While You Were Sleeping: Gift for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
delphinapterus
Dec. 22nd, 2010 11:16 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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bandomstuffsitTitle: While You Were Sleeping
Author:listedheart
Pairing(s): Mikey/Alicia, Pete/Mikey/Alicia
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Word count: 4,061
Summary: Pete and Alicia bodyswap.
Pete wakes with a jolt, his heart pounding in his chest.
He's used to waking up this way, jumping back from nightmares when he finally manages to sleep. This time, he can't work out what it is that woke him. The nightmares don't always stay sharp and clear in his mind, but there are usually some fragments when he first wakes up, vague images and feelings that float away when he tries to chase them. Tonight there's nothing: just the darkness of his bedroom and sheets that don't feel like his own for a few seconds as they pool around his waist when he sits up.
Pete shakes his head at himself. He yawns widely. He pulls his hand out from under his covers and rubs his eyes, only keeping them half open, and presses his palm flat against his chest to try and calm the beating of his heart.
His eyes fly open, wide. His palm is pressed against his skin, but it's not flat. His hand is curved around the gentle slope of breasts, fingers dipping down toward cleavage. He pulls his hand away fast, but he knows instinctively that he's touching himself, that this is him - he'd been able to feel the warmth of his hand, the spasm of his fingers as he registered what he was feeling.
Wide awake now, panic flooding through him, Pete says to his empty room, “Shit.”
--
He's booked a flight to New Jersey before the sun even rises, sitting in bed in a hoodie that no longer fits in the right places and boxers that suddenly feel too loose. Every time he ducks his head to look more closely at the small print prices on his laptop, his hair falls into his face, longer than he's ever worn his own.
He traces his fingers over the words he knows are looped across his collarbones, ink that he's never touched from this angle, looking down at such a sharp angle the letters blur. Once the flights are booked, it's easy to pack. There's a case out on his floor already, one he never put away when he got back from the latest tour, and he throws the first clothes he finds in his closet into it, not bothering to fold them or make them fit neatly. It doesn't really matter what he takes, he reasons. It's not really like it's going to fit him now.
In the end, he winds up with a spare hour before he has to call a cab to take him to the airport. He spends the time in front of his bathroom mirror, the light harsh against his pale skin, the hood of his hoodie pulled up, and none of it helps. The thick material disguises none of the new curves, and his hair pokes out from the sides of the hood, still out of control from a night tossing and turning in bed. He's wide-eyed and anxious; his expression is twisted and scared in a way he's never seen this face look before.
He spends the whole flight mentally preparing for what's about to happen next, for what will be waiting for him once they touch down in Jersey. He gazes at the in flight magazine without taking any of it in, ignores the safety talk before they take off the way he always does, and tries valiantly to ignore how thin his fingers are, shiny black nail varnish either side of the magazine, still callused but in different places. His clothes don't fit and there's no leg room on this flight. He's more uncomfortable than he can ever remember being.
He spends the whole flight preparing himself for it, but his brain still struggles to comprehend it, to catch up with what's going on and make sense of what's right in front of him when he knocks on Mikey and Alicia's door and he sees himself answer it, his eyes wide but his grin bright.
“We wondered when you'd show up,” the Pete in front of him says. “We thought it'd be sooner, but maybe you sleep better now than you used to.”
From somewhere inside, Mikey's voice calls, “Hey!”
“Hey, Alicia,” Pete says, and steps inside house when she moves back to make space for him.
--
“This is so fucking weird,” Mikey says in an almost awed tone, which Pete thinks is pretty much the understatement of the century. The three of them have gathered in Mikey and Alicia's kitchen, waiting for coffee, and Mikey is leaning back against the kitchen counter, looking between the two of them like he's watching the world's slowest tennis match. He's blinking more often than normal. “So fucking – it's so weird.”
Pete rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah.” It's weird on several levels, in fact, when he manages to think at least a little more coherently. He's still friends with Mikey and Alicia, still talks to the two of them a lot, through texts and emails and links to weird shit they all find on the internet, but this is the first time he's been to their house. This is the first time he's actually seen the two of them together since they got married.
Plus, he seems to have somehow, miraculously switched bodies with Alicia.
“What's it like?” Mikey asks.
“Having a dick is weird,” Alicia says, like it's the first thing on her mind, what she's been thinking about the whole time they've been standing in the kitchen. It probably is what she's been thinking about the whole time they've been standing in the kitchen. Pete can't blame her. It's taking a lot of effort not to just fixate on the whole having tits thing.
