fic: Sweetheart of the Rodeo (OUTTAKES)
Here are two other versions of the Bob scene from " Sweetheart of the Rodeo" that didn't make the final cut, for reasons of varying obviousness. There are things in both that I really like, so I figured, "Hey, why not post these anyway?" Bonus porn, woo!
One is set after Bob's wrist surgery (1751 words), and the other is set in the Paramour (I COULDN'T RESIST, OKAY?) (1490 words).
THE SET-UP:
She fucked Bob when he was doing their sound for free on their first European tour.
("Don't think this is, like, payment or anything," she said as she leaned into Bob's space, vodka-confident, and curled a finger through the carabiner hanging from his belt loop.
"So what is it?" he asked her. He didn't touch her back but he didn't pull away, either.
She looked at him and shrugged with one shoulder and said, "I'm horny and you're here, did you want something more?" When he didn't respond right away, she added, "Besides, you speak English, which is more important than you might expect."
Within half an hour, Bob had found an unused room where, at her request, he bent Mikey over a card table and held her down and fucked her so hard that it almost collapsed.)
THE VERSION WITH BOB'S WRIST SURGERY:
They never talk about it, but a lot of things happened on that tour that nobody talks about.
It finally comes up for the first time years later, when Bob is recovering from wrist surgery.
Mikey goes to Chicago for a few days to keep Bob company, just hang out and order takeout and watch movies. She's used to Bob's quiet surliness when he's in pain and irritated, but she's not expecting him to be completely missing his usual warmth.
But it makes sense, she figures; for a guy who's made a life by his hands, it's got to completely suck to not be able to use them at all for a few weeks. She just hugs him carefully and says, "I know it sucks not to use your hands right now, but we need you to be able to use them for the rest of your life, okay?"
Bob nods silently, the look on his face saying he's not entirely buying it.
She shrugs it off. If he's not willing to be convinced then she's not going to bother, so instead she spends the afternoon talking at him about her cats and Jersey and some of the fucked-up movies she saw as a kid. (When she tries to start in on comics, he cuts her a look that stops her dead. She wonders if Gerard called him when she was on the plane over.)
They both sleep late the next day, and when Mikey finally gets up to put on a pot of coffee to start dealing with her caffeine headache, Bob's bedroom door is still closed. She pauses on the threshold to listen. She can hear him moving around in his bed but she's not sure if that means he's awake or just moving around in a dream.
He finally emerges an hour later, rumpled and scowling. She opens her mouth to ask how he slept but closes it before any words come out. The answer is pretty obvious. Besides, Bob always wakes up in a bad mood, and the only thing notable about today is that he just looks crankier than usual.
But when he barely cracks a smile at the playlist of YouTube videos she'd put together just for the occasion of her visit, she knows something is up.
She turns in the computer chair and looks him in the eye. "What the hell is wrong with you?" she asks.
To Mikey's surprise, Bob starts blushing.
"What?" she asks.
He shakes his head.
"What, Bryar?" she presses, watching him closely.
"Drop it," he snaps. He looks like he wants to cross his arms over his chest, but of course his braces are in the way. They're new, bigger than the ones he normally wears. It's obvious he's not used to moving in them yet.
She glares at him. She's glad she doesn't have her glasses anymore; it makes her glaring that much more effective. "Tell me!"
"Fine!" he bursts out, then doesn't say anything else.
She raises an eyebrow at him and waits for him to spill.
"I can't jerk off," he eventually grits through clenched teeth as he stares down at his braces.
"Oh, is that all?" Mikey asks. "Because if you wanted, I could, I mean--"
"No thanks," Bob cuts her off.
"Your loss," she shrugs. She'd give Bob more shit but he's clearly really uncomfortable. "The offer stands, anyway."
"Um, thanks," Bob says weakly, and then gets up and bolts from the room.
