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rsadelleDear Chris,
Next time I write you a high school AU, could you maybe actually be in love with someone in high school? Please?
Only some love,
Ruth
Disclaimer: This is wholly fake. I messed with everyone's ages and put them all into the same high school. There are a few couples I didn't break up, though.
His Love Songs All Come Out Wrong
So Dave has this cheerleader girlfriend, Jaime, and Tom's girlfriend is this other cheerleader Jamie, and they're friends with Jensen, who's also a cheerleader (Chris has never understood why a guy who plays varsity baseball would be a cheerleader, but whatever), and his girlfriend Danneel is friends with this sophomore chick Sophia who's been friends forever or something with this guy Jared. Jared's only a freshman, but now he's hanging out with them all the time, and, sure he's gonna be real tall and he plays basketball, but he's still a freshman. Of course, his freshman cheerleader girlfriend has this amazing rack, so it's not like it's hard to look at her. Jared's friend Chad is a total asshole, but he becomes Mike's protege or some shit - Chris doesn't know, they're probably keeping the local X dealers in the black - and they both get laid regularly. Chris is the quarterback and they win way more games than they lose, but what the hell does he have to do to get his dick sucked around here?
He doesn't say that out loud.
He's thinking it, though, and too drunk or not drunk enough, and he stumbles out of Mike's house and into the backyard where it's quiet and there isn't anyone he might accidentally blurt it out to.
Mike's house has a huge porch all around it - it's like everything about Mike is huge, although the size of Mike's dick isn't something Chris wants to think about - and Chris almost falls into sitting on the steps down into the backyard. He's sitting there with his head in his hands trying to decide if he wants to go home or get another beer or three when there are footsteps behind him and the door hasn't opened which means whoever it is was already out here.
A hand holding a joint appears in his field of vision. Chris follows the arm up to a guy who looks vaguely familiar. He doesn't take the joint; pot makes him freaked out and paranoid sometimes.
"Mellow," the guy says. "Trust me."
And what the hell. It's not like he's going to get laid anyway. He takes the joint, and the guy sits down next to him, and they pass it back and forth until it's gone.
The guy wasn't lying. Chris is nice and mellow now. He leans his elbows back on the stair above him. You can't really see the stars with all the light in the middle of LA, but he looks anyway.
"Do I know you?" he asks the guy.
"Probably not." The guy holds out a hand and introduces himself. "Steve."
"Chris." Chris means to just shake his hand, but he kind of trips out on the feel of the calluses on the guy's hand and forgets to let go. The guy doesn't seem to mind, and they sit there like that until Chris remembers that this isn't what you do and lets go. "That's good shit."
"Grow it myself." Steve leans back next to Chris. "Wouldn't touch that shit Mike buys."
Chris isn't real sure, the next morning, just when he got off the porch and back into the house, but he wakes up on Mike's living room floor and drags himself home to get yelled at for not calling. High school sucks.
***
Jared and Jensen are, like, inseparable or some shit now, and Sandy's always got the other cheerleaders showing her something at lunch, which means that when Tom and Dave's college discussions get boring or Mike and Chad's plans get too wild even for Chris, he can just zone out on all the bouncing breasts.
He's doing that one day, when the Steve guy with the really good pot comes over to talk to Jensen. Like, he knows Jensen. And they're friends or some shit, and they start talking music, and even Jared gets into it. When the hell did that happen?
Two days later, Steve comes over to them at lunch again and brings a guitar with him, and he and Jensen trade chords and try to keep Jared from singing. Does the kid not realize how terrible his voice is?
"Shut up," Jensen says, laughing, and he tries to push Jared off the bench, but Jared's getting big and he just pushes right back. "You suck." He pulls the guitar strap over his head. "Chris, will you come play? At least he'll shut up and listen if it's country."
Steve's looking at him with something like interest. "Didn't know you played," he says.
Chris shrugs. "Yeah, well." He takes the guitar from Jensen and plays "Friends in Low Places." He knows it'll make Jared shut up and Jensen laugh, and Steve smiles at him the whole time.
"We should hang out and jam sometime," Steve says.
Chris shrugs again and hands him back his guitar. "Yeah, whatever."
***
Two weeks later, he's dragging himself out to his truck after a truly brutal practice, and Steve's there in the hall.
"Hey," Steve says. He falls into step with Chris. "I was serious about jamming."
Chris just wants to go home and fall onto his couch. "Not today." It doesn't come out very friendly, but what the fuck ever. He doesn't really know this guy and no one really cares if he's an asshole sometimes because he's still the fucking quarterback.
Steve stops and Chris keeps going, and he sees Steve around campus sometimes but they don't talk.
***
Dave's parents don't care if they all hang out in the basement, so that's where they are a lot on weekends, when they're not at practice or at Mike's house. Jared and Sandy broke up, and Chris thinks it's kind of weird that Danneel's all cuddled up to Jared these days, but Jensen's usually on the other side of her and doesn't seem to mind, so whatever. Everyone else is paired off - Dave and Jaime, Tom and Jamie, even Chad and Mike keep finding girls somewhere who are willing to sit on their laps and make out - and it kind of sucks.
One day Jensen comes in with Steve and two guitars. "Y'all know Steve, right?" he says, and goes to kiss Danneel, who's sitting in Jared's lap, without waiting for an answer.
Steve brings both guitars over to Chris and sits cross-legged in front of Chris's chair. He gives one guitar to Chris and Chris puts down his beer.
