Employee of the Month 1/1 (Jonas Brothers, The Academy Is...)
Title: Employee of the Month
Genre: Slash
Fandom: Jonas Brothers, The Academy Is...
Main Characters: Kevin Jonas, Mike Carden
Adult Content: Nope
Words: 3885
Chapter: 1/1
Summary: High school AU FUCK YES. When Carden shoplifts from the Jonas Family corner store, he has to work it off as punishment. With bonus charming-slash-harrassing Beckett.
Teaser: "Might be drunk. Yeah, you fucking might be." Carden shifts, wraps one arm around Kevin's waist so he can balance Kevin against his warm, solid side and have a hand free. Oh man, cuddles. Kevin loves cuddles.
Kevin knows Dad thinks of himself as tough, but fair (because that's what he says all the time); he also knows Dad's years doing prison ministry before Nick was born and he finally got himself a church left him wary of the justice system, likely to do things himself. So none of this is a surprise to Kevin, and he's not entirely sure Joe was even listening.
"This is ridiculous."
Nick, as usual, is a different story; Kevin has a flash of the future, of Nick running the store and starting his own jail to hold all the petty thieves the real prison won't take. Someday, Kevin's gonna start writing down all the times he stopped himself from giggling at the wrong time, so everyone else can be as proud of him as he is.
"It'll be good for him. You can't go anywhere in life if you don't know the value of a dollar."
Kevin meets Nick's eyes, both of them saying silently so neither of them have to say it out loud and get the lecture about judge not that Mike Carden probably isn't going anywhere in life whether he knows how much a dollar is or not. Mike and his friends skip class to smoke, hit mailboxes with baseball bats from their car windows, throw the kind of parties the cops shut down, shows up to the first-period math class he and Kevin have together hung over at least three times a week. He, or at least one of his...gang, or whatever, is the one who went through all the lockers one day after school, cut holes in the crotches of all the basketball teams' shorts (Kevin never said he didn't understand why Nick might not want the guy around, after that).
But there's no arguing with Dad when he's on a mission like this, so the look is as far as it goes, and Nick goes back to the register, Kevin goes back to stocking, Joe goes back to fixing his hair (sort of, he never stopped), and Dad goes back to tell Carden he's got a job.
- - - - - -
Carden disappears half an hour into his first shift, which is even less surprising than Dad giving him the job, but considering he doesn't know Dad's aversion to calling the cops on teenagers, it's kind of risky.
"No one told me when I get a break, so I just took one," a voice says from behind Kevin when he's taking the trash out, the alley behind their store way smokier than usual. He's pretty sure he didn't jump too noticeably, but the smirk on Carden's face when Kevin turns around says otherwise. "Easy, kid."
"We don't have specific breaks, just make sure someone knows you're leaving if you have to do something. And don't be gone too long. And don't take too many."
"You run a tight ship," Carden says, sarcasm so thick Kevin could choke on it, flicks some ash off the end of his cigarette and leans back up against the rough brick.
"You should probably be glad for that."
"Point. The consequences for lifting a soda and bag of chips are so fucking harsh these days, you know? Of course you know, hardened criminal that you are."
"I'm going back to work. And this door locks from the inside, so prop it open next time you come out here."
- - - - - -
At some point, Carden's friends apparently decided if he was gonna be spending three or four hours a day after school working in the store, they might as well hang out with him there. It's not that bad, really - not like Carden's a real hard worker, anyway, so who cares if he's distracted, and since none of them want to get kicked out of their new hangout theft is way, way down.
Not that it's that good, either; when Nick tells Kevin he has a lot of extra homework tonight so can Kevin take the register and the "lowlife" restock so Nick can go upstairs early, his face is red and his jaw's so tight it looks like it might snap.
"All I did," one of Carden's friends, Bill something, says, before Kevin even asks who did what, "was ask how he managed to get those jeans on without help."
"And then you offered to help," Joe adds, ever helpful.
"Right."
Kevin raises his eyebrow and makes a mental note to give Joe yet another talk about how maybe he shouldn't be helping senior boys hit on their closeted freshman brother, if for no other reason than the unholy wrath Dad'll bring down if he catches Joe in the act. "Since you two scared Nick off, you need to go stock the candy aisle."
"I didn't scare anybody off," Mike mutters, but he actually walks off before Joe.
"Young Carden here is interested in entirely different jeans," Bill says, solemnly, earning him a death glare over Mike's shoulder and a giggle, complete with snort, before Joe tears himself away from whatever tabloid was more important than taking care of Nick.
"Buy something or get out, Bill."
- - - - - -
Carden usually comes to math halfway through the class, slouches his way in to the back of the room stinking like smoke. Kevin's used up maybe 50% more of his notebook than he should have by now - he has a really specific system for his notes, and after the pause to lecture Carden about punctuality Miss Miller never starts exactly where she left off; Kevin has to start a new page to deal with the screw-up.