She gets the feeling that he would have been less embarrassed by his admission if he'd been talking to anyone else in the band (read: someone with a dick). She wishes it didn't bother he so much.
She can't explain why she was so quick to offer to lend a hand (as it were). But even though it just kind of slipped out, she does mean it. She doesn't think it would be a big deal; she likes Bob and thinks he's pretty hot, and at this point in her life she's kind of a pro at not letting sex fuck things up. Besides, there's precedent for it not being a big deal between them, even if it was half a world away when they were completely different people.
She pushes the thoughts away and goes to check her email to mentally change the subject.
When Bob reappears a while later and asks what she wants on the pizza he's going to order, she can tell he's making an effort to pretend their earlier conversation never happened. But she's not going to say anything until he does, and if that's never then so be it.
She only has to wait a day.
Bob wakes up late the next day too, as surly as the day before. He doesn't say anything to Mikey, just grunts something unintelligible on his way by to get a Red Bull. Then he sits on the couch and turns on the TV. Mikey joins him, for lack of anything better to do.
During Dr. Phil, Bob doesn't yell at the guests and Phil and the audience the way he normally does. Halfway through the episode, he gestures for her to turn off the TV. "Okay," he says, sounding almost resigned. "I can't take it anymore."
"Yeah, out-of-control teens sure ain't what they used to be," she says, just to bait him.
He rolls his eyes. "That's not what I meant."
"I know," she says, and looks him in the eye for a heartbeat before she leans across the couch to put a hand on his thigh.
Bob lifts his hips and starts pawing at the waistband of his sweatpants. The angle is bad, he's having trouble getting them down, so Mikey pulls them down to sit around his thighs.
Then she slides a hand across his hip and stomach, her fingertips dropping to skirt around the base of his dick, which is half-hard. She wonders if that's how he woke up, if he's had wood for the last couple hours. She hears his breath catch as her fingers edge in further, tracing lightly over the crease of his thigh.
"Wait," Bob says suddenly, and Mikey freezes for a second before Bob goes on, "Can we go do this on my bed? If this is going to have to hold me for a while I want to really enjoy it."
They move to his room. Bob kicks off his pants and then lies down in the middle of the bed, his arms stiff at his sides. Mikey settles next to his hip, carefully avoiding his hand. She starts touching him again and this time his skin feels much hotter. When she wraps long fingers around his dick he goes tense all over and doesn't really relax from there.
She's amazed at how absolutely still he stays while she starts to touch him, one hand working his dick as the other moves across his stomach, pushing up his shirt. The muscles in his chest are tight and hard under her fingers.
He's not silent, though. His breath is coming fast and heavy and he moans every time her palm slides across the head of his dick and her fingers close tight and squeeze.
Bob doesn't try to kiss her at all, but he asks politely if she'll take her shirt off. She does, and she can feel him watching her breasts and how they're jiggling a little bit as she jerks him off.
It takes no time at all for her to pick up a rhythm, and soon enough Bob's hips are flexing up in easy time with her hand. The rhythm section, she thinks fondly, but this is nothing like the music they play together, except for the ways that it is.
He shouts as he comes all over his chest and her hand and she wipes it off for him with a t-shirt from the floor. She's going to be doing his laundry before she leaves, anyway.
As she watches the rise and fall of Bob's chest slow down, she wonders if that should have been weird at all--Bob is almost a brother to her, now. But she's given enough handjobs in her time that she didn't really have to think about it while it was happening; it was muscle memory, like brushing her teeth or playing a G chord. Which isn't to say that she didn't enjoy it, because she did. There's a tightness in her stomach and she's a little wet, though not enough to need to do anything about it right away. Later, though, she probably will.
Bob certainly looks okay with what just happened, what with how he's sprawled limp-limbed across the width of his bed. His eyes are lightly closed and his mouth is hanging open and he's flushed pink all over.
Eventually he opens his eyes and looks at her and says, "So, later..." and doesn't finish his thought until Mikey pokes him hard in the ribs. "I guess I owe you one," he mumbles into his beard.