Steve is really fucking good. He has an ear for music like no one else Chris knows. Before he knows it, Dave's kicking everyone but Jaime out, and Chris doesn't even notice that his fingers are protesting so many hours on guitar strings.
So now Steve's there most weekends, and he and Chris play music while everyone else does whatever it is they do, or they all watch a movie, or sometimes Mike and Chad spring for pizza and Dave, who looks older than all of the rest of them, gets beer.
They've all been drinking and doing the pot Steve contributes sometimes, and the girl on Chad's lap turns out to be Sophia, and she says, "Let's play seven minutes in heaven."
Danneel sits on Jensen's lap in the circle, and that gets lots of hoots and hollers until Chad says, "Settle down, bitches," and says he's not waiting seven minutes for the next person's turn. He and Sophia negotiate down to three.
Sophia doesn't even go first. She makes them let Jared be first because he's the youngest and he had a girlfriend all through junior high and she thinks he needs something else. With the way he's been all over Danneel, Chris isn't sure about that, but whatever.
Of course, it lands on Jensen and Danneel, and the three of them pile into the storage closet at the other end of the basement.
"Time's up, bitches! Get your clothes back on!" Chad yells when their three minutes are up. All three of them have lips swollen from kissing, and Chris gives up thinking about who might have been kissing who because that's just too much for him.
Sophia's their dictator of fun, and she insists they go around to the left until everyone's had a chance, and that makes it Mike's girl's turn. She ends up with Dave, and then Jaime ends up with Tom, and Jamie with Sophia, and then it's Steve's turn, and the bottle points straight to Chris.
The closet has one of those doors with slats of some kind in it, so there's just enough light for Chris to see where Steve is when they're in there.
"You don't actually have to," he starts to say, and Steve presses against him, presses him back into the shelves along one side of the closet, and kisses him. Chris has never kissed a guy before, but it's not like it's that different from kissing a girl and they're all drunk and high and no one's going to care and it's been a really, really fucking long time since anyone made out with him.
It takes someone banging their fist on the door to make them stop.
Mike spins and gets Sophia, and then Chad spins and gets Sophia, and then everyone's had a turn and it kind of dissolves into everyone pairing off into their usual groupings to make out. Chris goes home, and thank God he lives down the street from Dave and can just walk.
No one talks about it, and they don't play again.
***
Football season ends, and then there's winter break, and when they get back, it's spring of their senior year and they all just want out of there, except maybe Jensen because he still has baseball.
College acceptance letters start coming in.
Chris knows roughly what everyone else wants to do, but not Steve, so he asks.
"College isn't my thing," Steve says. "I think I'm going to go to cooking school."
Chris gets in to Cal State LA, which means he doesn't have to go anywhere. Dave and Jaime head off to Boston to be the Harvard-Wellesley power couple, Tom and Jamie go to someplace they found in the Midwest that they just fell in love with, Jensen and Danneel are smart enough to go to Stanford together, and Mike heads off to Chico State based on its ranking in Playboy's lists of party schools in 1987 and 2002. Steve finds a fast-track cooking program in LA that will have him out and working after not too much time.
They have increasingly small going away parties all through August. Jared's not a bad guy, it turns out, and he helps Chris and Steve move into their new apartments even though he has to know Chris and Steve aren't going to be calling him up to hang out or anything.
***
Steve invites Chris over sometimes to eat whatever he's been working on in class - this is awesome when they're doing entrees and desserts and not quite as cool when it's sides and appetizers - and jam.
Chris dates a few people. He runs into Linda at the library where she's making out with a guy in a football jersey. Jennifer whispers sweet nothings in his ear and then fucks some other guy in the bathroom of the bar. Whitney sucks cock like a dream, so he shouldn't be shocked when he goes to surprise her in her dorm and finds her sucking some other guy's cock.
"You need to stop dating blonde skanks," is what Steve says. And, too, "Crying in it is a waste of good beer," and he steals Chris's beer and finishes it off.
Chris dates Lauren, a brunette, next time, and she cheats on him too, and this time Steve says, "So stop dating skanks."
Chris goes back to blondes.
Justin from his Art of Latin America class blows him in the bathroom of a bar and blows him off in class the next day. Chris doesn't tell Steve about that one.
***
Chris's cousin Brandon comes to LA on tour, and he hangs with Chris and Steve. He and Chris write a song for their mamas, and practice it enough that they can pick it up again at Christmas and sing it for the family.
Steve says, "We should write together," after Chris tells him about it. Chris laughs at him and says, "Yeah."
They write "The Chase" that night, and it's easier than any song Chris has ever written. He keeps thinking about the lyrics "I just can't believe you're leaving over three words I couldn't say last night" and how he's never said them to anyone except maybe his mama.
His love songs all come out wrong without Steve there to fix them.
***
Everyone comes back for Christmas, and before they can hang out in Dave's parents' basement, Steve invites everyone over for dinner, and he makes Chris help. Chris has learned how to properly cut vegetables by now.
Chris hasn't seen Jared in a while, and he'd swear the kid's grown half a foot. He's huge.
"We're getting married," Jamie announces over dinner.
"In June," Tom adds. "You'll get your invitations in a couple of months."
There's a lot more drinking after that, and Mike tells crazy story after crazy story. "I swear," he says. "He even got kicked out of the dorm."
Steve still grows the best weed any of them have experience with, and Mike, by now, has a lot of experience to compare it to.
***
They end up in Dave's parents' basement the next night, and Jared's even more obviously huge when Jensen and Danneel both end up on his lap.