Wednesday, Carden wanders into the room only a minute or two behind Kevin, drops into the seat right next to him, tosses a thin jewel case on his desk with a clear plastic cover. Kevin didn't realize they had a music-exchange kind of relationship; the thought is kind of weird, but not as bad as he'd expect.
STORE SHIT THAT ISN'T SO SHITTY is scrawled on the cd, black and messy, just a little smudged.
"There's only so much Josh Groban I can handle," Carden says, sneering around the name like he's talking about poop.
"I'll talk to Dad about it," Kevin says, picks up the cd, "but I can't show him this."
"Right. Jesus, and...all that. Whatever, listen to it. You'll like it."
The whole conversation takes less than three minutes, and Carden's gone before the bell rings. He doesn't come back in to mess up Kevin's notes.
- - - - - -
"Fucker," Joe mutters, glaring daggers at something while Kevin stocks the shelves on his own.
"Language. And what's so wrong you have to both swear and slack off?"
"Chelsea's supposed to meet me here at five."
"It's only ten of. You can stop working when she's actually stood you up."
Joe sighs like Kevin's being intolerably dim, like it's so unfair he has the weight of the world on his shoulders and his brother's too dumb to understand his problems. "Just look, will you?"
Chelsea's right outside the store, leaning against one of the little vending machines full of butterfly stickers, and instead of, like, primping or whatever before she comes in to meet Joe, she's gazing up at someone, laughing like they've just said the funniest thing in the world, blushing just a little bit. She looks like she usually does when she talks to Joe, actually. Except she's talking to a friend of Carden's, the tall skinny one who wears neon all the time.
"Yesterday, that Butcher kid cut Nicole off and she ended up canceling. They were making out in the fu - frigging parking lot this morning."
"That might not - "
Chelsea glances into the store, looking a little regretful (there's way less "regret" on her face than "totally charmed", but at least it's there), then turns, lets tall skinny neon boy link arms with her, and they're gone.
"Fucker."
"Language, Joe," Kevin says on a reflex.
- - - - - -
Dorky as it is, Kevin kind of likes it when Nick's finally stopped pretending he isn't aching to do his homework, when Joe's girl problems (or, on good days, dates) get to be too much for him to even pretend to work, when he's got the store to himself to clean up, do inventory, redo the counter displays, all the boring little jobs no one else likes. Dad loves his dedication, loves that he'll spend hours working of his own free will, tells him he's a businessman in the making. Kevin just thinks he likes to do boring things, and the store gives him almost too many opportunities.
"You've been abandoned, Jonas," Carden says, from somewhere by the storage room.
"I always close alone. Where were you?"
"Break."
"You took a twenty-minute break twenty minutes before time to leave?"
Carden hops up on the counter, thigh right next to where Kevin's neatening up the Snickers, gives him a smirky sort of lopsided smile. "All part of my quest to become employee of the month."
Kevin doesn't have a response for that; his attempts at sarcasm never work. So he just smiles back, even though his smiles are bright and dopey and nowhere near as cool as that affected smirk thing Carden's doing, and goes back to the candy.
"You're listening to it," Carden says, a minute or two later, when Kevin would have forgotten he was there except for the dirty sneakers dangling in front of the Milky Ways.
"What?"
"Shitty store shit, or whatever. Shitty shit that isn't shit, shittily."
"Lang - oh gosh, sorry. I - reflex."
Carden's smirk widens a little. "Your authority only extends so far, Jonas."
"I'd say Dad'll fire you if he hears you, but that probably doesn't bother you." Kevin straightens up, leans over the counter; the only free space is right next to Carden, arm so close to his thigh Kevin can almost feel the heat of him through his jeans. Carden just shrugs, slides off the counter, leg sliding along the whole length of Kevin's arm. Goosebumps follow the rough slide of denim; Kevin rubs his left hand over his arm almost absently.
"Told you you'd like it," Carden says, bumps against him and holds there for just long enough it has to be deliberate, just long enough Kevin looks up at him. "I'm out. Study hard, Jonas, I'll be cheating off you tomorrow."
- - - - - -
"I'm gonna ask him to leave," Nick says, jaw so tight Kevin's surprised he can talk. He glances over his shoulder, and Bill's not even doing anything, just throwing fairly innocent (for him) glances Nick's way while he makes plans for later with Carden.
"No you won't," Joe says, "you'll walk over there and he'll hit on you, and you'll just get all flustered and go upstairs to hit something."
Kevin won't lie, he actually sighs in relief when Nick just glares at Joe and goes back to neatly stacking the bills in the register. He's not sure he could've lied if Nick looked his way for support.
"I'll ask him to leave if you promise to stop slamming the cash drawer shut, you're gonna break it."
Nick glares at him, and Kevin braces himself, 'cause he probably just accidentally unleashed the entire force of an angry, sexually frustrated Nick Jonas on himself, but then he just sighs and nods.
