Archive of Our Own

After the first time Mike met Chiz, he had this dream where they were back on the couch - the couch where they'd talked for a couple of hours that had felt like fifteen minutes. Except this time, they were making out, Chiz pressing down against Mike pressing up, his shirt open and it and his skin and his hair stretched above like he was the curve of the sky and Mike was the earth.

Pouring coffee in the morning, Mike congratulated his subconscious on that one. It had been a serious first meeting, an intense one, pivotal. Mike couldn't fault his brain for translating the processing of it into the most visceral physical language it could find.

Hey, if he was going to start getting worried about something that his brain produced while he was asleep, it wouldn't have been a little guy-on-guy hot-and-heavy. He had dreams about zombie politician cheerleaders. He had dreams about ballet-triggered nuclear devices on London buses. He had dreams about Aztec ninjas infesting shopping mall jungles. He had an open and understanding relationship with his subconscious.

It was all fine.

They called him Chiz because, well, Mike was already Mike - in fact, he was already Mike C. Chiz had just shrugged, said there'd been four other Michaels in his combined three-four class as well, and he was used to being called Chiz. He'd called it a ready-made Aussie name, and got into this thing about how Australians shortened names that hadn't made much sense and had resulted in Sisky demanding they call him Ado ("rhymes with play-dough") for a week. But he got over that, and Chiz had been Chiz.

"What would you call me?" Mike had asked.

Chiz had shrugged, pick between his teeth and frown drawing his eyebrows together as he fiddled with the pegs of his guitar. "Mike. Cards. Princess."

"Princess?"

Chiz had grinned, settling his guitar on his knees, spinning his pick between his fingers. "You going to play or pout?"

He'd played. They'd played. They were always playing, in the early weeks, bent in together like the yin-yang of guitars. It was everything Mike had thought it would be every time he deleted the phrase "we should get together and jam sometime" from an email he was sending to Chiz.

He'd always known jamming wouldn't be enough. It had been well and truly worth the wait to lay down something official. Something permanent.

Bill had made Mike buy the first round for the first two months after Chiz started playing with them. "You're so fucking content," he griped, all bony folded elbows and fake disgruntlement. "It's offensive."

Mike knew it was fake. They were all happy with the way things were going; even Bill was unwinding by infinitesmal but significant degrees with every day of playback they listened to. The first day he'd actually smiled, Mike had felt a load he hadn't realised he was carrying fall away, and he'd been able to actually take the world in properly.

"Fucking sweet," Chiz had said that night, nodding happily. Except he swore the Australian way, sort of mushed together, short and unthinking, no emphasis and all casual. He'd spelt it "fucken" in an email once, and Mike had stared at it for half a minute in a sort of delighted discovery, because it was perfect.

Mike came into the bus late one morning and Chiz was the only one sprawled out in the lounge, an old issue of Kerrang open on his lap (Mike recognised the article, even upside down) and buds in his ears. Whatever he was listening to, Mike could tell it was awesome just by the flex of his foot on the armrest, the tilt of his neck as he nodded, the tap of his finger on the edge of the page.

Chiz had glanced up as Mike came in, so by the time Mike had tossed his shopping bag down on a chair and held out a demanding hand, Chiz was already tugging the bud out of one ear, and shuffling up to make room for Mike to throw himself down on the couch next to him. When he pushed the offered bud into his ear, a wall of white guitar noise washed over him, like being wrapped up in steel wool. It took him a moment to be able to settle into it, start picking out the different layers of it, the intricacies under the fuzz. When he found the beat, he nodded with it, Chiz doing the same beside him.

"Oh hey," Chiz said, "hey, wait." He flipped the magazine closed over his thumb, yanking the other bud out of his ear and untangling the cords from around his wrist. "You have to - here - the modulation will blow your mind."

Mike had a hand up, but apparently not fast enough; Chiz just reached across and wedged the bud into Mike's other ear. The sound got deeper and more complex, and Mike raised an eyebrow into Chiz's expectant face, watching him closely.

Then the change came through, a shift deep in the layers of the music, everything kicking up a gear without being dramatic, and Mike didn't think he'd even had a chance to put an appreciative look on his face before Chiz was nodding, his grin springing out like a jack-in-the-box. He said, "Yeah, man. Right?"

Mike said, "Yeah."

They were on in... whatever, half an hour, something, someone would tell Mike when it was go-time and he was practically ready anyway. Victoria was messing with her hair in the mirror, one foot up on the counter and Sisky at her elbow; Butcher was stretched out on the couch in the corner playing with someone's thing-that-went-beep, probably Nate's; and Mike didn't know where the others were, but there was a fuckton of noise in the corridor, so he could estimate Saporta's location, at least.