"You really don't," Mikey tells him. In part it's because she doesn't want it hanging over their heads, but it's mostly because she doesn't think he owes her anything at all. "I actually owed you that one. Sorry it took me so long to pay up."
It takes a minute but Mikey can see the moment Bob realizes what she's referring to, and he blushes dark all the way down to his chest. "You didn't owe me for that. I got just as much out of that as you did."
Mikey doesn't necessarily agree--it had been about the distraction as much as the sex, a need for something physical to take her out of her head even if she hadn't really realized that at the time--but if that's what Bob thinks, well. "Why don't we just call it even?" she suggests.
"Deal," he says.
She leans in and strokes his bangs back off his face and tucks his hair behind his ears. "You're going to be okay, Bob," she tells him seriously. "I can hear you worrying, but you have to know that we're all here for you no matter what."
"Well, I'm glad you're here now," he says. He keeps a straight face for almost five seconds before he smiles, his first real smile since Mikey's been there.
"Me too," she says, and she really means it.
THE VERSION AT THE PARAMOUR:
She fucks him again, the second and last time, when they're in the Paramour.
She drinks half a bottle of vodka alone in her room that day, desperately trying to stave off the anxiety she can feel hanging heavy over her head, to fight off the lurking feelings that she's useless, talentless, unloved.
She's not sure she's not going crazy, and this fucking house isn't helping.
Her room is dark and claustrophobic around her and she can't take it anymore. She gets unsteadily to her feet and staggers down the hallway. No destination in mind, no goal, no end in sight, she moves as quietly as she can through the house, like one of the ghosts she can't convince anyone else are haunting them.
She loses track of time but not of herself, which is too bad. She hears the sound of a movie coming from Frank's room when she walks by, the low murmur of Ray's voice, and she could knock on the door and sit with them and wait herself out, almost wants to, but she can't bring herself to lift a hand or call out to them. She just walks by, shuffling down the carpet and trying not to trip over her own feet.
Bob is in the kitchen when she gets there, eating a bowl of mac and cheese that he offers to share with her. She declines, and then offers to walk him back up to his room to give her something to do.
When they get to Bob's room, they're greeted by the sound of running water. Mikey sticks her head into the bathroom, where she sees the tub is full and about to overflow.
"Did you leave this on?" she asks, reaching out to turn it off. The knobs turn but the water doesn't stop running. Mikey freezes, staring at it with her mouth slightly open, and then Bob comes up behind her and touches her shoulder gently, pulling her away and out of the bathroom.
"It turns on by itself, sometimes," Bob says, disbelief stitched into every word. "And then it turns itself off, eventually."
"What are you going to do?" she asks, peering suspiciously at it through the doorway.
"Nothing," Bob shrugs, then very deliberately closes the door. "What is there to do?"
"Oh." Mikey keeps staring at the door.
"This house is fucked up," Bob mutters.
Mikey's legs almost go out from under her. Just hearing somebody else voicing the thoughts she's been having ever since they arrived, right now, when she's already feeling like this, it hits her hard, lights her up like the beam of a lighthouse through the fog and dark.
She turns to Bob, intending to hug him and tell him she agrees, but before she even registers what she's doing she's up on her toes and kissing him fiercely, grabbing his shoulders and pulling him down into her.
He just stands there dumbly for a few moments and then he growls, low and brief, and wraps his hands around her waist. Familiarity floods through her, real déjà vu, and the rush of it is good enough to clear her head for a moment.
She walks backward, half-dragging him across his room towards the bed, and then she throws herself onto the mattress and pulls him down onto her, pressing up against his body everywhere it covers hers.
They tug at each others' clothing, sitting up to undress gracelessly before falling together again, skin to skin on the sheets. She spreads her legs so he's lying between them.
And then Bob goes still atop her. "Wait, wait," he says in her ear.
