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Michael hasn’t jerked off in two weeks, at least.
This was the obvious unposed problem of sharing a room with his brother, worsened by the shower being inexplicably located in that very bedroom. The nail in the coffin comes — lucky it — when Michael, done pissing and half-hard from literally nothing, puts his hand to the doorknob and finds the single bathroom in this evil fucking house doesn’t even have a lock.
He bangs his head on the tiles till Sam yells that he’s gonna kill his remaining brain cells that way. That does deflate what he had of a boner, at least.
It isn’t like he’s some porn-addicted loser who can’t go a few days without getting off. (And thank God he’s not; if the only video store in town even has an adult film section, he’s not gonna ask his mom to find out.) It’s just — there’s been a lot for his dick to be excited about, in Santa Carla. Copious amounts of weed, adrenaline rushes, and Star, twinkling her corner of the constellation of Lost Boys. They’ve made out — him and Star — a few times, but he refuses to make his neglected dick her problem. He's more serious about her than he'd ever admit to her face.
Which is why he waits for her to leave the docks before complaining: “Man, I wish I had all that room—” Dwayne and Marko have been arguing about which one of them deserves the biggest empty-storage-space-call-it-a-bedroom. Their Coronado is a legend to Michael, a teenage-boy Eden free of parents and annoying little brothers, lit by Star shine... Not that he’s ever been. In the week since he slugged David in the face and earned his approval, he’s been dragged to every Lost Boy show and smoking session and bay dip, but has stopped short of actually going to the warehouse. Star’s insistent on that. “Me and Sam are practically on top of each other. I never get any damn privacy.”
He didn’t say it outright, but this group catches on fast. Marko, in a high-pitched coo, says, “Aw, is your little Mikey lacking attention?” and Paul wacks him upside the head with a “gross, dude, don’t say that,” that gets Marko tussling with him. It also gets Marko’s hand off of where it had teasing-rested on Michael’s thigh. He puts in the effort to be relieved about this.
“If you ever want some space, our home is always open to you,” David lilts. His too-sharp canines glint in the lamppost florescence. “For whatever you need.”
“But not,” Paul clarifies, “as a place to jerk off.”
David repeats: “For whatever he needs. Now, Michael...” His tongue is pink and visible in his mouth, articulating over his name: ‘My-kull’, like each syllable is its own word. David always says his name like that. It’s a singer thing, is Michael’s current hypothesis. “Wouldn’t you get us some popcorn? Our Star went out in search of pigeons, but she may fly home if we have something to feed them here.”
“Seriously?” Michael asks. He’s still damp from Dwayne pulling him into the bay, and this late it’s too dark and cold for him to have gotten at all dry. And anyway, this is barely a task — seems a pretty obvious getting-rid-of-him.
“It will make Star happy,” David sing-songs. “And me.”
Michael wishes his cold, wet shorts would do their part to suffocate the on-again-off-again boner. It's flared up by the prospect of a maybe-place to get it off, and figures it might not be the worst idea, to get away. “Fine,” he agrees.
It's a moot point, probably. Paul seemed pretty against the idea — and, for the record, a rock boyband's dank warehouse isn’t Michael's ideal place to get off; he’s just desperate. Probably not that desperate. Yet. And besides, he hasn’t been to the Coronado at all, nevermind going there alone, and he can’t imagine he ever would have the excuse to, unless he made some sort of deal with David…
That is an option, Michael supposes, while getting on a Friday evening-typical concession line. He’s done enough for the guy. David likes making requests, always in that low pitch that transforms his wheedling for popcorn, or dropped guitar picks, or a message passed to some tourist (didn’t even matter; the girl was gone from town the next day) into something more like a challenge. But these challenges are always small, easily-met, and paid-quickly. Past payments include: a pat on the cheek, a joint-pressed-to-lips, and, earlier that night, a drawled ‘good job, Michael’ that had him walking stiff till Dwayne pulled them all into the waves.
It’s a game.
He’s still learning the rules, but maybe — vis-a-vis alone time in the Coronado — he can add some rules of his own.
As he’s dropping a quarter in the tired-clerk's tip jar, he spots a familiar flow of locs and purple skirt. He grins. “Hey, Star!”
She turns to him, eyes wide with the relief he’s come to expect from her. He gets it; seeing her always has him grateful that she hasn’t skipped town or decided she has better things to do than mess around with him. “Hey there.”
“Hey,” he says, again, stupidly, then: “Does a place this busy get many pigeons?”
She furrows her brow, and falls into step beside him. “What?”
