Title: Conch Shells by the Shore
Author: Naisumi
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Lance/Pietro, Pietro/Lance
Disclaimer: Still not mine, still not rich, still not famous. Damn.
Spoilers: Uh. ... ... Yes :D
Warnings: Angst, sap, slash...uh, yes. UBERsymbolism :D Profundity--all the usual. Oh, and: STNH! STNH! STNH! (Season Two Never Happened)
Notes: Holy fuck, am I really writing an L/P fic after all this time?! Well, with PsychoB being the disruptive force in my life, I guess I really am :D Happy birthday, you silly sex-monkey.
Additional Notes: Mor! Mor! Get online! ...oh, notes on this? Um. ...Give me C&C. NOW. *starrrres at potential reviewers*
And enjoy! :D
Also, the ending's quite weak. I had a Calc quiz to study for >.
--
The first place he looked was in the park, where the grass was more soft than prickly and the wind, though barely felt, was comforting and always there. Under an old oak tree with initials and shapes carved in the bark was where Pietro usually sat, claiming that the tree enjoyed his company and the sunlight in the shade was just right. Pietro wasn't there, that day, though, like he always was--waiting, a little annoyed but not really. He wasn't there, complaining about how bored he was then not getting up to actually do something; or griping about how slow the rest of his Chemistry class was--how they were holding him back and cramping his style. He wasn't there, and the old oak tree with initials and shapes etched in its skin seemed lonely.
The second place he looked was in the deli, which had an Arabica coffee shoppe off in one wing with two p's instead of one and an e tagged on the end. It got smoky sometimes, from half-dead cigarettes that dragged caffeine into the system with a rush of nicotine, their neon crumbling cherries decorating ashtrays like Christmastime fireflies lighting up the soot-covered New York snow. Pietro didn't drink coffee, but he liked sitting in the wood-paneled corner of the small, dim room with its eerie coffeebar under overhead lights, saying that he got a buzz from simple osmosis. He said that, if he could, he'd order a double mocha espresso with chocolate sprinkles and caramel. Pietro had smiled when he said he just liked coffee black--plain. No creativity, Pietro'd shaken his head, no creativity. Pietro wasn't at the coffee shop, either, though, and the fans venting the silence on the small, dim ceiling of the small, dim room seemed to wonder at the corners and their speckles of fading light.
The third place he looked worried him a little, partly because he always worried a little when he went there and partly because of the first time he'd gone there. Pietro had been there--not before, as a child, but he had been there; there at that beaten-down old orphanage with two floors, no basement, and crooked shutters with veins of age in them. A few nuns ran it, the hemlines of their skirts stained with mud because they weren't really nuns, their smiles empty, devoid of the love usually held for some divine higher Being; God. They weren't really nuns, but they were good people and they really tried, which was all that mattered, really. Pietro'd asked him how it was at the orphanage he'd been at and he hadn't wanted to tell, but did so eventually, anyway--reluctantly surrendering the tattered patchwork of his soul in the ambiguity of chokehold hugs and ice-trimmed dagger kisses; plastic Easters and a statue in front of the back door, screaming like a gargoyle fountaining red. That orphanage had been different from this one. Pietro'd smiled and pointed to a little girl between the head nun and a portrait of Jesus, mentioning that her name could be Lucy or Marsha or even, maybe, Wanda. Then he'd gotten quiet, and the stone steps outside and the nuns' blank smiles seemed to echo his like absence.
The fourth place he looked made him feel sick to his stomach because he didn't think to look there before, partly out of protection for his sanity. It smelled strangely sterile with people that only spoke in whispers. He hated when people whispered. Except for Pietro. Pietro sounded like he was making fun when he whispered; like he was only kidding, or maybe telling a little secret that didn't really matter in the first place. But hospitals never kid. They lie all the time, just to suck all the money out of everyone; just to check people in, check people out, and never let them leave--as leaving is a whole different matter completely. They make their victims sign in blood and pump water back through a wire, drowning them in soap. Pietro'd joked that he'd choose the bacteria over magazine-nurses with glossy geniality any day, and he was inclined to agree. The lighting made everyone look sick except for the doctors, but then again, maybe it was just the opposite for them. Not all people did look sick, though--he amended--because the solitary crutches by the west wall and the silver bell on the front desk probably remembered, the same as he did, that Pietro had glowed.
The fifth place he looked was, reluctantly, at the mansion gates; him not being sure if there was a slight possibility--they, inside, not sure that there was anyone outside at all. It disturbed him that he really could find no trace of Pietro, and it disturbed him that no one else could either. It disturbed them equally that he was looking for Pietro in the first place, and it disturbed them that he cared. So, they were mutually affected, oddly enough, by the look in his eyes and the off-kilter crookedness of his tired smirk. They were all affected more over, though, by the delicacy of his footsteps leaving, as if he were hoping that someone would find them and come back home.
The final place he looked was his bedroom where under his bed he rolled up stolen magazines and shoved them back after he was done reading them. He sat down helplessly by the rickety excuse of a nightstand and leaned against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. After an entire day of fruitless searching, all he could think about was the foil-wrapped box resting in his closet behind the haphazard pile of grass-stained jeans and a ragged piece of tarp that had been there when they moved in. That present, and the melting cake in the broken freezer outside with the frosting and gel-letters--Pietro'd've liked that. But in thinking about that, he couldn't help but wonder where Pietro was--if Pietro were anywhere at all. It didn't make him feel sad; it didn't make him feel angry;
Just empty.
