
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/848602.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Original_Work
  Additional Tags:
      Underage_Sex, well_one_is_underage_and_the_other_is_immortal, you_know
      how_it_goes, way_more_ruminations_on_Mormonism_than_were_warranted
      considering_I_did_no_research, surprise_god_cameos!
  Series:
      Part 2 of Guitar_Hero_Series
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-06-19 Words: 4388
****** Kids and Heroes ******
by lynadyndyn
Summary
     "Yeah, that's what I want on my death certificate. Cause of death:
     overdosed on lube."
Rebecca Tietney was one of those mothers, Jeremy's own mother would have said
darkly; the kind of parent who opened up the liquor cabinet at parties because
it was better to have the kids drinking in the safety of her home rather than
outside it where safety was not guaranteed. She may have been regretting this
policy lately, as Rog and Jeremy were making friends with a college and post-
college crowd that was not always respectful with free alcohol. But her
philosophy was still clearly that kids were determined to make endless hurtful
mistakes and her job was primarily damage control, because when they went up to
Rog's room with their avocado sandwiches a pile of condoms, looking not unlike
gummy candy, and a few sample packets of lube were lying on top of Roger's
folded laundry.
"She got flavored lube," Rog marveled, crinkling the plastic between his
fingers. Jeremy was sorting the condoms into piles by color. He vaguely wanted
Skittles. "Where did she even find that in Utah? She must have ordered it off
the internet."
"She's very thoughtful," Jeremy said. They were both stubbornly determined to
avoid the implication that Rebecca assumed they were doing more in the basement
than writing songs and punching each other. Even at their least savory, Rog
just smoked up while Jeremy burned mixes of his favorite Pavement songs. But
Rebecca had only met Finn once and very briefly, even though Finn was a signal
flare of a person, the human equivalent of the sparks you saw when you pressed
your fingers against your closed eyelids. If she had made any connections there
Rebecca wouldn't be this oblique about it.
Roger made a noise of agreement, smoothing the packet between his index and
middle finger so the liquid inside collected at the bottom. He looked at Jeremy
from underneath his hair. It was at an awkward stage right now, growing out
before he could do anything interesting with it. "Dare you to put it in your
sandwich."
"Yeah, that's what I want on my death certificate. Cause of death: overdosed on
lube."
Rog rolled his eyes. "It's edible, Motard. Otherwise it wouldn't be flavored."
Rog had given him a Chinese burn when Jeremy told him this in fifth grade, but
his power animal was a badger. Rog had been upset because of the allegations of
near-sighted and rolly-pollyness, but Jeremy had mostly meant that he never,
ever gave up once he got an idea. He just kept snuffling and digging and making
increasingly hurtful and heretical snipes about Joseph Smith. Jeremy had
learned a long time ago to roll gently into the onslaught rather than struggle;
the same principle applied to a bear attack or the undertow. It was practically
Confucian. "What do I get?"
"My respect?" Rog said, hopefully.
"Your respect and twenty bucks," Jeremy said.
Rog considered it. "You got to use the whole thing up. And then eat the whole
sandwich. And not hurl."
"Deal," Jeremy said. He was a man of his word, but Rog was as suspicious as a
BBC detective and poured it on Jeremy's sandwich himself, oozing out every last
potential drop.
Jeremy figured it wouldn't be so bad since avocado was a domineering texture,
but he took one bite and Rog started cackling like an evil little monkey at the
expression on his face. Jeremy glared at him and forced himself to swallow.
"Oh, eff you in the a, Tietney."
"What's it taste like?" Rog asked with genuine curiosity. "Does it taste like
strawberries?"
Jeremy ate another mouthful, mulling it over. "It's like if a tub of Vaseline
had sex with a jolly rancher." He hadn't been minding it so much until the
analogy brought it home and he made an urping noise.
"Hold the line," Rog said sternly. "Hold it."
"You better have that twenty on you." The back of Jeremy's throat was
definitely sour now under the layer of artificial sweetener, bilious.
