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Entry tags:	american idol: fic, flyboys

AI Fic: When the Dawn Cracks
TITLE: When the Dawn Cracks
AUTHOR: Mari
RATING: R
PAIRING: Michael Johns/David Cook
DISCLAIMER: This is a wild-ass AU. Nothing that happens in it is real.
SUMMARY: David calls, and they try again. Takes place after “Black Bird Singing” and before “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Okay, here’s the thing. Sometimes an entire universe, and not merely a fic, will get into my head and refuse to let go. The last time that happened was a Blade fic called “Twilight People”. As it stands, the BBS-verse has the potential to beat even that one for number of fics written and word-count tallied.
AUTHOR’S NOTE 2: I can’t even tell you how many names this fic went through. It was going to be “When Love Comes to Town” up until the eleventh tour, because come on: B.B. King/U2 collaboration, musical orgasm, amirite? But Thea Gilmore’s “Call Me Your Darling” was a lot like “Blackbird” in the fic that spawned the universe in that it reared up, bit me, and then refused to go anywhere else.



Michael did not think that he had ever been this scared before in his life.

A second later, he decided that this was probably a sign that he had stopped actually living his life, as opposed to only continuing to draw air and make sure that everyone around him was well-supplied with snide comments, some nearly four years before. He muttered an oath beneath his breath as he drugged his fingers against the steering wheel of a car that he had only regained the right to actually drive the previous week. It was sleek and black and was going to cost him more in insurance payments than he actually cared to think about. It wasn’t the Chevelle, but since that car had managed to get him into deep shit along with being several different kinds of badass, maybe that was for the best.

A cop car drove slowly by as Michael sat behind the wheel of his sleek black car with the headlamps cut off, probably looking for all the universe like a truly unsubtle burglar. He would have to a particularly morally bankrupt as well as obtuse burglar to steal from a church, but Michael was still feeling so many recovery pains from the decidedly unpleasant person that he had been settling his way into being that he didn’t guess he was allowed to get smug. That cop had driven by three times now, though. Either he was exceptionally paranoid, or Michael had been sitting out here and gathering his nerve for far longer than he realized.

A glance at his watch told him that it was a little of both, actually. If he actually wanted to make the meeting, rather than sitting out in his car yet again and half-hoping that the requisite work could be done by telepathy rather than actually going inside and stamping a name onto this problem that he could no longer avoid admitting that he had, then he needed to actually get out of the vehicle at some point.

Michael took a deep breath and did so, shoving his car keys into his jacket pocket with one hand and pulling his cellular phone out with the other. The interface let him know that he had no missed calls and no messages awaiting for him.

He was not disappointed. He had no reason to expect or demand anything different, so he was not going to be disappointed. It was as good a story as any.

Michael kept telling it to himself right up until the very second that he walked through the church doors, and then he had much larger problems that he needed to address first. He had already been through hell; surely this was only one of the first of many, many steps on the road to coming back out. Michael followed the sound of distant voices down a short hallway and to an partially closed doorway, beyond which there was light. It looked incredibly non-threatening for the first step on a fire-filled pathway, but Michael could still feel sweat prickling along his spine. He walked through the doorway.

Apparently, the first step on the road out of hell had snacks. Michael blinked for several seconds and was sure that he must look confused.

He also still looked extremely nervous; he could tell because, although a few compassionate glances were thrown his way, no one dared to approach him and instead let him hang on the edges of the sparse crowd as he pleased.

Michael helped himself to a cup of coffee even though his nerves likely didn’t need anything to make them more jittery, because at least with that his hands would have something to do. When that was gone, he picked at the edges of the cup with his nails until he was leaving a path of styrofoam snowflakes in his wake. He had been sure that he was walking into this place with only moments to spare, Michael thought to himself, so what was the hold-up in getting on with it already?

Scarcely had Michael managed the thought and gotten a little farther into destroying the cup with gusto--and he realized that his casual vandalism was both being watched and ignored, and then decided that he really must be wearing his “Hi, I’m new and on the verge of panic, ask me how” button with a neon sign attached to it--than some unseen signal rippled through the crowd. They began to gravitate towards the battered folding chairs that had been set up in a circle in the center of the room.

Inhaling hard, Michael found a seat and took it.

*
He had had bad days since stepping into the studio again. He had had some good ones, too.

What Michael was having right now was a fucking fantastic one, and if he grinned any wider he thought that he might permanently strain his face.

“I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen you do that before,” McCartney said from his position at the soundboard. He had his head dipped down slightly, his voice maintaining the dry take-it-or-leave-it tones that he did exceptionally well, but Michael could still see the corners of his mouth twitching and knew that McCartney was smiling.

“When you met me, I had lost the knack,” Michael answered. He rubbed briefly at his throat before grabbing down one of the communal mugs and filling it with water for tea. The days when he had been able to sing for hours at a time without hoarseness and then go eat so much cheap diner food that he had all but needed to be rolled away were gone...but they were coming back. Slowly and more than a little painfully, they were coming back.