“It's like, science fiction shit,” Mikey says. He barely reacts to his wife talking about how she has a dick now. Pete guesses he probably isn't even all that bothered so much as he is intrigued about the whole thing. It was never Mikey who had a problem with the below the waist thing; he's probably genuinely more interested in the meaning and mechanics behind this has happening than anything else.
“You're loving this, aren't you,” Pete says accusingly, and Mikey shrugs tellingly at him. “So how do we turn back?”
It's Alicia who shrugs this time. “I have no idea. In the same way we got like this in the first place, I guess? Except I have no fucking idea how that happened. I was just sleeping.”
“Maybe,” Pete says, without much confidence, “we just need to sleep again. Maybe it's just some weird, like, dream shit.”
Alicia hums thoughtfully. “Well, you can stay. You can sleep in the spare room,” she says, and then shoots Mikey a wide smile when Mikey passes across her mug of coffee. “Thanks, babe.”
Pete really does have, he somewhat grudgingly has to admit, kind of big teeth.
--
The spare room, Pete thinks, shouldn't be called the spare room so much as it should be called Gerard's room. He unearths an old, crumpled, half-filled sketch book and three pencils from the bed, and when he wraps the covers around him, clad in a pair of pyjamas Alicia's given him, the sheets still smell strongly of smoke. It's comforting, somehow, though, to know that Alicia and Mikey – and by default, his body - are just across the hall.
He doesn't sleep much, but he's not really expecting to. He spends half the night with his hands clenched tightly at his sides, not touching any of this new body, and the rest of it tentatively creeping his fingertips up under the baggy, faded t-shirt to feel the smoothness of his skin before stopping when he imagines Alicia's reaction. He can feel himself blushing, turning red more easily than he usually does.
When he finally does fall asleep, the glowing numbers of the alarm clock on the bedside table tell him that it's nearing five a.m., that somehow a whole day has passed without Pete even knowing how.
When he wakes up, nothing has changed.
--
It's weird in ways Pete wouldn't have excepted.
It's weird whenever he looks in the mirror, obviously, or walks past any reflective surface and catches sight of his reflection out the corner of his eyes. It's weird when he gets dressed in the morning and looks down as he pulls his jeans up. It's fucking weird when he has to piss. The toilet seat is always cold.
It's also weird when he walks around, though, the weight distributed differently around his body. It throws him off balance. It's not like he starts bumping into things or falling over, but he feels like he has to move differently, somehow, that he has to pay more attention whenever he moves. He goes everywhere more slowly even though there's no reason for it, focused on the placement of his feet.
He keeps sitting on the couch, legs spread out wide, and sticking his hand down his pants only to be surprised every time.
Alicia rolls her eyes each time she catches him. “Stop feeling me up,” she says, and Pete can tell he's blushing again by the heat he feels creep into his cheeks.
Mikey just laughs, acting as though the whole thing is terribly funny. Pete guesses that maybe if the roles were reversed and he got to watch two people struggle to inhabit the wrong bodies, he might find it amusing too, but it's a situation that feels too far away for him to imagine.
--
Staying with Alicia and Mikey is kind of like a really prolonged sleepover, or a tour with fewer pranks and more showers. They all have weird sleeping patterns – Pete finds his insomnia doesn't disappear with his body, which he's kind of annoyed about, because he's sure he should be getting something out of this – and the three of them spend a lot of time on the couch, steadily working their way through the awesome movie collection that Alicia and Mikey have gathered together.
Pete remembers watching some of them with Mikey, curled up in his bunk back on Warped years ago. He tries not to think about that now, although it's hard. Mikey keeps smiling at him the way he used to back then, something slow and secret, like it's an automatic reaction every time he sees Alicia even though right now, seeing Alicia really means seeing Pete.
Alicia and Mikey still hold hands on the couch. It's a jolting sight, and mostly, Pete's glad that he squashes onto the couch with them instead of sitting in the chair. The couch is meant for two people, and the springs are going, and he feels like he's sinking down almost onto the floor each time he sits down and the cushions groan at his weight, but when they're next to him he can focus on the TV. He only catches sight of them together out the corner of his eyes and it's easy – or at least easier – to ignore some of the weirdness.
After a few days, he doesn't even feel the weirdness so much. It's not that he's used to it, to any of this, but he at least gets used to them. He works out how to use their complicated coffee machine after a lot of trial and error, and how their dishwasher works, and where to take the trash out to when it begins to overflow with old take out boxes. He likes feeling like he can at least be useful while he crashes with them for God knows how long. He stops feeling distant pangs of guilt when he sees and touches Alicia's naked body in the shower (she shrugs at him when he mentions this, gives him a small smirk and says, “Not like it's anything you haven't seen before, right?”) and starts wearing Mikey's hoodies. Back before he started buying them girls' sizes anyway, Pete never used to understand why his old girlfriends would always want to steal his hoodies, but he kind of gets it now. Mikey's really do feel more comfortable. It's like they're warmer, the sleeves long enough to comfortably cover his fingers.