Mike's only been back for a couple of days, and yet he found a girl somewhere, and Chris doesn't recognize her.
"No chicks at your school?" Chad asks.
Steve throws an arm around Chris's shoulders. "Chris only dates skanks who cheat on him."
Chris pushes him away but can't really deny it.
Like always, Chris and Steve play music while everyone else makes out and flirts. It's weird to have spent a couple months in his own apartment and sleeping with skanks and taking classes and still be back in the same old basement doing the same old thing. Weird.
***
Chris and Brandon's mamas love the song they wrote, and they get showered with love and affection at Christmas. It's cool.
***
"I hate art history. It's all dates and memorization." Chris shoves his book across the table. Steve has a real job now, and it's slow, so no one cares that he's bringing Chris food on the house - no way could Chris afford to eat there any other way - instead of working in the kitchen.
"So why are you majoring in it?"
"I love art." Chris stares morosely at his giant fucking textbook until Steve literally puts a fork in his hand.
"You could major in art."
Chris shakes his head. "I don't have the talent." He looks down at his plate. "This is really good. What is it?"
"Pistachio crusted salmon. You could major in something else. Music."
"I don't want to major in something else. I just don't want to be memorizing dates for the next three and a half years."
Steve takes the book off the table and puts it on the chair next to him. "It's midterms. You'll like it again next week."
It's hard to scowl with the book out of sight and Steve's salmon melting in his mouth.
"You're done, what, Thursday, right? Come out. We'll get drunk, find you a blonde skank."
Chris agrees to that kind of plan, and Steve brings him dessert after he finishes his salmon, and then Steve has to go back to work and Chris takes his stupid fucking textbook and goes back to his apartment to study.
***
They go out on Thursday. Some friend of a friend of Steve's is there with this girl, but she's not into him. She's into Steve. And Chris. She's more Chris's type - blonde and skinny - than Steve's usual curvy brunettes, but Steve doesn't mind too much when she keeps brushing up against him. By the time they're all well on their way to being drunk, Steve's friend's friend is gone, and Chris and Steve are passing the girl back and forth between them.
"Let's get out of here," she slurs, leaning one arm on one of Steve's shoulders and the other arm on one of Chris's.
They go back to Steve's place because it's close. Steve takes her first, making love to her sweet and soft while Chris watches from just inside the door. Chris gets her next, and Steve lounges and watches Chris fuck her hard. Steve puts his hand on her back to hold her there, and then eats her out and makes her come again afterwards.
Chris gets dressed and stumbles home after Steve and the girl fall asleep.
He goes into Steve's restaurant late the next morning. Steve feeds him eggs and potatoes and they don't talk about the girl.
***
They get Tom and Jamie's wedding invitations a couple of days later.
Steve calls Chris a couple of days after that and says, "I wrote a song and I'm making dinner." So Chris takes his homework because Steve's used to him doing his homework while he cooks.
The song is a love song about watching the girl he loves be with someone else. Chris wonders briefly if Steve had a thing for Jamie, but she's not really his type.
***
Summer is different again. Everyone comes home for Tom and Jamie's wedding, but then Dave and Jaime have internships in New York they have to go back to and Tom and Jamie go on a honeymoon and then home to Kansas or Iowa or whatever flyover state they live in now and Jensen and Danneel are spending all their time with Jared and Chris and Steve both keep their apartments and Chris gets a job working construction. Only Mike is the same, and Chris finds that's not his thing anymore. He's too used to Steve's calmer musician friends and the pretentiousness of art and art history majors.
He says this to Steve one night when he's doing the dishes - when Steve cooks, Chris does the dishes - and when he puts the last dish in the rack to dry and turns around, Steve is right behind him.
"Remember that time we played seven minutes in heaven?" Steve puts his hands on the edge of the sink on either side of Chris, trapping him there.
Chris nods with a single jerk of his head.
"I want my other four minutes." Steve kisses him and Chris kisses back and they make out in front of the sink for Chris doesn't know how long until he leans back, away from Steve, and Steve lets him go, and he leaves without saying goodbye.
***
Chris doesn't answer his phone for a few days, just goes to work and comes home and sleeps and goes to work again. At least he's building up muscle doing construction.
When he starts answering his phone again, the first call is from Steve.
"This guy I know is having a birthday party and he wants us to play."
Chris huffs out a laugh. "We have, what, one song?"
"So get your ass over here so we can write enough for a set."
The songwriting's easy, and they come up with enough songs and enough covers they both know that they can do a whole set, and maybe a shorter second one, and no one kisses anyone.
"We need a name," Steve says. "I was thinking about Kane."
"Kane and Carlson," Chris says immediately.
"Too long. Kane's good."
So they become Kane and they play the birthday party and someone there knows someone who books gigs for a couple of bars and they write a few more songs so they have two whole sets of their own songs.
Chris doesn't date any skanks, blonde or otherwise, all summer.
***
School starts up again. Chris quits his construction job and Steve gets him a job as a waiter at the restaurant. He makes friends with Stephanie the hostess. A few of the waitresses flirt with him, but it never goes any farther than that.
Justin sidles up to Chris after History of Costume. Chris pretends not to see him, and walks the other way, even though it's not the way he was planning to go.
***
"I hate art history." Chris is studying his flash cards while Steve chops up ingredients for something complicated.