Michael dropped a tea bag into the mug and shoved the whole thing into the microwave. He had never thought that this particular pain could actually feel kind of good, either. He threw himself down into a chair opposite McCartney and watched as McCartney added “sound technician” to one of the dozens of roles that he seemed able to assume as easily as most people could change their shoes.

“And don’t lay bets on seeing it again too soon, either,” Michael continued. “My jaw might fall off, and then I won’t be able to sing, and where will you be then?”

McCartney flicked a wry glance over him. “Minus one cocky son of a bitch, is what I’m thinking,” he answered. Michael’s grin turned into an outright laugh. “And I am absolutely positive that I’ve never heard you do that before.”

The microphone dinged, giving Michael an excuse to get up and not look McCartney in the eye quite yet. He let his tea steep for a few more seconds before he returned with it. McCartney waved a warning hand at him, and Michael obligingly scooted his chair back so that there would be no danger of him spilling on the electronics.

“I know how,” Michael insisted. “I just never--”

“I know,” McCartney interrupted in a soft voice, saving him. Without a word needing to be said between them, Michael knew that McCartney understood that his pamphlet had been put to use, and that furthermore he was proud.

Michael coughed into his hand, feeling uncomfortable even though his good mood was too deeply entrenched to go far. He took a deep drink of his tea and leaned further back in his chair. His throat still felt strained, but at the moment Michael thought that he could go on singing for another three hours without impairment. “Do you want to keep going?” he asked.

Once again, McCartney flashed him that sideways smile that he always seemed to do without actually moving his mouth. “Relax, son,” he said, reaching out to touch Michael lightly on the knee. “It’s been a good day. No reason to push farther than you’re ready for just yet.”

Michael scowled and knew from the way that McCartney’s smile deepened--and again without seeming as if he was actually moving his mouth at all, how did he do that--that this was an expression he was far more accustomed to seeing on Michael’s face, and that he was furthermore amused by it. That he was right didn’t actually help. “I used to sing for seven hours at a time without hurting myself,” Michael grumbled, more to himself than to McCartney.

That did not of course stop McCartney from hearing. “You’ve come a long way,” he answered. “You’re in this for a marathon. If I had wanted a sprinter, I wouldn’t have put half the effort into getting your ass back on the straight, narrow, and healthy in the first place.”

Michael had been effectively sobered to the point where he didn’t think that another laugh was in him, but a smile was not too much to ask. He drained the last of his tea in one long gulp and rose from his seat. Before he could speak, there was a chattering of voices, and a man and a woman, both in their early twenties, walked into the studio. They stopped when they saw Michael there.

“Um, are we early?” the woman asked. She had light brown hair that had been accented with highlights and was wearing artfully distressed jeans. Michael could see the marks of an aspiring pop star all over her.

“Right on time,” McCartney said. “We were just wrapping up here.”

Michael narrowed his eyes as he realized that McCartney had planned this knowing exactly when his voice would start to go for the day. “I could have gone longer,” he insisted.

“We had a damned good day getting that far,” McCartney said. He adjusted a few things on the soundboard. “You try to run on a muscle too far and too hard without stretching it first, you wind up tearing it.”

“You’re just full of metaphors today.” But Michael rinsed his mug in the sink and rose to go without protest. He gave the young woman a friendly nod as she and the man who looked to be her boyfriend, both of them clearly not accustomed to being in an actual music studio, looked about curiously. It had taken Michael weeks to realize that McCartney did not really fund his entire company by holding the hands of less than half a dozen hopefuls who might make money at some point or might not. He also did a brisk business in recording demos and self-produced CDs for anyone who had the money to pay for studio time and equipment. He was always perfectly pleasant with them, did everything possible from his end to give them a good recording, and then ushered them out the door.

When Michael had first realized, several weeks in, what it meant for McCartney to extend the kind of effort with an artist that he was putting forth with Michael, he was torn between desperately wanting to drink himself into oblivion and equally desperately not wanting to blow it.

“Have yourself a good night, Michael,” McCartney said to him. “Try to put the workaholic impulses on hold for a few hours.”

“And won’t that mean prying a hole in my busy social calendar,” Michael muttered. It came out slightly more bitter than he had intended, and he glanced McCartney’s way. McCartney was engrossed in explaining to the new woman what the process was going to be over the next few hours. If he had heard Michael’s comment, then he seemed willing to ignore it.

Michael walked out into the afternoon sunlight outside and was fumbling for his keys when his cellular phone chirped in his pocket. He was busy juggling the car keys and his sunglasses and so answered the phone without bothering to look at the number. “Hello?”

“You sound distracted. That a good thing or a bad thing?”

Michael tightened his fingers against his keys so that he would not drop them and leaned his hip against his car. “Little of both,” he answered honestly. “Work.” He could hear David breathing on the other end of the line. “You sound good.”