Rog fished a crumpled bill out of his pocket and waved it in front of his nose.
"Smell it, Motard. Smell the money. Smell how sweet it is, like freedom."
"All I smell is your ball sweat," Jeremy said, but he finished his sandwich
without incident and Roger handed over the twenty. Jeremy suspected
uncomfortably that Rog would have found an excuse to give it to him regardless.
He wasn't homeless, technically, or starving even in the hypothetical, but
Jeremy's finances were in a nebulous state, worrying and unclear as theoretical
mathematics and just as easy to ignore in his daily life. He had avoided his
parents or they, with an unexpected finesse, had been avoiding him, for two
months at the least, but there was always food at home and a place to sleep at
the Tietney's. Still, he had lost that job at the Pretzel Hut when band
practice took precedent over responsibility, although he would argue in a
conversation he felt coming that his responsibilities had shifted and he was
beholding to a different family now. And when that conversation came, he
wouldn't feel comfortable mooching off Rebecca and Jake afterwards, even though
that was so seductive, falling into the well of their kindness. Even in the
here and now, he didn't want to give his parents ammunition; he needed new
guitar strings and he was gee-dee sure that he wasn't going to have to tell
them their money was paying for them. And Rog generally knew Jeremy's slippery
internal processes like it was his job, which maybe it was in the fiercely
loyal mess of his own brain.
The guitar string plan, however, only lasted as long as it took Finn to call
him about Chinese that night. "Bill and Harry's," he said. Finn never exactly
purred but everything he said sounded velvet anyway. "They're doing some two-
for-one special on appetizers and Stace wants vegetable dumplings."
So Stacy would be there. That didn't rule out necessarily that it was a date -
Finn's social boundaries were uneven and mysterious - but he felt a roil of
disappointment all the same. "Would it be okay if we ordered spareribs too? I'm
seriously craving some meat." Jeremy's whole face went hot when he realized
what he had said. He bit his lip to keep from backpedaling; it would only make
him seem more retarded.
But Finn just laughed. "No, it's cool. You gotta have pig at a Chinese place.
Veggies over here, they get so excited about tofu and assumes the Chinese all
subscribe this meatless, ascetic lifestyle, but really in China if you go one
meal without pork they look at you funny."
"Yeah," Jeremy said agreeably, like this was something he could have possibly
known. "So, see you at six?"
"Six works," Finn said. His voice went a little lower, conspiratorial. "And
just so you know, it took a lot of effort not to say I was going to help you
out with your obvious protein deficiency."
"Us growing boys," Jeremy squeaked, not a little dizzy, and hung up before he
had a seizure.
Roger was giving him a look, brows drawn together, thoughtful and not so much
aggrieved as grimly unimpressed. "What?" Jeremy said.
Roger rolled his eyes and threw a condom at his head.
***
Stacy was straight-edge and a lot more ballsy about being an ex-mo than Jeremy,
although a sharp and gristly part of him complained that her parents hadn't cut
off her tuition when she told them or even when she came home with green bangs
and a Marilyn piercing. She was rebelling with bowling bumpers. But Jeremy
liked her; she was older than he was and smart and funny and hugely
enthusiastic about the band in the way only someone without much musical
expertise could be. No technical critique just a possessive love.
Right now Jeremy was drinking an orange soda and staring at her tattoos. She
had a half-sleeve on her forearm, koi fish intertwining, speckled sunset colors
pooling together on her wrist while she and Finn talked about politics. Jeremy
was still slightly terrified someone were going to jump them anytime one of his
friends said the word Iraq.
Jeremy was thinking of a pretty warm-toned melody to match her tat when Finn
tucked a hand between the waistband of his jeans and his boxers, casual and
proprietary. Jeremy had gotten better about not freezing and, like, immediately
popping wood when Finn did stuff like that. Partly it was just from practice;
Finn touched him all the time, thoughtless and ruthless, almost from the day
they met, an arm over Jeremy's shoulder, a finger wiping an eyelash off his
cheek. It had gotten more blatant since they had started... whatever they were
doing, or maybe just more confident, like Finn, at least, assumed they had
defined their terms.