Their cat still seems to hate him, though, no matter how helpful he is. He feels bad about it, a little worried that maybe it'll hate Alicia, too, whenever they finally change back, but then he spends an afternoon sitting cross-legged on the floor with Mikey, helping him dress it up in a tiny, cat-sized hoodie, and changes his opinion. He thinks the cat probably just hates the world at large, with the occasional exception of whoever last fed it.
“I miss Hemmy,” Pete says, with a sigh and a sudden burst of longing. He'd barely been home a week before he had to take him back to his parents to come here. Mikey gives him a sympathetic look.
“You could probably get him a matching hoodie when you get home,” Mikey suggests. “I can find the website later if you want.”
The thought cheers Pete up a bit.
Alicia goes out grocery shopping that afternoon, which is really just code for junk food and pet food, because they can get everything else delivered. When she gets home, she stands in the doorway for a while, just looking at them. Pete doesn't even realise she's back until Mikey says, without even looking up, “Hey, 'Licia,” like he has some weird, sixth sense for her. Pete thinks that maybe he does. Maybe it's a married couple thing. He turns around to look at her.
“You fucking losers,” she says, and laughs. There's a weird look on her face, and it takes Pete a moment or two to place it as the sort of fondness that's so strong he can never quite hold it in.
--
Pete doesn't know how exactly he stumbles into their bedroom at four in the morning, half asleep and trying to feel his way to the bathroom. He's been staying with them long enough now that he knows the apartment like the back of his hand, and Mikey and Alicia's room is at the other end of the hall. It's just something about the darkness and his foggy brain, the unfamiliarity of Alicia's body that still hasn't quite faded away yet, or maybe it's just that a lifetime of touring has finally fucked his sense of direction up once and for all. Whatever it is, he opens the wrong door, disorientated and dazed, and pauses as soon as he realises. He can't help but stare, taking in the double bed illuminated by slices of moonlight cutting through the gaps left in the curtains.
For a second, he can't bring himself to look away – he can barely even blink. He's seen them on the couch together before, holding hands, and even seen them kiss goodnight, although nothing more than a peck on the lips, which he doubts is their normal routine. This is different.
This is still them, but it's him.
He never got to sleep in a bed like this with Mikey, not even on their rare hotel nights because of how difficult getting people to switch rooms always turned out to be. The black sheets make them both look paler then normal, and the dark ink of the tattoos on Pete's arm stand out, stark against Mikey's chest. They look – they look fucking great together, Pete thinks, and his breath catches in his throat before he makes himself move. He closes the door as quietly as he can behind him.
He goes straight back to his room before he remembers that he got up in the first place to take a leak, and has to drag himself back out of bed. He pads softly to the bathroom and doesn't let himself so much as glance back around at the other door.
Back in bed, he's wide awake again, staring up at the ceiling as his thoughts begin to buzz. He can't get the image out of his head, stop thinking about how they look. His stomach twists uncomfortably and all his blood feels like it's running too hot.
It takes him a while to realise that it's not just jealousy he's feeling.
--
Pete takes his showers hot. He likes the temperature turned up high enough for the water to turn his skin red and to fill the room with steam. It makes him feel more refreshed, and he likes the way the steam blurs everything he looks at, including the body he sees when he looks down.
He still feels guilty that he gets to see Alicia's body like this, essentially without her permission, even though she waves the issue off because of their lack of other options. It's increasingly out of a sense of obligation more than anything else, though, which in turn makes him feel even worse – because he knows this is how he should feel about it, but he's seen her body before and he's always going to want to see her again. It's Alicia, after all, and he's only human. Ever since he saw Alicia and Mikey asleep together he's had thoughts of the two of them circling around his mind, flashes bare skin and long limbs behind his eyelids every time he closes his eyes.
In the shower, under the steady stream of hot water beating down on his back, Pete rests his hand over the sharp bone of Alicia's hip for a few moments before slowly sliding it downward. His palm moves easily over his wet skin. He hasn't done this, yet, hasn't touched himself in this body even though at times it's all he's been able to think about, but the thing is, he remembers.
He remembers how she'd react whenever he touched her like this, what speed and what pressure made her bite her lip and gasp the most, and he understands it, now. Hand between his legs, fingers rubbing fast, heat in his stomach building and building, his other hand splayed against the shower wall for balance, he bites his lip and gasps and shudders the way she used to.