"Jonas! We were just talking about you," Bill says, earning him a light shove and a glare from Carden, and from the look on their faces Kevin completely can't tell what they might have been saying.
"Um, okay. I - you're freaking Nick out."
"I'm helping him discover his sexuality."
"He doesn't need your help."
Carden nudges Bill. "Dude, stop hassling the kid."
"He's not a kid. And it's not hassling, it's making romantic overtures."
Kevin and Carden both roll their eyes; Carden slaps Bill's hand down when he wiggles his fingers at Nick in a wave.
"Just go, dick. Friday?"
"And Saturday. Hell, leave Sunday open, too, we'll crown whoever makes it all the way to Sunday night King of...something clever."
Kevin's starting to get the feeling Carden rolls his eyes at Bill a lot, but this eye roll comes with a grin at Bill's obediently retreating back.
"The kind of party your daddy wouldn't like, Jonas," Carden says to Kevin's questioning eyes, when he looks back over. "There might - might, I dunno, depends how crazy we feel - be swearing."
Heat rushes to Kevin's cheeks, but he smiles like the kind of person who can handle jokes at his own expense.
"And Bill's not a bad guy, he's just...enthusiastic."
"I know. But Nick's gonna break something expensive if he gets any more tense."
- - - - - -
Someone slings an arm around Kevin's shoulder in the hall, so enthusiastically he stumbles a little.
"Jonas! I trust Mike told you about my shindig this weekend."
"Uh, sort of."
"I didn't actually trust he did. Boy can't even do an assignment when it has nothing to do with school. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word 'assignment'...opportunity would've worked."
Kevin blinks at Bill, tries to figure out exactly what'll happen if he ducks out from under the arm heavy around his shoulder. Obviously, he isn't essential to the conversation.
"Anyway! You, party, et cetera. Friday night. Or Saturday night, but that's only for the hardcore, or something. Don't come Sunday night, everyone'll be dead and there'll probably be a mess."
Bill shoves a piece of paper into Kevin's pocket (which is kind of not an okay place for him to be reaching uninvited, and Kevin is totally capable of putting things in his own pocket), throws him a lewd wink Kevin's seen him aim at Nick more than once, and then he's gone.
- - - - - -
Kevin tells Dad he's going to hang out with Lucas, 'cause Dad won't remember he hasn't spent any time with Lucas since ninth grade when he made all his new drama friends, doesn't tell Nick and Joe anything 'cause normally they'd love this sort of thing but Nick would accuse him of mutiny for going anywhere near Beckett and Joe'd crash the party to get all his girlfriends back.
Bill's house is three blocks away; one and a half down Kevin almost turns around, except he can't go home right away, and what else is there to do. Being the butt of whatever joke they had in mind when they decided to invite him is a better idea than freezing his ass off in the park until a convincing amount of time has passed, probably.
"Oh man, shit, Carden's gonna shit," whoever answers the door says - Kevin thinks it's whoever Joe called "that Butcher kid", since Nicole's all wrapped around him. "Shit."
"Wow, coherent. Ignore him," Nicole says, all smiles, and pulls Kevin in, shuts the door behind him. "Get him something to drink."
"Oh God, yeah, yes. What're you having?" Nicole arches an eyebrow, tilts her cup so Butcher can look in. "Yeah I won't get him that. Fruitier."
Butcher disappears out of Nicole's octopus-arms hold, and Nicole shifts on her feet, looks at Kevin a little awkwardly. "So, Joe..."
"Don't feel guilty, he had a date every day that week."
"Oh. I - okay. Cool."
Butcher comes back then, shoves a red plastic cup into Kevin's hand, wraps around Nicole the way she'd just been wrapped around him. "You're all set, Jonas. Go get your man," he says, and they disappear into the crowd.
Well. That was.
Wait, what man?
- - - - - -
People he recognizes from the store keep coming to talk to Kevin; since most of them look some combination of excited and amused to see him, he's gone from suspecting he's the butt of a joke to being sure. Except everyone who's come over has brought him a drink, some of them multiple, so when he gets up to leave before whatever ridiculous humiliation can take place, he wobbles once, twice, and topples right over.
At least someone catches him. That's nice.
"Jesus, I thought Beckett was joking." Carden helps Kevin straighten up, and starts to let go until Kevin wobbles again. "Oh for the love of - how much have you had?"
Kevin holds up a bunch of fingers, which probably don't add up to the right number at all, but he wasn't counting, and Carden wasn't watching so how would he know if Kevin was lying, and it's kind of mean to make him try to remember things like amount of red cups when his head is this fuzzy.
"Right. Okay, Jonas, let's get you home."
"I can't go home," Kevin says (or, from the way Carden winces and half the room turns to look, shouts), like that's the stupidest thing ever. "I think I'm a little drunk. Duh."
"Might be drunk. Yeah, you fucking might be." Carden shifts, wraps one arm around Kevin's waist so he can balance Kevin against his warm, solid side and have a hand free. Oh man, cuddles. Kevin loves cuddles.