Stacy smirked at them as she dunked her dumpling into the sauce, shredding it
inelegantly with her chopstick. "So, playing at Kilby. That's pretty cool."
"We're just opening," Jeremy said. Finn curled his fingers around Jeremy's
hipbone and gave him a half-smile when Jeremy shot him a look and squirmed.
"Yeah, it's cool, but we should probably hold off on buying fur coats."
"But I look so good in mink," Finn said. Jeremy thought glumly that he probably
did. Like a gay mobster's bit on the side.
"But you're opening for Drew Michelin," Stacy insisted. "That's a big deal. You
know he's signed up for Coachella this year?"
Jeremy perked up a little. "Really?" Finn kept rubbing a warm, rough thumb
against the jut of Jeremy's hip, smoothing down the wrinkles of Jeremy's
underwear. Jeremy could feel his pulse in the spot, the beat of his blood.
Finn had, like, post-graduate degrees in surreptitious touching and Stacy just
kept giving Jeremy concerned looks as he couldn't sit still. "Yeah. On the
second stage but still. But you're a better writer than he is though.
Lyrically, definitely. I mean, you're doing some Mountain Goats level shit."
Jeremy was pretty sure John Darnielle could skin and eat him alive without any
real effort, but he stammered out something gracious. Finn beamed. Early on,
Jeremy had tried to concede frontman duty to Finn. It had stung, but Finn
looked and played like that; Rog had pretty much kicked over a rock and
discovered a miracle. But Rog and Finn had been weirdly insistent, seamlessly
united in an early display of their effortless cohesion. Jeremy had the better
voice. Jeremy had something. Jeremy thought that if he had something, Finn had
the whole stock of it. But so far Finn blended in with the rest of the band
contentedly, just providing a flash of unexpected color when approached from
certain angles.
"Yeah, our boy's got talent." Finn said it at the same time as he slid his
fingers below the waistband of Jeremy's boxers and .2 seconds before Jeremy
choked on his soda. Finn only looked more pleased, in a muted, sly way.
"Oh screw you, the food's spicy, shut up," Jeremy said when Stacy laughed in
great hoarse peals. He shot Finn a glare. Finn propped his chin on his free
hand and just grinned, innocent as a crocodile, and Jeremy could have stumbled
from the weight of his own stupid heart.
"If you really think this is spicy," Stacy said. "That's seriously sad. You
need to man up, Monson."
"Gender is a fluid construct," said Jeremy, scowling. "There are a lot of ways
to be manly." But he was pleased when Finn and Stacy laughed.
Finn was starting to say something about CPR when the restaurant door opened
with a little tinkle of the bell, and he yanked his hand out of Jeremy's boxers
so abruptly the elastic snapped. Jeremy winced, but Finn, who usually monitored
his physical condition like a home health aid, didn't even notice. Jeremy and
Stacy exchanged a baffled glance before looking at the door.
It was a couple, both with dark good looks and strong noses. Mediterranean
maybe. Stunning. The woman actually was wearing a fur coat, floor-length and
deadly white. As cold as Salt Lake got, Jeremy didn't think he had ever seen
one in person. Even in stilettos she barely came up to the man's shoulder. Finn
was Jeremy reference for a tall guy, and his length was emphasized by his
narrowness, like he was once normal-sized but had been mysteriously stretched
out. This man, though, owned his height, all boxy angles and broad shoulders
under his leather jacket. He had a goatee even. They looked otherworldly in the
fluorescent lights of the tacky one-room Chinese place, like they should have
been in Europe or a soap opera.
"Shit," Finn murmured so quietly Jeremy doubted he was supposed to hear him.
Finn looked somewhere between sheepish and chagrined, almost exactly like he
had been caught with his hand down a teenager's pants by people he knew.