"What?" she growls.
"Don't have a condom." He sounds embarrassed. "I didn't bring any, wasn't going to need them, you know?"
Mikey rolls her eyes. "I've been on the pill the entire time I've known you. It's okay," she tells him, then rubs herself up against him for emphasis.
"You sure?" he asks.
"Yes," she tells him.
It must be enough for him, because a moment later he's moving against her, rubbing his dick against the crease of her thigh before he lines up properly and slides in.
That first moment of it fills her with a familiar bright flash of warmth, and she relaxes into it as she adjusts herself under him, fitting her body to his.
He starts thrusting right away, easy rolls of the hip that feel nice but aren't enough, not nearly.
She rocks up to meet each thrust, her hipbones pressing into his body, her pelvis grinding against his. It's not enough.
His hair is almost too short to hold onto, but she runs her fingers through it and twists and pulls as best she can.
"Stop it," he pants between ragged breaths.
"Harder," she grunts at him.
He obliges, snapping his hips into her hard enough to send little tremors through her whole body. She lets go of his hair and lifts her hips into him, flexes her legs, tries to feel him as deep as she can.
One of his hands is on the bed above her shoulder and the other moves to grip her thigh, tight enough that she might have finger-sized bruises from it, and press her knee upwards. She stretches into it, opening herself further, and Bob groans as he sinks in the tiniest bit more.
She scratches hard down his back. Her nails are too short to do any damage but she keeps pressing them down, digging into his skin like she'll find something buried there.
It's fast and hard and hot and wet and wraps her up with something new to focus on, at least for the moment.
Her eyes are closed, her eyelids fluttering against her lower lashes as she moves with him. She concentrates on the rhythm of it, the growing tension in her stomach and thighs, and works a hand in between them to pinch at her clit.
Her whole body goes tight as she comes, her legs clamping down around Bob's hips, and she arches up off the mattress for long seconds before falling limply back down.
"Fuck, Mikey," Bob groans, and pulls out to come on her leg and the sheets.
She rolls away from him, holds herself tight with almost an arm's length of distance between them. She'd almost managed to lose herself, but she didn't quite get there. And now she's back where she started. Fuck.
"You can sleep here, if you want," Bob offers drowsily.
Mikey stares wide-eyed up at the shadows hiding the ceiling. She realizes that they never turned on the lights, that they were moving by feel and instinct alone.
She's suddenly overwhelmed by this huge awful empty feeling that threatens to suck her under. Guilt burns holes through her guts. She shouldn't have fucked Bob, shouldn't have thrown herself at him like that. She shouldn't have made this his problem, even by fleeting association. She should leave. She needs to leave, get out of here. Even the thought of touching him right now is enough to make her heart race the wrong way.
"It's okay," she chokes out, and books it back to her room.
She sits on the foot of her bed and stares out her window and nurses the rest of her vodka. The sun is already starting to come up when she finally passes out.
She can't meet Bob's eyes for days. He lets her avoid him for almost a week--a week of silent panic attacks and sleepless nights and desperate self-medicating--but then he corners her and puts a heavy hand on her shoulder and gives her a look.
He holds her gaze for almost a minute before he clears his throat. "I don't know what's going on," he starts, his voice a bit rough, "but it's obviously something, and I think you need to deal with it."
Mikey doesn't reply, she just stares blankly back at him.
Bob shifts his weight awkwardly under her gaze. "It was weird, Mikey. You obviously weren't you."
She comes back to life at that. "So why did you let me?" she spits at him, accusing.
"I thought it would help," he says. He sounds sad, unsettled. He looks it too. "Like before."
Mikey can't look away from his face, even though everything in her is screaming at her to break free and run away and hide.
Somehow, somewhere, she finds the strength to go to Gerard instead, and she cuts herself open with trembling hands to spill her guts at his feet.