There was the sound of a door opening downstairs and he closed his eyes, lips pursed as if thinking hard about something--maybe trying to think of some prayer that he had forgotten long ago in a way that he'd never learned it or believed in it at all. In an instant--a rush of wind--he found his arms full of warmth, the sort that made him feel like he was caving into himself, the ice-smooth lips on his drinking the soul from him. The scent of ginger and cleanliness--like having just emerged from being wind-whipped by the autumn evening; so cool it almost made his lungs ache. He buried his nose in the soft, down hair, opening his eyes only when he felt Pietro's arms wrap around him, one hand slowly measuring the length of his spine with gentle wandering fingers.
"Hey," he felt Pietro whisper against his ear more than heard him.
He leaned against the slender form of the boy against his chest, hugging him tighter, and mumbled back, "Hey."
Pietro pressed a strangely chaste kiss to his neck and a frisson of chills ran through him--chastity no matter, as the faint wetness of Pietro's lip sang of sex to his nerves always.
"Heard you were looking for me," Pietro rocked backward slightly, their legs entangled in the sprawl of familiarity. The pale-haired boy twisted and untwisted the collar of his shirt between deft fingers.
"Were you looking for me, Lance?"
Lance mustered up enough energy to glower at the willowy boy on his lap, eyes unconsciously flickering toward the closet and all its shadowy contents. Leaning forward on a whim, he captured another kiss, this time, the sheer heat overtaking any pretense of decency and premarital valor of physical means.
"Where have you been?" Lance panted when they finally parted, eyes narrowed, his hands on either side of Pietro's head straining into the bristled carpet as their two bodies pressed tightly together. In response, Pietro simply smiled, and reached up, one hand cupping the side of his lover's jaw, then sliding precariously down the caramel column of his neck, alongside the collarbone curving slickly to the planes of the hard chest above him. Instead of answering Lance's question, he simply asked,
"Did you get me a present?"
Lance drew in a sharp breath, exhaled, then rolled off of him, propping his head up with an elbow to the floor. He drummed his fingers, pointing to the half-ajar closet just a few feet away, and softly with all the venom he didn't mean at all,
"Now I know you only want me for material things."
His words dwindled on his lips to a breath, however, when Pietro glanced back at him with a light in his eyes, unveiled only to him and never to the rest of the jading world. In the space of two seconds, Pietro was sitting next to him, legs crossed Indian style, the aluminum-swathed box between his hands. He shook it curiously; held the present up to his ear, and wondered aloud,
"What did you get me, Lance Alvers?"
"Open it and you'll find out," the other returned dryly, and instead of retorting wittily as Pietro was often wont to do, he complied, carefully peeling back the brittle makeshift wrapping paper. Watching Pietro handle the foil made him cough, a tint of redness hinting at the curves of his ears,
"Sorry about the wrapping. I--"
"It's fine," Pietro waved off his explanation with impatience, having almost finished unwrapping the present. He slid open the lid of the cardboard box, making a noise of amusement at the shredded paper that filled the inside like spaghetti-strap confetti.
"You really packed this carefully, didn't you?"
Lance shrugged, feeling strangely embarrassed, his chest hurting for some reason at the relentlessly slow speed of Pietro opening the present.
"Oh, well. I guess--"
Pietro was quiet, up to halfway to his elbow in sliced paper, an expression of surprise--shock? amazement? pleasure?--as he felt around the bottom, hands closing around a small object of many buried deep under all the wreckage of old newspapers and math homework that was never turned in. He straightened, his hands cupped to shelter the one of the delicate gifts in his palms.
It was a seashell.
"Lance?" He asked, his voice quavering.
Lance couldn't look at him, his head throbbing as if he'd dived underwater and could no longer breathe.
"You said you missed the beach."
Pietro sat still for a moment, eyelashes dark on the paleness of his countenance. Then, reaching up and around to lean his chin on Lance's shoulder, he whispered,
"Thank you."
Lance let out a shaky breath and turned around quickly, kissing Pietro as deeply as he could;
"I just wanted to...well, you know."
"Sentimental shit?" Pietro guessed with a grin, bumping foreheads with Lance as the older boy chuckled,
"Yeah. Lots of sentimental shit. I guess I'll just settle for...well, happy birthday?"
"Thanks."
Pietro sighed and smiled weakly, weighing the next-to-nothing shell in the curve of his palm and thinking of tomorrow and how it would be nothing like the past and the valleys of sand that he remembered. The dark-haired girl with his eyes and his mother's smile would never be there again, nor would she even look at him without the slightest smidgen of hate creeping onto her face. But that was fine for now.
Leaning up against Lance, his next words made him smile, this time with more mischievous delight rather than nostalgia;
"You know what they say is the best part of birthdays, right?"
Lance tilted his head downwards, grinning slowly,
"Why don't you tell me?"
"Oh, I will..."
Hours later, the box with the finely shredded paper and shells on the bottom was still on the floor beside a sea of crumpled tinfoil. Beside it, a seashell lay on its side, the inside smooth and echoing the distant sounds that sounded much like a dream. A dream, that is, that was doubtful to end any time soon, despite the pauses and silences and absences. With a breath of air, the search seemed to end at that, and the morning found Pietro sitting up in bed and looking down at the boy next to him, still sleeping--and glowing like the sun had never touched him before--not even at the park, under the oak tree with the initials and the shapes carved into it, where in the shade, the sun was just right; the fans were swirling the smell of smoke with wishful thinking; the smiles weren't empty, and everyone was beautiful.
~fin~