"You say that every semester at midterms." Steve leans over Chris to put a plate of some kind of puff pastry appetizer on the table, and then he kisses the top of Chris's head, and then just walks back to the counter like nothing just happened, like his lips weren't just in Chris's hair.
Chris eats an appetizer. He thinks it's mushroom.
Steve doesn't let him help with the dishes, and when he sends Chris home, it's with a dozen muffins to get him through the rest of the week. Steve doesn't kiss him again.
***
They get invited to a Halloween party. Chris throws on a cowboy hat and calls himself a redneck.
"You are a redneck," Steve points out. Steve goes as a pirate. He already has the tattoos.
Late at night, drunk on beer and shots and about a million of those little fun size candy bars, Chris finds himself in a dark corner with Steve plastered against him.
***
Steve has everyone who's come home - Mike, Jensen and Danneel, Dave and Jaime - plus Chris, Jared, Chad, and Sophia over for a second Thanksgiving on Friday. Mike brings beer. Dave and Jaime bring wine. Chris doesn't want to know what it is Chad's brought, and he's sure as hell not taking any.
When everyone else trails out, full of food and alcohol and drugs and some of them stumbling, and Chris is pretty sure Jared was actually carrying Chad, Chris helps Steve clean up, and he's not even surprised when Steve hands him a bag of leftovers and kisses him at the door.
***
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, in the week before finals, Chris goes over to Steve's for dinner. He's not sure what makes him look up, maybe he notices that something's different when he comes in, but he does look up, and there's mistletoe hanging over the stove, or over where someone cooking at the stove would be standing.
"A kiss the cook apron wasn't working for you?" Chris jokes. He wants Steve to joke back.
"I've been writing you love songs for two years," is what Steve says.
Oh. Oh. And Chris's love songs all come out wrong without Steve there to fix them.
Chris comes around the counter and kisses Steve under the mistletoe.
Steve helps him do the dishes, and when they put the last dish in the rack to dry, they make out by the sink, and then they go into the living room and make out on the couch, and then they go to Steve's bedroom and Chris jerks himself and sucks Steve.
In the morning, Steve wakes him up, loans him a shirt, and makes him breakfast all early enough that Chris still makes it to class on time.
***
Chris doesn't know what to get Steve for Christmas. He didn't know before, and now he really doesn't know. He'd like to write Steve a song, but his love songs only work with Steve, so he can't do that.
He's studying for finals and the caption on a photo in one of the books he's using to write a paper catches his eye.
The week after Christmas, he takes Steve to The Getty. He pays for parking, buys Steve lunch at the restaurant, and puts his art education to good use and tells him almost everything he knows about everything they see. It could be boring, but Steve seems to find him charming, and they have sex afterwards and it's really good.
***
Mike has a New Year's Eve party.
At a quarter to midnight, Steve finds Chris. Everyone else Chris is talking to wanders off to find champagne, but Chris doesn't have to because Steve brought two glasses with him. They count down, toast, and kiss, and everyone else is too busy with their own kissing to pay much attention to them.
"Way to go, man," Chad says later when Chris somehow gets stuck talking to him. "True love, man, true love."
Chris kind of wants to know what Chad's on, but he appreciates Chad's good wishes.
***
Chris brings in flowers for Stephanie on Valentine's Day.
"Watch it," Sarah the waitress says when Stephanie thanks him with a kiss on the cheek. "Your boyfriend might not like that."
Chris goes into the kitchen. "You bastard," he says to Steve.
Steve looks up but doesn't stop cooking. "What?"
"They all." Chris laughs and kisses Steve. He finally gets why he never got anywhere with any of the waitresses, and he wasn't even sleeping with Steve then.
Steve kisses back and then pushes him away. "Out of my kitchen, waiter."
***
"I hate art history."
Steve keeps up with Chris's school schedule and reliably cooks for him during busy times. "You say that every semester at midterms. Here, try this." He comes over to the table and pushes a spoon in front of Chris. It's delicious.
"It's good," Chris says.
Steve drops a kiss on the top of Chris's head and goes back to his cooking. Chris closes his book and watches.
"I love you," he says.
Steve's whole face lights up, and he stops stirring and leaves everything just where it is and comes over to kiss Chris with everything he has.
Next time I write you a high school AU, could you maybe actually be in love with someone in high school? Please?
Only some love,
Ruth
Disclaimer: This is wholly fake. I messed with everyone's ages and put them all into the same high school. There are a few couples I didn't break up, though.
His Love Songs All Come Out Wrong
So Dave has this cheerleader girlfriend, Jaime, and Tom's girlfriend is this other cheerleader Jamie, and they're friends with Jensen, who's also a cheerleader (Chris has never understood why a guy who plays varsity baseball would be a cheerleader, but whatever), and his girlfriend Danneel is friends with this sophomore chick Sophia who's been friends forever or something with this guy Jared. Jared's only a freshman, but now he's hanging out with them all the time, and, sure he's gonna be real tall and he plays basketball, but he's still a freshman. Of course, his freshman cheerleader girlfriend has this amazing rack, so it's not like it's hard to look at her. Jared's friend Chad is a total asshole, but he becomes Mike's protege or some shit - Chris doesn't know, they're probably keeping the local X dealers in the black - and they both get laid regularly. Chris is the quarterback and they win way more games than they lose, but what the hell does he have to do to get his dick sucked around here?
He doesn't say that out loud.
He's thinking it, though, and too drunk or not drunk enough, and he stumbles out of Mike's house and into the backyard where it's quiet and there isn't anyone he might accidentally blurt it out to.