“So do you.” Michael could all but see David wincing as he realized how terribly awkward this was becoming. Good, so they matched.

“You told me to wait by the phone,” Michael said as he unlocked his door and got behind the driver’s seat.

“Which you clearly did.”

“Yeah, but I seem to recall you telling me that two weeks ago.” He wasn’t going to sound testy--after everything that he had done, he would have to quite literally save David’s life multiple times before he had the right to get testy with him--but it was a close thing.

“Took me a while to make up my mind,” David answered. And that effectively knocked even the thought of getting cranky and entitled right out of Michael’s head. He leaned further back against his seat and sighed.

“I take it that I passed, then?”

“Provisionally.” For the first time since answering the phone, Michael thought that he detected a hint of a smile in David’s face. “Look, I’ll just lay it on the line here. I’ve tried...I’ve tried getting you out of my head, and I can’t do it. And, no offense, I won’t know whether or not that’s just a symptom of declining taste on my part--”

“It’s definitely a symptom of declining taste on your part,” Michael interrupted. David made a short noise, not quite a laugh.

“Yeah, fine. I’m not going to pretend that it’s not an essay answer rather than multiple choice.” David paused. “A symptom of declining taste, or proof that there’s maybe something here.”

Michael paused with his breath lodged somewhere between his lungs and his throat, trapped with nowhere else to go.

“Meet me at Hyde, ten tonight?” David continued. He sounded as if he was reading from a script that he had to finish before he lost his nerve.

“Of course. See you there.” Michael hung up the phone and leaned his head back against the seat. It made sense that David would want to see him in a public place, neutral territory if things should not go well. It also made sense that he would choose a place where lots of alcohol would be solved. He didn’t know.

Michael asked himself if he was going to do the wise thing and call David to back out or try to shift the location somewhere else, and knew right away that he would not. When it came to basic self-preservation, it always seemed that he found a way to run in exactly the opposite direction.

*
Michael would not have figured David for a man with a twisted sense of humor, but he thought that he was going to have to change that assessment. Pulling up to Hyde in a Pontiac while most arrived in vehicles which could fund families for two years was one of those pieces of evidence. Michael felt a faint flush crawling up his cheeks as he got out and greeted the bouncer as the valet hovered nearby to make sure that Michael was even going to get in before he took the car keys. Naturally, it was a bouncer that Michael knew well from when they had glared at each other from their respective positions on opposite sides of the street. He looked just as happy to see Michael now as he had when Michael had been receiving hefty paychecks to catch Hyde’s patrons ruining their designer shoes with vomit.

“David Cook’s waiting for me inside,” Michael said, and gave the bouncer his very most charming “fuck you” smile. He could feel people in the line behind him looking at him curiously, and hear a few whispers. Maybe to the average person on the street his face had already faded out of memory, but it was Los Angeles. Everyone there was industry; their jobs were to know everyone who could possibly someday be someone. Even if they did it by screwing a body who was already someone.

The bouncer twisted his lips into an unfriendly smile as he said, “You’ve moved up in the world.”

“Careful, or you won’t get a tip,” Michael answered back lightly, easily, as if the flush on the sides of his neck wasn’t growing hotter by the second. He tossed his keys to the valet and walked through the door that the bouncer so obligingly held open for him.

The beauty of Hyde was in its marketing. It was a small venue that had room only for a bar and a handful of tables and couches, a bar, and the barest excuse of a dance floor, so the owner marketed it as exclusive and, by the wave of a magic wand, merely saying so made it true. Celebrities stampeded over themselves to get in; once you managed it, you knew that you had made it, and never mind that you were making the club, too. Essence of Los Angeles: you repeated yourself until you became what you wanted to be.

It was not the kind of place that Michael would have figured David to be attracted too, not the David that he been getting to know before it had all gone to hell, and he paused inside the door, for a few seconds wondering if he was really going to see David in the club at all. Another of the things that he would not have thought David capable of was conscious cruelty, but he was willing to bet that no one else in his life had slept with him and then run to the press.

It was a weekday, but the place was still crowded, the DJ in the corner making sure that people on the dance floor still had plenty to do. David had asked him to come right at the hour when the club started to get busy, though there would not be fodder for the line of photographers on the other side of the street for a few hours yet. It took a while to drink enough to get interesting.

Unless you were doing it professionally, anyway.

Michael flicked a glance towards the bar and swore before he turned away, running his hand through his hair. “I’m a fucking moron,” he said to himself.

“Maybe.”

Michael jerked and turned, saw David looking at him with impassive eyes. Michael had no idea how David had managed to get behind him that quickly and quietly; the man was a fucking ghost.

“But that might make me a fucking moron, too, so.” David lifted his shoulders. “I don’t like to do things by myself. You wanna sit down?” He gestured towards a booth that was mysteriously being kept open, even though the club itself was becoming so crowded that breathing room was going to be an issue before too much longer. Michael guessed that this was the kind of power that you held in your hand when both of your albums went multi-platinum in a matter of weeks.

