Imitation of Life
By: Lady DeathAngel
Disclaimer: not mine, not profiting, 'nuff said.
Warnings: language, bit of angst, bit of fluff
A/N: Yes! So, in celebration of my 31st review (I would say 30th, but I thought that my 31st was very nice and deserved some credit as well) here is chapter 5. Um . . . what to say? Thanks so much everyone for sticking with me! I appreciate it and love you all so much for telling me what you think. It keeps me writing this story which was impossible for the longest time.You make me proud to write slash and femmeslash, especially for this fandom. I'll be working on the next chapter, so until then please read, enjoy, and review.
By the time everyone was finally up and moaning about hangovers and various other aches and pains, it was almost noon. Which was actually early for a group of teenagers that had been up partying well into the a.m. For his part, Freddy felt decidedly relaxed and, it being his house, proceeded to make the usual post-party session breakfast of hot tea, pancakes, and scrambled eggs, passing around Saltine crackers and 7-Up to all the pussies with the upset stomachs.
"So, where's your mom, anyway?" Zack asked, staring down at his plate, wondering if he was sober enough to eat it and not puke it up minutes later.
"Um . . ." Freddy thought back, tapping his fork against his bottom lip. "Oh, right, she's out with George."
Billy snorted.
"Out where? She never showed up last night, right?"
"I think he took her on some weekend sojourn to gamble away his social security or something."
Katie laughed, pausing in the relentless chugging of her 7-Up.
"I'll never understand what it is with your mom and all those old guys," she said.
Freddy smirked.
"Me neither. But it's damn convenient. They always suck up to me and buy me shit that I could probably afford but don't want to spend money on."
It wasn't, technically, a convenience that she was always gone, though. Zack's parents took whole months off to go on their marriage reaffirmation trips. One for every affair they got caught indulging in, so they were gone pretty often. Summer's mom worked long hours, Billy's mom was preparing for her older daughter's wedding and spent more time in the next county over with Jenna than she did with her son. Katie's parents were the kind that liked to think they were involved and loving, but were actually pretty oblivious.
Any number of weekends had been spent passed out drunk in empty houses, blissfully unhurried in any attempts to get sober because their parents were so caught up in their own lives they didn't care about any of the usual self-destructive habits their kids had formed.
Not that any of them were bitter or anything.
"So what are we doing today?" Billy asked, rubbing his temples and carefully avoiding looking at the food on the table.
"I'm finishing up my sketches of Summer," Katie said. "And then we're going to a movie."
"Oh, yeah! How're those art projects coming?"
Freddy shrugged.
"Mine's not, actually," he said, turning to Zack. "Wanna stick around? At least then I can get a few sketches done."
The brunette shrugged.
"Yeah, okay."
"I'll probably really get started on mine this week," Katie said. "I just haven't done a sketch that pops, yet."
Billy nodded in understanding and then yawned.
"Well, I've got a date in about," he squinted at the microwave's digital clock. "Two hours. I should probably be going."
"Your keys are under the couch," Freddy said.
Billy stood up.
"Yeah, that's usually where they end up."
For some strange reason, every time Billy drove himself to anyone's house, his keys ended up underneath a couch somewhere. They still had no explanation for it, but Freddy was beginning to wonder if it was some kind of alien conspiracy. Snagging a 7-Up and a handful of crackers, Billy bid everyone adieu and left. By the time his car pulled out from in front of Freddy's house, they had all finished eating and were cleaning up the kitchen.
"Hey," Summer said, tossing her plate into the sink. "Are you guys going to the dance on Saturday?"
Zack nodded morosely while Katie and Freddy both laughed and shook their heads.
"Fuck no," Freddy said. "I'd sooner be caught in bed with Paris Hilton."
"Aw, that wouldn't be so bad," Katie said with a wink.
"Um, ew. Besides, think of all the STD's you could contract just by inhaling her air."
"This is true."
"You guys have to go!" Summer exclaimed. "If I end up going with Chris you have to be there. Please, Katie?"