Mike wasn't really playing his guitar, more just slouching on the couch with it across his lap and his fingers across the strings, dead and soundless, letting the weight and feel of it stop his knees jittering. He had his feet up on the low table and his head against the not-quite-sticky back of the couch. Chiz came in through the open door and Mike tilted that way without looking up. There was clear space around the other side of the table, but Chiz just came through the middle. Stepped over Mike and guitar both, kicking Mike's knee but never coming near hitting the instrument.

Mike sat up straighter anyway, dropping his feet down to the floor, and Chiz sat where they'd been, settling his own guitar across his knees. His fingers were starting to pick out notes before he'd even stopped moving, setting his feet, getting comfortable, and Mike felt one corner of his mouth quirk up. He hit the chord that his fingers had found without him even thinking about it and let it hang as he shifted, lifted his head, sat up a bit, leaning in towards Chiz. Their knees slotted together across the narrow space, and when Mike's hands went back to the strings they were active, not still.

They started out in mapped territory, the main riff of the best song of the local openers. It all felt so familiar for so long, shaping his playing around Chiz's, giving him structure and space, that by the time Mike realised they'd wandered, they were deep into making shit up as they went. Mike wasn't even counting, just going by the nod of Chiz's head, and by the tap of his foot that he could feel against the ankle of his jeans, but not hear or see. He found himself watching Chiz's face, the twitch of his eyebrows, his gaze fixed on what Mike assumed was nothing. Assumed, until he made a more radical chord change, watched Chiz blink, and realised Chiz was watching his hands. Watching Mike's hands with that encompassing concentration, absorbing detail like a sponge.

Mike barely heard Sisky barking, "Hey, five minutes!" Only realised he'd heard it when a plastic cup bounced off the wall and landed in the space between his back and the couch.

Mike's fingers plunked and stopped; Chiz looked up, met his gaze, and grinned, lazy and golden.

There were something like a dozen reasons why Chiz should not have been as perfect in the band as he was. Like, he'd had such a varied career already, Mike hadn't even wanted to hope he'd stay still long enough. But he had. And half the time Chiz and Bill needed an interpreter just to actually communicate. But they did anyway.

And Chiz practically never drank. Mike had seen the guy consume perhaps three and a half beers, maybe a pint of spirits with huge amounts of juice, and one tequila shot. In all the time he'd known him. Some nights Mike and Bill managed that each, and God only knew what the Butcher was putting away. But Chiz stuck it out as long as any of them, animated and unconcerned with a neverending glass of juice in his hand (orange and mango, apple and strawberry, passionfruit and who knew what - different every time Mike thought to ask, but he'd stopped tasting because all that really got past the liquor was tart or acid or sweet, and Chiz just shrugged and said, "What do you expect?"). Tonight it was something really boutique - watermelon and carrot and apple or something - and the room was getting blurry for Mike but he could still hear Chiz laughing across the other side of it.

Mike didn't drive them here, but he drove them to the thing they were at before the thing at which Sisky shouted, "Beer o'clock!" and they all came here. He wouldn't be driving them home. Something like an hour ago he'd shoved his car keys into Chiz's jeans pocket and Chiz had grabbed his wrist until he'd finished whatever he'd been saying, when he'd looked over his shoulder, still not letting go, and said, "Hey."

"Hey," Mike said, leaning against his back since he was here anyway. "Security measure."

"Cool," Chiz said, smile curving the edge of lips stained slightly pink from the juice. "Just make sure you find me before you leave."

"What if I pick up?" Mike said, laughing already.

"Find me anyway," Chiz declared, squeezed his wrist before letting go, turning back.

Later, at the spinning end of the night, it was Chiz helping Mike ricochet out of the bar onto the sidewalk, arm hugging his ribs with Mike's slung over Chiz's shoulder. A moment later they were in easy step, and Mike blew hair (probably his own) out of his face to say, "Yeah, but it's too..." He pulled a face. "Green."

"Green," Chiz repeated thoughtfully, as though Mike was making perfect sense, six beers and eight shots be damned.

"Forget it," Mike mumbled, but,

"No," Chiz said, lugging him around a corner. "I get it. Like grass. Not cut grass. That's summer."

Mike had forgotten what point he'd been trying to make, but he was pretty sure Chiz was right. He got it. He always got it. He got it when Mike didn't, had lost it in the swirl of everything, and sometimes he honestly didn't know why Chiz put up with all of this. With him.

"Hey," Chiz said, leaning them sideways until Mike was propped up against the side of a car-- oh, hey, it was his car. He tilted and fumbled at the door handle, but Chiz's hand closed over his, fingers curling in under the handle. "Hey," Chiz repeated, right in Mike's ear, and when Mike turned he was right there, still holding Mike up with a hand warm between his shoulder blades and a sliver of a smile curving his mouth. His breath did something weird, but no wonder when Mike imagined he smelled like he'd bathed in the booze instead of drinking it, and a moment later Chiz was leaning back. "Give it a rest," he said.