From the way Carden stares at him, like he's trying to make lasers come out of his eyes and burn all Kevin's hair off, when he wraps his arms around Carden's waist and leans heavy against him like a good cuddler, he has to assume maybe Carden isn't as into cuddling. Which is stupid. Who doesn't like cuddling. Puppy killers don't, and Hitler, probably, but Kevin's pretty sure Carden isn't Hitler, and he'd like to assume he wouldn't just cuddle a puppy killer. He's a pretty good judge of character.
"You wouldn't kill a puppy."
"I - yeah, it's time to get you out of here," Carden says, and he's still looking at Kevin but without the laser eyes thing. Except he feels a lot warmer now than when he thought laser eyes were a possibility. He starts walking Kevin towards the door, swearing every time Kevin stumbles a little and sends them knocking into a wall or a person or...something breakable, ha ha, oops.
"Have fun with your barnacle," Bill calls, just before the door closes, and that's kind of ridiculous, 'cause barnacles stick on ships, and Carden is way too skinny to be a ship.
- - - - - -
"So I know you're the good one, and Dad trusts you and all, but I heard you come in this morning, so out with it."
Kevin blinks at Joe, glances over his shoulder to make sure Nick's safely stuck at the register - kid is the champion of blackmail, no contest - and looks back at Joe. "It - I just went to a party."
"You don't go to parties. Not all-night parties."
"Your brother parties like a rock star, what are you talking about," Carden says from right behind Kevin, smirks when he jumps about a foot in the air. Joe just stares, looking between them like he's watching a tennis match; his eyes get wide and one eyebrow goes up when Carden holds out Kevin's watch. "You left this at my place," he says, and Joe's jaw hits the floor.
Carden holds on to it a second longer than he needs to, lets their fingers brush, and last night is a lot of fog but Kevin clearly remembers the brush of those fingers, and feeling really good, and - and that's about it, but it's enough to make his face heat up.
"I. Um. Thanks. For the watch. And. Y'know. I - thanks."
The more he stammers the more Carden smirks, like a cat watching poor Kevin the mouse run himself in circles, but instead of saying anything he just shrugs, nods, and walks away.
"You'll catch flies, Joe," Kevin says, and goes to find out if Nick'll let him take the register for a while.
- - - - - -
"Your mouth said thank you, but your avoidance is giving me mixed signals, Jonas."
"I'm not avoiding you. And you just tracked the dirt I swept up all down the aisle."
Carden glances down at his shoes, shrugs, leans against the shelves stacked full of soup cans. "Sorry. And this store is, like, eight square feet, it's kind of hard not to be totally fucking obvious."
"Um."
"Yeah."
Kevin swipes the broom halfheartedly at the mess Carden made, the mess he already swept up once, but gives up even trying to look busy when he can't focus on anything but Carden's eyes burning holes in his shoulder.
"I kissed you, didn't I."
Carden snorts. "If you can call it that. You're as innocent as you act, aren't you?"
"Um. I guess?" Kevin leans the broom against the shelf, stuffs his hands in his pockets awkwardly; his pants are too tight, he's probably gonna end up cutting off his own circulation. Awesome. "And - ?"
"You tried to stick your hand down my pants, and when I stopped you, you just fell asleep on the spot. Well. You took enough time to cling on so tight I couldn't fucking move."
All Kevin does is blush around Carden, but this time it's probably really, really justified. "I, uh - sorry."
"I don't blame you," Carden says, walking forward, crowding Kevin back against the shelves. "I blame the inventor of the chocolate martini. Also, Beckett."
"Right." Kevin's hands are stuck in his pockets - if he jerks as hard as he thinks he might have to, he's gonna whack Carden right in the nose. And that would be even more awesome than losing his hands 'cause he's too awkward to know what to do with them when his pants don't actually have any pocket space.
Carden leans, and Kevin's blushing probably more than he ever has in his life, but it's okay - and then Carden stops leaning and blinks at him. "The fuck are you doing?" he asks, flicks his eyes down to where Kevin's trying to wiggle his hands out of his stupid pockets without causing any injuries.
"Um. I. Tight pants."
Carden rolls his eyes, grabs Kevin's wrists and gives one good pull, and Kevin doesn't even have time to thank him before Carden's using his wrists to pin him back against the canned vegetables and his lips are on Kevin, dry and warm and soft and oh gosh, this is awesome.
"You should probably," Carden pulls back just enough to murmur, and the whisper of air against his lips makes Kevin feel kind of melty, "just keep your hands out of pants entirely, Jonas. Apparently it's a little advanced for you."
Not that Kevin ever has a retort when Carden makes fun of him, but this time he's happy to blame it on the way his head is swimming from kissing Carden, wanting to kiss him more, so instead of even trying to think of something he leans and closes the little bit of distance, draws Carden in for another kiss.
"Oh." Carden pulls back again, expression going totally smug when Kevin tries not to let him, tries to lean in and keep kissing. "You gave Bill your brother's number."
