Pretty Emo Boys Kissing

The first time Adrian and Jamie kissed was a total accident.

A few weeks before, Jamie had decided it was time for him and Adrian to start a band, since, as he pointed out, they were eighteen and pretty soon would graduate from high school. "If we don't start a band," he pointed out in that Southern drawl of his, "we'll have to work for a living."

Adrian didn't think that was quite as bad as Jamie made out—after all, Adrian planned on being an astrophysicist, which wasn't exactly a Dilbert job—but Jamie scoffed.

"I'll ask you one thing." Jamie looked up languorously from his seat leaning against the side of Adrian's bed. "Do astrophysicists have legions of screaming groupies?"

"Brian May does," Adrian said, peering at his signed Panic poster.

"Brian May is the guitarist of Queen," Jamie said.

Adrian had to admit he had a point.

Jamie looked at Adrian, his dark eyes full of good humor. "Only you would know that the guitarist of Queen is an astrophysicist."

"Hey, you knew who he was too," Adrian said, bouncing up and down a little on his bed. It still had the blue-and-white striped sheets his mom had bought him when he was nine. "'Sides, only poseurs think that rock began the day MCR put out The Black Parade."

"I agree that there was music," Jamie said. "I love Morrissey as much as the next guy. I just don't think that glam rock fits in with the dark, gloomy, ambiguously-gay aesthetic we're going for here."

"Queen is totally ambiguously gay," Adrian said. "Freddie Mercury died of AIDS."

"Stop knowing so much about Queen," Jamie said, "or I will hurt you."

The idea of Jamie hurting anyone was extremely odd. He was short, pale and scrawny, generally giving one the impression that he'd forgotten to eat for the past month. He believed that black went well with everything, especially more black. His hair featured a cheap black dye job and the sort of casual messiness it took hours to achieve. And despite his stated goal of a dark and gloomy aesthetic, when he smiled it was full of a good humor that lit up the entire world.

If Jamie and a kitten fought, Jamie would forget halfway through that he was supposed to be fighting the kitten, start cuddling it and get his eyes scratched out for his pains.

Of course, the person he was threatening to hurt was Adrian, who combined absolute nerddom with a penchant for stealing his sister's black jeans, so he had pretty much even odds.

Anyway, after the requisite vaguely homoerotic wrestling session had come to an inconclusive end, Jamie got his way as he always did and they started a band.

Jamie knew how to play guitar as part of his quest to become the most cliché emo guy ever. Will, a drama fag they knew, got the vocals by default as the only one who knew how to sing. Somehow Jamie had discovered that Tory, a preppy girl in a few of their classes, knew how to play bass and prevailed upon her to join. Adrian was drafted to play drums.

"I don't actually know how to read music," Adrian protested. "I have no sense of rhythm and I can't afford a drum set."

"You just have to hit the drums at the right time," Jamie said. "You know, one-two-three-four. It's practically math."

Jamie had firmly held but incredibly inaccurate ideas about pretty much every area of life that had nothing to do with music or the color black. Adrian still remembered the time he had tried to persuade his English teacher that Pride and Prejudice had zombies in it.

And that very moment, as Adrian opened his mouth to explain that, actually, drumming had exactly nothing to do with math, that Jamie tripped over a wire leading to his electric guitar and fell on top of Adrian and their mouths met and—

God.

Adrian wasn't inexperienced. He'd fumbled with girls in movie theaters, given chase and not-so-chaste kisses goodnight and even had a steady girlfriend a time or two. But this was something completely different, Jamie's body hard and angular against his own, hipbones pressing together, lips locking in unspoken agreement.

Jamie made a little meeping sound, full of need, and he rolled Adrian's lower lip between his own and Adrian got the idea and pulled on Jamie's upper lip and suddenly there were teeth, Jamie was biting him and Adrian was so hard it was like a tent in his pants.

Jamie's hair was passing through Adrian's hands, his stupid too-black hair and Adrian was messing up the gel but he didn't care because Jamie's mouth was opening and his tongue was going into Adrian's mouth, fuck, it was so hot, their tongues tangling together and their lips moving and, dear God, this was heaven, Adrian could die right now and be complete, and Jamie's mouth had these little bumps on it and for some reason that was the thing that turned Adrian on, made him moan.

Then Adrian shifted, just a little, just to deepen the kiss, and his cock rubbed against the place where Jamie's thigh met his crotch, and it sent a jolt down Adrian's spine and it felt so fucking—

"Door," Jamie said suddenly and, that was right, Tory and Will were coming to Adrian's house, and Jamie rolled off Adrian's body and he couldn't stop one little whimper of protest.

Adrian thought determinedly about his grandmother in stripper boots and a G-string, his parents conceiving him, the final scores for every one of Jamie's baseball games for the past two years. Anything to make him not go through an entire band practice with a raging hardon.

Adrian was blackly sure that Jamie wiggled his ass a bit more than necessary as he walked to open the door to Tory and Will.