“Yeah,” Michael said, and followed. It was so loud that he had to shout in order to be heard, making him think that maybe he could understand why David had chosen this place for their meeting. It was nearly impossible for them to connect right now; it would also be nearly impossible for them to hurt one each other. He could not stop himself from glancing over his shoulder at the bar and exhaling slowly.

“You ever been here before?” David asked him as he settled down into the booth and gestured for Michael to do the same. They kept a good distance between themselves. God, this felt more like a business meeting, and one that was not likely to end well, than it actually did a date.

“Once or twice,” Michael said. He watched David make a gesture towards a waitress who glided over to the table without any further signal actually being needed, moving as if joints were a necessity that she had discarded a long time before as part of her transformation into Super Waitress. David glanced back towards him, causing Michael to add dryly, “Believe it or not, I came pretty close to being a hot thing on the music scene myself.”

David looked abashed for a span of about ten seconds before he went back to that eerie and purposefully distant place. “Yeah, I forgot about that. Sorry.” As the waitress arrived at the booth, he said to her, “I’ll have a Scotch and water, thanks.” He lifted his eyebrows at Michael for his order.

“Club soda.” Michael’s voice was terse, his throat tight. He watched the waitress as she walked away so that he would not have to look at David.

David, who looked curious but not particularly concerned, and Michael was not sure whether he was pleased and dismayed by that. “Huh,” he said. “The last time that I was out with you, you were tying one on pretty hard.”

Michael shrugged and put all of his effort into making sure that it looked nonchalant. “I’m reassessing,” he said. It had enough Hollywood bullshit vagueness to it to get him by with just about anyone.

Anyone would not happen to be one David Cook. Michael remembered how David had been able to skewer him, lay him open bare, and make him even believe in the person that David saw there. When he was just sitting there and staring, what had become an uncomfortable kind of therapy in the interminable before was now merely uncomfortable. “Okay,” David said with a slight shrug as the waitress returned with their drinks.

Michael took a sip of his club soda and could not even bring himself to pretend that this was what he wanted. What he wanted was at that bar less than twelve yards away in this postage stamp of a club that had managed to chameleon itself into something important, and, God, if one fucking meeting had really made Michael feel good enough that he thought he could withstand this, then he was a bigger idiot than anyone had ever guessed that he could possibly be. That was a pretty long, not to mention enthusiastic, list at this point.

Just rough it out, Michael ordered himself as he took another sip of his drink. He didn’t know what David wanted, because the closed-off light to his eyes and the tight set of his mouth sure as hell didn’t make Michael think that it was companionship or even a fast lay. Revenge, maybe. Some kind of fucking closure. He could give him that; he guessed that he had no other choice but to give him that.

And Michael could feel himself growing angry, suddenly. Those moments still managed to roll over him even when he could not say why. He drummed his fingers against the top of the table, could feel David watching him, didn’t care. He swore to God he could actually smell the alcohol all around him, even though that had to be the stupidest thought that he had entertained all night.

Second stupidest.

Michael swore suddenly and loudly enough to make David jump. “This was a mistake.” He pulled out enough money to cover his drink and threw it down on the table.

David rose as he did. “What are you talking about?”

“Look, David, I don’t know what you’re doing here,” Michael said. It was nearly impossible to keep his voice pitched as low as it needed to be, with how crowded the place was already becoming, and he could feel eyes on him. “Making a point, whatever. Cool. You made it. We’re good.”

David’s faced was more confused than Michael thought he had ever seen it before. “Point?” he repeated, his voice becoming testy, and Michael remembered that he had given him a hell of a reason to be harboring resentments against him. Fine. That may be the case, but Michael was not going to sabotage something so new that he couldn’t even bring himself to call it by its name in the service of it. Not even for the...the intensity that existed between them, as David had put it on that last good night. “What the hell kind of point would I be making?”

“You’re a rock star, you’re doing fine, moving on doesn’t cost you anything at all.” David’s mouth opened; Michael held up his hand. “I’m not pissed at you for it, you’ve got the right. But I have to get out of here.” He didn’t realize how true his last sentence was until he heard himself say it. He needed to leave, and he needed to do it at least ten minutes ago.

David stared for a moment, and then reached out to grab for Michael’s arm as Michael turned to go. “There are so many things wrong with that sentence that I don’t even know where you started connecting the dots,” he said.

Michael’s smile was grim. “Really?” he asked. He shook David off and headed for the door. David was behind him, Michael could feel it, and it was nearly funny. One of them always seemed to be following after the other, trying to get him to look.

David caught Michael just before he reached the door and spun him around hard enough to put Michael’s balance in jeopardy before he was able to catch himself. His surprise must have shown on his face, for David looked briefly chagrined before he said, “If this turns into a fight, I’m not having it on that sidewalk outside. Not with those cameras across the street.”

Of course not; David was smarter than that. If he was really as smart as he needed to be, then he would fucking remember that he had first laid eyes on Michael when Michael was a member of those cameras.