Genre: Slash
Fandom: Jonas Brothers, The Academy Is...
Main Characters: Kevin Jonas, Mike Carden
Adult Content: Nope
Words: 3885
Chapter: 1/1
Summary: High school AU FUCK YES. When Carden shoplifts from the Jonas Family corner store, he has to work it off as punishment. With bonus charming-slash-harrassing Beckett.
Teaser: "Might be drunk. Yeah, you fucking might be." Carden shifts, wraps one arm around Kevin's waist so he can balance Kevin against his warm, solid side and have a hand free. Oh man, cuddles. Kevin loves cuddles.
Kevin knows Dad thinks of himself as tough, but fair (because that's what he says all the time); he also knows Dad's years doing prison ministry before Nick was born and he finally got himself a church left him wary of the justice system, likely to do things himself. So none of this is a surprise to Kevin, and he's not entirely sure Joe was even listening.
"This is ridiculous."
Nick, as usual, is a different story; Kevin has a flash of the future, of Nick running the store and starting his own jail to hold all the petty thieves the real prison won't take. Someday, Kevin's gonna start writing down all the times he stopped himself from giggling at the wrong time, so everyone else can be as proud of him as he is.
"It'll be good for him. You can't go anywhere in life if you don't know the value of a dollar."
Kevin meets Nick's eyes, both of them saying silently so neither of them have to say it out loud and get the lecture about judge not that Mike Carden probably isn't going anywhere in life whether he knows how much a dollar is or not. Mike and his friends skip class to smoke, hit mailboxes with baseball bats from their car windows, throw the kind of parties the cops shut down, shows up to the first-period math class he and Kevin have together hung over at least three times a week. He, or at least one of his...gang, or whatever, is the one who went through all the lockers one day after school, cut holes in the crotches of all the basketball teams' shorts (Kevin never said he didn't understand why Nick might not want the guy around, after that).
But there's no arguing with Dad when he's on a mission like this, so the look is as far as it goes, and Nick goes back to the register, Kevin goes back to stocking, Joe goes back to fixing his hair (sort of, he never stopped), and Dad goes back to tell Carden he's got a job.
- - - - - -
Carden disappears half an hour into his first shift, which is even less surprising than Dad giving him the job, but considering he doesn't know Dad's aversion to calling the cops on teenagers, it's kind of risky.
"No one told me when I get a break, so I just took one," a voice says from behind Kevin when he's taking the trash out, the alley behind their store way smokier than usual. He's pretty sure he didn't jump too noticeably, but the smirk on Carden's face when Kevin turns around says otherwise. "Easy, kid."
"We don't have specific breaks, just make sure someone knows you're leaving if you have to do something. And don't be gone too long. And don't take too many."
"You run a tight ship," Carden says, sarcasm so thick Kevin could choke on it, flicks some ash off the end of his cigarette and leans back up against the rough brick.
"You should probably be glad for that."
"Point. The consequences for lifting a soda and bag of chips are so fucking harsh these days, you know? Of course you know, hardened criminal that you are."
"I'm going back to work. And this door locks from the inside, so prop it open next time you come out here."
- - - - - -
At some point, Carden's friends apparently decided if he was gonna be spending three or four hours a day after school working in the store, they might as well hang out with him there. It's not that bad, really - not like Carden's a real hard worker, anyway, so who cares if he's distracted, and since none of them want to get kicked out of their new hangout theft is way, way down.
Not that it's that good, either; when Nick tells Kevin he has a lot of extra homework tonight so can Kevin take the register and the "lowlife" restock so Nick can go upstairs early, his face is red and his jaw's so tight it looks like it might snap.
"All I did," one of Carden's friends, Bill something, says, before Kevin even asks who did what, "was ask how he managed to get those jeans on without help."
"And then you offered to help," Joe adds, ever helpful.
"Right."
Kevin raises his eyebrow and makes a mental note to give Joe yet another talk about how maybe he shouldn't be helping senior boys hit on their closeted freshman brother, if for no other reason than the unholy wrath Dad'll bring down if he catches Joe in the act. "Since you two scared Nick off, you need to go stock the candy aisle."
"I didn't scare anybody off," Mike mutters, but he actually walks off before Joe.
"Young Carden here is interested in entirely different jeans," Bill says, solemnly, earning him a death glare over Mike's shoulder and a giggle, complete with snort, before Joe tears himself away from whatever tabloid was more important than taking care of Nick.
"Buy something or get out, Bill."
- - - - - -
Carden usually comes to math halfway through the class, slouches his way in to the back of the room stinking like smoke. Kevin's used up maybe 50% more of his notebook than he should have by now - he has a really specific system for his notes, and after the pause to lecture Carden about punctuality Miss Miller never starts exactly where she left off; Kevin has to start a new page to deal with the screw-up.