The way he knows she must with Mikey, the way Mikey used to make him shake apart.
--
Sitting with them on the couch, taking the dogs out for walks with them, Pete wonders if they can tell what he's been thinking about. It's been a while now, days creeping into weeks, and Pete has slotted neatly into their routine, into their lives and their home. He's still trapped as Alicia and she's still stuck as him, but there's still nothing they can do other than wait it out. It still makes him feel halfway to going crazy, waking up every morning when he manages to sleep to find that he's not exactly himself, but Pete's used to the room now, to the sheets with their permanent cigarette smell, to the way Alicia's skin feels underneath his fingertips again.
The only thing that's really changed is that when the three of them hang out now, curled up under blankets on the couch, quoting whatever they wind up watching back at each other, Pete's mind wanders. He catches them glancing at each other, sharing short, private looks, and the lights from the TV throw flickering shadows over their faces that make their expressions hard to read. He wonders, sometimes, if they know what it is he thinks about when he can't sleep, if it's what they're silently communicating about.
Pete knows he's always either terrible or too good at hiding things, and with something like this, he has no idea.
He tries to keep his eyes fixed on the TV screen.
--
Pete is in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee machine, zoned out the way he always is early in the morning running on not enough sleep. He's not paying attention to his surroundings; he jumps half a mile when a hand settles on his waist from behind him, someone creeping up behind him when without him even noticing them enter the room.
He looks down and sees his own hand, the familiar lines and shapes of his tattoos, his fingers resting at the waistband of Alicia's jeans. It's still hard to make sense of what he's seeing.
“Well, good morning,” he says, and laughs, and is proud when the sound comes out only a little too loud and strained. He trails off as Alicia hooks her chin over his shoulder. It's just plain fucking weird, the two of them the wrong way round like this, but that's not why Pete feels so hot all of a sudden.
“Why are you still sleeping in that spare room?” she asks, and Pete swallows hard. They've both adjusted a little, but that doesn't mean he wants to leave yet, to go back to his own house, all the same walls surrounding him while he's the wrong person.
“I thought,” he begins, but she shakes her head, her chin digging into his shoulder. He stops.
“I mean,” she says, and she sounds almost amused, “why are you still sleeping on your own?”
Pete swallows hard again, different reasons. “What?”
“I've seen the way he looks at you,” Alicia says.
“Because I'm like – it's because I'm you.”
“And I've seen the way he looks at me now,” she continues. “You have no idea, do you? You've been here all this time and you can't see the way he looks at both of us?”
“What?” Pete repeats, stupidly, and her fingertips dip down just under his waistband, just for a second, the ghost of a real touch. Goosebumps spring up all over his skin. He notices that she's painted his nails with her black nail varnish; it's chipping away around the edges.
“We like having you here,” she says, slowly. “And it's not just because of this.” She gestures down at him, losing the contact of her hand but still pressed up close behind him. “It's because you're you. You know you're hot, don't even give me that shit, and it's 'cause we're us, even when, you know, we're not. It's... the three of us.”
“You and Mikey are married,” Pete points out helpfully. Just in case she's saying what he thinks she's trying to say, just in case they've all forgotten this somewhere along the line. He twists around a little awkwardly to face her, standing too close, and Alicia gives him a look like she can't believe how stupid he's being. It's much more familiar territory for Pete.
“I know that. We know that, it's not just me saying this, you know that, right? He's too fucking lame to talk to you himself. You know what he's like.”
Pete laughs, helpless, because he does. He knows what they're both like, and they know him, and maybe that's why he's struggling to keep up with what he's saying, because he's been missing that one, vital point. She's still smirking at him, just this side of smug. “What the fuck?” he asks. He runs a hand through his hair in a nervous habit that he can't let go of, even though his fingers get caught up in tangles now it's long like this. “Shit. I don't even – are you fucking with me?” He knows, somehow, that she isn't, even though Alicia is second only to Mikey in keeping a straight face when she's screwing with someone. The whole body swapping mess is more than enough – they both know that.
“Pete,” she says, tilting her head to the side. “Pete. I'm not fucking with you, don't be a dick.” She takes his hand in hers. Pete looks down at the tangle of their fingers. “Just come to fucking bed and help me wake Mikey up.”
--
Mikey is actually awake already when Pete lets Alicia lead him into their bedroom. He blinks at them both with sleepy eyes and says, “What took you so long?”
Pete laughs again just because he has no fucking idea.
Author:
listedheartPairing(s): Mikey/Alicia, Pete/Mikey/Alicia
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Word count: 4,061
Summary: Pete and Alicia bodyswap.