They all cluster around the front door to see her off when she leaves. When Bob hugs her it feels warm and safe, like he's not mad at her, like he doesn't blame her. Not for the first time but more than ever before, she thinks about how lucky they are to have him.
One is set after Bob's wrist surgery (1751 words), and the other is set in the Paramour (I COULDN'T RESIST, OKAY?) (1490 words).
THE SET-UP:
She fucked Bob when he was doing their sound for free on their first European tour.
("Don't think this is, like, payment or anything," she said as she leaned into Bob's space, vodka-confident, and curled a finger through the carabiner hanging from his belt loop.
"So what is it?" he asked her. He didn't touch her back but he didn't pull away, either.
She looked at him and shrugged with one shoulder and said, "I'm horny and you're here, did you want something more?" When he didn't respond right away, she added, "Besides, you speak English, which is more important than you might expect."
Within half an hour, Bob had found an unused room where, at her request, he bent Mikey over a card table and held her down and fucked her so hard that it almost collapsed.)
THE VERSION WITH BOB'S WRIST SURGERY:
They never talk about it, but a lot of things happened on that tour that nobody talks about.
It finally comes up for the first time years later, when Bob is recovering from wrist surgery.
Mikey goes to Chicago for a few days to keep Bob company, just hang out and order takeout and watch movies. She's used to Bob's quiet surliness when he's in pain and irritated, but she's not expecting him to be completely missing his usual warmth.
But it makes sense, she figures; for a guy who's made a life by his hands, it's got to completely suck to not be able to use them at all for a few weeks. She just hugs him carefully and says, "I know it sucks not to use your hands right now, but we need you to be able to use them for the rest of your life, okay?"
Bob nods silently, the look on his face saying he's not entirely buying it.
She shrugs it off. If he's not willing to be convinced then she's not going to bother, so instead she spends the afternoon talking at him about her cats and Jersey and some of the fucked-up movies she saw as a kid. (When she tries to start in on comics, he cuts her a look that stops her dead. She wonders if Gerard called him when she was on the plane over.)
They both sleep late the next day, and when Mikey finally gets up to put on a pot of coffee to start dealing with her caffeine headache, Bob's bedroom door is still closed. She pauses on the threshold to listen. She can hear him moving around in his bed but she's not sure if that means he's awake or just moving around in a dream.
He finally emerges an hour later, rumpled and scowling. She opens her mouth to ask how he slept but closes it before any words come out. The answer is pretty obvious. Besides, Bob always wakes up in a bad mood, and the only thing notable about today is that he just looks crankier than usual.
But when he barely cracks a smile at the playlist of YouTube videos she'd put together just for the occasion of her visit, she knows something is up.
She turns in the computer chair and looks him in the eye. "What the hell is wrong with you?" she asks.
To Mikey's surprise, Bob starts blushing.
"What?" she asks.
He shakes his head.
"What, Bryar?" she presses, watching him closely.
"Drop it," he snaps. He looks like he wants to cross his arms over his chest, but of course his braces are in the way. They're new, bigger than the ones he normally wears. It's obvious he's not used to moving in them yet.
She glares at him. She's glad she doesn't have her glasses anymore; it makes her glaring that much more effective. "Tell me!"
"Fine!" he bursts out, then doesn't say anything else.
She raises an eyebrow at him and waits for him to spill.
"I can't jerk off," he eventually grits through clenched teeth as he stares down at his braces.
"Oh, is that all?" Mikey asks. "Because if you wanted, I could, I mean--"
"No thanks," Bob cuts her off.
"Your loss," she shrugs. She'd give Bob more shit but he's clearly really uncomfortable. "The offer stands, anyway."
"Um, thanks," Bob says weakly, and then gets up and bolts from the room.
She gets the feeling that he would have been less embarrassed by his admission if he'd been talking to anyone else in the band (read: someone with a dick). She wishes it didn't bother he so much.
