal circumstances, normal defined here as any situation in which Brian and Jesse had not fallen asleep nestled sweetly against one another, Jesse would not have been started awake by Brian’s movement, but considering that Jesse’s forehead had been comfortably balanced against Brian’s all night, and now that balancing point had been removed, Jesse’s head lolled on the pillow, dropping slowly down to the mattress from it’s height. His eyes opened sleepily at impact in time to see Brian enjoying a seated stretch beside him.
“Time’s it?” Jesse muttered, rolling over.
Brian stood from the bed and turned back, putting his knee on the mattress. “Eleven. Go back to sleep.”
“Where you goin’?” Jesse said through a yawn.
“Someone’s ringing the doorbell,” Brian told him. Jesse hadn’t heard it. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Jesse started to sit up, but Brian’s hand on his chest placed him back on the pillow. “I said I’ll be right back.”
Jesse snorted and grinned. “Fine,” he said.
Brian bent down to peck a tentative kiss to Jesse’s cheek, then one to his lips. Jesse leaned up for one more as Brian was attempting to escape, and with a smirk, the drummer obliged. Jesse turned onto his side and pulled Brian’s pillow into his arms, hugging it as a replacement for his missing friend.
Jesse, being half asleep, found it difficult to account for the amount of time that had passed since Brian took his leave, but a sleepy-Jesse hour later, his Brian substitute was still nestled in his arms, and Jesse noted that the other side of the bed had grown cold. He raised his head to squint at the dresser and the green glowing light of the digital clock on top. Surely, Jesse thought upon deciding that it said 11:38, it didn’t take a half an hour to answer the door.
Jesse cast his covers aside and rolled from the bed to his feet in one fluid, though disorienting motion. Donning his crumpled jeans and sparing a moment to pop in his contacts, he ventured into the hall.
His stomach rumbled at once. ‘Oh my God,’ Jesse thought briefly, waking up fully to descend the carpeted stairs and pad across the cool hallway tiles to the kitchen, where his nose was leading him.
Jesse was certain he had never seen anything more adorable than the sight before him, and selfishly, he spared a moment to look on without making his presence known.
Brian obliviously measured out a quarter cup of batter and carefully poured a perfect round pool of it onto the sizzling pan before dropping the scoop back into the bowl and attacking its three other slightly browner friends with his flour and fingerprint covered spatula. He poked a finger into the recipe book on the counter beside him, then lifted the pancake and glanced at its golden underside. Seemingly satisfied he picked it up and turned to drop it on the pre-prepared tray and plate ensemble on the table.
“Ah!” Brian jumped, his arms flailing in surprise at Jesse’s supposedly sudden appearance, and the pancake shot into the air. Jesse raised his hands to protect his face from flying breakfast items, and it landed with a smack squarely in the centre of his chest. “Jesus fuck, Jesse! You scared the living hell out of me!”
Jesse plucked the pancake from his shirt and tossed it to his other hand, rushing forward to deposit the steaming thing on its intended plate.
“Doesn’t mean you’ve got to throw shit at me!”
Brian mumbled a bashful apology. “What are you doing up?”
“Well, I was waiting for you, and you never came back. What are you doing? Jesse glanced in wonder around the demolished room. Brian turned back to his griddle and flipped up the next pancake, putting it beside its twin on the plate. “Well, I went to the door, and then I was hungry, and… I remembered you liked pancakes, so… I was gonna bring them up to you.”
Jesse’s eyes widened, and his mouth dropped. He took in the eggshells on the counter and the flour on Brian’s hands and arms, and the fingerprint of pancake batter on his left cheek. “You did all this for me?”
Brian spent extra time poking at the next cake, deliberately avoiding looking at Jesse. “Well… yeah.” He shrugged and pushed misplaced droplets of batter, which had turned into mini-pancakes, around with the spatula, but his preoccupation couldn’t fool Jesse, or blind him to the crimson flooding Brian’s cheeks. Jesse found himself trying and failing miserably to suppress a silly grin. He approached the other boy from behind.
His hand on Brian’s shoulder made Jesse’s friend turn around so he could beam at him instead of smiling like a moron to himself. Brian’s face lit up. “No one’s ever done something like that for me.”
Brian’s face grew no less vibrant, but he shrugged again, still trying to feign cool confidence. “Well, whatever. I needed to learn how to make ‘em anyway. I’ll probably move out of here someday, and I can’t very well call up Mom for breakfast all the time.“ He turned back to flip the last pancake on the griddle. “Don’t expect it all the time, though. I’m too fucking lazy to be making you breakfast every morning.”
Jesse didn’t move away, despite Brian’s dismissing tone. Brian avoided it for a good few minutes, but finally, when he turned back to Jesse, his colour had returned to normal again. He stared at Jesse, seeming to be asking why he was still standing so near. In response, Jesse leaned in and kissed Brian’s quirked mouth. Brian was still surprised well into the second kiss, but a moment later, he kissed back. Jesse pressed forward, taking hold of Brian’s spatula arm simply so he would have something to touch, and his other arm slipped around his friend’s waist.
Jesse begrudgingly let Brian withdraw so as not to burn their precious breakfast and licked his lips.
“Have you been eating the batter?” Brian’s face flushed bright red all at once. “You know that’s not good for you. There’s raw egg in there.”
Brian put his finger to his lips. “Shh.”
Jesse laughed. “There’s no use trying to deny it-”
Brian pecked Jesse on the lips in mid sentence, but the boy didn’t take the hint.
“I can taste it on you.”
Brian kissed him again.
“If you get sick-” Kiss. “Don’t say-” Kiss. “I didn’t warn-” Kiss, kiss, kiss. “Didn’t warn-” Kiss. “Oh forget it!”
Brian triumphantly placed one more kiss on Jesse’s lips and turned back to his bowl of batter to pour out four more circles on the pan.
***
“So what do you want to do?” Brian asked, flopping down onto the sofa.