Taking a second look at David’s face, Michael realized that David had no trouble remembering it at all. Then that made him the stupidest person on the planet, because he still had his hand on Michael’s arm.

Michael exhaled a long breath that whistled and said, “Try to get me out of your head, David, you’ll be better off if you do.”

David’s eyes flashed, and he said, “I’m an idiot,” a sentiment that Michael was not terribly inclined to argue against, because he then kissed Michael.

If there hadn’t been eyes on them before, there certainly were now, even in a club that had seen a good portion of the excesses of Britney and Lindsay and wouldn’t even be able to count a couple of men kissing near the door among the top ten by the end of the night. Michael started to pull away, but David followed, putting his hand up against the wall beside Michael’s head when Michael had backed away so far that he had nowhere else to go. It was sweet and slow; Michael didn’t realize how much he wanted it to be deeper until David pulled away. He made a small sound from the back of his throat.

“Get me out of your head, David,” Michael whispered, realizing that he might as well have been talking to himself.

“You first,” David whispered back. So he could alternate between being so perceptive that it stole Michael’s breath and being the most obtuse person that Darwin had not picked off yet. Michael was not sure which one of them applied right now.

Michael shook his head and pushed himself away from the wall that he barely realized he had begun to lean against. David leaned back along with him so that he could have his space; maybe he saw that there was something in Michael that was about to fly apart at the first careless bit of pressure. A waitress passed close by, balancing a tray, and Michael turned his face away from her.

David noticed. David noticed goddamned everything, it seemed. “What’s going on?” he asked softly.

“I don’t deal well with crowds,” Michael said. He leaned forward and kissed David briefly himself, pulling back almost before his lips had managed to touch David at all. It was all that he trusted himself to do. “Look, don’t count me as one of your might have beens, all right, David? Those will just make you go out of your mind.”

“Weren’t you the one who wanted me to call you?” David asked, but he had sensed the undercurrents, and his face was intent as he clearly worked at pulling them apart.

“You haven’t figured out by now that my judgment sucks?” Michael said, and smiled. He left the club before he had time to demonstrate that any further. The cameras outside flashed automatically upon his entrance. David didn’t follow, didn’t give them needless fodder, as Michael had known that he probably wouldn’t, and maybe Michael was a little bit of a douchebag for counting upon that. Still dealing with the hangover that had come from being a major douchebag, he thought that he could cope.

Michael displayed a casual middle finger as he waited for his car and thought that he heard a laugh from the other side of the street. He thought that it sounded like Levine, too, but the combination of shadows and night flashes made it impossible to pick out faces.

His hands were shaking slightly as he slid behind the wheel of his car, and Michael knew that nothing good whatsoever would come of it if he went home alone tonight. There had been people at the meeting who made it their jobs to do with that, grab people by their collars and bodily pull them back up onto the wagon every time that they started to slip off, but Michael had not been able to bring himself to speak at all, let alone to one of them. That left his options fairly limited. McCartney might be Jesus reincarnated into the body of a middle-aged music producer, from where Michael was standing, but there were still certain weaknesses that he had seen on display far too much. He had been there since the beginning. That was plenty.

There was only one other number that Michael could think of to dial. He muttered curses under his breath as he pulled away from the curb and the phone rang and rang without an answer on the other end. Michael was on the verge of hanging up and bracing himself to ride this out by himself, white-knuckled grip and all, when someone finally picked up.

“Hello?”

“Jason?” Michael asked.

“This is Jason’s phone.”

Michael paused, not certain if Jason was being a smartass or not. It was sometimes hard to tell. “Can you meet me at my apartment?” he asked.

“Okay.” Jason paused and seemed to realize that more was needed in the way of conversation right now. “Why?”

“I just need someone else to be there.” Michael could have beaten his head against the steering wheel when he realized how suspicious that sounded. “And it’s not so that I have an alibi or anything.”

Jason laughed. “Relax, man, I’ll be there,” he said before hanging up. Though Michael had never actually said anything to him--by the way, I’m an alcoholic, wasn’t really a conversation that one started easily unless, ironically, one was fairly lit first--he somehow had the feeling that Jason knew exactly what he needed. The time for embarrassment was long past.

Jason was sitting on the curb when Michael pulled up, smoking a cigarette. He put it out beneath his heel and stood. Michael could not help but follow the path of the burning embers with his eyes and feel faintly surprised when it turned out that it was only the ludicrously priced but supremely legal nicotine variety.

Jason saw where Michael was looking and pulled a face. “Why does everyone think that I do that?” he asked.

“Videotape yourself sometime. The answer might surprise you.” Michael hesitated, then added, “Thanks.”

Jason shrugged as if people called him in the middle of the night to stay at their places all the time. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You know, there was a lobby.”

“I like it outside. It’s a nice night.” Jason flashed his teeth at him. “You worry too much, Johns.”