"Well, hello!" the woman trilled, her eyes lighting up when they trained on
Finn. She put a hand on his shoulder. It looked like a shell or the hand of a
statue, realer than real in its perfection. "Fancy meeting you here." The man
just smiled out of the corner of his mouth. Jeremy had spent three years and
change as a short, skinny kid in high school with a best friend who was also
short but inherently obnoxious and who ruled the drama club with an iron fist.
He had a good sense for how people could mock you through the judicial
application of small talk; how you could be defeated by a thousand paper cuts.
He put a hand on Finn's thigh but Finn jiggled his leg until he took it off
again.
"This is quite a coincidence," he said, with more composure than Jeremy would
have anticipated. Finn was using a dinner party voice, as depicted by the WB.
"Let me guess. You're here for the season."
"Just passing through," the woman said breezily. And okay, that had to be a
lie. No one ever just stopped by Salt Lake - you either pilgrimadged there as a
Mormon tourist or you were fervently hoping to escape the sticks. If you lived
there, your family had been in the valley for five generation, and maybe that
was exactly the reason you were desperately trying to leave. Salt Lake was
about proving things to yourself, one way or another. People barely came for
the skiing in the only interesting season they had, which was winter. "Of
course we had to say hello. So, who are these... people?"
"I'm Stacy," Stacy said, bright as gunfire.
The woman took her in with one sweeping glance. "I'm sure you are." She looked
at Jeremy and her smile, somehow, became even more knowing. "Ah," she said,
with her full, ripe mouth, and Jeremy was having an unexpected and bewildering
reverse-sexual-crisis.
"Do you ever stray from type?" the man asked, his voice higher than Jeremy
would have expected but abrupt and terrible.
Finn just smiled blandly but his knuckles went white where he was gripping the
table.
"So how do you know Finn?" Stacy asked, all brassy, and Jeremy could have
written a whole album about girls who grew up to be tough when they didn't have
this lady's Veronica Lake hair.
"Finn," the woman said, like the name delighted and amused her. "Well we and
Finn go back many years, but oh, it's complicated. How would you describe it,
darling?"
"Oh, I don't know," Finn said pleasantly. "But I had the opportunity to speak
with your son several months ago. He asked me to pass his regards along to his
father."
Her amazing mouth fell into a perfect 'o' while the man's expression darkened.
"Fucking hilarious, pretty boy."
Stacy stood up with a screech of the chair legs against the floor. "Powdering
my nose!" She grabbed Jeremy by the wrist. "Keep me company, Jer." And she
dragged him, protesting feebly, off to the ladies room and locked the door.
Jeremy had never been in a woman's bathroom before and the experience was
disappointing. This one was a single stall and the only major difference was
the lack of a urinal. Stacy put the seat down and sat on the toilet. "Holy
shit."
"I know, what the junk," Jeremy said.
"Don't ask me," Stacy said. "He's your... guitarist. And okay, Jeremy, really
'what the junk'?"
Jeremy shrugged. He slid down against the wall into a sitting position, his
knees drawn up. "It's kind of lamer to intentionally practice swearing, I
think. Like, this is something you have to work at? It's just weird."
She looked briefly annoyed, but that was replaced by an expression he was
growing familiar with from both sides of the fence, the 'he'll come around
eventually' look. "You know, they're still holding that ex-mormon support group
at the Y. Thursday nights at 7:00."
"I have band practice then."
"You could switch it around. Sometimes it really helps to talk about these
things. It's important to have a safe space."
The crappy little practice space they rented for 250 a month was as safe as any
he knew, but that sounded corny and pretentious besides. Instead he just told
her he would think about it, which hopefully didn't seem insincere. They
gossiped for a while about a girl from Jeremy's ward who was probably pregnant
until they judged enough time had gone by that it was safe to come back. Stacy
peaked her head out and round the corner to make sure it was safe and waved him
out. All the other customers must have left. Finn was sitting half a foot away
from the table, like he had kicked his chair out. His arms were crossed and he
was glaring moodily at his brown rice. Jeremy sat down across from him, feeling
like he always did after ducking out of a confrontation: guilty and rubbery and
relieved.
