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Ethan is already flushed and a little dizzy by the time he takes the first swing, and the bar is in an uproar; the night is hot and long and Ethan's not sure how much of it is the heat, how much of it is the alcohol, and how much of it is the pink unfurling of Percy's tongue, probing his split lip.
He's had a little too much to drink, and Percy's had none at all: this is clear by the Xs dark on the backs of his hands when he fists them in the front of Ethan's shirt, hauls him around and bends him backwards over the bar with a yell, but there is nothing sober about the gleam in his eyes, pupils dilated and shifty, restless, wanting.
The bartender pulls them apart in a heartbeat, practice in the bend of his arms as he shoves them towards the door, saying, take it out back, boys, take it out back.
And they do.
They spill onto Bourbon Street on a Friday night so far gone it's Saturday and then some, and topless girls call out from the balconies, strings of Mardi Gras beads pooling from their thin wrists. The air is stagnant and too-sweet: Ethan's head reels with it.
They're barely outside the door before he grabs Percy, pulling him into a joint-lock he remembers from middle-school aikido, wrists pressed together under the heel of his hand. His back hits the brick with a satisfying thump, and Ethan finds it so much easier to just use his weight to pin him back, since his knees are shaking.
They pant against each other. Percy wriggles his hands, trying to get loose. "Is that it?" His murmur is a low hum that Ethan can feel vibrating in his chest. "Usually we fight more than this."
"Didn't feel like wasting time tonight," is all Ethan can reply. He'd been expecting more fight, too, the familiar instinctive rush of a heart pounding, but this isn't much different: the honesty still sharp on his tongue when he leans forward, slotting his mouth against Percy's.
Percy kisses back like a punch, a drag of his teeth across the line of Ethan's lips. They lick into each other's mouths, and it quickly becomes less of a kiss and more of an open-mouthed mess of tongues and saliva, jaws aching and spread wide. Percy wraps his arms around his neck, dragging him closer.
"How come you always know where we are?" he wants to know, as Ethan sucks a bruising kiss to his jaw.
He pulls back from the warmth beating in Percy's neck to give him an incredulous look. "For one, it's in the papers. For another, it's on your Facebook. For a third --"
"Okay, okay, no, shut up," he pounds his shoulder twice to get his attention. "I mean, how do you always know where I am?"
With a feeling like falling, Ethan fisted the fabric of his shirt and pulled him closer, so that there's nothing but heat all along his front, their chests plaited together. "I know everything about you," he murmurs, dragging his mouth back along the side of Percy's face.
Percy arches back off the wall at that, hips shifting restlessly, hissing, "Jesus, you're a creeper."
But it's true, it's true, he thinks, sliding a hand up Percy's shirt to trace the lines of his ribs, feeling the shiver run all the way through him. He's drunk, but he's not that drunk, and he knows Percy Jackson, nineteen years old, lead guitarist and singer for Percy Jackson and the Olympians, a band comprised entirely of handicapped Manhattan teenagers. "We won't stop following you," he breathes, biting down hard on the place where Percy's neck meets his shoulder, feeling him jerk and gasp, nails scratching at his back. "Not until we win."
"You keep saying that," says Percy, and there it is, the arrogant, sneering laugh in his voice that usually winds up with Ethan trying to plant his fist in Percy's damn stupid face, just a little bit before he backs him into an alley or a bathroom stall.
"I believe it," says Ethan faithfully, but he doesn't. He doesn't care much about the Olympians' concerts, or how many plays they have on Last.fm, or whether or not they really have Mike Shinoda on speed dial. He can't even tell you the names of the three other band members.
But he does care about this; Percy tangling his fingers in Ethan's hair, growling, "ugh, before you piss me off," and pulling him in for a kiss, messy and wet, and Ethan shoves them both up against the wall again and sticks his hand down Percy's pants, because right now, here, Percy is his.
Percy belongs to his mother, his bandmates, his manager, his label, his fans, his ADHD, but right now, here, he is Ethan's. No one else's.
He is Ethan's.
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As awesome as the hate sex is between competing bands, Ethan can't exactly make his career choices based on it. Not for lack of trying.
"Do you think they're going to remember that we're still here?" Kelli wants to know, breathing out heavily through her nose. She's draped over the back of Ethan's seat; it's one of those rare days when Ethan'd managed to claim shotgun, no joust, before she did. Outside, on the curb, Luke talks to the ginger chick from the Delphi Sun Chariot, his charm turned on full.
"Are you kidding me," Ethan returns, resting back against the headrest and scrolling absently through people's Twitters on his phone. "Like anyone ever remembers we exist when Luke's around. Well, okay," he amends, after a deliberate pause from Kelli's end. "People notice when you take your top off, but in general."
"You're disgusting," she says without heat. "Stop objectifying me."
"You're a former cheerleader with the body of a Greek goddess," he props his feet up on the dash. "Fergie only wishes she were you."
Outside the truck, Luke throws his head back and laughs, a genuine, chest-deep laugh that makes both Ethan and Kelli fall silent, their faces turned towards him the way plants tend to grow towards sunlight.