Wednesday, Carden wanders into the room only a minute or two behind Kevin, drops into the seat right next to him, tosses a thin jewel case on his desk with a clear plastic cover. Kevin didn't realize they had a music-exchange kind of relationship; the thought is kind of weird, but not as bad as he'd expect.
STORE SHIT THAT ISN'T SO SHITTY is scrawled on the cd, black and messy, just a little smudged.
"There's only so much Josh Groban I can handle," Carden says, sneering around the name like he's talking about poop.
"I'll talk to Dad about it," Kevin says, picks up the cd, "but I can't show him this."
"Right. Jesus, and...all that. Whatever, listen to it. You'll like it."
The whole conversation takes less than three minutes, and Carden's gone before the bell rings. He doesn't come back in to mess up Kevin's notes.
- - - - - -
"Fucker," Joe mutters, glaring daggers at something while Kevin stocks the shelves on his own.
"Language. And what's so wrong you have to both swear and slack off?"
"Chelsea's supposed to meet me here at five."
"It's only ten of. You can stop working when she's actually stood you up."
Joe sighs like Kevin's being intolerably dim, like it's so unfair he has the weight of the world on his shoulders and his brother's too dumb to understand his problems. "Just look, will you?"
Chelsea's right outside the store, leaning against one of the little vending machines full of butterfly stickers, and instead of, like, primping or whatever before she comes in to meet Joe, she's gazing up at someone, laughing like they've just said the funniest thing in the world, blushing just a little bit. She looks like she usually does when she talks to Joe, actually. Except she's talking to a friend of Carden's, the tall skinny one who wears neon all the time.
"Yesterday, that Butcher kid cut Nicole off and she ended up canceling. They were making out in the fu - frigging parking lot this morning."
"That might not - "
Chelsea glances into the store, looking a little regretful (there's way less "regret" on her face than "totally charmed", but at least it's there), then turns, lets tall skinny neon boy link arms with her, and they're gone.
"Fucker."
"Language, Joe," Kevin says on a reflex.
- - - - - -
Dorky as it is, Kevin kind of likes it when Nick's finally stopped pretending he isn't aching to do his homework, when Joe's girl problems (or, on good days, dates) get to be too much for him to even pretend to work, when he's got the store to himself to clean up, do inventory, redo the counter displays, all the boring little jobs no one else likes. Dad loves his dedication, loves that he'll spend hours working of his own free will, tells him he's a businessman in the making. Kevin just thinks he likes to do boring things, and the store gives him almost too many opportunities.
"You've been abandoned, Jonas," Carden says, from somewhere by the storage room.
"I always close alone. Where were you?"
"Break."
"You took a twenty-minute break twenty minutes before time to leave?"
Carden hops up on the counter, thigh right next to where Kevin's neatening up the Snickers, gives him a smirky sort of lopsided smile. "All part of my quest to become employee of the month."
Kevin doesn't have a response for that; his attempts at sarcasm never work. So he just smiles back, even though his smiles are bright and dopey and nowhere near as cool as that affected smirk thing Carden's doing, and goes back to the candy.
"You're listening to it," Carden says, a minute or two later, when Kevin would have forgotten he was there except for the dirty sneakers dangling in front of the Milky Ways.
"What?"
"Shitty store shit, or whatever. Shitty shit that isn't shit, shittily."
"Lang - oh gosh, sorry. I - reflex."
Carden's smirk widens a little. "Your authority only extends so far, Jonas."
"I'd say Dad'll fire you if he hears you, but that probably doesn't bother you." Kevin straightens up, leans over the counter; the only free space is right next to Carden, arm so close to his thigh Kevin can almost feel the heat of him through his jeans. Carden just shrugs, slides off the counter, leg sliding along the whole length of Kevin's arm. Goosebumps follow the rough slide of denim; Kevin rubs his left hand over his arm almost absently.
"Told you you'd like it," Carden says, bumps against him and holds there for just long enough it has to be deliberate, just long enough Kevin looks up at him. "I'm out. Study hard, Jonas, I'll be cheating off you tomorrow."
- - - - - -
"I'm gonna ask him to leave," Nick says, jaw so tight Kevin's surprised he can talk. He glances over his shoulder, and Bill's not even doing anything, just throwing fairly innocent (for him) glances Nick's way while he makes plans for later with Carden.
"No you won't," Joe says, "you'll walk over there and he'll hit on you, and you'll just get all flustered and go upstairs to hit something."
Kevin won't lie, he actually sighs in relief when Nick just glares at Joe and goes back to neatly stacking the bills in the register. He's not sure he could've lied if Nick looked his way for support.
"I'll ask him to leave if you promise to stop slamming the cash drawer shut, you're gonna break it."
Nick glares at him, and Kevin braces himself, 'cause he probably just accidentally unleashed the entire force of an angry, sexually frustrated Nick Jonas on himself, but then he just sighs and nods.
"Jonas! We were just talking about you," Bill says, earning him a light shove and a glare from Carden, and from the look on their faces Kevin completely can't tell what they might have been saying.