“Uh, David said you were out looking for pigeons?” Her incredulous scoff gets him acquainted with the likelihood that David was fucking with him. “That’s what the popcorn is for. Feeding them.”
She stares at him in complete bafflement for the length of three paces, before laughing. “Oh, Moonbeam…” She takes his hand and laces their fingers together. “You’re right. There's less foot traffic by the Santa Carla sign — let’s go.”
“Sure, but David asked—” He turns to jab a thumb back towards the guys, but at some point in his waiting-around, all their motorcycles had vanished, leaving his lonely. He sighs. “Nevermind. Let’s feed some pigeons.”
She smiles, and squeezes his hand, and he figures he can save that conversation with David for another night.
Michael’s dancing on the edge of the sky.
This is the show, this is the fucking show, in a bar basement opened to him by Star sweettalking a bouncer. David got them drinks and Dwayne lit up a joint, but those drugs pale against what's onstage: David and Star’s voices going through the stages of love-marriage-babies in one golden instant. Waspbuzz and birdsong shot out through the ear-aching speakers. He feels the magnetism of them — his head wants to pillow on David’s thigh, Star’s hand petting his hair — or, no, Star’s thigh, David’s hand —
During the opening set, they'd surrounded him. Circling like sharks, moving to music far worse than theirs, crowding in with the inelegant masses just to dance on Michael’s every side. Star put her hand to the back of his neck, kissed him deep and metallic and sharp, and then performed a magic trick; when he opened his eyes, she was behind him, forehead to his shoulderblades. David was before him. He pulled Michael close to dance, metal jacket spikes lit every color of an oil slick.
Their bodies aren't around him, now, but their music is, and, hell. It's good fucking music. Michael gets another beer from David’s bartender friend, as his Lost Boys (and girl) cast their divinity out over the undeserving room. Well, the Lost Boys absent Dwayne. He’d been circling the opening band and, after their set, he'd drawn away the bassist — a scrawny blonde boy, maybe a year his junior — with an undeniable hunger. Impossible, damnable hunger, and Michael had felt it, just as stomach-growling, when David grabbed his neck, pulled Michael’s ear to his mouth— “Star and I have a new song for you. You’ll pay attention?”
He couldn’t breathe, despite the lax of David’s hold. His affirmation “I will, I will,” was barely audible even before Star kissed it off his mouth.
“Good,” she said, and shoved him into the crowd.
He danced. The sea of beautiful people swallowed him into their writhing mass, moving to the interim DJ’s tracks. A lovely girl placed a pill under his tongue and he swallowed easy. His neck was sore, his ribs too, sweet jostling pressure on every side, and then the Lost Boys took to stage, and Star smiled right at him, and this, he thought, this is the fucking night.
He wakes up to the taste of sick, the sight of a dark backroom, and the feel of a hand smoothing over his hair. He turns his face into his pillow and breathes in the smell: leather and potsmoke and the unavoidable underscent of postshow teenage boyhood. Said pillow shifts below him as David coos, “Well, good morning, Michael,” with a tug on his hair sharp enough he nearly forgets the moment-ago tenderness.
“Shit,” Michael whines out a mewlish sound he’s embarrassed of. “What time is it?”
“Near four.” Michael notes an ache in chest as he stands. Ache in his legs, his throat, too. Good to keep track of that. He remembers listing those same symptoms out to a juvie doctor, sat next to the cop who’d picked him up for underage drinking and disorderly conduct. He’d blamed the bruises on a mosh pit and, as reward for sticking to that story, he got nothing more than boxed ears from his dad, in the car outside the station.
Ugh. No point dwelling on that.
“All the other boys are out partying,” David continues. He swirls his index finger over the rim of a beer bottle — there’s a barely-lit shelf of alcohol in the corner, and Michael has to guess this is some greenroom of the venue. “And here I am, taking care of you.”
“What about Star?” Michael rifles through his jacket pockets — he’s got a dollar (he’d left the house with a ten and change), the guitar pick he nicked from Marko, and the key to his house. All expected, aside from the scrap of paper with a number and ‘when you need more E ;)’ scribbled on it. He crumbles it up.
Not any time soon.
“You can say ‘thank you’,” David complains. “You missed our new song, you know. We skipped out on our encore to look for you, and there you were, passed out in the bathroom. Paul had to carry you up! Have you considered Star might be upset with you?” Michael meets his gaze for five seconds, before David relents. “She isn’t, by the way.”