She can't explain why she was so quick to offer to lend a hand (as it were). But even though it just kind of slipped out, she does mean it. She doesn't think it would be a big deal; she likes Bob and thinks he's pretty hot, and at this point in her life she's kind of a pro at not letting sex fuck things up. Besides, there's precedent for it not being a big deal between them, even if it was half a world away when they were completely different people.
She pushes the thoughts away and goes to check her email to mentally change the subject.
When Bob reappears a while later and asks what she wants on the pizza he's going to order, she can tell he's making an effort to pretend their earlier conversation never happened. But she's not going to say anything until he does, and if that's never then so be it.
She only has to wait a day.
Bob wakes up late the next day too, as surly as the day before. He doesn't say anything to Mikey, just grunts something unintelligible on his way by to get a Red Bull. Then he sits on the couch and turns on the TV. Mikey joins him, for lack of anything better to do.
During Dr. Phil, Bob doesn't yell at the guests and Phil and the audience the way he normally does. Halfway through the episode, he gestures for her to turn off the TV. "Okay," he says, sounding almost resigned. "I can't take it anymore."
"Yeah, out-of-control teens sure ain't what they used to be," she says, just to bait him.
He rolls his eyes. "That's not what I meant."
"I know," she says, and looks him in the eye for a heartbeat before she leans across the couch to put a hand on his thigh.
Bob lifts his hips and starts pawing at the waistband of his sweatpants. The angle is bad, he's having trouble getting them down, so Mikey pulls them down to sit around his thighs.
Then she slides a hand across his hip and stomach, her fingertips dropping to skirt around the base of his dick, which is half-hard. She wonders if that's how he woke up, if he's had wood for the last couple hours. She hears his breath catch as her fingers edge in further, tracing lightly over the crease of his thigh.
"Wait," Bob says suddenly, and Mikey freezes for a second before Bob goes on, "Can we go do this on my bed? If this is going to have to hold me for a while I want to really enjoy it."
They move to his room. Bob kicks off his pants and then lies down in the middle of the bed, his arms stiff at his sides. Mikey settles next to his hip, carefully avoiding his hand. She starts touching him again and this time his skin feels much hotter. When she wraps long fingers around his dick he goes tense all over and doesn't really relax from there.
She's amazed at how absolutely still he stays while she starts to touch him, one hand working his dick as the other moves across his stomach, pushing up his shirt. The muscles in his chest are tight and hard under her fingers.
He's not silent, though. His breath is coming fast and heavy and he moans every time her palm slides across the head of his dick and her fingers close tight and squeeze.
Bob doesn't try to kiss her at all, but he asks politely if she'll take her shirt off. She does, and she can feel him watching her breasts and how they're jiggling a little bit as she jerks him off.
It takes no time at all for her to pick up a rhythm, and soon enough Bob's hips are flexing up in easy time with her hand. The rhythm section, she thinks fondly, but this is nothing like the music they play together, except for the ways that it is.
He shouts as he comes all over his chest and her hand and she wipes it off for him with a t-shirt from the floor. She's going to be doing his laundry before she leaves, anyway.
As she watches the rise and fall of Bob's chest slow down, she wonders if that should have been weird at all--Bob is almost a brother to her, now. But she's given enough handjobs in her time that she didn't really have to think about it while it was happening; it was muscle memory, like brushing her teeth or playing a G chord. Which isn't to say that she didn't enjoy it, because she did. There's a tightness in her stomach and she's a little wet, though not enough to need to do anything about it right away. Later, though, she probably will.
Bob certainly looks okay with what just happened, what with how he's sprawled limp-limbed across the width of his bed. His eyes are lightly closed and his mouth is hanging open and he's flushed pink all over.
Eventually he opens his eyes and looks at her and says, "So, later..." and doesn't finish his thought until Mikey pokes him hard in the ribs. "I guess I owe you one," he mumbles into his beard.