Jesse sat next to him with a sigh. “I don’t know.”
“I’m sick to fucking death of TV,” Brian objected to the unspoken suggestion offered by the item in question taunting him from across the room. He emphatically dropped the remote onto the coffee table and put his feet up next to it to further highlight his hostility toward the idea. “And videogames are getting old,” he added.
“You’re getting old,” Jesse retorted with a smirk, staring straight ahead at the black television screen.
“Your mom’s getting old,” Brian snorted.
Jesse feigned a frown, but he wasn’t fooling anyone, judging by Brian’s playful shove and grin. Jesse smiled back, but it wasn’t long before the pattern of the cushions engaged the boys again in their seemingly fruitless attempt to choose an activity to occupy them for the day. Moments passed in bored silence until Jesse’s ears quirked at an odd thumping. The rhythmic thudding seemed vaguely… tinny… treble… Jesse didn’t know. It sounded like someone playing palm muted hammer-ons through a wah pedal or something; it was non-uniform sound making itself out to be a beat. It took him as long as it took Brian’s tapping to start before he recognized that the sound was coming from the body next to him. Brian was imitating his movements with drum sound effects as he tapped and twitched a makeshift rhythm. Jesse was at once glad that he’d not asked his friend where that sound was coming from.
“Puh, puh, puh, puh, puh-bah-puh, puh, puh, puh-bah-puh, puh, puh, puh-bah-puh, dum-dum, puh-bah, dum-bah-puh, puh-ching-puh, puh-ching-bah-puh-dum-dum-ching-puh.” Jesse smirked and folded his arms over his chest, now watching Brian’s movements become more animated as the sound effects increased both in variety as well as frequency. Finally, snapping up a pen from the coffee table and a straw from the previous night’s empty glass collection, Brian began to play out his rhythms on any nearby drum-substitutes, like the sofa cushions, the coffee table, and Jesse.
“Hey!” Jesse cried in a crossly good-natured manner with an abrupt giggle to disrupt his annoyed affectation when Brian began to tap out his beat on Jesse’s shoulder and thigh. Jesse laughed and grabbed for the pen, but Brian deftly avoided him, tapping him on the nose with a triumphant, “Pah!” Jesse laughed and lunged again for the instruments of Brian’s juvenile tyranny, but the boy moved out of his reach yet again. “Bah-dum-bum!” Brian talentedly tapped on Jesse’s grasping hands, at which point the chagrined guitarist determined he’d endured quite enough indignity for one afternoon.
Jesse lunged abruptly across the sofa, aiming for his shocked counterpart’s wrists, pinning them against the arm of the chair while Brian was still reacting in shock at Jesse’s sudden leap. Before the ‘O’ of surprise had faded from Brian’s lips, Jesse managed to make himself very comfortable lying flat atop Brian’s prone form, stretched not altogether uncomfortably across the cushions.
“Well, hello there,” Brian drawled with a wink.
“Hello, yourself,” Jesse shot back teasingly.
“Hello your mom! Brian retorted, earning a pathetic chuckle from Jesse.
“How old are you?” Jesse asked rhetorically.
With a suggestive wink, he said, “Old enough to be very comfortable right here.”
For that, Jesse bent his neck to kiss the other boy. Brian, anticipating Jesse’s loss of concentration, attempted to spring up from the hold Jesse had on him, but Jesse’s grip was strong, and Brian pushed against it instead of pulling from it, so he maintained his position of power with relative ease.
Brian frowned in as close to a petulant pout as Jesse was sure he was likely to get. “No fair.”
“As if you actually want me to let you up, anyway.”
Brian couldn’t help the excited flash in his eyes or his telltale grin of agreement, although he tried to object, “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
Jesse rolled his eyes and easily transferred his left hand’s grip to include Brian’s other arm, thus freeing his right hand, which he used to poke Brian in the ribs. “That’s a lie,” he guessed with conviction.
Brian twitched at a second jab. “And if it’s not?”
Jesse’s hand flattened against Brian’s stomach, fingers contouring around his friend’s thin hipbone. “Well… then you’d better stop me,” he whispered against Brian’s mouth.
Of course, Jesse thought, he’d had the appropriate affect on the other boy. He was no stranger to seduction, and guys really weren’t much different from girls in that respect, he figured, except maybe that once you had a boy on his back, he wouldn’t pretend to object for the sake of innocence and purity. Jesse looked to be right. Brian’s head strained upward toward the heat of Jesse’s breath. Jesse bit at Brian’s lip and drew the lower one between his own, sucking gently, and let his hand slide upward on Brian’s torso, dragging the flimsy shirt he’d worn to bed and hadn’t yet changed up his stomach until Jesse felt bare skin against his wrist.
Brian sighed when Jesse’s tongue traced his lips and opened his mouth to the other boy, moaning when Jesse’s fingers met his bare stomach. His arms had gone slack under the pressure of Jesse’s hold on his wrists, and Jesse heard the pen drop to the floor. He didn’t let go, though.
Jesse’s free hand pressed into Brian’s stomach, feeling his ribs stretch his skin. He traced patterns on Brian’s flesh from his sharp ribs to the course hair just below his bellybutton, but as he did so, Brian wriggled, finally breaking the lock of their lips with a twitch and a laugh. Jesse raised an eyebrow, only partially in mocking imitation of Brian’s signature expression and mostly in sincere curiosity, but before Brian could blushingly confess, Jesse understood. He poked Brian in the stomach again and received another twitch for his efforts.
“Ticklish?” Jesse asked.
“No!” Brian objected. Jesse’s eyebrow rose to new heights and he gently prodded with claw-shaped fingers into Brian’s side, earning a yelp as Brian tried to leap up from the sofa and regain possession of his arms again, presumably to slap Jesse away. Jesse continued to hold him down, and a smile spread across his amused face.
“Then you won’t mind if I keep this up, then,” he decided facetiously.