“Didn’t think she would be.” He does feel bad, actually. Not that he knows much of music beyond how you can propel yourself through space with it, but he always feels cradled by their songs, and imagine, how it would have felt, hearing one written for him. “...Thank you.”
This gets the full grin. “Michael! You are welcome.” David's looking down at his crouched-over posture, thigh a half-foot west of Michael’s face. Michael could lean there again. If he were more drunk. “She’s with the boys. She wanted to be the one to fawn over you, but, well... I won that privilege.” He extends his hand, and, what the hell?, like Michael’s gonna rest his face in the curl of David’s fingers just cause—
He realizes, a second later, it’s to help him up.
He takes the hand, and with it, a resolution to never again accept pills from strangers. It must be somewhere in his system still.
“I can’t fathom what issue your dad took with you,” David says, apropos of nothing, once they are eye-to-eye. “You’re so obedient. I was a nightmare for mine.” His gaze takes post at the hold of Michael’s hand in his, his thumb brushing back and forth over the side of his palm.
Michael pulls away. He’s unsure about this overwhelm, this intimacy with some guy he barely knows. Sure, David’s seen the bruises — Marko practically wrestled the shirt off of him, the first time they went swimming — but it was like he knew even before. Maybe it’s obvious to anyone who has been that sort of target. “Well, it matters who’s asking. Pretty sure, the way I acted, Dad would’ve called me a nightmare, too.”
David watches him for a long moment. “But you’ll do what I ask? What Star asks?” It prickles his skin, to be so directly asked. Dredging out into light something Michael thought would stay dark and obscured, not subject to the firm press of David’s insistence. “Well, except stay awake for the special song we wrote you.”
“In my defense—” He doesn’t have much of one. This is always his issue, when Sam cons him out of quarters and makes him play arcade fighting games: he can get good hits in, but whatever blow he takes cripples him. “I think I was awake, for that part. Only, I couldn't hear well too well over the vomiting. What was the song?”
“Hmm…” He leans forward and taps Michael on the nose. “You’ll just have to come to the show tomorrow and see.” Switch-flip, he’s back to playful intensity. His hand hasn’t fallen far from Michael’s face, so it’s easy for David to grab him by the chin. “If you miss that one, I will be upset. But I know you won’t.”
His face is so close. He smells like metal, leather, sweat, and the fumes of hair products Michael has never figured out how to use. It makes him dizzy. “You think you know a lot about me.”
“More even than you do, ‘Moonbeam’.” Michael flushes. What is sweet and teasing coming from Star makes him feel like a dumb kid when cooed by David. “Your brother has been taken in by new friends, your mom’s date on Tuesday went very well. Your wear three times the cologne, since Star has taken to you —” He looks over Michael, dips his gaze low, and grins. “And I am guessing you haven’t yet gotten that privacy, have you?”
Michael’s nineteen next month and, as such, is above getting flustered over a boner. His own damn fault, for wearing tight jeans just cause Star complimented them once. He shrugs. “I got an offer who never followed up.”
“You're the one who never comes by,” David pouts. There’s a slight flash of canines, over the turned lip. “It's no Coronado, but... the bar is closed. The room is yours.” He lets go of Michael’s chin to spread his hands. “Unless you'd rather I take you home?”
“Here works.” Star’s specific condition, vis a vis the Coronado, was he couldn’t go there without her. She then proceeded to be wrought with never-before-mentioned plans the two nights Michael was invited over. He's getting the sense it's a condition she’ll never let be filled, but he won’t go behind her back. “You’re serious? No one will come around?”
“No other beating hearts in the building. It’s just you and me.”
“You can’t know that,” Michael says, with not-quite-surety. Musicians have always been mysteries to him, and David particularly is… strange.
David hums, then begins patting rhythmically on his shoulder, a pattern it takes Michael a moment to realize is in the same time, exactly, as his quick-skipping heart. “Listen for it. It’s music, Michael,” David says, able to tell Michael’s figured it out. “I’d use it as a beat, for Paul — no, it’s too fast. Is your blood hurrying somewhere?” He shoves Michael in the shoulder, and perches on the opposite end of the couch, maybe a half foot between them. It’s the farthest they’ve been all night. “You can take care of that.”
Michael realizes, David never specified in his offers that he wouldn’t be present. Michael had assumed — of course, he had. Sure, David is strange, cloying and coiling, indicative in his tone and dress and the way he breathed in against Michael’s neck when he’d taught him guitar. But Michael had assumed… He’d had to. Watching another guy jerk off isn’t an option for boys with dads like theirs. “This isn't really private.”