Michael snorted. “You might be the first person who has ever accused me of being too responsible.” They went up the stairs to Michael’s unit and Michael let them inside to an apartment that was probably half the size of the one that he had been staying in when he had hit a wall so hard that his ears were still ringing with it. Michael liked this one better; there was less room for him to rattle around in it. “Make yourself at home.”

“Cool.” Jason beelined for the sound system that was one of the few transplants from the old place that had made it to the new one. He began examining CDs with interest as Michael went into the kitchen, with its refrigerator that was actually full of responsible, healthy food now and not what Michael wanted so badly that his throat was almost literally burning with it. He pulled out a can of soda instead and held it against his forehead.

Jason moved like a cat; Michael didn’t hear the pad of his feet against the floor and realize that he was there at all until Jason said, “So, how does this work?”

Michael jumped slightly and then let out a short laugh. “I don’t know,” he said. “Not one fucking clue, I’m still on the learning curve. Just...” Michael hesitated and pressed his lips together hard around the words before he was able to continue. “Just keep me from doing something stupid, all right?”

Chief among the reasons that Michael liked Jason was that no one realized how quick Jason actually was. He didn’t seem surprised and embarrassed in the slightest as he said, “For the man who actually owns Marley CDs, anything.” He disappeared back into the living room as if he realized that Michael might also need a moment or two to get his head back together. Smart guy, because right at the moment Michael felt as if he had been scattered in so many different directions that he didn’t even know where to begin when it came to putting them back into their fucked-up whole again.

And all that it had taken was half an hour in David’s presence. Michael set the soda down on the counter so that he could press the heels of his hands hard against his eyes. Well, if that was all that it had taken to nearly knock him off again, then he couldn’t say that he was going to get cocky any time soon.

Michael walked back into his living room just as Jason stopped fiddling with the sound system. Marley started singing about pirates lost at sea at a low volume. Jason looked at him for a moment, then back at the stereo, and Michael remembered a certain offer that Jason had made to him scarcely two weeks before. Stupid of him not to remember it; stupider to think that whatever interest it was that Jason had in him would have gone away in that time.

Jason glanced up again, long enough to catch Michael’s expression, and laughed. “Easy there, bro, I’m not going to jump you here and now,”

Michael felt a flush crawling up his cheeks. “You got a hell of an ego, if you automatically assume that’s what I was thinking about.”

“Or maybe you just have one of the most transparent faces that I’ve ever seen.” Jason settled himself down onto Michael’s couch and began flicking through the channels on his television. He made a face as he looked at the offerings that were available on late-night television, even with a premium cable package. “I like you, man, but not well enough to watch porn with you.” Jason turned the television off again and looked down at his hands before he said softly, “All right, there’s no way to keep this from being a little weird, is there?”

Michael shrugged and dragged his hands through his hair before he let out a mirthless laugh. “Pretty much,” he said. “I’m pretty new to this, too. Just...I’m telling you now, if I start to do something moronic, you have the right to chuck things at my head.”

“Yeah,” Jason said in a voice that was so soft, kind, and above all non-judgmental that it was making Michael’s skin itch. “I can do that.”

“You’re a good friend.”

“I try to be.” Jason contemplated the remote for a few more seconds. “I like your new place.”

Michael settled down onto the couch next to Jason. Though he made sure to keep a healthy distance between them, there was no awkward tension, and Michael felt himself unwinding immediately. “You never saw my old place,” he said.

Jason flicked a sideways glance at him. “No,” he said. “But you were a wreck when I first met you, so I figure it can’t have been happy times.”

“I was a wreck for a lot of reasons,” Michael said. Now he was starting to get tense again. He liked Jason, he wasn’t joking or lying when he said that he considered Jason to be a friend, but there were still things that Michael did not think that he was willing to discuss with anyone. Just how close he had come to an untimely end, one way or another, was one of those things.

He didn’t think that he had ever been so happy to hear someone knock on his door in his life. Michael leapt up from the couch and went to answer it, wondering who it could be at just a few minutes before midnight but not altogether caring. It could be a vacuum cleaner salesperson and he thought that he might still buy whatever they had to offer, just out of gratitude.

On the other hand, Michael thought as he swung the door open, he had an inkling of what David was selling, and if he was wise he would shut that door right again and not look back. It had been way too long since Michael had ever been able to claim wisdom as one of his attributes, though, so he stared with his fingers curled around the edges of the door hard enough to turn the knuckles white and said nothing at all.

“I remember having to be buzzed in at your last place,” David said. He stared hard at Michael, and Michael wondered what he was looking for there. He wondered if David could see past him into the apartment, to where Jason was, and if he should care.

“I’m going for a more frugal approach these days,” Michael said faintly. A second later, a thought struck him. “Wait, did you get my address the same way that you got my old cellphone number?”

David actually looked offended. “Okay, I’m not really a stalker,” he said. “I looked you up in the book, dude, and get over yourself.”