"He is gorgeous, though, isn't he?" Kelli says wonderingly. It's a rhetorical question.
It depends on your tastes, really, Ethan concedes, because Luke is one of those people who can't turn off their stage persona, so when he's out in public, people tend to turn and stare. He gets away with it, because, duh, rock star. KRONOS doesn't have the feel-good angle or the good press coverage that Percy Jackson and the Olympians do, but they aren't bad. They share a label with The Underworld Records, because, as Luke had once put it, everyone in music answers to the Underworld eventually, but the powers that be at the Underworld are keeping out of the catfight between KRONOS and the Olympians.
Luke has a way of grinning mischievously that makes him look like he stole it straight off Shakespeare's Puck. He's a mess of golden hair, golden skin, and eyes bluer than anything. Even the reporter -- Rachel, he thinks her name is -- isn't immune to how easy on the eyes he is, judging by the fact she hasn't blinked once since he started talking.
"You joined because of him, didn't you?" he asks Kelli, who's KRONOS's female vocal and jack-of-all trades.
She blinks at him, eyes big and glittering black. "You didn't?"
At that moment, there's an interruption outside. They're still parked in the loading zone outside the hotel, so Ethan isn't really surprised to look up and find that Percy Jackson has arrived, planting himself between Luke and Rachel with a brash laugh and a daredevil grin. His manager is a few steps behind; a snappy, blonde-haired bitch who always dresses like she's stepping off of Wall Street, flays people alive with her tongue for a hobby, and glares at Rachel like she's something she wants to crush beneath the heel of her hand.
Ethan gives her only the most cursory of glances before he finds his eyes sliding back towards Percy, who's obviously monopolizing the conversation, to Luke's annoyance and Rachel's delight. They're too far away to hear what they're talking about, so Ethan just takes pleasure in the glimpses of the bruises that pepper Percy's skin, mostly hidden underneath his scarf, and the plum-colored scab of his split lip.
He must have been obvious, because suddenly, Kelli goes, "Oh, you poor bastard."
He cuts his eyes at her. She's watching him again, lips pulled in sympathetically. "So," she arches her eyebrows. "That's your story? You joined KRONOS because of ... Peter?"
"Percy," he corrects automatically, seeing her lips twitch. Bitch, she knows his name. "And no, not entirely. I joined because I like music, and because Luke's my friend and he asked me to."
Her eyebrows remain in close contact with her hairline.
"And possibly because I wanted to get Percy's attention," he admits carefully. And sighs. "We went to school together," he confesses.
This piques her interest. "The special needs school? Wait, you're not --"
"Handicapped?" he smiles at her sardonically. "How do you not know that about me yet? I've got the same thing that all the Olympians have. We've been in the same school since we were children. Percy has no clue who I am, though." There's no keeping the bitterness out of his voice. Percy Jackson's made the plight of the underdog his life's calling, but he can't remember that Ethan Nakamura's been sitting two rows to the right of him in homeroom since first grade. That was what inspired their first fight: Percy thought it came out of the KRONOS-Olympians hostility, but Ethan just wanted to make him remember.
There must be something on his face, because Kelli shifts forward in her seat. "Wait. You two haven't ..." she trails off.
He looks at her, amused by her sudden discomfort.
"You two haven't ..." she makes some gesture with her hands that could mean anything from I'm going to feed you to my monstrous alligator to can you hand me the Sports section?
"Kelli, are you trying to awkwardly ask me if I've had gay sex with the lead singer of our rival band?"
"Frjiscnnn," replies Kelli, eyes wide.
Ethan turns back to face front. "No." Depending, again, on how you defined it. They'd always gotten each other off through their clothing -- but it's too vulnerable to get naked. It means too much. So they resort themselves to leaving hickeys and palming each other through their jeans, in alleyways and in bathrooms and in whatever dark space they find themselves in.
He wants it, though. Oh, he wants it. There are moments when he doesn't think he can take another step, he's paralyzed with wanting it so much, to slip Percy's pants from his hips and pin him to his bed and make him beg. His life continues in, on, and around these moments, but they stand out in his mind for what they are, as bright as landmarks.
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And it has to make some kind of noise, his hero-worshipping heart breaking, the day he watches Percy tug on his skinny twink of a bass guitarist, pulling him into some dark backstage hallway where he thinks no one can see them. Percy's laughing, even as Nico hooks a leg around his hip and reels him in, long fingers twining together and mouths opening to each other's, lazy and confident. They kiss like they've got nowhere to go, like there's no hurry, like there's nothing better to be doing than this, and not ten feet away, Ethan feels like a figurine in a glass menagerie, shattered.
Luke and Kelli hold onto him, later, tucked around him like quotes. They're supposed to be somewhere, talking to somebody, and their instruments aren't even out of their cases yet, but Luke and Kelli don't mention it -- which means a lot, coming from them. They hadn't even needed to be told. They took one look at his face when he came in and converged on him as one, and how could he think Percy had a chance against this?
"I'm sorry," he tells them, murmurs it to the space between their bodies. "I'm sorry I ever doubted you."
Kelli presses her forehead in between his shoulder blades, and Luke says, "It's good to have you back."
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fin