“Private from the world, I meant. Do you want me to leave?” Michael scoffs, but before he can turn his head to the side, David grabs his chin. “Use your words, Michael.”
He’s flushed from ear to nose to ear, and it’s a wonder there’s enough blood to rush to his dick. It’s the drugs-weed-alcohol in his system. It’s Star’s earlier kiss. It’s his desire to not be alone. He answers, “No.”
“That is very good to hear.” Michael’s glad someone’s happy about this — really. He himself is too nervous to be excited, embarrassed at the idea of David seeing his dick, a part of him only known by himself, two girls from his high school, and one thirty-something bartender in a shitty music venue in Phoenix. Those had all been in the dark, and none had the grand intensity of David’s steady gaze.
He sticks a hand in his pants artlessly; he has none of David’s elegance, and doesn't want to pretend he does. He keeps his head downturned. Gaze focused on the movement of his fingers through tight denim, one stroke and another before David orders: “Eyes on me.”
He does, of course, as he’s told.
“Attaboy.” David’s pupils are wide, mouth parted to that glimpse of teeth. “I won’t have you acting shy. You're too bright to keep to yourself.”
“Nah, that's not me,” Michael says, with whatever he has left of a brain. After weeks of neglect, his dick is rapturous at being touched, even like this, light over sweat-damp fabric. “You're thinking of Star.”
“Oh, can't it be both?” His hand has fallen from Michael's chin to his neck, idly stroking over the tendons. “But I'm glad you see how bright she is. I wouldn't share her with anyone who couldn't." Michael doesn't often think about it, what underlies his and David's camaraderie. When he does, he's always assured himself that he and Star are musicians, free-love remnants of the polyamorous revolution from before his time, that he isn't encroaching on anything. “Like I wouldn't share you with anyone who didn't think you were special.” But it seems to matter, to David, that it's him. “Star does.”
Thinking of Star — her fingers on his earlobe, her song in his head, the sharp pierce of needle, Star, choosing him — he palms over his shaft. Breath hissed out through teeth. “Yeah?”
“Oh, she likes you a lot. More than she should, I told her. But she is… stubborn.”
“I've noticed,” Michael affirms. He draws out another long stroke — it’s more foreplay than he usually does, but David’s approval is a physical weight on him, settling softly, same as his fingers over Michael’s on the guitarstrings.
“What a shame.” David traces his knuckle slowly over a smile that looks almost real. “I'd thought maybe she'd listen to you. Well, I doubted it, but I wanted to have you try.”
“Who says I’d take your side over hers?”
“No one. That is why we need you.” David’s hand presses to his own neck — hand to collarbone, button undone.
Michael's breath catches.
This seems an invitation good as any, to slip his pants and briefs down to his knees. David watches with grinning curiosity, so pleased Michael thinks he might just be laughing at him. He would glance down, check that his dick doesn’t look, like, laughable—
But David didn’t tell him he could look away.
“It will be wonderful, the three of us.” David insists. He plays with another button, circling his thumb over its smooth edges. “Once we’re all together, Star will need something new to argue about with me.”
Michael rubs thumb in circles over the head of his dick. “What, I’m some princess whose hand you’re fighting over?”
“More a tug of war rope.” Not a bad idea — he pulls experimentally on the base of his dick, and, fuck, he doesn’t remember the last time he had pressure, like that. “But a prize, too.”
“For whoever wins?”
“I imagine we’ll have to share. Take turns. You’ll be both of ours.”
This is stated matter of fact, spoken clear and obvious and by the party not currently dick-in-hand. But for all the teasing, touching, Michael didn’t — “I didn’t know you wanted to have me.”
David actually laughs at this. “I told you! The first night we met.”
“That’s just a song. You play it every time.”
“To someone, always. Someone I want.” A musician, throwing out the kind of line his dad reeled his mom in with. Fake as anything, and he wants to hear infinities more bullshit, from David. “I was singing to you, before I even knew Star had picked you.”
“You weren’t.”
“I was.” Michael’s attempts at slow-stroke have gotten a little rushed, and he takes his hand out to spit in it — but he looks at that sharp, wet mouth so close, and thinks he can — “You were like a stray,” David says, between presses of his lips to Michael’s knuckles. “All that growling bravado… But you just needed a hand to feed you.” With that, he takes two of Michael’s fingers in his mouth. His teeth scrape against new callouses (he’s been practicing guitar, what-of-it) but stops short of breaking skin. Michael thinks, horny and stupid, he’d gladly have his blood in David’s mouth.