Pete wakes with a jolt, his heart pounding in his chest.
He's used to waking up this way, jumping back from nightmares when he finally manages to sleep. This time, he can't work out what it is that woke him. The nightmares don't always stay sharp and clear in his mind, but there are usually some fragments when he first wakes up, vague images and feelings that float away when he tries to chase them. Tonight there's nothing: just the darkness of his bedroom and sheets that don't feel like his own for a few seconds as they pool around his waist when he sits up.
Pete shakes his head at himself. He yawns widely. He pulls his hand out from under his covers and rubs his eyes, only keeping them half open, and presses his palm flat against his chest to try and calm the beating of his heart.
His eyes fly open, wide. His palm is pressed against his skin, but it's not flat. His hand is curved around the gentle slope of breasts, fingers dipping down toward cleavage. He pulls his hand away fast, but he knows instinctively that he's touching himself, that this is him - he'd been able to feel the warmth of his hand, the spasm of his fingers as he registered what he was feeling.
Wide awake now, panic flooding through him, Pete says to his empty room, “Shit.”
--
He's booked a flight to New Jersey before the sun even rises, sitting in bed in a hoodie that no longer fits in the right places and boxers that suddenly feel too loose. Every time he ducks his head to look more closely at the small print prices on his laptop, his hair falls into his face, longer than he's ever worn his own.
He traces his fingers over the words he knows are looped across his collarbones, ink that he's never touched from this angle, looking down at such a sharp angle the letters blur. Once the flights are booked, it's easy to pack. There's a case out on his floor already, one he never put away when he got back from the latest tour, and he throws the first clothes he finds in his closet into it, not bothering to fold them or make them fit neatly. It doesn't really matter what he takes, he reasons. It's not really like it's going to fit him now.
In the end, he winds up with a spare hour before he has to call a cab to take him to the airport. He spends the time in front of his bathroom mirror, the light harsh against his pale skin, the hood of his hoodie pulled up, and none of it helps. The thick material disguises none of the new curves, and his hair pokes out from the sides of the hood, still out of control from a night tossing and turning in bed. He's wide-eyed and anxious; his expression is twisted and scared in a way he's never seen this face look before.
He spends the whole flight mentally preparing for what's about to happen next, for what will be waiting for him once they touch down in Jersey. He gazes at the in flight magazine without taking any of it in, ignores the safety talk before they take off the way he always does, and tries valiantly to ignore how thin his fingers are, shiny black nail varnish either side of the magazine, still callused but in different places. His clothes don't fit and there's no leg room on this flight. He's more uncomfortable than he can ever remember being.
He spends the whole flight preparing himself for it, but his brain still struggles to comprehend it, to catch up with what's going on and make sense of what's right in front of him when he knocks on Mikey and Alicia's door and he sees himself answer it, his eyes wide but his grin bright.
“We wondered when you'd show up,” the Pete in front of him says. “We thought it'd be sooner, but maybe you sleep better now than you used to.”
From somewhere inside, Mikey's voice calls, “Hey!”
“Hey, Alicia,” Pete says, and steps inside house when she moves back to make space for him.
--
“This is so fucking weird,” Mikey says in an almost awed tone, which Pete thinks is pretty much the understatement of the century. The three of them have gathered in Mikey and Alicia's kitchen, waiting for coffee, and Mikey is leaning back against the kitchen counter, looking between the two of them like he's watching the world's slowest tennis match. He's blinking more often than normal. “So fucking – it's so weird.”
Pete rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah.” It's weird on several levels, in fact, when he manages to think at least a little more coherently. He's still friends with Mikey and Alicia, still talks to the two of them a lot, through texts and emails and links to weird shit they all find on the internet, but this is the first time he's been to their house. This is the first time he's actually seen the two of them together since they got married.
Plus, he seems to have somehow, miraculously switched bodies with Alicia.
“What's it like?” Mikey asks.
“Having a dick is weird,” Alicia says, like it's the first thing on her mind, what she's been thinking about the whole time they've been standing in the kitchen. It probably is what she's been thinking about the whole time they've been standing in the kitchen. Pete can't blame her. It's taking a lot of effort not to just fixate on the whole having tits thing.
“It's like, science fiction shit,” Mikey says. He barely reacts to his wife talking about how she has a dick now. Pete guesses he probably isn't even all that bothered so much as he is intrigued about the whole thing. It was never Mikey who had a problem with the below the waist thing; he's probably genuinely more interested in the meaning and mechanics behind this has happening than anything else.
“You're loving this, aren't you,” Pete says accusingly, and Mikey shrugs tellingly at him. “So how do we turn back?”