Oh, great. Freddy watched as Katie caved, no contest. Of course she'd say yes. The love of her life was begging her to do something and she'd never been able to say no to that.
"You too, Freddy," Summer said after Katie nodded her assent.
The blonde chuckled.
"Oh, no. You aren't going to talk me into it."
"Come on," Zack said. "I'm going with Alice but if I can help it, I won't even see her all night. If you're there, at least I'll have an excuse to avoid her." He smirked. "You know you want to."
"Fuck," Freddy exclaimed, raking a hand through his hair. "Fine! God."
Right. No contest. Hell, the fight wasn't even fair. He glanced over at Katie who was smiling and shaking her head.
"Perfect, so now we have to go shopping for suitably shocking outfits."
"Of course," Katie said with a grin.
Freddy sighed and grabbed his keys off the kitchen counter.
"Are we all in?"
—(
Summer didn't know why she'd given Chris her cellphone number. He hadn't given her his, just asked for hers with a wink and a smile. It was possibly because, at the time, he'd had his hand creeping underneath the prep-school issued blazer she always wore. She always found it hard to think logically when he was doing things like that. So she agreed and mechanically recited the number which he dutifully repeated back. A part of her had hoped he would forget, but if the incessant ringing coming from her purse was any indication, he hadn't.
"Just answer it," Katie said.
She sounded irritated, but didn't say anything else. Summer watched with a frown as she moved to examine a blouse that Freddy was wrinkling his nose over.
"Hey," she said wearily.
"Hey!" Chris' voice sing-songed in her ear. "Wanna hang out?"
She shuddered, knowing what he meant when he said 'hang out', and coughed delicately.
"Can't. I'm busy."
"You're just shopping with the homos," he retorted. "You look bored and besides, wouldn't want any of that to rub off on you. It works better for me if you're at least slightly into guys, right?"
Summer nodded compulsively and a polite laugh escaped before she could stop it.
"Where are you?" she asked, finally catching what he said.
"Coming to rescue you," he answered, hanging up.
She blanched and shoved her phone back into her purse, rushing over to Freddy, Zack, and Katie.
"Guys," she whispered. "I–"
A loud voice cut her off.
"Summer!"
Identical looks of disgust flashed over the faces of her friends and it would have been funny if Chris hadn't looped an arm around her waist and pulled her back against him. She hated this, didn't like it at all, wanted it to stop . . . but she just couldn't say anything.
"Didn't you promise you'd hang out with me?" he asked in an annoying tone. The kind that only soap opera studs used and the kind that only soap opera sluts fell for.
"I don't think–"
"Well, I'm here now," he said and she could tell he was smirking at her friends. "So let's go."
Summer watched as Katie's lips pinched in.
"She never mentioned making any plans with you," she practically growled.
"In fact, I think she very specifically made sure that her schedule was clear so she could hang out with us," Freddy said.
"Yeah, so why don't you get your hands off of her and fuck off?" Zack said it as pleasantly as if he was commenting on the mediocre performance of a band right before their own set, but his eyes were dark and hard.
Taking a deep breath, Summer disentangled herself from Chris and squeezed her eyes shut when his hand lingered on her arm.
"I did promise them and Katie and I have an assignment to work on later," she said slowly. "So I'll see you later."
"Yeah, buh-bye," Zack said with a grin and a wave of his fingers.
Summer didn't turn to see if Chris was gone yet. She moved between Katie and Zack and, when they all started laughing, assumed he was gone.
"Fucker," Freddy muttered.
Summer giggled, relieved, and relaxed slightly.
"Can we just find outfits so we can leave?"
They ended up sticking around for another hour, though. The store was a collective favorite, local and trendy, and, best of all, a complete prep repellant. They could never rush a shopping trip and, with Chris out of her mind, Summer found it easy to pick out an outfit she loved (a black, strapless dress, decorated with cherries, flared at the bottom with red fabric belling it out slightly, ending just above her knees). Zack, who didn't feel like dressing flashy, got a black tie with the words 'Hot Fcuk' printed on the bottom, engulfed in decorative flames. Freddy found a plain, blue shirt so soft to the touch that Katie couldn't stop petting it. The bassist, once she relinquished the drummer's find, chose a purple and black sleeveless top, made to look like a corset, and a pair of black pants that laced up the sides.
