Fic: Well Met (Nate/Mikey, FRM, 3000 words)

[rsadelle]

Title: Well Met
Pairing Nate/Mikey
no_tags Prompt: Everyone forgets that Nate and Mikey know each other. (AU or canon.)
Rating: FRM
Summary: Nate meets a lot of people at Gabe's annual last Saturday before school blowout.
Word Count: 3000
Notes: This was written for no_tags and originally posted here. Thank you to inlovewithnight for reading along and talking it out with me. Thank you to airgiodslv for running no_tags. Thank you to schuyler, lakeeffectgirl, icanbreakthesky, isweedan, and sleepherealone for answering questions even though (a) they didn't know why I was asking and (b) the answers served mostly as background that never made it into the story itself.


Nate meets a lot of people at Gabe's annual last Saturday before school blowout. He also drinks an amount that exceeds any description he can come up with. Nate's spent a lot of weekend parties getting trashed in high school, but even he's hard put to keep up with Gabe. He stays the hell away from the vodka, at least; beer is more his speed.

"Nate!" Gabe slings an arm around Nate's shoulder. "Nate, Nate, Nate. Meet Mikeyway." Gabe makes the name all one word.

Mikeyway is a hot skinny guy in tight jeans with spiky hair and glasses.

"Nate lives in my basement," Gabe says with a leer. He always makes it sound more salacious than it actually is. Nate didn't know exactly what to expect when he moved up here, but when he moved in, he discovered that what Gabe refers to as his basement is more like an apartment. It has a separate bedroom and bathroom. The corner opposite the stairs has a kitchenette with a microwave and mini fridge. The fridge usually just holds beer; the freezer doesn't work very well and since Nate cooks like the college student he is, which requires a freezer, he eats upstairs most of the time.

Mikeyway nods at him. "Hey."

Nate tips his chin up in reply. "Hey."

Gabe squeezes Nate's shoulders. "I'm sure you two can find a lot to talk about." He wanders away.

"You want a drink?"

Mikeyway holds up a red cup. "I'm good."

Nate nods. His cup is full too. He watches Mikeyway drink. Mikeyway watches him back over the rim of his cup.

"You want to see the basement?" Nate offers.

Mikeyway's lips stretch into a slow smile. "Yeah."

*

Mikey - sometime after Nate got Mikey's pants off but before he blew him, Mikey said, "Not Mikeway, just Mikey" - is gone when Nate wakes up hungover and not sure one day is really enough to recover before classes start.

When Nate feels ready to stumble upstairs, he finds the house a mess and coffee in the pot. He gulps down one cup black, then pours himself a second with milk and sugar.

"Good party," Gabe says from the living room.

Nate wanders out and flops onto the couch next to him. "Yeah." He holds out a fist for Gabe to bump. "Left a hell of a mess."

Gabe's hand slaps down on the top of his head. "Freshman, you're going to clean it up."

Nate's feeling generous; the party got him laid. "After coffee."

*

Nate meets Victoria in Biology of Movement when she sits down next to him and proceeds to pass him notes on the applicability of the first lecture to drunken dance parties.

"I hate having to take general ed classes," Victoria says at the end of class. "I need some fucking coffee. You been to BR Roasters yet?"

"No."

Victoria hooks her arm through his. "Let's go. I'll buy you a latte. A kind of welcome to college kind of thing."

Nate lets her pull him along. "Is it that obvious?"

Victoria grins. "Not really. Gabe pointed you out at the party."

Nate squints at her. "I don't think I remember you."

"Gabe's parties," Victoria says, "it's a miracle if you remember anything."

Victoria only lets go of Nate's arm when they reach BR Roasters. Nate holds the door for her, and she pushes her sunglasses up onto the top of her head as she goes through it.

"Hey, Bob," Victoria says to the blond guy behind the counter. "Latte, and whatever he wants."

"Just coffee," Nate says.

"This is Nate. He's living in Gabe's basement." Victoria hands her debit card over the counter. "Nate, this is Bob. He and Ray make the best coffee in town. If you're not making it yourself because you're hungover, you come in here."

"Got it."

Victoria turns away from the counter and grins. "Mikeyway!"

Nate follows her across the room to the table where Mikey has a coffee cup and a comic book in front of him.