When Jeremy caught Finn's eye though, Finn tilted his head, his hair spilling
in front of his eyes and the curve of his neck exposed, the effect as natural
and striking as good ballet. "Hey Jeremy," he said thoughtfully. "Can I talk to
you outside for a minute?"
"Sure." Jeremy got his coat and kicked Stacy's chair on his way out the door
when she smirked at him. In the doorway the spring air hit with surprising
force. Finn lit a cigarette and offered it to Jeremy. Jeremy took a drag as
Finn stretched his arms over his head.
"Sorry about that," he said.
"It's cool," Jeremy said. "Who were they?" And when Finn didn't respond,
actually froze a little, he hurried to add. "You don't - it's okay. You don't
have to tell me. We all have our stuff."
Finn said, almost like he was embarrassed. "Family. Sort of. My dad's side is
pretty much a clusterfuck."
"Dude," Jeremy said, laughing a little. "I understand complicated families. I'm
Mormon. I have, like, seventeen cousins on my mom's side alone, seriously, you
don't have to-"
Finn grabbed him, not ungently, but the back of the neck and dragged Jeremy
into a kiss he had to stand on his tip-toes to reciprocate. The cigarette fell
to the sidewalk where it smoldered, a single, unnoticed point of light. Finn's
mouth was wet and a little frantic and Jeremy felt clumsy answering it. Finn
usually took control, but Jeremy was usually the one desperate for it.
Finn broke away, his mouth still brushing Jeremy's. His other hand ran up and
down Jeremy's side. "I really like you."
Part of Jeremy wanted to say no shit, they were making out in public, but the
rest of him smothered it in a giddy volcanic flow. "I - you too."
Finn grinned. "You're going to go amazing places. And even if you don't, it's
worth it to be here just so I can be with you."
"How are you even real?" Jeremy asked. Finn just laughed, which was good
because Jeremy legitimately wanted to know. He couldn't say so, not yet, but he
had barely felt real before Finn. If Finn ever left, Jeremy would follow.
Finn just smiled some more, securing a hand on Jeremy's ass. And then he
assumed an expression of genuine curiosity when he felt... oh, right. The bulge
of the condom and lube there. Jeremy's face flared up. "That's... uh. Yeah.
It's a long story."
"I don't want to pressure you," Finn said quietly but gritty with heat.
Jeremy smiled crookedly. "That wouldn't be a problem."
Finn nodded, almost to himself, and let Jeremy go, smoothing out his own
jacket. "Let's go."
Jeremy glanced back at the restaurant. "But Stacy..."
"We'll owe her," Finn said, tugging on his elbow. "Come on."
Jeremy thought he saw a flash of white fur in his peripheral vision on their
way to the parking lot, but it was probably just his imagination.
****
Years later, Jeremy would remember their first time with over-exaggerated
awkwardness, himself as gangly and unsure and approaching sex as clinically and
skittishly as health class. At the moment though, he was nervous but a lot more
eager, naked and watching Finn from the futon while Finn tugged off his pants,
not exactly doing a striptease but not methodical either. He was hard, which
Jeremy had seen before but not enough that he wasn't still fascinated by it.
Jeremy however did have sort of an episode when Finn worked two of his slicked
up fingers inside him and planted a kiss on the inside of Jeremy's lower thigh.
Episode was the word Jeremy preferred to use; Finn immediately labeled it as a
hysterical giggle fit.
He paused in his ministrations, his hair hanging black and fine into his eyes.
He glowing almost, turning anyone else's flushed and sweaty into something
almost ethereal. Jeremy felt like he was being laid down on the dissection
table. Finn cocked his head slightly. A lot of his gestures looked screen-ready
and practiced, but so fluid he might as well have invented them. Like every
other iteration was a copy. "What?"