Brian glared, daring Jesse. Well, Jesse was never one to back down from a challenge.
“Jesse! No! Ah!” Brian struggled under him trying and failing to reclaim his arms, pushing against Jesse, twisting and writhing. “Please! Jesse!” Then, Jesse heard a rare thing: Brian’s giggle. He stopped almost immediately to gape at his friend.
“What the hell was what?”
“What? Nothing! Jesse, don’t….” Brian’s eyes were gleeful, though, and his smile gave him away. Jesse raised his hand off Brian’s smooth stomach and threateningly curved his fingers into the same claw-shape as before and let his hand hover over his friend. “No, no, no!” Brian sucked in his tummy as far as he could and wriggled out of the way with another high-pitched giggle. Jesse hadn’t even touched him, yet.
“I’ve never heard you make a noise remotely like that before. I think maybe you would make a better guitar than I make a set of drums; at least you make your own noise when I play you.”
“If I hit you with something big enough, you’d make a lot more noise,” Brian warned with a narrow-eyed glare. Jesse chuckled and shifted his grip on Brian’s arms, holding him like a guitar, now, despite the fact that it gave Brian an advantage to get away. Jesse plucked imaginary strings on Brian’s stomach and earned more twitching laughter from his friend, but almost at once, with a ticklish jerk, he managed to pull his arms away from Jesse.
“Oh, it’s on, bitch,” Brian called. He grabbed Jesse’s shoulders and launched them off the side of the sofa, narrowly missing the coffee table, and Brian landed on top of Jesse with an uncomfortable “oof!” Brian wasted no time in obtaining control of Jesse’s arms, holding them above the other boy’s head with one hand as Jesse had been doing to him. He poked Jesse in the ribs, now, too, but emphatically, Jesse simply yawned. “You jerk! You’re not ticklish?”
Jesse shrugged. “Sorry.”
Brian frowned. “Fine,” he said, deciding on a new plan of attack. A second later, his lips crashed into Jesse’s, forcing the other boy’s mouth apart. Jesse felt his tongue thrust between his teeth, and with a rush of desire and blood coursing through his body, he eagerly met the other boy’s fervour.
Brian backed off after only a moment of violent making out, but it was so he could suck on Jesse’s bottom lip and slide his shirt up Jesse’s stomach with his remaining free hand.
Jesse moaned when Brian’s fingers neared his nipple and all the adrenaline coursing through him a moment before found a place to go. Brian smiled into the next kiss and deliberately pressed his hips downward into Jesse’s, exposing his own arousal in the process. Jesse gasped as his hips moved upward of their own volition and Brian thrust his tongue between Jesse’s lips once again, drawing Jesse’s into a battle, which Brian easily won by coaxing it into his own mouth, closing his lips on it and sucking on the end of it gently. Jesse moaned and felt his erection strengthen itself, becoming harder than before, harder than Jesse had been in… a long time. He panted at Brian as the other boy’s fingers closed over his nipple; Jesse thought he was going to pass out from loss of blood to the head.
Fortunately for the sake of Jesse’s conscious state, Brian decided to relent, pulling his arm back down Jesse’s shirt and releasing his friend’s lips. Brian sat back, not touching Jesse in any kind of a sexual manner anymore, and grinned. Jesse thought if Brian didn’t look so damn good right then, it might be fun to kill him.
“Let’s go,” Brian said simply, standing up, despite his obvious hard on, and stretching so that his shirt came up and bared his stomach.
Jesse covered his face with his hands, knowing that there wasn’t enough blood in the muscles of his legs to let him stand without toppling back onto the floor again. “What? Go? What? Brian-”
“We’re going to get your guitar.”
Jesse, extremely puzzled, removed his hands from his face to dart a questioning look at Brian. “What?”
“Get up.”
“I am up. I am very much up. And until I am less up, I am not moving.”
Brian laughed and stepped between Jesse’s legs to get closer to the boy before bending down, grabbing his arm, and hauling him bodily to his feet.
“Fuck, Brian!”
“Come on,” Brian said enthusiastically. He bounded out of the room to obtain the keys he had left hanging on the wall the day before and returned with their jackets to lead Jesse out the kitchen door to his driveway.
***
It was difficult to pay attention to anything when a rhythm pounded through his veins and a melody coaxed his swaying hips like a gentle lover. Jesse couldn’t seem to stop his fingers in their rough plucking and smooth strumming, and his breath stopped in anticipation for every wavering vibrato note that clung to the cymbal crashes and stiff beat of the bass and snare that hung in the air. With sweat beading on his upper lip and dampening him across the chest and under the arms despite the cool huffs of air that struggled through the small basement windows to caress his face, arms and body, Jesse was oblivious to anything but the music. When the phone rang, it summoned his attention from beneath a layer of fog, as dense as a pillow and made of reverberating chords. He felt it stab through his head, the digitized ringing of the portable telephone. He muted his strings so Brian could answer.
Jesse exhaled heavily in badly disguised annoyance.
“Hi, mom,” Brian said into the receiver, rolling his eyes in agreement with Jesse. “No, I was just drumming. Yeah, Jesse brought his guitar. I didn’t forget. No. Yes. Yeah, I did my homework. Okay, so I’ll see you Tuesday? Okay. Bye.”
Brian tossed the offending article on the nearby chair. “They’re staying an extra two days,” he revealed. “Something about Aunt Bette’s hip and Grandma needing someone to look after her while she’s gone to get it checked out.”
Jesse nodded. “But everything’s okay?”
“Better than okay; you can stay an extra two days if you want.”
Jesse smiled and played a mini-solo in glee. “Unless my parents realize what a bad idea that would be.”
Brian laughed. “Well, you got your homework done, so obviously you’re a responsible enough adult to be left alone for a few days. What else would they worry about? What else do you need to do?”
Jesse shrugged. “I do have band practice Monday. I have to go home for that.”