Mike's house has a huge porch all around it - it's like everything about Mike is huge, although the size of Mike's dick isn't something Chris wants to think about - and Chris almost falls into sitting on the steps down into the backyard. He's sitting there with his head in his hands trying to decide if he wants to go home or get another beer or three when there are footsteps behind him and the door hasn't opened which means whoever it is was already out here.
A hand holding a joint appears in his field of vision. Chris follows the arm up to a guy who looks vaguely familiar. He doesn't take the joint; pot makes him freaked out and paranoid sometimes.
"Mellow," the guy says. "Trust me."
And what the hell. It's not like he's going to get laid anyway. He takes the joint, and the guy sits down next to him, and they pass it back and forth until it's gone.
The guy wasn't lying. Chris is nice and mellow now. He leans his elbows back on the stair above him. You can't really see the stars with all the light in the middle of LA, but he looks anyway.
"Do I know you?" he asks the guy.
"Probably not." The guy holds out a hand and introduces himself. "Steve."
"Chris." Chris means to just shake his hand, but he kind of trips out on the feel of the calluses on the guy's hand and forgets to let go. The guy doesn't seem to mind, and they sit there like that until Chris remembers that this isn't what you do and lets go. "That's good shit."
"Grow it myself." Steve leans back next to Chris. "Wouldn't touch that shit Mike buys."
Chris isn't real sure, the next morning, just when he got off the porch and back into the house, but he wakes up on Mike's living room floor and drags himself home to get yelled at for not calling. High school sucks.
***
Jared and Jensen are, like, inseparable or some shit now, and Sandy's always got the other cheerleaders showing her something at lunch, which means that when Tom and Dave's college discussions get boring or Mike and Chad's plans get too wild even for Chris, he can just zone out on all the bouncing breasts.
He's doing that one day, when the Steve guy with the really good pot comes over to talk to Jensen. Like, he knows Jensen. And they're friends or some shit, and they start talking music, and even Jared gets into it. When the hell did that happen?
Two days later, Steve comes over to them at lunch again and brings a guitar with him, and he and Jensen trade chords and try to keep Jared from singing. Does the kid not realize how terrible his voice is?
"Shut up," Jensen says, laughing, and he tries to push Jared off the bench, but Jared's getting big and he just pushes right back. "You suck." He pulls the guitar strap over his head. "Chris, will you come play? At least he'll shut up and listen if it's country."
Steve's looking at him with something like interest. "Didn't know you played," he says.
Chris shrugs. "Yeah, well." He takes the guitar from Jensen and plays "Friends in Low Places." He knows it'll make Jared shut up and Jensen laugh, and Steve smiles at him the whole time.
"We should hang out and jam sometime," Steve says.
Chris shrugs again and hands him back his guitar. "Yeah, whatever."
***
Two weeks later, he's dragging himself out to his truck after a truly brutal practice, and Steve's there in the hall.
"Hey," Steve says. He falls into step with Chris. "I was serious about jamming."
Chris just wants to go home and fall onto his couch. "Not today." It doesn't come out very friendly, but what the fuck ever. He doesn't really know this guy and no one really cares if he's an asshole sometimes because he's still the fucking quarterback.
Steve stops and Chris keeps going, and he sees Steve around campus sometimes but they don't talk.
***
Dave's parents don't care if they all hang out in the basement, so that's where they are a lot on weekends, when they're not at practice or at Mike's house. Jared and Sandy broke up, and Chris thinks it's kind of weird that Danneel's all cuddled up to Jared these days, but Jensen's usually on the other side of her and doesn't seem to mind, so whatever. Everyone else is paired off - Dave and Jaime, Tom and Jamie, even Chad and Mike keep finding girls somewhere who are willing to sit on their laps and make out - and it kind of sucks.
One day Jensen comes in with Steve and two guitars. "Y'all know Steve, right?" he says, and goes to kiss Danneel, who's sitting in Jared's lap, without waiting for an answer.
Steve brings both guitars over to Chris and sits cross-legged in front of Chris's chair. He gives one guitar to Chris and Chris puts down his beer.
Steve is really fucking good. He has an ear for music like no one else Chris knows. Before he knows it, Dave's kicking everyone but Jaime out, and Chris doesn't even notice that his fingers are protesting so many hours on guitar strings.
So now Steve's there most weekends, and he and Chris play music while everyone else does whatever it is they do, or they all watch a movie, or sometimes Mike and Chad spring for pizza and Dave, who looks older than all of the rest of them, gets beer.
They've all been drinking and doing the pot Steve contributes sometimes, and the girl on Chad's lap turns out to be Sophia, and she says, "Let's play seven minutes in heaven."
Danneel sits on Jensen's lap in the circle, and that gets lots of hoots and hollers until Chad says, "Settle down, bitches," and says he's not waiting seven minutes for the next person's turn. He and Sophia negotiate down to three.
Sophia doesn't even go first. She makes them let Jared be first because he's the youngest and he had a girlfriend all through junior high and she thinks he needs something else. With the way he's been all over Danneel, Chris isn't sure about that, but whatever.
Of course, it lands on Jensen and Danneel, and the three of them pile into the storage closet at the other end of the basement.
"Time's up, bitches! Get your clothes back on!" Chad yells when their three minutes are up. All three of them have lips swollen from kissing, and Chris gives up thinking about who might have been kissing who because that's just too much for him.