It's Alicia who shrugs this time. “I have no idea. In the same way we got like this in the first place, I guess? Except I have no fucking idea how that happened. I was just sleeping.”
“Maybe,” Pete says, without much confidence, “we just need to sleep again. Maybe it's just some weird, like, dream shit.”
Alicia hums thoughtfully. “Well, you can stay. You can sleep in the spare room,” she says, and then shoots Mikey a wide smile when Mikey passes across her mug of coffee. “Thanks, babe.”
Pete really does have, he somewhat grudgingly has to admit, kind of big teeth.
--
The spare room, Pete thinks, shouldn't be called the spare room so much as it should be called Gerard's room. He unearths an old, crumpled, half-filled sketch book and three pencils from the bed, and when he wraps the covers around him, clad in a pair of pyjamas Alicia's given him, the sheets still smell strongly of smoke. It's comforting, somehow, though, to know that Alicia and Mikey – and by default, his body - are just across the hall.
He doesn't sleep much, but he's not really expecting to. He spends half the night with his hands clenched tightly at his sides, not touching any of this new body, and the rest of it tentatively creeping his fingertips up under the baggy, faded t-shirt to feel the smoothness of his skin before stopping when he imagines Alicia's reaction. He can feel himself blushing, turning red more easily than he usually does.
When he finally does fall asleep, the glowing numbers of the alarm clock on the bedside table tell him that it's nearing five a.m., that somehow a whole day has passed without Pete even knowing how.
When he wakes up, nothing has changed.
--
It's weird in ways Pete wouldn't have excepted.
It's weird whenever he looks in the mirror, obviously, or walks past any reflective surface and catches sight of his reflection out the corner of his eyes. It's weird when he gets dressed in the morning and looks down as he pulls his jeans up. It's fucking weird when he has to piss. The toilet seat is always cold.
It's also weird when he walks around, though, the weight distributed differently around his body. It throws him off balance. It's not like he starts bumping into things or falling over, but he feels like he has to move differently, somehow, that he has to pay more attention whenever he moves. He goes everywhere more slowly even though there's no reason for it, focused on the placement of his feet.
He keeps sitting on the couch, legs spread out wide, and sticking his hand down his pants only to be surprised every time.
Alicia rolls her eyes each time she catches him. “Stop feeling me up,” she says, and Pete can tell he's blushing again by the heat he feels creep into his cheeks.
Mikey just laughs, acting as though the whole thing is terribly funny. Pete guesses that maybe if the roles were reversed and he got to watch two people struggle to inhabit the wrong bodies, he might find it amusing too, but it's a situation that feels too far away for him to imagine.
--
Staying with Alicia and Mikey is kind of like a really prolonged sleepover, or a tour with fewer pranks and more showers. They all have weird sleeping patterns – Pete finds his insomnia doesn't disappear with his body, which he's kind of annoyed about, because he's sure he should be getting something out of this – and the three of them spend a lot of time on the couch, steadily working their way through the awesome movie collection that Alicia and Mikey have gathered together.
Pete remembers watching some of them with Mikey, curled up in his bunk back on Warped years ago. He tries not to think about that now, although it's hard. Mikey keeps smiling at him the way he used to back then, something slow and secret, like it's an automatic reaction every time he sees Alicia even though right now, seeing Alicia really means seeing Pete.
Alicia and Mikey still hold hands on the couch. It's a jolting sight, and mostly, Pete's glad that he squashes onto the couch with them instead of sitting in the chair. The couch is meant for two people, and the springs are going, and he feels like he's sinking down almost onto the floor each time he sits down and the cushions groan at his weight, but when they're next to him he can focus on the TV. He only catches sight of them together out the corner of his eyes and it's easy – or at least easier – to ignore some of the weirdness.
After a few days, he doesn't even feel the weirdness so much. It's not that he's used to it, to any of this, but he at least gets used to them. He works out how to use their complicated coffee machine after a lot of trial and error, and how their dishwasher works, and where to take the trash out to when it begins to overflow with old take out boxes. He likes feeling like he can at least be useful while he crashes with them for God knows how long. He stops feeling distant pangs of guilt when he sees and touches Alicia's naked body in the shower (she shrugs at him when he mentions this, gives him a small smirk and says, “Not like it's anything you haven't seen before, right?”) and starts wearing Mikey's hoodies. Back before he started buying them girls' sizes anyway, Pete never used to understand why his old girlfriends would always want to steal his hoodies, but he kind of gets it now. Mikey's really do feel more comfortable. It's like they're warmer, the sleeves long enough to comfortably cover his fingers.