“Oh, right. Mine’s Tuesday night. But, I mean, you can do that, and then come over here afterwards. Or I could go to your place, I guess. That might be easier.” Brian thumped his kick drum a couple times. “Maybe I won’t come to your practice, though. John might cry.”
Jesse laughed. “Yeah, that might be a good call.”
“Hey, but you should come to ours. You should bring your guitar.”
Jesse smirked. “And show that Mike guy what’s what?”
Brian grinned. “Right.”
Jesse shrugged, attempting indifference, but the idea of being left alone with Brian for not one, but two more nights was extremely pleasing to Jesse’s overactive, teenage, hormone-driven imagination. “I could go for that.”
Brian barked an abrupt laugh, drawing Jesse’s momentarily startled eyes. “You’re not as cool as you pretend to be, Lacey. I can tell you want me.”
Jesse snorted. “You’re so full of yourself, Lane.”
“And you love it.”
“I’m not going to lie,” Jesse stated easily, smirking as he turned to face the other direction with a swipe of his pick across the strings. Brian didn’t start up again right away, but a moment later, as the smile was beginning to fade from Jesse’s lips, he heard Brian’s stick’s first strike, and then they were back in the rhythm and the melody. Jesse could feel himself already pulling away, following the music into that grey haze of half-wakefulness, partial awareness that turned Jesse into simply unconscious cognitive gestures, a heart beating, lungs breathing, and the music. All thought merged into notes, fingers on strings, and Brian’s constant pace with his drums. They flowed beautifully together, each feeding off the other. Brian gauged his timing by the pattern of Jesse’s strumming, Jesse changed up the timing slightly to keep him on his toes, Brian entered a solo as Jesse figured out how he wanted to play, and they both settled back down to a rhythm and a melody again for a few minutes until one of them got bored and decided to change it up.
Jesse didn’t play just anything, though. He was pretty good at guitar, but he wasn’t an expert. He mostly played riffs he’d made up and solos he’d learned or designed, occasionally dipping into the automatic mechanics of scales and complementary chords until randomly, or seemingly so, Brian stopped playing altogether.
Jesse turned to look at him, muting his strings.
“Play that again,” Brian insisted.
Jesse frowned. “Huh?”
“What you just played, play it again.”
Jesse’s eyebrows tilted downward in thought. “What?”
Brian sighed and tried to imitate the sound with his mouth. Jesse stifled a snicker and attempted to play what it sounded like Brian was instructing him to play. “That?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Brian agreed with an impression of deep thought wrinkling his forehead. “Keep playing that. I mean, you can change it up a bit, but… just….” He didn’t finish because Jesse had already begun to comply. He repeated the riff once or twice before Brian jumped in with soft use of the cymbals and a nice complementary beat to accompany him.
Jesse followed his indication from a moment before and began to change up what he’d been playing just slightly until he had something he liked a lot more, something a lot less boringly repetitious. He faced Brian who was smiling and nodding.
“I like this,” Brian yelled over the music, without missing a move.
Jesse nodded with his own grin and began to sway to the music and sift through the phrases in his head for something to sing to it. With a surprised grin, it came to him. He muttered it to himself, trying to find a rhythm and thinking of anything that might rhyme.
The beginning of the riff came around again; they had settled into their own pieces of the music playing, and Jesse cried out over the amp and the drums, “Two cents? Boy, daydreams come cheap these days!” Brian’s head whipped to bring Jesse into his field of vision. The guitarist smirked, “‘That’s a wish,’ he said, ‘that you and me won’t ever bleed.’ And you stay and we stay, even if they have to leave. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘I think you’re just like me!’”
Brian’s face was formed in confusion as he tried to understand the words. Jesse carried on, repeating the same verse, or chorus, or whatever he’d just belted out. Brian laughed and shook his head upon recognizing the initiating phrase. Jesse watched him watch him as he tried to get the rest of the words. Another repetition and Brian had it, and he was screaming along, very out of key, but extremely enthusiastically.
When they both started to crack up in the middle of their third time through it, they finally quit. Jesse muted his strings and Brian stopped his last cymbal with his hand.
“Fuck,” Brian said, taking a swig from his water bottle on the floor. Jesse just laughed. “That was awesome!”
Jesse nodded. “See? That’s how you write a song. Come up with something you like and see what else you can figure out to add onto it until it sounds perfect, or until you can live with not tweaking it anymore. I’m sort of a compulsive tweak-freak. I’m never completely satisfied with anything.”
“Mike needs lessons from you, then. Shit, when you come to practice Tuesday night, you should bring your guitar. We should play that for them and see what they think.”
“Let’s work on it a little longer and see what else we can come up with,” Jesse suggested. He hated others seeing his work when it was incomplete.
“Are you sure you don’t want to be a member of the Rookie Lot?” Brian coaxed with another thud of his bass drum.
Jesse laughed. “I think if I don’t stick with John and Shaun, I might get shot.”
“Fair enough. We’ll just have to abduct you every so often, then.”
Jesse smirked. “You can abduct me as often as you like.”
Brian blew him a kiss.
[Author] dejectedmadness
[Rating] Eventually NC-17. This chapter… PG-13 for boykissing/light touching.
[Chapter Listing] .:1:. .:2:. .:3:. .:4:. 5/?
[Disclaimer] I am posting fanFICTION. Neither the characters nor the ideas belong to me, just the plot specific to this story. No profit is being made off of this fiction, it is being written solely for my entertainment and for the entertainment of others as warped as I am. Don't sue.
[Band/Pairing]Brand New/Straylight Run, Jesse Lacey/Brian Lane, Jesse Lacey/John Nolan
[Summary] Jesse makes a new friend about whom John is not particularly fond for reasons as yet only speculated upon.
[X-Posted] rockinthebed, slashypunkboys, _brand_new_love, lacey_loves_jno
[Author’s Notes] This isn’t intended to be particularly AU, although it is a high school fic, and it has some anachronistic tendencies.