Sophia's their dictator of fun, and she insists they go around to the left until everyone's had a chance, and that makes it Mike's girl's turn. She ends up with Dave, and then Jaime ends up with Tom, and Jamie with Sophia, and then it's Steve's turn, and the bottle points straight to Chris.
The closet has one of those doors with slats of some kind in it, so there's just enough light for Chris to see where Steve is when they're in there.
"You don't actually have to," he starts to say, and Steve presses against him, presses him back into the shelves along one side of the closet, and kisses him. Chris has never kissed a guy before, but it's not like it's that different from kissing a girl and they're all drunk and high and no one's going to care and it's been a really, really fucking long time since anyone made out with him.
It takes someone banging their fist on the door to make them stop.
Mike spins and gets Sophia, and then Chad spins and gets Sophia, and then everyone's had a turn and it kind of dissolves into everyone pairing off into their usual groupings to make out. Chris goes home, and thank God he lives down the street from Dave and can just walk.
No one talks about it, and they don't play again.
***
Football season ends, and then there's winter break, and when they get back, it's spring of their senior year and they all just want out of there, except maybe Jensen because he still has baseball.
College acceptance letters start coming in.
Chris knows roughly what everyone else wants to do, but not Steve, so he asks.
"College isn't my thing," Steve says. "I think I'm going to go to cooking school."
Chris gets in to Cal State LA, which means he doesn't have to go anywhere. Dave and Jaime head off to Boston to be the Harvard-Wellesley power couple, Tom and Jamie go to someplace they found in the Midwest that they just fell in love with, Jensen and Danneel are smart enough to go to Stanford together, and Mike heads off to Chico State based on its ranking in Playboy's lists of party schools in 1987 and 2002. Steve finds a fast-track cooking program in LA that will have him out and working after not too much time.
They have increasingly small going away parties all through August. Jared's not a bad guy, it turns out, and he helps Chris and Steve move into their new apartments even though he has to know Chris and Steve aren't going to be calling him up to hang out or anything.
***
Steve invites Chris over sometimes to eat whatever he's been working on in class - this is awesome when they're doing entrees and desserts and not quite as cool when it's sides and appetizers - and jam.
Chris dates a few people. He runs into Linda at the library where she's making out with a guy in a football jersey. Jennifer whispers sweet nothings in his ear and then fucks some other guy in the bathroom of the bar. Whitney sucks cock like a dream, so he shouldn't be shocked when he goes to surprise her in her dorm and finds her sucking some other guy's cock.
"You need to stop dating blonde skanks," is what Steve says. And, too, "Crying in it is a waste of good beer," and he steals Chris's beer and finishes it off.
Chris dates Lauren, a brunette, next time, and she cheats on him too, and this time Steve says, "So stop dating skanks."
Chris goes back to blondes.
Justin from his Art of Latin America class blows him in the bathroom of a bar and blows him off in class the next day. Chris doesn't tell Steve about that one.
***
Chris's cousin Brandon comes to LA on tour, and he hangs with Chris and Steve. He and Chris write a song for their mamas, and practice it enough that they can pick it up again at Christmas and sing it for the family.
Steve says, "We should write together," after Chris tells him about it. Chris laughs at him and says, "Yeah."
They write "The Chase" that night, and it's easier than any song Chris has ever written. He keeps thinking about the lyrics "I just can't believe you're leaving over three words I couldn't say last night" and how he's never said them to anyone except maybe his mama.
His love songs all come out wrong without Steve there to fix them.
***
Everyone comes back for Christmas, and before they can hang out in Dave's parents' basement, Steve invites everyone over for dinner, and he makes Chris help. Chris has learned how to properly cut vegetables by now.
Chris hasn't seen Jared in a while, and he'd swear the kid's grown half a foot. He's huge.
"We're getting married," Jamie announces over dinner.
"In June," Tom adds. "You'll get your invitations in a couple of months."
There's a lot more drinking after that, and Mike tells crazy story after crazy story. "I swear," he says. "He even got kicked out of the dorm."
Steve still grows the best weed any of them have experience with, and Mike, by now, has a lot of experience to compare it to.
***
They end up in Dave's parents' basement the next night, and Jared's even more obviously huge when Jensen and Danneel both end up on his lap.
Mike's only been back for a couple of days, and yet he found a girl somewhere, and Chris doesn't recognize her.
"No chicks at your school?" Chad asks.
Steve throws an arm around Chris's shoulders. "Chris only dates skanks who cheat on him."
Chris pushes him away but can't really deny it.
Like always, Chris and Steve play music while everyone else makes out and flirts. It's weird to have spent a couple months in his own apartment and sleeping with skanks and taking classes and still be back in the same old basement doing the same old thing. Weird.
***
Chris and Brandon's mamas love the song they wrote, and they get showered with love and affection at Christmas. It's cool.
***
"I hate art history. It's all dates and memorization." Chris shoves his book across the table. Steve has a real job now, and it's slow, so no one cares that he's bringing Chris food on the house - no way could Chris afford to eat there any other way - instead of working in the kitchen.
"So why are you majoring in it?"
"I love art." Chris stares morosely at his giant fucking textbook until Steve literally puts a fork in his hand.
"You could major in art."
Chris shakes his head. "I don't have the talent." He looks down at his plate. "This is really good. What is it?"
"Pistachio crusted salmon. You could major in something else. Music."
"I don't want to major in something else. I just don't want to be memorizing dates for the next three and a half years."
Steve takes the book off the table and puts it on the chair next to him. "It's midterms. You'll like it again next week."