Done and done. Michael was pretty sure it was one of the steps, the ones that he couldn’t make himself read all the way through just yet. He had a smile that was going to break his face if he didn’t find a way to put it away soon.

“So, tonight was weird,” David said, when it became clear to him that Michael was just going to stand there in his doorway without speaking.

And Michael had to laugh at that, and rub his hands over his face, because otherwise he was going to bang his head against the doorframe until things started making sense again. David already had a pretty good inkling that Michael was an emotionally damaged asshole--he was loving this new self-awareness so, so much--and Michael would really like to get out of this entire embarrassing situation without David also thinking that he was completely insane.

“No lie there--” Michael started, but David must have heard the beginnings of a dismissal in his tone, because he bumped him hard with his shoulder and cut him off before he could go any further.

“You gonna invite me in, asshole, or not?”

Michael thought about saying no. He thought as hard as he could possibly think about anything in the span of the five seconds or so before he had no choice and his lizard brain decided on his answer for him, because part of this whole new leaf thing ought to mean turning away from things that were bad for him. And if there was one thing that he ought to have figured out from that brief, awkward “date” in the club, it was that David was not good for him. Or he was not good for David. Or something that was deeply noble, anyway, and didn’t cause such a sick feeling to go churning through Michael’s stomach.

While Michael’s brain was trying out new ways to be noble, or at least not be so much of a jackass, other parts of him decided to take control, since he was doing so piss-poor a job of it.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, “Come on in.” And then held the door open further and stepped back so that David could come into his apartment. It took him a full thirty seconds to realize that he was a moron. Once he got there, however, he realized it mightily.

“Um,” David said when he hit the living room, and then Michael realized that he had completely forgotten about Jason. David had a way of taking his thoughts and knocking them all of the way out of his head and down the block like that.

“Hey,” Jason said, rising easily and fluidly off of the couch. He raised what had to be the single most eloquent set of eyebrows in the world in Michael’s direction. Whatever hopes Michael had been entertaining that maybe Jason didn’t know what had brought about his sudden refusal to be alone tonight went right out the window. “So, as much as I seem to be walking out of rooms whenever the two of you are in them, I’m going to--” Jason hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “That way.” It was not until his back was disappearing down the hall that Michael realized Jason was heading for the bedroom, and the slight hunch of Jason’s shoulders, closest thing to embarrassment that that kid ever got, meant that he realized it, too, and the mortified look on David’s face meant that he definitely realized it.

David looked at Michael with a face so carefully blank that he had to be concentrating in order to keep it that way. “Look, man,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t know if you think you--think you owe me or something? But if that’s why you agreed to go out with me tonight, don’t worry about it.” They weren’t cool, even a little bit, and David was lucky that he had chosen music as a career, because his acting talents were leaving something to be desired.

“I know that I don’t owe you anything,” Michael started, and then stopped himself, because David was giving him a look like even he didn’t believe that line of bullshit. “That’s not why I was weird tonight.”

“Okay, good,” David said, and looked infinitely relieved. “Because before, you hid the douche tendencies better.”

“Seduce me, baby, make me beg for it,” Michael shot back before he could stop himself.

David’s face went very still, and after a long pause he said, “I am ordering you right now to not say anything else like that until we get this hammered out.” And then flushed from his neck to his ears as he appeared to realize at exactly the same moment that Michael did that there were worse ways to phrase that, but not many. Michael held up his hand in silent assent and could feel his throat working up and down.

“If you didn’t want to go out, you didn’t have to,” David said. He sounded hurt, but not in the stunned and furious way that he had been before, like...like maybe he was expecting this from Michael now, and that made Michael want a drink more than anything else he had experienced that night.

“I wanted to,” Michael said. Once again, if he could get control of his fucking responses before he just blurted them out, that would be great, no, really.

“Oh,” David said. He looked deeply relieved before glancing towards the bedroom again and saying, “Michael, I am not going to have a threesome with Jason Castro.”

“I’m not asking you to!” Michael nearly yelped, and then put his hands over his face. “Oh, fucking Christ,” he muttered around his fingers. He took a deep breath, lowered them again, and said carefully, rehearsing each word in his head beforehand so that he would not fuck it up, “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with you tonight. It was just that...that club was too much. Too much to the point that I kind of...needed Jason to be here tonight, to keep me centered.” His tongue felt thick and clumsy in his mouth, just in time, because he had to be the stupidest person on the surface of the entire planet.

David looked confused. Michael was glad for the company. “You used to flirt better,” he said. David cocked his head to the side. “If you’ve developed claustrophobia or something, you can just say so--”

“I couldn’t be there because of the booze,” Michael interrupted him. He swallowed hard, could feel color rising in his cheeks, and still didn’t dare stop. “That’s not the ideal, I have to get to a point where I can stand to be around alcohol without breaking out into hives or going on a bender, but I’m...not there yet. And I needed Jason here tonight to make sure that I didn’t do something stupid.” There was a worried, flat set to David’s mouth which all but guaranteed that Michael was still on the verge of doing something incredibly stupid, but at least this one wouldn’t involve any further criminal charges.