While writing this chapter I used the word Sofa. Then I worried that previously I had used the word Couch instead (Couch is Canadian for Sofa… that or Chesterfield, but I don’t know anyone who actually uses that word). So I checked back and miraculously I HAD used Sofa before. Weird.
This chapter, I sort of see it as a failure on the part of this story. It feels like filler for some reason, I think because I indulged myself a little bit, but it was meant to have a purpose. Well two purposes: Bringing the boys closer, and forming a new sort of bond between them musically. However, it still feels like filler to me. I am not happy with it. Comments are love. Sorry this took so long to post, I have been swamped with end-of-term work lately. The next one is already done, as well as the one after that. As soon as they are betaed, they'll be posted.
Sometime in the early morning, or what could likely have been mid-afternoon for all that Jesse’s perception of time could discern, having gone to bed at dawn, he was roused awake by movement next to him. In normal circumstances, normal defined here as any situation in which Brian and Jesse had not fallen asleep nestled sweetly against one another, Jesse would not have been started awake by Brian’s movement, but considering that Jesse’s forehead had been comfortably balanced against Brian’s all night, and now that balancing point had been removed, Jesse’s head lolled on the pillow, dropping slowly down to the mattress from it’s height. His eyes opened sleepily at impact in time to see Brian enjoying a seated stretch beside him.
“Time’s it?” Jesse muttered, rolling over.
Brian stood from the bed and turned back, putting his knee on the mattress. “Eleven. Go back to sleep.”
“Where you goin’?” Jesse said through a yawn.
“Someone’s ringing the doorbell,” Brian told him. Jesse hadn’t heard it. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Jesse started to sit up, but Brian’s hand on his chest placed him back on the pillow. “I said I’ll be right back.”
Jesse snorted and grinned. “Fine,” he said.
Brian bent down to peck a tentative kiss to Jesse’s cheek, then one to his lips. Jesse leaned up for one more as Brian was attempting to escape, and with a smirk, the drummer obliged. Jesse turned onto his side and pulled Brian’s pillow into his arms, hugging it as a replacement for his missing friend.
Jesse, being half asleep, found it difficult to account for the amount of time that had passed since Brian took his leave, but a sleepy-Jesse hour later, his Brian substitute was still nestled in his arms, and Jesse noted that the other side of the bed had grown cold. He raised his head to squint at the dresser and the green glowing light of the digital clock on top. Surely, Jesse thought upon deciding that it said 11:38, it didn’t take a half an hour to answer the door.
Jesse cast his covers aside and rolled from the bed to his feet in one fluid, though disorienting motion. Donning his crumpled jeans and sparing a moment to pop in his contacts, he ventured into the hall.
His stomach rumbled at once. ‘Oh my God,’ Jesse thought briefly, waking up fully to descend the carpeted stairs and pad across the cool hallway tiles to the kitchen, where his nose was leading him.
Jesse was certain he had never seen anything more adorable than the sight before him, and selfishly, he spared a moment to look on without making his presence known.
Brian obliviously measured out a quarter cup of batter and carefully poured a perfect round pool of it onto the sizzling pan before dropping the scoop back into the bowl and attacking its three other slightly browner friends with his flour and fingerprint covered spatula. He poked a finger into the recipe book on the counter beside him, then lifted the pancake and glanced at its golden underside. Seemingly satisfied he picked it up and turned to drop it on the pre-prepared tray and plate ensemble on the table.
“Ah!” Brian jumped, his arms flailing in surprise at Jesse’s supposedly sudden appearance, and the pancake shot into the air. Jesse raised his hands to protect his face from flying breakfast items, and it landed with a smack squarely in the centre of his chest. “Jesus fuck, Jesse! You scared the living hell out of me!”
Jesse plucked the pancake from his shirt and tossed it to his other hand, rushing forward to deposit the steaming thing on its intended plate.
“Doesn’t mean you’ve got to throw shit at me!”
Brian mumbled a bashful apology. “What are you doing up?”
“Well, I was waiting for you, and you never came back. What are you doing? Jesse glanced in wonder around the demolished room. Brian turned back to his griddle and flipped up the next pancake, putting it beside its twin on the plate. “Well, I went to the door, and then I was hungry, and… I remembered you liked pancakes, so… I was gonna bring them up to you.”
Jesse’s eyes widened, and his mouth dropped. He took in the eggshells on the counter and the flour on Brian’s hands and arms, and the fingerprint of pancake batter on his left cheek. “You did all this for me?”
Brian spent extra time poking at the next cake, deliberately avoiding looking at Jesse. “Well… yeah.” He shrugged and pushed misplaced droplets of batter, which had turned into mini-pancakes, around with the spatula, but his preoccupation couldn’t fool Jesse, or blind him to the crimson flooding Brian’s cheeks. Jesse found himself trying and failing miserably to suppress a silly grin. He approached the other boy from behind.
His hand on Brian’s shoulder made Jesse’s friend turn around so he could beam at him instead of smiling like a moron to himself. Brian’s face lit up. “No one’s ever done something like that for me.”
Brian’s face grew no less vibrant, but he shrugged again, still trying to feign cool confidence. “Well, whatever. I needed to learn how to make ‘em anyway. I’ll probably move out of here someday, and I can’t very well call up Mom for breakfast all the time.“ He turned back to flip the last pancake on the griddle. “Don’t expect it all the time, though. I’m too fucking lazy to be making you breakfast every morning.”
Jesse didn’t move away, despite Brian’s dismissing tone. Brian avoided it for a good few minutes, but finally, when he turned back to Jesse, his colour had returned to normal again. He stared at Jesse, seeming to be asking why he was still standing so near. In response, Jesse leaned in and kissed Brian’s quirked mouth. Brian was still surprised well into the second kiss, but a moment later, he kissed back. Jesse pressed forward, taking hold of Brian’s spatula arm simply so he would have something to touch, and his other arm slipped around his friend’s waist.