It's hard to scowl with the book out of sight and Steve's salmon melting in his mouth.
"You're done, what, Thursday, right? Come out. We'll get drunk, find you a blonde skank."
Chris agrees to that kind of plan, and Steve brings him dessert after he finishes his salmon, and then Steve has to go back to work and Chris takes his stupid fucking textbook and goes back to his apartment to study.
***
They go out on Thursday. Some friend of a friend of Steve's is there with this girl, but she's not into him. She's into Steve. And Chris. She's more Chris's type - blonde and skinny - than Steve's usual curvy brunettes, but Steve doesn't mind too much when she keeps brushing up against him. By the time they're all well on their way to being drunk, Steve's friend's friend is gone, and Chris and Steve are passing the girl back and forth between them.
"Let's get out of here," she slurs, leaning one arm on one of Steve's shoulders and the other arm on one of Chris's.
They go back to Steve's place because it's close. Steve takes her first, making love to her sweet and soft while Chris watches from just inside the door. Chris gets her next, and Steve lounges and watches Chris fuck her hard. Steve puts his hand on her back to hold her there, and then eats her out and makes her come again afterwards.
Chris gets dressed and stumbles home after Steve and the girl fall asleep.
He goes into Steve's restaurant late the next morning. Steve feeds him eggs and potatoes and they don't talk about the girl.
***
They get Tom and Jamie's wedding invitations a couple of days later.
Steve calls Chris a couple of days after that and says, "I wrote a song and I'm making dinner." So Chris takes his homework because Steve's used to him doing his homework while he cooks.
The song is a love song about watching the girl he loves be with someone else. Chris wonders briefly if Steve had a thing for Jamie, but she's not really his type.
***
Summer is different again. Everyone comes home for Tom and Jamie's wedding, but then Dave and Jaime have internships in New York they have to go back to and Tom and Jamie go on a honeymoon and then home to Kansas or Iowa or whatever flyover state they live in now and Jensen and Danneel are spending all their time with Jared and Chris and Steve both keep their apartments and Chris gets a job working construction. Only Mike is the same, and Chris finds that's not his thing anymore. He's too used to Steve's calmer musician friends and the pretentiousness of art and art history majors.
He says this to Steve one night when he's doing the dishes - when Steve cooks, Chris does the dishes - and when he puts the last dish in the rack to dry and turns around, Steve is right behind him.
"Remember that time we played seven minutes in heaven?" Steve puts his hands on the edge of the sink on either side of Chris, trapping him there.
Chris nods with a single jerk of his head.
"I want my other four minutes." Steve kisses him and Chris kisses back and they make out in front of the sink for Chris doesn't know how long until he leans back, away from Steve, and Steve lets him go, and he leaves without saying goodbye.
***
Chris doesn't answer his phone for a few days, just goes to work and comes home and sleeps and goes to work again. At least he's building up muscle doing construction.
When he starts answering his phone again, the first call is from Steve.
"This guy I know is having a birthday party and he wants us to play."
Chris huffs out a laugh. "We have, what, one song?"
"So get your ass over here so we can write enough for a set."
The songwriting's easy, and they come up with enough songs and enough covers they both know that they can do a whole set, and maybe a shorter second one, and no one kisses anyone.
"We need a name," Steve says. "I was thinking about Kane."
"Kane and Carlson," Chris says immediately.
"Too long. Kane's good."
So they become Kane and they play the birthday party and someone there knows someone who books gigs for a couple of bars and they write a few more songs so they have two whole sets of their own songs.
Chris doesn't date any skanks, blonde or otherwise, all summer.
***
School starts up again. Chris quits his construction job and Steve gets him a job as a waiter at the restaurant. He makes friends with Stephanie the hostess. A few of the waitresses flirt with him, but it never goes any farther than that.
Justin sidles up to Chris after History of Costume. Chris pretends not to see him, and walks the other way, even though it's not the way he was planning to go.
***
"I hate art history." Chris is studying his flash cards while Steve chops up ingredients for something complicated.
"You say that every semester at midterms." Steve leans over Chris to put a plate of some kind of puff pastry appetizer on the table, and then he kisses the top of Chris's head, and then just walks back to the counter like nothing just happened, like his lips weren't just in Chris's hair.
Chris eats an appetizer. He thinks it's mushroom.
Steve doesn't let him help with the dishes, and when he sends Chris home, it's with a dozen muffins to get him through the rest of the week. Steve doesn't kiss him again.
***
They get invited to a Halloween party. Chris throws on a cowboy hat and calls himself a redneck.
"You are a redneck," Steve points out. Steve goes as a pirate. He already has the tattoos.
Late at night, drunk on beer and shots and about a million of those little fun size candy bars, Chris finds himself in a dark corner with Steve plastered against him.
***
Steve has everyone who's come home - Mike, Jensen and Danneel, Dave and Jaime - plus Chris, Jared, Chad, and Sophia over for a second Thanksgiving on Friday. Mike brings beer. Dave and Jaime bring wine. Chris doesn't want to know what it is Chad's brought, and he's sure as hell not taking any.
When everyone else trails out, full of food and alcohol and drugs and some of them stumbling, and Chris is pretty sure Jared was actually carrying Chad, Chris helps Steve clean up, and he's not even surprised when Steve hands him a bag of leftovers and kisses him at the door.
***
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, in the week before finals, Chris goes over to Steve's for dinner. He's not sure what makes him look up, maybe he notices that something's different when he comes in, but he does look up, and there's mistletoe hanging over the stove, or over where someone cooking at the stove would be standing.