The paid for their things with their credit cards (for emergencies only, not that their parents would notice if they did or not) and then left, laughing about stupid things. Freddy drove them all back to his house and they lounged around for a few hours, watching edited versions of rated R movies on the lame, basic cable stations, filling in the blanks with colorful phrases that may or may not have been in the original. Finally, Summer and Katie decided it was time to go. They searched for Katie's keys, found them in Freddy's bathroom, and then took off with cheerful goodbyes.
"Thanks," Summer said as they pulled up in front of Katie's house.
"For what?" the other girl asked.
Summer just grinned.
"For agreeing to go to the dance. For being so awesome."
Katie blushed.
"Um, anytime."
—(
"Okay, so, you can just sit on the bed and get comfortable."
Zack nodded and did as Freddy told him, trying not to feel quite as nervous as he really was. After all, he'd fantasized about this, and not just in his dreams. All day Thursday and all day Friday he'd thought about being drawn by the blonde, about kissing him, about . . . other things too. Most of those other things were just wild guesses as to how . . . well . . . yeah, best not to even go there. Not sitting on Freddy's bed in his dark room. Nope, better to just think about nothing. And especially nothing that involved kisses and moans and blow jobs and . . .
Fuck it. There was no possible way he was going to be able to avoid thinking about it.
"Here, I'm gonna put this lamp on you," Freddy was saying, taking a desk lamp with a swiveling head and adjusting it so that it cast a glow on the left side of Zack's head. "And don't be nervous. Just don't move around too much."
Zack took a deep breath.
"Yeah, okay."
Freddy grinned at him and then flopped back into the chair he'd set up in front of his bed. "You're just so cute when you've got that look on your face," he mumbled, sketching
furiously.
The brunette frowned slightly.
"What look?"
But Freddy didn't answer. He just kept looking up and then back down, sketching and then wiping his fingers across the paper. They came away black every time and Zack would stare at the graphite smudges until he returned to moving the pencil across the paper with fluid movements. After about twenty minutes he flipped the page of his sketchbook, rose and shifted the lamp again.
"You doin' okay?" he asked, fiddling with the light a bit more before going back to his chair.
"Yeah."
"Good. Now, um, just look off to the side, okay? That's good."
Zack carefully avoided looking back over at Freddy and instead examined his room. He'd become quite acquainted with it over the years and, instead of thinking about things that were more than likely going to give him an embarrassing erection that Freddy was bound to notice, he decided to reminisce. Listening to the sounds of lead on paper, he thought back.
Their sixth grade year had been awesome. School of Rock had gotten more exposure than any other band that year and they'd cut an album. But after that the changes started. First Gordon had to move across the country because of his mom's job. Then Marco transferred to another, more affordable prep school. By the time highschool rolled around, it was pretty much just Billy, Lawrence, Freddy, Summer, Katie, Marta, Alicia, and Tomika left from the old crowd.
Lawrence met Dani their second week of school in math club and fell in love. After that, except for band practices, he was always busy doing something academic, something with his girlfriend, or a little bit of both. Marta, Alicia, and Tomika, who had all turned into pretty sexy girls, each in their own way, hit the party scene hard. He had classes with them often, but they were more interested in hanging out with whatever their current, collective, flavor of the week was than doing anything else.
Around that time he got close to Summer. They had plenty of advanced classes together, and they'd been friends for a while up to that point. She'd been best friends with Katie for a while and Katie was close to Billy and Freddy and together, the five of them struck up a sort of bond. There had been plenty of rough times and Katie, Billy, and Freddy had all gone through plenty of shit before eventually coming out. But, despite it all, half of their time was spent together.