Jesse begrudgingly let Brian withdraw so as not to burn their precious breakfast and licked his lips.
“Have you been eating the batter?” Brian’s face flushed bright red all at once. “You know that’s not good for you. There’s raw egg in there.”
Brian put his finger to his lips. “Shh.”
Jesse laughed. “There’s no use trying to deny it-”
Brian pecked Jesse on the lips in mid sentence, but the boy didn’t take the hint.
“I can taste it on you.”
Brian kissed him again.
“If you get sick-” Kiss. “Don’t say-” Kiss. “I didn’t warn-” Kiss, kiss, kiss. “Didn’t warn-” Kiss. “Oh forget it!”
Brian triumphantly placed one more kiss on Jesse’s lips and turned back to his bowl of batter to pour out four more circles on the pan.
***
“So what do you want to do?” Brian asked, flopping down onto the sofa.
Jesse sat next to him with a sigh. “I don’t know.”
“I’m sick to fucking death of TV,” Brian objected to the unspoken suggestion offered by the item in question taunting him from across the room. He emphatically dropped the remote onto the coffee table and put his feet up next to it to further highlight his hostility toward the idea. “And videogames are getting old,” he added.
“You’re getting old,” Jesse retorted with a smirk, staring straight ahead at the black television screen.
“Your mom’s getting old,” Brian snorted.
Jesse feigned a frown, but he wasn’t fooling anyone, judging by Brian’s playful shove and grin. Jesse smiled back, but it wasn’t long before the pattern of the cushions engaged the boys again in their seemingly fruitless attempt to choose an activity to occupy them for the day. Moments passed in bored silence until Jesse’s ears quirked at an odd thumping. The rhythmic thudding seemed vaguely… tinny… treble… Jesse didn’t know. It sounded like someone playing palm muted hammer-ons through a wah pedal or something; it was non-uniform sound making itself out to be a beat. It took him as long as it took Brian’s tapping to start before he recognized that the sound was coming from the body next to him. Brian was imitating his movements with drum sound effects as he tapped and twitched a makeshift rhythm. Jesse was at once glad that he’d not asked his friend where that sound was coming from.
“Puh, puh, puh, puh, puh-bah-puh, puh, puh, puh-bah-puh, puh, puh, puh-bah-puh, dum-dum, puh-bah, dum-bah-puh, puh-ching-puh, puh-ching-bah-puh-dum-dum-ching-puh.” Jesse smirked and folded his arms over his chest, now watching Brian’s movements become more animated as the sound effects increased both in variety as well as frequency. Finally, snapping up a pen from the coffee table and a straw from the previous night’s empty glass collection, Brian began to play out his rhythms on any nearby drum-substitutes, like the sofa cushions, the coffee table, and Jesse.
“Hey!” Jesse cried in a crossly good-natured manner with an abrupt giggle to disrupt his annoyed affectation when Brian began to tap out his beat on Jesse’s shoulder and thigh. Jesse laughed and grabbed for the pen, but Brian deftly avoided him, tapping him on the nose with a triumphant, “Pah!” Jesse laughed and lunged again for the instruments of Brian’s juvenile tyranny, but the boy moved out of his reach yet again. “Bah-dum-bum!” Brian talentedly tapped on Jesse’s grasping hands, at which point the chagrined guitarist determined he’d endured quite enough indignity for one afternoon.
Jesse lunged abruptly across the sofa, aiming for his shocked counterpart’s wrists, pinning them against the arm of the chair while Brian was still reacting in shock at Jesse’s sudden leap. Before the ‘O’ of surprise had faded from Brian’s lips, Jesse managed to make himself very comfortable lying flat atop Brian’s prone form, stretched not altogether uncomfortably across the cushions.
“Well, hello there,” Brian drawled with a wink.
“Hello, yourself,” Jesse shot back teasingly.
“Hello your mom! Brian retorted, earning a pathetic chuckle from Jesse.
“How old are you?” Jesse asked rhetorically.
With a suggestive wink, he said, “Old enough to be very comfortable right here.”
For that, Jesse bent his neck to kiss the other boy. Brian, anticipating Jesse’s loss of concentration, attempted to spring up from the hold Jesse had on him, but Jesse’s grip was strong, and Brian pushed against it instead of pulling from it, so he maintained his position of power with relative ease.
Brian frowned in as close to a petulant pout as Jesse was sure he was likely to get. “No fair.”
“As if you actually want me to let you up, anyway.”
Brian couldn’t help the excited flash in his eyes or his telltale grin of agreement, although he tried to object, “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
Jesse rolled his eyes and easily transferred his left hand’s grip to include Brian’s other arm, thus freeing his right hand, which he used to poke Brian in the ribs. “That’s a lie,” he guessed with conviction.
Brian twitched at a second jab. “And if it’s not?”
Jesse’s hand flattened against Brian’s stomach, fingers contouring around his friend’s thin hipbone. “Well… then you’d better stop me,” he whispered against Brian’s mouth.
Of course, Jesse thought, he’d had the appropriate affect on the other boy. He was no stranger to seduction, and guys really weren’t much different from girls in that respect, he figured, except maybe that once you had a boy on his back, he wouldn’t pretend to object for the sake of innocence and purity. Jesse looked to be right. Brian’s head strained upward toward the heat of Jesse’s breath. Jesse bit at Brian’s lip and drew the lower one between his own, sucking gently, and let his hand slide upward on Brian’s torso, dragging the flimsy shirt he’d worn to bed and hadn’t yet changed up his stomach until Jesse felt bare skin against his wrist.
Brian sighed when Jesse’s tongue traced his lips and opened his mouth to the other boy, moaning when Jesse’s fingers met his bare stomach. His arms had gone slack under the pressure of Jesse’s hold on his wrists, and Jesse heard the pen drop to the floor. He didn’t let go, though.