“Why would you...oh.” And David went very still, his eyes very wide. The worst part was the way that he was fucking looking at Michael, like now Michael was something to be pitied. It was all that Michael could do not to step back. “Oh.”

Michael did take that step back, turned around, running his hand through his hair and wishing that Jason would use some of that eerie prescience that he had sometimes to come out of the bedroom now. Jason stayed stubbornly where he was, bastard. “You didn’t notice how much I was drinking when we were together?”

“I did,” David answered immediately. Michael desperately wanted this to be over. “But, you know, I’ve been to college. Some people have bigger limits than others.”

“As it turns out, I don’t have any limits at all.” Michael turned around, finally; he knew that his smile was bitter. “So there you go. Run out the door at will.” And it would probably be better for all of them, because David made Michael’s skin buzz in a way that was like several shots done all in a row, throwing his good sense out of his head and making his breath catch in his throat.

David folded his arms over his chest and dipped his chin. He looked as if this was a knotty math problem, something that he was really considering. Michael waited for David to make the rational choice and was not even sure if he wanted it--thinking clearly for the first time in God only knew how long, he knew that he couldn’t squander this second chance on the basis of a good lay, but, oh, when David looked at him like that he wanted to--until David nodded as if he was coming to a decision. He turned partway; Michael held his breath.

David turned back before he could go more than a step and covered the distance between them in one stride. He took Michael’s face in both of his hands, pulled it down those measly few inches that separated them from being the same height, and kissed Michael hard. He had calluses from playing the guitar that Michael could feel first on the skin just beneath his ears as David first held him tight, then caressing the sides of his jaw and his neck as David slowed down, stroked him as if he was something that David intended to take his time enjoying. Someone needed to tell that to Michael’s suddenly racing heartbeat. He thought that he could get as high as he needed to be for the rest of his life with David’s tongue in his mouth and David clasping both of his hands against the back of Michael’s neck as if he was afraid that Michael would pull away.

It was a good choice. It was a smart choice. Michael couldn’t bring himself to do it. He made a soft sound that he didn’t mean to and put both of his hands against David’s waist. His fingers were curling through David’s shirt to touch the bare skin underneath before he quite knew what he was doing.

David coughed as Michael’s hands began tracing patterns against his ribs. “I really like this,” he said against Michael’s mouth. “I really, really like this.” Michael didn’t think that that actually required a response, and so kept kissing David and giving David invitations to kiss him back until David finally made a small moue and pulled away. “But there’s another dude in the place where I’d like to take you right now.”

“I have no resistance to temptation, I’ll kick him out,” Michael muttered back. There was blood rushing to places that were definitely not his head right now, and it was hard to remember that he had been trying to do the right thing moments before.

“No, you need him here right now.” David put his hand against Michael’s chest and leaned back. He was still close enough for Michael to see every pore in his face, every minute change in expression. “I’ll come back tomorrow night. I’ll make dinner. Booze will be nowhere in sight.”

Michael felt his mouth quirking in spite of himself. “Trying to be best boyfriend of the year already?” he asked. He stumbled just slightly over the word “boyfriend”, since he was thirty-three and he and David had only just had their second disastrous attempt at a first date, but David had a curling little smile that made Michael forget every other instinct that he had other than pulling David close to him again and refusing to let him go.

“Making up for being kind of an ass earlier.” David gripped at Michael’s hand before he turned to go.

“That wasn’t part of some cunning plan?”

David flushed a little at Michael’s wry tone and said, “No, I was pretty much just being an ass.”

“Really.”

David shoved at Michael’s shoulder again. “I wasn’t quite sure how that was going to go, either. It didn’t bring out my better instincts, all right? I’ll see you,” he said. “And maybe this time you won’t have another guy hiding in your bedroom.”

“Jason’s not hiding,” Michael felt moved to protest. “He’s just...making himself creatively scarce.”

David’s laugh was a sound that Michael didn’t have to hear often to know that he loved. He squeezed at Michael’s hand again before releasing him; Michael realized that he did not even know when David had reached for him in the first place. “I’ll see you,” he repeated. David opened his mouth again, and Michael thought for sure that David was going to give him some kind of platitude, tell him that everything was going to be all right, that the problem that Michael had just admitted didn’t mean anything, but he didn’t.

Michael exhaled as David closed his front door quietly behind him. He heard the sound of footfalls behind him as Jason left the bedroom. “Don’t you even think about leaving tonight,” Michael said without turning around. His voice was ragged; he didn’t know whether he was happy or something else.

Jason made him jump when he put his hand on Michael’s shoulder briefly. “You have a nice couch,” he said. “I think Sci-Fi’s showing a rerun of Mammoth, come on.” Michael allowed himself to be led back. He settled down next to Jason without worrying about personal space, leaned his head back, and took a full breath. He exhaled, and then took another, and the world continued to turn.

End