"Um, okay. I - you're freaking Nick out."
"I'm helping him discover his sexuality."
"He doesn't need your help."
Carden nudges Bill. "Dude, stop hassling the kid."
"He's not a kid. And it's not hassling, it's making romantic overtures."
Kevin and Carden both roll their eyes; Carden slaps Bill's hand down when he wiggles his fingers at Nick in a wave.
"Just go, dick. Friday?"
"And Saturday. Hell, leave Sunday open, too, we'll crown whoever makes it all the way to Sunday night King of...something clever."
Kevin's starting to get the feeling Carden rolls his eyes at Bill a lot, but this eye roll comes with a grin at Bill's obediently retreating back.
"The kind of party your daddy wouldn't like, Jonas," Carden says to Kevin's questioning eyes, when he looks back over. "There might - might, I dunno, depends how crazy we feel - be swearing."
Heat rushes to Kevin's cheeks, but he smiles like the kind of person who can handle jokes at his own expense.
"And Bill's not a bad guy, he's just...enthusiastic."
"I know. But Nick's gonna break something expensive if he gets any more tense."
- - - - - -
Someone slings an arm around Kevin's shoulder in the hall, so enthusiastically he stumbles a little.
"Jonas! I trust Mike told you about my shindig this weekend."
"Uh, sort of."
"I didn't actually trust he did. Boy can't even do an assignment when it has nothing to do with school. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word 'assignment'...opportunity would've worked."
Kevin blinks at Bill, tries to figure out exactly what'll happen if he ducks out from under the arm heavy around his shoulder. Obviously, he isn't essential to the conversation.
"Anyway! You, party, et cetera. Friday night. Or Saturday night, but that's only for the hardcore, or something. Don't come Sunday night, everyone'll be dead and there'll probably be a mess."
Bill shoves a piece of paper into Kevin's pocket (which is kind of not an okay place for him to be reaching uninvited, and Kevin is totally capable of putting things in his own pocket), throws him a lewd wink Kevin's seen him aim at Nick more than once, and then he's gone.
- - - - - -
Kevin tells Dad he's going to hang out with Lucas, 'cause Dad won't remember he hasn't spent any time with Lucas since ninth grade when he made all his new drama friends, doesn't tell Nick and Joe anything 'cause normally they'd love this sort of thing but Nick would accuse him of mutiny for going anywhere near Beckett and Joe'd crash the party to get all his girlfriends back.
Bill's house is three blocks away; one and a half down Kevin almost turns around, except he can't go home right away, and what else is there to do. Being the butt of whatever joke they had in mind when they decided to invite him is a better idea than freezing his ass off in the park until a convincing amount of time has passed, probably.
"Oh man, shit, Carden's gonna shit," whoever answers the door says - Kevin thinks it's whoever Joe called "that Butcher kid", since Nicole's all wrapped around him. "Shit."
"Wow, coherent. Ignore him," Nicole says, all smiles, and pulls Kevin in, shuts the door behind him. "Get him something to drink."
"Oh God, yeah, yes. What're you having?" Nicole arches an eyebrow, tilts her cup so Butcher can look in. "Yeah I won't get him that. Fruitier."
Butcher disappears out of Nicole's octopus-arms hold, and Nicole shifts on her feet, looks at Kevin a little awkwardly. "So, Joe..."
"Don't feel guilty, he had a date every day that week."
"Oh. I - okay. Cool."
Butcher comes back then, shoves a red plastic cup into Kevin's hand, wraps around Nicole the way she'd just been wrapped around him. "You're all set, Jonas. Go get your man," he says, and they disappear into the crowd.
Well. That was.
Wait, what man?
- - - - - -
People he recognizes from the store keep coming to talk to Kevin; since most of them look some combination of excited and amused to see him, he's gone from suspecting he's the butt of a joke to being sure. Except everyone who's come over has brought him a drink, some of them multiple, so when he gets up to leave before whatever ridiculous humiliation can take place, he wobbles once, twice, and topples right over.
At least someone catches him. That's nice.
"Jesus, I thought Beckett was joking." Carden helps Kevin straighten up, and starts to let go until Kevin wobbles again. "Oh for the love of - how much have you had?"
Kevin holds up a bunch of fingers, which probably don't add up to the right number at all, but he wasn't counting, and Carden wasn't watching so how would he know if Kevin was lying, and it's kind of mean to make him try to remember things like amount of red cups when his head is this fuzzy.
"Right. Okay, Jonas, let's get you home."
"I can't go home," Kevin says (or, from the way Carden winces and half the room turns to look, shouts), like that's the stupidest thing ever. "I think I'm a little drunk. Duh."
"Might be drunk. Yeah, you fucking might be." Carden shifts, wraps one arm around Kevin's waist so he can balance Kevin against his warm, solid side and have a hand free. Oh man, cuddles. Kevin loves cuddles.