"This," Victoria says, sitting down across from Mikey and pulling over another chair for Nate, "is Mikeyway. He's awesome. Mikey, Nate. He lives in Gabe's basement."

Mikey smiles a little. "Hey."

Nate smiles back. "Hey."

Before they leave, Mikey slips Nate a piece of paper with ten digits on it.

*

Nate calls Mikey when he gets out of Introduction to the Novel on Friday. It goes straight to voice mail. Nate doesn't leave anything other than his name.

Mikey doesn't call back, so Nate goes out with Gabe for pizza. They're at a table bullshitting over pizza and a pitcher of beer when a group of people that includes Victoria, Mikey, and a bunch of people Nate doesn't know show up.

Gabe whoops at them and makes Nate help him move all their stuff to another table where they can add a couple more and make space for everyone.

"Hey, Nate," one of them says, and Nate belatedly recognizes Spencer from Issues in Religious Thought.

"Hey, man." Nate catches Spencer's hand in a quick half-shake. "How's it going?"

"Good." Spencer sits next to him. Mikey takes the other side of Nate, and Spencer leans over him to say, "Hey, have you met Mikeyway? Nate's in my department."

Mikey's lips quirk into the smile that's quickly becoming familiar. "Religion, huh?"

Gabe leans into the conversation. "First thing he ever said to me was a long, complicated question about Saint Augustine."

"Well," Nate says, back on familiar footing, "you can't just rip off one of the greats and hope no one notices."

"Oh, fuck you," Gabe says, laughing. "You just wait until you're a grad student trying to put together ideas."

Victoria leans into the middle of the table to say, "Then you too can rip off the greats," and everyone laughs.

The conversation moves on, and Mikey's hand rests high on Nate's thigh for a moment.

After the pizza's gone and they've demolished a couple of pitchers, they recongregate outside and make plans to head to a bar Gabe knows. A couple of people decline to go, so it doesn't look out of place when Nate bows out.

The people who aren't going to the bar peel off, leaving Nate and Mikey standing on the sidewalk.

Mikey shoves his hands in his pockets. "Want to come back to my place?"

The direct approach takes the pressure off. "Yeah."

They walk, mostly in silence. Nate doesn't see much of Mikey's place because Mikey hustles him straight to the bedroom.

Nate falls asleep after Mikey blows him and wakes up thirsty later. The place isn't big enough for him to get lost on the way to the kitchen. He turns on a light while he's in there and turns away from the sink to be confronted with a six-foot tall painting of a skeleton. He jumps when Mikey's arm slides around his waist.

"Unusual art."

"My brother did it."

Nate looks over the painting again. "You have a brother?"

"Yeah." Mikey presses his cheek against Nate's shoulder. "Come fuck me."

Nate loses all interest in the painting.

*

Nate comes home from class on a Friday to the familiar sounds of Gabe playing video games and talking shit.

"Nate!" Gabe yells at him from the living room.

"What?" Nate drops his backpack by the door to the basement.

"I'm getting my ass handed to me. Come defend my honor."

Nate pauses in the doorway to the living room. Mikey's on the couch next to Gabe.

"Nate, this is Mikeyway," Gabe says without looking up. "He's beating my ass. Nate's going to save me."

"We've met," Mikey says.

"Yeah?" Gabe pauses the game and looks between them. "Huh. Okay." He tosses the controller at Nate and pats the space between himself and Mikey.

It's not that big a space, and Nate doesn't do much to defend Gabe's honor with Mikey's thigh pressed against his.

Gabe wrests the controller back when Nate hits a save point. "You suck."

Mikey snickers, and Gabe reaches behind Nate to cuff him across the back of the head. "Shut up, you mutant with gaming superpowers."

As tends to happen on Friday nights, the house fills up with people.

"Hey," Nate says to Mikey after they've devoured their share of the Chinese takeout. "Want to get out of here? My door locks."

"I remember." Mikey gets up, and no one notices them go down to the basement.

*

Nate wakes up early and not hungover on Saturday. He stares at the clock for a while before he remembers that he and Mikey came downstairs before he'd had very much to drink.

When he gets tired of losing the staring contest to the red numbers on his alarm, he goes upstairs. Mikey's at the kitchen table, head resting on his arms and a cup of coffee in front of him.

"It's really strong," Mikey says without looking up.