Their cat still seems to hate him, though, no matter how helpful he is. He feels bad about it, a little worried that maybe it'll hate Alicia, too, whenever they finally change back, but then he spends an afternoon sitting cross-legged on the floor with Mikey, helping him dress it up in a tiny, cat-sized hoodie, and changes his opinion. He thinks the cat probably just hates the world at large, with the occasional exception of whoever last fed it.
“I miss Hemmy,” Pete says, with a sigh and a sudden burst of longing. He'd barely been home a week before he had to take him back to his parents to come here. Mikey gives him a sympathetic look.
“You could probably get him a matching hoodie when you get home,” Mikey suggests. “I can find the website later if you want.”
The thought cheers Pete up a bit.
Alicia goes out grocery shopping that afternoon, which is really just code for junk food and pet food, because they can get everything else delivered. When she gets home, she stands in the doorway for a while, just looking at them. Pete doesn't even realise she's back until Mikey says, without even looking up, “Hey, 'Licia,” like he has some weird, sixth sense for her. Pete thinks that maybe he does. Maybe it's a married couple thing. He turns around to look at her.
“You fucking losers,” she says, and laughs. There's a weird look on her face, and it takes Pete a moment or two to place it as the sort of fondness that's so strong he can never quite hold it in.
--
Pete doesn't know how exactly he stumbles into their bedroom at four in the morning, half asleep and trying to feel his way to the bathroom. He's been staying with them long enough now that he knows the apartment like the back of his hand, and Mikey and Alicia's room is at the other end of the hall. It's just something about the darkness and his foggy brain, the unfamiliarity of Alicia's body that still hasn't quite faded away yet, or maybe it's just that a lifetime of touring has finally fucked his sense of direction up once and for all. Whatever it is, he opens the wrong door, disorientated and dazed, and pauses as soon as he realises. He can't help but stare, taking in the double bed illuminated by slices of moonlight cutting through the gaps left in the curtains.
For a second, he can't bring himself to look away – he can barely even blink. He's seen them on the couch together before, holding hands, and even seen them kiss goodnight, although nothing more than a peck on the lips, which he doubts is their normal routine. This is different.
This is still them, but it's him.
He never got to sleep in a bed like this with Mikey, not even on their rare hotel nights because of how difficult getting people to switch rooms always turned out to be. The black sheets make them both look paler then normal, and the dark ink of the tattoos on Pete's arm stand out, stark against Mikey's chest. They look – they look fucking great together, Pete thinks, and his breath catches in his throat before he makes himself move. He closes the door as quietly as he can behind him.
He goes straight back to his room before he remembers that he got up in the first place to take a leak, and has to drag himself back out of bed. He pads softly to the bathroom and doesn't let himself so much as glance back around at the other door.
Back in bed, he's wide awake again, staring up at the ceiling as his thoughts begin to buzz. He can't get the image out of his head, stop thinking about how they look. His stomach twists uncomfortably and all his blood feels like it's running too hot.
It takes him a while to realise that it's not just jealousy he's feeling.
--
Pete takes his showers hot. He likes the temperature turned up high enough for the water to turn his skin red and to fill the room with steam. It makes him feel more refreshed, and he likes the way the steam blurs everything he looks at, including the body he sees when he looks down.
He still feels guilty that he gets to see Alicia's body like this, essentially without her permission, even though she waves the issue off because of their lack of other options. It's increasingly out of a sense of obligation more than anything else, though, which in turn makes him feel even worse – because he knows this is how he should feel about it, but he's seen her body before and he's always going to want to see her again. It's Alicia, after all, and he's only human. Ever since he saw Alicia and Mikey asleep together he's had thoughts of the two of them circling around his mind, flashes bare skin and long limbs behind his eyelids every time he closes his eyes.
In the shower, under the steady stream of hot water beating down on his back, Pete rests his hand over the sharp bone of Alicia's hip for a few moments before slowly sliding it downward. His palm moves easily over his wet skin. He hasn't done this, yet, hasn't touched himself in this body even though at times it's all he's been able to think about, but the thing is, he remembers.
He remembers how she'd react whenever he touched her like this, what speed and what pressure made her bite her lip and gasp the most, and he understands it, now. Hand between his legs, fingers rubbing fast, heat in his stomach building and building, his other hand splayed against the shower wall for balance, he bites his lip and gasps and shudders the way she used to.
The way he knows she must with Mikey, the way Mikey used to make him shake apart.