"You really don't," Mikey tells him. In part it's because she doesn't want it hanging over their heads, but it's mostly because she doesn't think he owes her anything at all. "I actually owed you that one. Sorry it took me so long to pay up."
It takes a minute but Mikey can see the moment Bob realizes what she's referring to, and he blushes dark all the way down to his chest. "You didn't owe me for that. I got just as much out of that as you did."
Mikey doesn't necessarily agree--it had been about the distraction as much as the sex, a need for something physical to take her out of her head even if she hadn't really realized that at the time--but if that's what Bob thinks, well. "Why don't we just call it even?" she suggests.
"Deal," he says.
She leans in and strokes his bangs back off his face and tucks his hair behind his ears. "You're going to be okay, Bob," she tells him seriously. "I can hear you worrying, but you have to know that we're all here for you no matter what."
"Well, I'm glad you're here now," he says. He keeps a straight face for almost five seconds before he smiles, his first real smile since Mikey's been there.
"Me too," she says, and she really means it.
THE VERSION AT THE PARAMOUR:
She fucks him again, the second and last time, when they're in the Paramour.
She drinks half a bottle of vodka alone in her room that day, desperately trying to stave off the anxiety she can feel hanging heavy over her head, to fight off the lurking feelings that she's useless, talentless, unloved.
She's not sure she's not going crazy, and this fucking house isn't helping.
Her room is dark and claustrophobic around her and she can't take it anymore. She gets unsteadily to her feet and staggers down the hallway. No destination in mind, no goal, no end in sight, she moves as quietly as she can through the house, like one of the ghosts she can't convince anyone else are haunting them.
She loses track of time but not of herself, which is too bad. She hears the sound of a movie coming from Frank's room when she walks by, the low murmur of Ray's voice, and she could knock on the door and sit with them and wait herself out, almost wants to, but she can't bring herself to lift a hand or call out to them. She just walks by, shuffling down the carpet and trying not to trip over her own feet.
Bob is in the kitchen when she gets there, eating a bowl of mac and cheese that he offers to share with her. She declines, and then offers to walk him back up to his room to give her something to do.
When they get to Bob's room, they're greeted by the sound of running water. Mikey sticks her head into the bathroom, where she sees the tub is full and about to overflow.
"Did you leave this on?" she asks, reaching out to turn it off. The knobs turn but the water doesn't stop running. Mikey freezes, staring at it with her mouth slightly open, and then Bob comes up behind her and touches her shoulder gently, pulling her away and out of the bathroom.
"It turns on by itself, sometimes," Bob says, disbelief stitched into every word. "And then it turns itself off, eventually."
"What are you going to do?" she asks, peering suspiciously at it through the doorway.
"Nothing," Bob shrugs, then very deliberately closes the door. "What is there to do?"
"Oh." Mikey keeps staring at the door.
"This house is fucked up," Bob mutters.
Mikey's legs almost go out from under her. Just hearing somebody else voicing the thoughts she's been having ever since they arrived, right now, when she's already feeling like this, it hits her hard, lights her up like the beam of a lighthouse through the fog and dark.
She turns to Bob, intending to hug him and tell him she agrees, but before she even registers what she's doing she's up on her toes and kissing him fiercely, grabbing his shoulders and pulling him down into her.
He just stands there dumbly for a few moments and then he growls, low and brief, and wraps his hands around her waist. Familiarity floods through her, real déjà vu, and the rush of it is good enough to clear her head for a moment.
She walks backward, half-dragging him across his room towards the bed, and then she throws herself onto the mattress and pulls him down onto her, pressing up against his body everywhere it covers hers.
They tug at each others' clothing, sitting up to undress gracelessly before falling together again, skin to skin on the sheets. She spreads her legs so he's lying between them.
And then Bob goes still atop her. "Wait, wait," he says in her ear.
"What?" she growls.
"Don't have a condom." He sounds embarrassed. "I didn't bring any, wasn't going to need them, you know?"