Nate pours himself half a cup, tastes it, pours just a little more in and adds milk. He sits down across from Mikey and slides his foot across the floor to rest next to Mikey's.

"Dude, you crash here somewhere?" Gabe comes in wearing only his boxers.

Mikey makes a yes kind of sound.

"Shit," Gabe says. "That means you can use this shit to strip paint."

Nate watches him get two mugs down from the cabinet and pour liberal amounts of milk into one. He's looking at Gabe, so he doesn't notice Victoria until she says, "I hope that one's mine."

She's wearing what Nate recognizes as one of Gabe's flannel shirts. He can't tell for sure, but he thinks that might be all she's wearing.

"Morning, Nate, Mikey."

"Good morning," Nate says. Mikey just grunts at her.

"I'm taking this back to bed," Victoria says.

"And I'm going with her," Gabe adds.

Nate blinks and watches them go. "That was unexpected."

"Not really. It was only a matter of time before they fell into bed together."

"Huh." Nate sips at his coffee.

"So," Mikey says, not looking at him, "you into Gabe?"

Nate says, "No," even though the whole truth is "not anymore." "And even if I were, he's straight. I'm not."

A sudden smile flashes across Mikey's face. "No straight boy knows how to suck cock like you do."

"Only one of my talents." Nate stands up. "Taking this back to bed sounds like a good idea."

Mikey stands too, and sways across the table to press his lips in a sloppy kiss against Nate's chin. "I'll come with you."

*

Mikey calls Nate on a Thursday when he's barricaded in his room with his homework because Gabe and Victoria were making out on the couch last time he went upstairs.

"I'm at this club," Mikey shouts at him, and Nate can hear the sound of it in the background. "Come dance with me."

Nate slams his bio textbook shut. "Hell yes. Where are you?"

Nate's fake ID gets his hand stamped over twenty-one, but he dives into the crowd instead of getting a drink. Whatever. He'd rather save his money and dance with Mikey - and be able to drive them home - than get drunk.

Mikey is drunker than Nate's ever seen him, his eyes bright and his hips working against Nate's in a way that makes Nate want to do things that shouldn't be done in a crowd.

When Mikey starts licking his neck, Nate says, "Let's get out of here," and Mikey gropes his ass on the way out.

Mikey stops in front of the skeleton painting when they get back to his place.

"What?" Nate asks.

Mikey shakes his head, sharply, like he's shaking off something stuck there. "Nothing." He turns his back to the painting and kisses Nate, squeezes his cock. "I want to fuck you."

Nate tips his head up so Mikey can suck at his neck. "Yes."

In the bedroom, they fall onto the bed together. Mikey gets him ready too fast and fucks him hard, collapses onto him after. Nate rearranges them so he's not quite as squished and doesn't ask about Mikey's hitching breath.

*

Nate doesn't see Mikey for two weeks. He texts Mikey a couple of times and gets a Busy. Talk to you later once.

Nate's pretty sure that's a brush off, and stops texting. He fails an English quiz, gets a stern talking-to from Victoria about not letting down his part of their study session, and gets drunk enough that he throws up everything he's ever eaten and even Gabe looks worried.

Victoria takes him for coffee after class and comes home with him.

"You're just using me to get to Gabe," Nate accuses.

Victoria laughs. "Trust me, Novarro, I can get to Gabe any time I want. I don't need you for that."

She's still laughing when they get home. There are voices in the kitchen.

Gabe's standing at the stove, half turned away from it to talk to the people at the table. Mikey's on one side of it, his back to the door. Next to him is a guy Nate's never met before, pale face, black hair, one hand wrapped around a coffee cup and the other waving everywhere.

Victoria crosses the room to kiss Gabe's cheek. "You better be making enough for all of us."

"Yeah, yeah. This is Victoria. She only thinks she lives here. Nate actually does." He waves at the table. "Mikey and Gerard."

"I've met Mikey," Nate reminds Gabe. To Gerard, he says, "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too," Gerard says. He looks at Nate, then at Mikey. Nate can't follow the expressions on his face. "You're a religion major, right? Do you think any religious symbol would work against vampires or is it just the cross?"

Nate drops his backpack outside the kitchen and sits down next to Mikey, where he doesn't have to look directly at him. "That depends on what drives them away. Are they specifically opposed by the Christian God or is it the power imbued in the symbol by its believers?"