Jeremy covered his mouth with the back of his wrist, his shoulders still
shaking. "Nothing."
Finn sat back on his haunches. His fingers only slipped out slightly, but
Jeremy felt the loss. "You're not exactly boosting my confidence here."
"No, it's... shit," Jeremy hiccuped, forcing himself to take a few deep
breaths. "It's just... wow. Woo. You know?"
Finn glided his fingers out completely and Jeremy moaned a little at the loss,
which oh god, that was mortifying, just totally slutty wasn't it, not that it
really mattered since Finn must already have him pegged as a sure thing. "I
think," Finn said. "You need to be a little more relaxed."
And Jeremy's brain wasn't working right, of course, but he still should have
expected the wet heat of Finn's mouth around his cock.
Finn smirked at him when Jeremy groaned, but of course, Jeremy already knew he
was a man of skill. This they had done, but Finn was using his fingers now too,
and his smirk only widened when Jeremy slammed his hand down on the floor by
the futon. The other he wound through Finn's hair. It felt better than it
looked. It wasn't like Finn didn't have flaws - he was pro-life and took film
way too seriously and only used deodorant when you bugged him about it - but
every layer of quirk and character Jeremy had uncovered was better than the
last. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Finn's talented mouth and
talented fingers and weird, wonderful brain.
He came with another moan and Finn swallowed with alarming neatness. He kissed
Jeremy and crooked his fingers and said, "You want to try again?"
Jeremy did.
****
Finn apparently had The District Sleeps Alone as one of his ringtones, which
was actually pretty funny and something Jeremy would have made fun of him for
if the noise weren't infiltrating the crusty morning layer of his brain. He
groaned and batted half-heartedly at Finn, who slept on, and eventually
staggered to his feet and fished Finn's phone out of his jeans. "Finn's pants."
There was a pause and then Jamie's voice. "Jeremy?"
Jeremy rubbed his forehead. "Yeah. It's me." Awareness was trickling in: he was
wearing a sock, his contacts were burning, as was his butt, and he vaguely
needed to pee. He looked over his shoulder at Finn, whose face was somehow
superior and contented even in his sleep, and smiled. Finn's hair was a mess.
"You want Ruefenacht?"
"No, it's cool. I was trying to reach you too. Rog said you were probably
crashing at Finn's. You have got to get yourself a cell, man."
Getting cold, Jeremy half-hopped his way back to the futon and burrowed in.
Finn made a little noise and immediately rolled over half on top of him. Jeremy
sighed. "Yeah, I know. So, uh... is this band stuff?"
"Hell yeah, band stuff!" His voice crackled with more than static. "We got a
gig in Vegas!"
Finn slid off him with a thump when Jeremy sat up. "No fucking way!"
"I would not joke about this," said Jamie, who really wouldn't. "Not on the
strip, obviously, but that venue whose Myspace we were looking at? They emailed
me back! They want us in May! This is a full-fledged out of state gig, Jeremy!"
Finn sat up groggily, smoothing his hair back. Jeremy mouthed 'gig!' at him and
he brightened a little. The corner of his mouth twitched up when he saw a
suspiciously located bulge under the covers, and Jeremy had to lunge forward
and kiss him hard. Finn wrapped his arms around Jeremy's waist, one of them
quickly traveling south, and eased back on the mattress.
After a time Jeremy became aware of Jamie saying, "Okay, are you even there
anymore?"
"Call you back," Jeremy gasped, snapping the cell shut and throwing it towards
Finn's laundry bin.
"Where's the gig?" Finn asked, nipping at Jeremy's jaw.
"Las Vegas."
"No shit," Finn said brightly. "Okay, first actual rule of Vegas is to avoid
the buffets. They're liquid death. I can call in a few favors and get us tables
at some quality restaurants."
Jeremy flipped off the covers so he could kiss his way down Finn's body and
said, "awesome."
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