Jesse’s free hand pressed into Brian’s stomach, feeling his ribs stretch his skin. He traced patterns on Brian’s flesh from his sharp ribs to the course hair just below his bellybutton, but as he did so, Brian wriggled, finally breaking the lock of their lips with a twitch and a laugh. Jesse raised an eyebrow, only partially in mocking imitation of Brian’s signature expression and mostly in sincere curiosity, but before Brian could blushingly confess, Jesse understood. He poked Brian in the stomach again and received another twitch for his efforts.
“Ticklish?” Jesse asked.
“No!” Brian objected. Jesse’s eyebrow rose to new heights and he gently prodded with claw-shaped fingers into Brian’s side, earning a yelp as Brian tried to leap up from the sofa and regain possession of his arms again, presumably to slap Jesse away. Jesse continued to hold him down, and a smile spread across his amused face.
“Then you won’t mind if I keep this up, then,” he decided facetiously.
Brian glared, daring Jesse. Well, Jesse was never one to back down from a challenge.
“Jesse! No! Ah!” Brian struggled under him trying and failing to reclaim his arms, pushing against Jesse, twisting and writhing. “Please! Jesse!” Then, Jesse heard a rare thing: Brian’s giggle. He stopped almost immediately to gape at his friend.
“What the hell was what?”
“What? Nothing! Jesse, don’t….” Brian’s eyes were gleeful, though, and his smile gave him away. Jesse raised his hand off Brian’s smooth stomach and threateningly curved his fingers into the same claw-shape as before and let his hand hover over his friend. “No, no, no!” Brian sucked in his tummy as far as he could and wriggled out of the way with another high-pitched giggle. Jesse hadn’t even touched him, yet.
“I’ve never heard you make a noise remotely like that before. I think maybe you would make a better guitar than I make a set of drums; at least you make your own noise when I play you.”
“If I hit you with something big enough, you’d make a lot more noise,” Brian warned with a narrow-eyed glare. Jesse chuckled and shifted his grip on Brian’s arms, holding him like a guitar, now, despite the fact that it gave Brian an advantage to get away. Jesse plucked imaginary strings on Brian’s stomach and earned more twitching laughter from his friend, but almost at once, with a ticklish jerk, he managed to pull his arms away from Jesse.
“Oh, it’s on, bitch,” Brian called. He grabbed Jesse’s shoulders and launched them off the side of the sofa, narrowly missing the coffee table, and Brian landed on top of Jesse with an uncomfortable “oof!” Brian wasted no time in obtaining control of Jesse’s arms, holding them above the other boy’s head with one hand as Jesse had been doing to him. He poked Jesse in the ribs, now, too, but emphatically, Jesse simply yawned. “You jerk! You’re not ticklish?”
Jesse shrugged. “Sorry.”
Brian frowned. “Fine,” he said, deciding on a new plan of attack. A second later, his lips crashed into Jesse’s, forcing the other boy’s mouth apart. Jesse felt his tongue thrust between his teeth, and with a rush of desire and blood coursing through his body, he eagerly met the other boy’s fervour.
Brian backed off after only a moment of violent making out, but it was so he could suck on Jesse’s bottom lip and slide his shirt up Jesse’s stomach with his remaining free hand.
Jesse moaned when Brian’s fingers neared his nipple and all the adrenaline coursing through him a moment before found a place to go. Brian smiled into the next kiss and deliberately pressed his hips downward into Jesse’s, exposing his own arousal in the process. Jesse gasped as his hips moved upward of their own volition and Brian thrust his tongue between Jesse’s lips once again, drawing Jesse’s into a battle, which Brian easily won by coaxing it into his own mouth, closing his lips on it and sucking on the end of it gently. Jesse moaned and felt his erection strengthen itself, becoming harder than before, harder than Jesse had been in… a long time. He panted at Brian as the other boy’s fingers closed over his nipple; Jesse thought he was going to pass out from loss of blood to the head.
Fortunately for the sake of Jesse’s conscious state, Brian decided to relent, pulling his arm back down Jesse’s shirt and releasing his friend’s lips. Brian sat back, not touching Jesse in any kind of a sexual manner anymore, and grinned. Jesse thought if Brian didn’t look so damn good right then, it might be fun to kill him.
“Let’s go,” Brian said simply, standing up, despite his obvious hard on, and stretching so that his shirt came up and bared his stomach.
Jesse covered his face with his hands, knowing that there wasn’t enough blood in the muscles of his legs to let him stand without toppling back onto the floor again. “What? Go? What? Brian-”
“We’re going to get your guitar.”
Jesse, extremely puzzled, removed his hands from his face to dart a questioning look at Brian. “What?”
“Get up.”
“I am up. I am very much up. And until I am less up, I am not moving.”
Brian laughed and stepped between Jesse’s legs to get closer to the boy before bending down, grabbing his arm, and hauling him bodily to his feet.
“Fuck, Brian!”
“Come on,” Brian said enthusiastically. He bounded out of the room to obtain the keys he had left hanging on the wall the day before and returned with their jackets to lead Jesse out the kitchen door to his driveway.
***
It was difficult to pay attention to anything when a rhythm pounded through his veins and a melody coaxed his swaying hips like a gentle lover. Jesse couldn’t seem to stop his fingers in their rough plucking and smooth strumming, and his breath stopped in anticipation for every wavering vibrato note that clung to the cymbal crashes and stiff beat of the bass and snare that hung in the air. With sweat beading on his upper lip and dampening him across the chest and under the arms despite the cool huffs of air that struggled through the small basement windows to caress his face, arms and body, Jesse was oblivious to anything but the music. When the phone rang, it summoned his attention from beneath a layer of fog, as dense as a pillow and made of reverberating chords. He felt it stab through his head, the digitized ringing of the portable telephone. He muted his strings so Brian could answer.
Jesse exhaled heavily in badly disguised annoyance.