Gerard grins at him, opening up his face. "And does it have to be believers plural or would a symbol that holds significance for just one person work?"

Nate glances at Mikey, who isn't looking at him. He's looking at Gerard with more affection than Nate's ever seen on his face.

"God save us from the Way brothers' half-assed understanding of theology." Gabe slides a couple of plates onto the table. His hand rests briefly on Victoria's hip on his way back to the stove.

"We were raised Catholic," Gerard says, and Nate abruptly realizes that Gerard is Mikey's brother. Now that he's looking for it, he can see the ink smudges on his fingers and a paint stain on his hoodie.

"Then maybe your question," Nate says, "should be how many believers have to believe? Would a Saint Christopher medal be less effective than a cross?"

Gerard tugs one of the plates closer to him without letting go of his coffee cup. "I like him," he says, looking at Mikey.

Nate turns to look at Mikey too, and catches the way he ducks his head and smiles.

*

Nate gets out of class to a text from Mikey: Coffee?

Just got out of class. When/where?

Nate hangs around outside the building, lounging on the steps and waiting for his phone to buzz again.

Now, BR

On my way

Mikey's sitting at a table as far away from anyone else as possible. There are two cups on the table, so Nate goes straight to him.

Nate's coffee is just the way he likes it. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"Shouldn't you be at work?"

Mikey shrugs. "Took the afternoon off." He looks up at Nate, then back down at his cup. "Gerard's an alcoholic. He hasn't been sober for very long." He stops talking.

Nate has no idea what to say.

"I used to be better at relationships," Mikey says after long enough that Nate thinks the silence might crush them both. "Sometimes I have to go be with Gerard."

Nate says, "Okay." He puts his hand on Mikey's wrist. "Want to get out of here?"

Mike looks up at him, his eyes wide, like he wasn't expecting that. "Yeah." He looks back down. "Finish your coffee first."

*

The sex isn't really different, but Mikey is. He seems more settled, more open. They lie in bed afterwards, and Mikey traces patterns over Nate's chest until his stomach growls.

"I think there are still Hot Pockets upstairs."

Mikey pushes away from him and stretches before getting up to pull on his clothes. "Gabe won't have eaten them?"

"They have meat in them." Nate pulls on just his jeans and runs his hands over his hair so it's not sticking up quite so much.

There are Hot Pockets left. Nate throws two of them in the microwave and turns around because he can feel Mikey right behind him. Mikey crowds him into the counter and keeps him there with hands on either side of him.

Nate smiles at him, and keeps smiling when Mikey kisses him, the kind of slow and lazy making out that people always talk about being the best thing about high school.

Nate hears footsteps and voices, but ignores them until Gabe says, "I guess you really do know Mikey."

Nate can feel Mikey's laugh into his mouth. He keeps his arms where they are so Mikey has to lean back against him when he turns around. Gabe and Victoria are in the doorway to the kitchen.

"Yep."

"You could have said."

Nate just shrugs.

"I brought Gerard to meet him," Mikey says.

That seems to mean more to Gabe than it does to Nate, although he recovers quickly. "I'm hurt that it wasn't for my cooking skills."

"Speaking of which," Victoria says, "I was promised dinner."

The microwave dings, and Nate gets the Hot Pockets out. "There are more of these."

Victoria laughs. "Your boyfriend might not mind that, but Gabe's going to do better by me."

Mikey doesn't protest the label.

"Fine," Gabe sighs. Nate can tell he doesn't actually mind. "Pizza?"

"I'll split the veggie with you," Victoria says, "if you get pepperoni for them."

"This house," Gabe says very seriously, "is becoming a tyranny against my ethics."

"You might get a paper out of it," Mikey says.

Nate laughs and brushes a kiss to Mikey's neck. "Gabe's writing is what got us all into this."

Mikey turns his head and smiles at Nate. "Saint Augustine."

"Saint Augustine." Nate kisses Mikey's shoulder. "Maybe you should write that paper. Good things might come of it."

Comments

[chalcopyrite.livejournal.com]

I really liked this! I like how Nate already knowing Mikey is a running almost-joke without ever turning into a gag line. I also liked how you worked the misunderstanding/explanation with Gerard. Plus, obviously, Gabe and his Basement. :D

[rsadelle]

Thank you! I had a lot of fun playing with this prompt.