--
Sitting with them on the couch, taking the dogs out for walks with them, Pete wonders if they can tell what he's been thinking about. It's been a while now, days creeping into weeks, and Pete has slotted neatly into their routine, into their lives and their home. He's still trapped as Alicia and she's still stuck as him, but there's still nothing they can do other than wait it out. It still makes him feel halfway to going crazy, waking up every morning when he manages to sleep to find that he's not exactly himself, but Pete's used to the room now, to the sheets with their permanent cigarette smell, to the way Alicia's skin feels underneath his fingertips again.
The only thing that's really changed is that when the three of them hang out now, curled up under blankets on the couch, quoting whatever they wind up watching back at each other, Pete's mind wanders. He catches them glancing at each other, sharing short, private looks, and the lights from the TV throw flickering shadows over their faces that make their expressions hard to read. He wonders, sometimes, if they know what it is he thinks about when he can't sleep, if it's what they're silently communicating about.
Pete knows he's always either terrible or too good at hiding things, and with something like this, he has no idea.
He tries to keep his eyes fixed on the TV screen.
--
Pete is in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee machine, zoned out the way he always is early in the morning running on not enough sleep. He's not paying attention to his surroundings; he jumps half a mile when a hand settles on his waist from behind him, someone creeping up behind him when without him even noticing them enter the room.
He looks down and sees his own hand, the familiar lines and shapes of his tattoos, his fingers resting at the waistband of Alicia's jeans. It's still hard to make sense of what he's seeing.
“Well, good morning,” he says, and laughs, and is proud when the sound comes out only a little too loud and strained. He trails off as Alicia hooks her chin over his shoulder. It's just plain fucking weird, the two of them the wrong way round like this, but that's not why Pete feels so hot all of a sudden.
“Why are you still sleeping in that spare room?” she asks, and Pete swallows hard. They've both adjusted a little, but that doesn't mean he wants to leave yet, to go back to his own house, all the same walls surrounding him while he's the wrong person.
“I thought,” he begins, but she shakes her head, her chin digging into his shoulder. He stops.
“I mean,” she says, and she sounds almost amused, “why are you still sleeping on your own?”
Pete swallows hard again, different reasons. “What?”
“I've seen the way he looks at you,” Alicia says.
“Because I'm like – it's because I'm you.”
“And I've seen the way he looks at me now,” she continues. “You have no idea, do you? You've been here all this time and you can't see the way he looks at both of us?”
“What?” Pete repeats, stupidly, and her fingertips dip down just under his waistband, just for a second, the ghost of a real touch. Goosebumps spring up all over his skin. He notices that she's painted his nails with her black nail varnish; it's chipping away around the edges.
“We like having you here,” she says, slowly. “And it's not just because of this.” She gestures down at him, losing the contact of her hand but still pressed up close behind him. “It's because you're you. You know you're hot, don't even give me that shit, and it's 'cause we're us, even when, you know, we're not. It's... the three of us.”
“You and Mikey are married,” Pete points out helpfully. Just in case she's saying what he thinks she's trying to say, just in case they've all forgotten this somewhere along the line. He twists around a little awkwardly to face her, standing too close, and Alicia gives him a look like she can't believe how stupid he's being. It's much more familiar territory for Pete.
“I know that. We know that, it's not just me saying this, you know that, right? He's too fucking lame to talk to you himself. You know what he's like.”
Pete laughs, helpless, because he does. He knows what they're both like, and they know him, and maybe that's why he's struggling to keep up with what he's saying, because he's been missing that one, vital point. She's still smirking at him, just this side of smug. “What the fuck?” he asks. He runs a hand through his hair in a nervous habit that he can't let go of, even though his fingers get caught up in tangles now it's long like this. “Shit. I don't even – are you fucking with me?” He knows, somehow, that she isn't, even though Alicia is second only to Mikey in keeping a straight face when she's screwing with someone. The whole body swapping mess is more than enough – they both know that.
“Pete,” she says, tilting her head to the side. “Pete. I'm not fucking with you, don't be a dick.” She takes his hand in hers. Pete looks down at the tangle of their fingers. “Just come to fucking bed and help me wake Mikey up.”
--
Mikey is actually awake already when Pete lets Alicia lead him into their bedroom. He blinks at them both with sleepy eyes and says, “What took you so long?”
Pete laughs again just because he has no fucking idea.
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Date: 2010-12-23 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-11 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-01-11 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-01-11 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-23 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-01-11 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-24 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-11 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-24 08:26 am (UTC)I loved it when they all squish together on the couch.
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Date: 2011-01-11 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-01-11 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-12-30 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-11 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-03 06:23 pm (UTC)This was a fantastic story! I really enjoyed the characterizations, the complex relationships among them, the way Pete felt seeing Mikey sleep with his body in a read bed.
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Date: 2011-01-11 05:56 pm (UTC)