"A kiss the cook apron wasn't working for you?" Chris jokes. He wants Steve to joke back.
"I've been writing you love songs for two years," is what Steve says.
Oh. Oh. And Chris's love songs all come out wrong without Steve there to fix them.
Chris comes around the counter and kisses Steve under the mistletoe.
Steve helps him do the dishes, and when they put the last dish in the rack to dry, they make out by the sink, and then they go into the living room and make out on the couch, and then they go to Steve's bedroom and Chris jerks himself and sucks Steve.
In the morning, Steve wakes him up, loans him a shirt, and makes him breakfast all early enough that Chris still makes it to class on time.
***
Chris doesn't know what to get Steve for Christmas. He didn't know before, and now he really doesn't know. He'd like to write Steve a song, but his love songs only work with Steve, so he can't do that.
He's studying for finals and the caption on a photo in one of the books he's using to write a paper catches his eye.
The week after Christmas, he takes Steve to The Getty. He pays for parking, buys Steve lunch at the restaurant, and puts his art education to good use and tells him almost everything he knows about everything they see. It could be boring, but Steve seems to find him charming, and they have sex afterwards and it's really good.
***
Mike has a New Year's Eve party.
At a quarter to midnight, Steve finds Chris. Everyone else Chris is talking to wanders off to find champagne, but Chris doesn't have to because Steve brought two glasses with him. They count down, toast, and kiss, and everyone else is too busy with their own kissing to pay much attention to them.
"Way to go, man," Chad says later when Chris somehow gets stuck talking to him. "True love, man, true love."
Chris kind of wants to know what Chad's on, but he appreciates Chad's good wishes.
***
Chris brings in flowers for Stephanie on Valentine's Day.
"Watch it," Sarah the waitress says when Stephanie thanks him with a kiss on the cheek. "Your boyfriend might not like that."
Chris goes into the kitchen. "You bastard," he says to Steve.
Steve looks up but doesn't stop cooking. "What?"
"They all." Chris laughs and kisses Steve. He finally gets why he never got anywhere with any of the waitresses, and he wasn't even sleeping with Steve then.
Steve kisses back and then pushes him away. "Out of my kitchen, waiter."
***
"I hate art history."
Steve keeps up with Chris's school schedule and reliably cooks for him during busy times. "You say that every semester at midterms. Here, try this." He comes over to the table and pushes a spoon in front of Chris. It's delicious.
"It's good," Chris says.
Steve drops a kiss on the top of Chris's head and goes back to his cooking. Chris closes his book and watches.
"I love you," he says.
Steve's whole face lights up, and he stops stirring and leaves everything just where it is and comes over to kiss Chris with everything he has.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-23 09:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 06:04 am (UTC)Glad you enjoyed it!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 05:15 am (UTC)--You put in both of my suggestions! How sweet of you!
--The repetition of "you say that every semester at midterms"
--Steve claiming the 4 minutes he never got from the game
--Steve and cooking school (that's for real, right?)
--Steve being the one to name the band Kane (is that true too?)
--the Jared/Jensen/Daneel thing in the background
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 06:19 am (UTC)Do you see now how I was TOTALLY OVERTHINKING that one paragraph of exposition? But, yes, I did have Mike get someone thrown out of the dorm.
Steve really did go to cooking school. Someone asked him about it at Eyecon and he talked about how he did that before cooking was cool, and how he used to cook for a living and play music for fun and now he plays music for a living and cooks for fun, which he thinks is the better way to go. (Aha! The adorable video. [Hmm. Apparently he went in Portland, but I changed everything else, so that doesn't matter.]) I wanted to work in something about his hands being a mess from burns and cuts plus guitar calluses, but it didn't fit.
I don't know who named the band. I don't know if anyone's ever said. Their first Kane gig really was a friend's birthday party. (Video where Steve talks about the origins of the band and how they met in real life.)
(Um. I may be writing a wacky Jared/Jensen/Danneel AU in my head. But first I might have to finish my non-AU Jared/Sophia story. Um. It's been a long time since I wrote this much fan fic.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-18 07:53 pm (UTC)also? I love oblivious!Chris because I can believe it oh so easily.
This has to be re-read many, many times!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-18 08:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-18 08:51 pm (UTC)Oh and I meant to tell you what I liked in particular about this story, so I'll just do that, okay?
Even though it's AU it's sticking rather adequately to the real life events we know of and yeah, that I like a lot!
The continuity of "I hate art history." - "You say that every semester at midterms. Here, try this." I love stylistic things like that ♥
The ... softness and care between them once Chris finally gets it. Steve kissing Chris on top of his head must be one of my favorites 'cause that's something I do with close friends, too and I just love the intimicy of that motion.
And Chris's love songs all come out wrong without Steve there to fix them.
Yeah, that is just pure love for me.
I mentioned that I love Oblivious!Chris? It bears repeating.
Them cooking together ♥
Uhm yeah ... just to pick a few favorites ;o)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-18 11:05 pm (UTC)I'm such a sucker for gentle, intimate moments.
And cooking: in real life, Chris loves to cook, which he learned from Steve, and I really want someone to write a really good Steve teaches Chris to cook and they fall in love story.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-22 05:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-22 06:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-10 02:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-10 04:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-27 05:52 am (UTC)Thank you so much!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-27 04:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-06 03:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-11 03:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-11 08:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-11 10:53 pm (UTC)