“Hi, mom,” Brian said into the receiver, rolling his eyes in agreement with Jesse. “No, I was just drumming. Yeah, Jesse brought his guitar. I didn’t forget. No. Yes. Yeah, I did my homework. Okay, so I’ll see you Tuesday? Okay. Bye.”
Brian tossed the offending article on the nearby chair. “They’re staying an extra two days,” he revealed. “Something about Aunt Bette’s hip and Grandma needing someone to look after her while she’s gone to get it checked out.”
Jesse nodded. “But everything’s okay?”
“Better than okay; you can stay an extra two days if you want.”
Jesse smiled and played a mini-solo in glee. “Unless my parents realize what a bad idea that would be.”
Brian laughed. “Well, you got your homework done, so obviously you’re a responsible enough adult to be left alone for a few days. What else would they worry about? What else do you need to do?”
Jesse shrugged. “I do have band practice Monday. I have to go home for that.”
“Oh, right. Mine’s Tuesday night. But, I mean, you can do that, and then come over here afterwards. Or I could go to your place, I guess. That might be easier.” Brian thumped his kick drum a couple times. “Maybe I won’t come to your practice, though. John might cry.”
Jesse laughed. “Yeah, that might be a good call.”
“Hey, but you should come to ours. You should bring your guitar.”
Jesse smirked. “And show that Mike guy what’s what?”
Brian grinned. “Right.”
Jesse shrugged, attempting indifference, but the idea of being left alone with Brian for not one, but two more nights was extremely pleasing to Jesse’s overactive, teenage, hormone-driven imagination. “I could go for that.”
Brian barked an abrupt laugh, drawing Jesse’s momentarily startled eyes. “You’re not as cool as you pretend to be, Lacey. I can tell you want me.”
Jesse snorted. “You’re so full of yourself, Lane.”
“And you love it.”
“I’m not going to lie,” Jesse stated easily, smirking as he turned to face the other direction with a swipe of his pick across the strings. Brian didn’t start up again right away, but a moment later, as the smile was beginning to fade from Jesse’s lips, he heard Brian’s stick’s first strike, and then they were back in the rhythm and the melody. Jesse could feel himself already pulling away, following the music into that grey haze of half-wakefulness, partial awareness that turned Jesse into simply unconscious cognitive gestures, a heart beating, lungs breathing, and the music. All thought merged into notes, fingers on strings, and Brian’s constant pace with his drums. They flowed beautifully together, each feeding off the other. Brian gauged his timing by the pattern of Jesse’s strumming, Jesse changed up the timing slightly to keep him on his toes, Brian entered a solo as Jesse figured out how he wanted to play, and they both settled back down to a rhythm and a melody again for a few minutes until one of them got bored and decided to change it up.
Jesse didn’t play just anything, though. He was pretty good at guitar, but he wasn’t an expert. He mostly played riffs he’d made up and solos he’d learned or designed, occasionally dipping into the automatic mechanics of scales and complementary chords until randomly, or seemingly so, Brian stopped playing altogether.
Jesse turned to look at him, muting his strings.
“Play that again,” Brian insisted.
Jesse frowned. “Huh?”
“What you just played, play it again.”
Jesse’s eyebrows tilted downward in thought. “What?”
Brian sighed and tried to imitate the sound with his mouth. Jesse stifled a snicker and attempted to play what it sounded like Brian was instructing him to play. “That?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Brian agreed with an impression of deep thought wrinkling his forehead. “Keep playing that. I mean, you can change it up a bit, but… just….” He didn’t finish because Jesse had already begun to comply. He repeated the riff once or twice before Brian jumped in with soft use of the cymbals and a nice complementary beat to accompany him.
Jesse followed his indication from a moment before and began to change up what he’d been playing just slightly until he had something he liked a lot more, something a lot less boringly repetitious. He faced Brian who was smiling and nodding.
“I like this,” Brian yelled over the music, without missing a move.
Jesse nodded with his own grin and began to sway to the music and sift through the phrases in his head for something to sing to it. With a surprised grin, it came to him. He muttered it to himself, trying to find a rhythm and thinking of anything that might rhyme.
The beginning of the riff came around again; they had settled into their own pieces of the music playing, and Jesse cried out over the amp and the drums, “Two cents? Boy, daydreams come cheap these days!” Brian’s head whipped to bring Jesse into his field of vision. The guitarist smirked, “‘That’s a wish,’ he said, ‘that you and me won’t ever bleed.’ And you stay and we stay, even if they have to leave. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘I think you’re just like me!’”
Brian’s face was formed in confusion as he tried to understand the words. Jesse carried on, repeating the same verse, or chorus, or whatever he’d just belted out. Brian laughed and shook his head upon recognizing the initiating phrase. Jesse watched him watch him as he tried to get the rest of the words. Another repetition and Brian had it, and he was screaming along, very out of key, but extremely enthusiastically.
When they both started to crack up in the middle of their third time through it, they finally quit. Jesse muted his strings and Brian stopped his last cymbal with his hand.
“Fuck,” Brian said, taking a swig from his water bottle on the floor. Jesse just laughed. “That was awesome!”
Jesse nodded. “See? That’s how you write a song. Come up with something you like and see what else you can figure out to add onto it until it sounds perfect, or until you can live with not tweaking it anymore. I’m sort of a compulsive tweak-freak. I’m never completely satisfied with anything.”
“Mike needs lessons from you, then. Shit, when you come to practice Tuesday night, you should bring your guitar. We should play that for them and see what they think.”
“Let’s work on it a little longer and see what else we can come up with,” Jesse suggested. He hated others seeing his work when it was incomplete.
“Are you sure you don’t want to be a member of the Rookie Lot?” Brian coaxed with another thud of his bass drum.
Jesse laughed. “I think if I don’t stick with John and Shaun, I might get shot.”
“Fair enough. We’ll just have to abduct you every so often, then.”
Jesse smirked. “You can abduct me as often as you like.”
Brian blew him a kiss.