Chiz's hand over his pulled the door open, and Mike didn't even stagger. He just blinked and said, "Huh?"

"I can hear you thinking from over here," Chiz explained, heading around the front of the car to the driver's side. "Give it a rest."

"Whatever," Mike flung across the roof of the car, and threw himself into the passenger seat.

His iPod was plugged in already; the music started along with the engine. Mike was a rubbish passenger, but Chiz wasn't a bad driver, actually. Mike didn't bother watching the road. Just slumped in the seat, and watched Chiz's hands on the wheel of his car, the lazy curl of two fingers over the bottom, the tap of his other hand against the streetlight-orange curve, the same beat the guitars from the speakers shivered along Mike's bones.

The tour bus always seemed like another world, a sort of limbo, an appendix off the regular processes of the world. Stationary was still fleeting; Mike always felt like they were moving anyway.

Chiz was in the kitchenette with wet hair and a towel wrapped around his waist when Mike staggered out, rubbing the nap he hadn't meant to have out of his eyes. Chiz was drinking juice (he'd had dragonfruit or something once, or maybe Mike had been drunker than usual that night) and lifted his eyebrows over the raised glass in greeting.

"The fuck's everyone?" Mike asked, twitching his t-shirt straight.

Chiz shrugged, wiped his chin with the back of his hand. "Butcher and Sisk were talking about a booze run."

"Shit," Mike mumbled, coming across. Chiz edged aside just enough to let him get a cup of his own. "If he brings back more... what did you call it?"

"Goon." Chiz nudged the juice bottle across, grin blooming.

"I am making you fucking drink it," Mike finished, as he poured.

The juice was unexpectedly tart, making Mike wince and set down the cup. Chiz was laughing. "You and whose army?" he asked, ducking to put the juice back in the fridge.

So Mike jumped on his back, hooking an arm over his shoulder and the other around his ribs. Chiz staggered, bottles in the fridge door clanking as it closed. Chiz was laughing, sound in Mike's ear and vibration against his chest and they were both off-balance. Mike brought up a knee to hook against Chiz's hip to try and stop himself falling over the other way, and somehow got it tangled in Chiz's towel even as Chiz pushed himself upright and sent them both tottering a step backwards. The wall hit Mike's back and Chiz hit his chest; Mike dropped his hand, catching Chiz's towel at his waist before it could unravel completely. The breath had been crushed out of him.

Chiz turned his head, showing Mike that sliver of his smile again, that sidelong glance at the sun, and murmured, "Just a little lower, mate."

"Oh really?" Mike replied, grinning back, and dropped his hand a little. Just a brush.

Just a brush, but that didn't alter the fact that Chiz was half hard.

Mike should back away, should joke it off, should pretend not to notice. He really shouldn't press his palm flat. Really shouldn't press the knuckles of his other fisted hand against Chiz's breastbone. Really shouldn't turn his face to finally breathe in against the clean skin and damp hair at Chiz's neck.

Really shouldn't. Did anyway. But Chiz didn't pull away, just hissed in a breath (that Mike felt like it went straight into his own veins) and got harder against Mike's hand.

Anyway, there was nowhere for Mike to go.

So he braced his shoulders against the wall behind him and shaped his hand to Chiz's erection through the towel, heart thundering and white guitar noise in his head. He still heard over it the tiny noise Chiz made when his hips twitched forward against Mike's hand. Tiny; enough; more than enough. Mike pulled Chiz back even tighter against his body, and there was a thunk as Chiz's hand flailed back to grip the counter and knocked Mike's forgotten cup of juice into the sink. Mike ignored it, busy tugging the towel out of the way entirely.

Mike stroked once, base to tip, curling his palm around the head, and Chiz swayed but stayed put; hunched up a little, his other hand coming up to brace against the cupboard. Mike was hard himself, up against Chiz's hip with just his boxers and the towel trapped between them. Pushed forward against him, pushed him into the grip of Mike's hand. The rhythm made itself, in the slide of skin on skin, in the heave of Chiz's chest beneath Mike's fist pressed over his heart, in the pants of Mike's breath, open-mouthed and shallow against the muscle tensed in Chiz's neck. Mike wanted to test that tension with his teeth, wanted to turn Chiz around, wanted more. But he didn't. He twisted his hand just to hear Chiz's breath catch, pushed harder against him, found himself watching for glimpses of the curve of his cheek as damp hair swung with his rhythm.

Realised Chiz was looking down. Was watching Mike's hand.

"Fuck," Mike gasped, pressed his open mouth against Chiz's shoulder, and that's when Chiz came with a grunt, grabbing the wrist of the fist Mike had pressed against his solar plexus.

Fuck, Mike said again, in the suddenly silent space inside his head.