From the way Carden stares at him, like he's trying to make lasers come out of his eyes and burn all Kevin's hair off, when he wraps his arms around Carden's waist and leans heavy against him like a good cuddler, he has to assume maybe Carden isn't as into cuddling. Which is stupid. Who doesn't like cuddling. Puppy killers don't, and Hitler, probably, but Kevin's pretty sure Carden isn't Hitler, and he'd like to assume he wouldn't just cuddle a puppy killer. He's a pretty good judge of character.
"You wouldn't kill a puppy."
"I - yeah, it's time to get you out of here," Carden says, and he's still looking at Kevin but without the laser eyes thing. Except he feels a lot warmer now than when he thought laser eyes were a possibility. He starts walking Kevin towards the door, swearing every time Kevin stumbles a little and sends them knocking into a wall or a person or...something breakable, ha ha, oops.
"Have fun with your barnacle," Bill calls, just before the door closes, and that's kind of ridiculous, 'cause barnacles stick on ships, and Carden is way too skinny to be a ship.
- - - - - -
"So I know you're the good one, and Dad trusts you and all, but I heard you come in this morning, so out with it."
Kevin blinks at Joe, glances over his shoulder to make sure Nick's safely stuck at the register - kid is the champion of blackmail, no contest - and looks back at Joe. "It - I just went to a party."
"You don't go to parties. Not all-night parties."
"Your brother parties like a rock star, what are you talking about," Carden says from right behind Kevin, smirks when he jumps about a foot in the air. Joe just stares, looking between them like he's watching a tennis match; his eyes get wide and one eyebrow goes up when Carden holds out Kevin's watch. "You left this at my place," he says, and Joe's jaw hits the floor.
Carden holds on to it a second longer than he needs to, lets their fingers brush, and last night is a lot of fog but Kevin clearly remembers the brush of those fingers, and feeling really good, and - and that's about it, but it's enough to make his face heat up.
"I. Um. Thanks. For the watch. And. Y'know. I - thanks."
The more he stammers the more Carden smirks, like a cat watching poor Kevin the mouse run himself in circles, but instead of saying anything he just shrugs, nods, and walks away.
"You'll catch flies, Joe," Kevin says, and goes to find out if Nick'll let him take the register for a while.
- - - - - -
"Your mouth said thank you, but your avoidance is giving me mixed signals, Jonas."
"I'm not avoiding you. And you just tracked the dirt I swept up all down the aisle."
Carden glances down at his shoes, shrugs, leans against the shelves stacked full of soup cans. "Sorry. And this store is, like, eight square feet, it's kind of hard not to be totally fucking obvious."
"Um."
"Yeah."
Kevin swipes the broom halfheartedly at the mess Carden made, the mess he already swept up once, but gives up even trying to look busy when he can't focus on anything but Carden's eyes burning holes in his shoulder.
"I kissed you, didn't I."
Carden snorts. "If you can call it that. You're as innocent as you act, aren't you?"
"Um. I guess?" Kevin leans the broom against the shelf, stuffs his hands in his pockets awkwardly; his pants are too tight, he's probably gonna end up cutting off his own circulation. Awesome. "And - ?"
"You tried to stick your hand down my pants, and when I stopped you, you just fell asleep on the spot. Well. You took enough time to cling on so tight I couldn't fucking move."
All Kevin does is blush around Carden, but this time it's probably really, really justified. "I, uh - sorry."
"I don't blame you," Carden says, walking forward, crowding Kevin back against the shelves. "I blame the inventor of the chocolate martini. Also, Beckett."
"Right." Kevin's hands are stuck in his pockets - if he jerks as hard as he thinks he might have to, he's gonna whack Carden right in the nose. And that would be even more awesome than losing his hands 'cause he's too awkward to know what to do with them when his pants don't actually have any pocket space.
Carden leans, and Kevin's blushing probably more than he ever has in his life, but it's okay - and then Carden stops leaning and blinks at him. "The fuck are you doing?" he asks, flicks his eyes down to where Kevin's trying to wiggle his hands out of his stupid pockets without causing any injuries.
"Um. I. Tight pants."
Carden rolls his eyes, grabs Kevin's wrists and gives one good pull, and Kevin doesn't even have time to thank him before Carden's using his wrists to pin him back against the canned vegetables and his lips are on Kevin, dry and warm and soft and oh gosh, this is awesome.
"You should probably," Carden pulls back just enough to murmur, and the whisper of air against his lips makes Kevin feel kind of melty, "just keep your hands out of pants entirely, Jonas. Apparently it's a little advanced for you."
Not that Kevin ever has a retort when Carden makes fun of him, but this time he's happy to blame it on the way his head is swimming from kissing Carden, wanting to kiss him more, so instead of even trying to think of something he leans and closes the little bit of distance, draws Carden in for another kiss.
"Oh." Carden pulls back again, expression going totally smug when Kevin tries not to let him, tries to lean in and keep kissing. "You gave Bill your brother's number."