Mikey rolls her eyes. "I've been on the pill the entire time I've known you. It's okay," she tells him, then rubs herself up against him for emphasis.
"You sure?" he asks.
"Yes," she tells him.
It must be enough for him, because a moment later he's moving against her, rubbing his dick against the crease of her thigh before he lines up properly and slides in.
That first moment of it fills her with a familiar bright flash of warmth, and she relaxes into it as she adjusts herself under him, fitting her body to his.
He starts thrusting right away, easy rolls of the hip that feel nice but aren't enough, not nearly.
She rocks up to meet each thrust, her hipbones pressing into his body, her pelvis grinding against his. It's not enough.
His hair is almost too short to hold onto, but she runs her fingers through it and twists and pulls as best she can.
"Stop it," he pants between ragged breaths.
"Harder," she grunts at him.
He obliges, snapping his hips into her hard enough to send little tremors through her whole body. She lets go of his hair and lifts her hips into him, flexes her legs, tries to feel him as deep as she can.
One of his hands is on the bed above her shoulder and the other moves to grip her thigh, tight enough that she might have finger-sized bruises from it, and press her knee upwards. She stretches into it, opening herself further, and Bob groans as he sinks in the tiniest bit more.
She scratches hard down his back. Her nails are too short to do any damage but she keeps pressing them down, digging into his skin like she'll find something buried there.
It's fast and hard and hot and wet and wraps her up with something new to focus on, at least for the moment.
Her eyes are closed, her eyelids fluttering against her lower lashes as she moves with him. She concentrates on the rhythm of it, the growing tension in her stomach and thighs, and works a hand in between them to pinch at her clit.
Her whole body goes tight as she comes, her legs clamping down around Bob's hips, and she arches up off the mattress for long seconds before falling limply back down.
"Fuck, Mikey," Bob groans, and pulls out to come on her leg and the sheets.
She rolls away from him, holds herself tight with almost an arm's length of distance between them. She'd almost managed to lose herself, but she didn't quite get there. And now she's back where she started. Fuck.
"You can sleep here, if you want," Bob offers drowsily.
Mikey stares wide-eyed up at the shadows hiding the ceiling. She realizes that they never turned on the lights, that they were moving by feel and instinct alone.
She's suddenly overwhelmed by this huge awful empty feeling that threatens to suck her under. Guilt burns holes through her guts. She shouldn't have fucked Bob, shouldn't have thrown herself at him like that. She shouldn't have made this his problem, even by fleeting association. She should leave. She needs to leave, get out of here. Even the thought of touching him right now is enough to make her heart race the wrong way.
"It's okay," she chokes out, and books it back to her room.
She sits on the foot of her bed and stares out her window and nurses the rest of her vodka. The sun is already starting to come up when she finally passes out.
She can't meet Bob's eyes for days. He lets her avoid him for almost a week--a week of silent panic attacks and sleepless nights and desperate self-medicating--but then he corners her and puts a heavy hand on her shoulder and gives her a look.
He holds her gaze for almost a minute before he clears his throat. "I don't know what's going on," he starts, his voice a bit rough, "but it's obviously something, and I think you need to deal with it."
Mikey doesn't reply, she just stares blankly back at him.
Bob shifts his weight awkwardly under her gaze. "It was weird, Mikey. You obviously weren't you."
She comes back to life at that. "So why did you let me?" she spits at him, accusing.
"I thought it would help," he says. He sounds sad, unsettled. He looks it too. "Like before."
Mikey can't look away from his face, even though everything in her is screaming at her to break free and run away and hide.
Somehow, somewhere, she finds the strength to go to Gerard instead, and she cuts herself open with trembling hands to spill her guts at his feet.
They all cluster around the front door to see her off when she leaves. When Bob hugs her it feels warm and safe, like he's not mad at her, like he doesn't blame her. Not for the first time but more than ever before, she thinks about how lucky they are to have him.