The next moment there were voices outside, feet on the stairs, and they were both moving, Mike seeing Chiz fumbling with his towel as he lunged for the bathroom. He slammed the door shut even as Sisky's voice boomed into the bus.

The religion thing - with Chiz - had never really bothered Mike before. Sure, there was that period of about a month back at the start when Mike had kept a seriously close eye on Bill (so close that they'd just about had a fight about it one night) because Bill could get defensive with Christians and when Bill got defensive, he got full-blown paint-stripping sarcastic and Mike hadn't wanted Chiz to get hit with that in his first month with the band. But it hadn't been an issue (once Bill stopped yelling that one night and someone distracted him with bourbon) and eventually Mike had forgotten about it. Well, not forgotten, but it was just one of those things, like Butcher's art or Bill's vocabulary.

He was very aware of it now. He was very aware that there was a big fucking difference between being cool about hanging around with Gabe Saporta and being cool about coming from another guy's hand on your dick.

Other things he was very aware of right now:

a) The width of the stage, stretching between them. The immense distance between the Michael on Bill's left and the one on his right. How little they actually strayed. There'd never been anything physical about playing together before, but tonight Mike looked across so often (Chiz's hair forward over his face, curled into the music) that he lost his place, playing on instinct. No matter how hard he listened, there were still obviously two guitars in the mix. Not twined together, not one thought on two instruments, fucking different.

b) How distracted Chiz had been before the show, barely saying a thing, sitting on the other end of the couch from Mike. There had been half a hundred shows they hadn't talked before, hadn't needed to talk before, and Mike couldn't figure out if this was different. Couldn't figure Chiz out. Had never been able to figure him out. Mike had always been drawn to the people who weren't easy, but where Bill was complicated to incoherency, Chiz was so simple he stopped making sense. The end result was the same.

c) The fact that however much he wanted to do it again - to have Chiz searing bare against his open mouth, to see his ribs judder against his skin, to make a whole new sort of music in the tiny fluctuations of his breath - to do it properly, he wanted even more to have never done it.

Life had its rhythm, things came and went, energy flowed. Mike had always been good with that. Been easy.

Not with this.

Someone in Cobra Starship bought (or found, or stole, or possibly won in a game of poker) a big children's wading pool. Someone else - Mike blamed a conspiracy of drivers - half-filled it with balloons. Either Victoria or Sisky filled it the rest of the way with a combination of lime cordial and detergent. And then the Butcher threw Nate bodily into it. After that it was just a free-for-all.

Eventually the balloons were all burst (except Gabe's lone Token of Victory one, but Mike didn't give it long) and the pool got overturned and ripped and everyone was smeared more or less liberally with pale green and mud. Bill and Sisky were guarding the entrance to the bus against fuck-knew-what, so Mike found a patch of relatively clean grass and sprawled out in the sun, watching the sun-red inside of his eyelids and listening to the last few bubbles expire.

He didn't even know Chiz was beside him until there was the pop of a balloon, the shout of an upset Saporta, and a voice saying, "Fucken knew Vicks was going to get him to sit on it himself."

Mike flinched with his whole body, eyes jerking open and head lifting and feet twitching and a hand coming up to shield his eyes from the sun. Chiz was just sitting there, elbows hooked around his raised knees, shirt draped across his lap, hair dripping on his bare shoulders, squinting off towards the bus. Just there.

Mike pushed himself up towards sitting with one hand, and said, "So are we just not going to talk about it?" Chiz glanced at him, one eyebrow crooked, and words just welled up in Mike's throat, impelled by panic. "I don't want that. I don't want there to be something... We talk about everything." They talked. Mike had lost hours - days - of his life talking with Chiz, except they weren't lost at all. "There can't be..." He waved a hand between them. "Dead air."

Chiz's other eyebrow went up, looking sceptical. "Have you been reading Bill's notebooks?"

"Fuck," Mike spat, looking away, pressing his knuckles against the grass. He wanted to hit something, but the only something here was Chiz.

Who said, "Mike, mate," quietly behind him, and Mike turned around to meet his steady, direct gaze. "If I had a problem, I'd've let you know."

Mike stared, pressed his knuckles harder into the grass, holding himself up. "What?" he said.

But he'd heard, and relief was already swamping him. Relief and something else, as Chiz said, "Y'reckon you could try for a little more privacy next time?" His tone was low and warm, like honey. He tucked his hair behind his ear, fingers trailing down his cheek past the corner of a knowing, promising smirk.

"Shit," Mike muttered, because a sideways glance showed that Sisky and Bill were still flanking the bus door like venue security, and Mike's shorts were still plastered to him. He rolled over onto his stomach on the grass, trying to think about baseball and broken strings and other completely non-sexy things. He growled, "I hate you."

But he was grinning, grinning hard enough to make his face hurt, and Chiz laughed, like liquid sunshine, and tipped his face back towards the sky. "Nah," he said. "You really don't."