When David has decided Michael’s hand is sufficiently damp, he wrenches his head away. This, of anything, has him truly flushed, curling and uncurling his fists, breath too rapid for a being who seems seldom troubled by things so mundane as air. Michael takes one of those unsure hands and settles it on his knee. Returns his wet fingers to his dick. “That doesn’t—” because he’s remembered they are, nominally, having a conversation “—sound very complimentary.”
“Star was worse.” David’s head is tilted away — (Michael’s never seen him lose a thing, and here he is, floundering in a battle with want) — but his body is close-pressed to Michael, shoulder-to-shoulder, palm kneading against his lower thigh. “You’re her lost little lamb.”
This isn’t much of a surprise. She’s so gentle with him, petting his hair and kissing close-mouthed and never letting him so near as to see whatever she considers so deadly about her. He thought David might be different. He’d wanted him to hit back, after the punch, wanted blood and bruises paid back and earned—
Rather than all this comfort.
“Is that why? Is it for Star?” He can hear it, frozen in his head, same as earlier: use your words, Michael. “You pick people to have, each night. I don’t see them all around. You’re not — doing special songs. For them.”
David chuckles, his breath hitting Michael’s chin. He’s close-by. Michael isn’t far, either. “Maybe we do. You haven’t heard all our songs.” He leans in further, nose to shoulder, then neck, then veered fast to put his lips to Michael’s ear, tongue darting out, just off the lobe. Michael realizes — he’s eating out the fucking earring. “No. You are special, Michael. Not just to Star. You’re going to be one of us. You’re going to be one of mine.” His hand slides up, pressed against and into the flesh of Michael’s bare inner thigh. “I can have anyone. You, I intend to keep.”
That about does it for him.
The heat of David’s hand and the echo of keep in his head and a few more quirk jerks and Michael comes, held against David’s side. That voice cooing out “good, good,” so confident Michael might just believe it, too.
He regains his senses a moment later, legs shaking and sweat-damp. David is petting his hair, shushing and humming, Michael’s head pulled into his shoulder. The hum has the shape of a song, his usual rock-style reformatted for lullaby. Michael could sleep, like this. He nearly does. He half-opens an eye to look up at David, lovely, skin and leather shining in the lowlight—
And he notices the come he got on the couch.
He sits to attention, heart racing once again. Idiot. He got fucking jizz, on a stranger’s couch, in a stranger’s bar — hell, he got some on David, he made a mess he made a fucking mess he needs to — “Fuck! Sorry, sorry, I’ll clean this—”
“Michael! Michael. Slow.” David holds still Michael's face. There’s no pulse against his skin, nothing like the jackrabbit thumping David can surely feel, his pinky on Michael’s throat. “This is nothing.” As if to prove, he glides his thumb over the white speck on his leather jacket, and sticks it in his mouth. This doesn’t do much to slow Michael’s heartrate. “I’ll clean up.”
Michael stands, sticks himself back in his briefs and shuffles on his jeans. He’s barely clothed for a moment before David is guiding him back down onto the couch. “I said, I’ll take care of it. Sit.”
Michael flushes, but doesn’t try to stand again. David drops his jacket, strips off his shirt, wets it with what’s left in the beer bottle, and uses that to clean the couch. Humming all the while. “You’re so fucking weird,” Michael comments.
“An absolute nightmare, I’ve heard.”
“Nah. Feverdream, though.”
David smiles. Call Michael an idiot, but it feels real. “I can accept that.” Considering the job well-enough-done, David shrugs the jacket over his bare chest. (The light is low, but Michael has seen him shirtless, before. He remembers where pale scarlines cross that expanse of skin.) “You’re not going to thank me?”
“You didn’t let me help!”
David waves this off with a lithe hand he then uses to haul Michael up to standing. “Come to the Coronado. That’s how you can thank me.” Michael rolls his eyes, and David plows forward. “You can have a room there. A place to yourself. All the privacy you could want.”
“Privacy, with you watching me?” David shrugs, ever-enigmatic. “Star doesn’t want me going there without her.”
“Don’t worry, lamb. Your shepherd will be there. We all will.” His hands trace from Michael’s shoulders, down to his elbows, to hold his hands. “The six of us. Like it should be.” He looks so sharp, every edge jagged and bloody. But his voice and touch are soft as cotton gauze, sweet like honey and safe like the home Michael had for his first ten years. “Tell me you’ll go.”
Star will worry, but she won’t tell him why he should stay away. Why he shouldn’t accept and honor any command David gives him, when it gives him back a sense of place, an anchorhold of some grand belonging.
Michael swallows. “I will.”