Sure, sometimes it had been awkward. Zack didn't know a damn thing about being gay (at the time, anyway. He was starting to get an inkling of how hard it was to deal with) and neither did Summer. But they were all that they had left of a childhood they still thought back on fondly, a childhood that no one else would ever be able to lay claim to so they hung out together, got drunk for the first time together, got hungover for the first time together, swore off alcohol forever for the first time together, and a ton of other important things besides.
Sometimes it was at Zack's house, but only when he was sure his parents were going to be gone. Sometimes it was Summer's, Billy's, or Katie's. Mostly it was Freddy's because his room was, by far, the coolest.
Up until the eighth grade, he'd had a pretty standard room. And then his mom had met the Love of Her Life, a rich, much older man who started off a string of bad relationships with rich, much older men. To try and get into Freddy's good graces, he offered to convert the entire top level of their house into his own bedroom. It wasn't a huge space, but it was more sizable than the standard attic and the renovations had paid off. Freddy, who never liked the man but milked him for all he was worth, had the most comfortable bedroom and luxurious bathroom of any of them.
He'd added a lot of things since then. Gone were the pictures of half-naked women and in their place were posters of gay European bands and 'boy-touching' posters of other rock bands that he liked, his own artwork, tons of candid pictures of him and his friends, a Queer As Folk poster or two, and a ton of bumper stickers that read things like, "I don't even think straight." Billy thought none of it was cohesive, but his own room was a lot of bright colors and fancy duvet covers that sometimes made Zack's eyes hurt. Not that he'd ever say anything, lest he offend the other boy. Billy was such a fashion queen sometimes.
Zack's own room was as bare as it had been years ago since his parents didn't really want him putting up too many posters or pictures and definitely wouldn't have held with pro-gay bumper stickers. Katie's was pretty normal, all decked out in varying shades of purple with a few posters and paintings, and Summer's was practical with cream walls and only a few pictures of friends on her night stand. The difference between all of theirs was that Freddy's seemed lived in and it was incredibly welcoming. His mom didn't care. She was actually fairly supportive, when she wasn't off with someone way too old for her, and thought it was a good thing that he 'knew who he was' at such a young age.
Zack wondered, vaguely, how one 'knew who he was', and didn't even realize he was asking the question until it was hanging in the air between him and Freddy.
"How did you know?"
He flinched at the sound of his own voice and then looked over at the blonde who had halted in his sketching.
"Just knew, I guess," he answered vaguely.
Zack sighed. He knew it was touchy subject with Freddy. While Billy was adamant he'd always known and Katie could pinpoint the exact day she'd realized it, the drummer never talked about it.
"Sorry," he apologized. "I don't know why I thought of that."
Freddy didn't say anything for a long time and the scratch of pencil on paper never resumed. Zack looked up with a contrite look and jumped when he realized that Freddy was right in front of him. The blonde hopped onto his bed, laid his head in Zack's lap, and shrugged.
"It's okay."
It had taken years for Zack to get used to Freddy's touchy-feeliness. He wasn't used to casually touching anyone. Not his mom and certainly not his dad. There were, of course, the compulsory hugs and kisses at holidays and the brief stint they'd had on tour right before highschool had led to a pretty tearful departure on his mom's part, but mostly Zack didn't touch other people and wasn't touched by others either. Freddy, on the other hand, was extremely tactile and used to make Zack nervous. After so many years with him, the brunette was comfortable with it, if not a natural at it.
"I know you don't like talking about it," Zack mumbled.
Freddy sighed and seconds later, Zack felt the breath waft over his chin.
"I got a crush on a guy," he said softly. "And he was straight, which, of course, made everything that much worse. I told Billy I thought maybe I was and that I didn't want to be . . ." He trailed off and sat up, his back to his friend. "I tried so hard to forget about it. About my crush and the fact that it wasn't just him, it was all guys. There were always girls willing to reaffirm my heterosexuality, you know? But I just felt worse after."
Zack recalled that pretty vividly; there had been wild parties, late nights, and girl after girl after girl.
"I guess I hate talking about it because of the scars," Freddy said absently. "I was so stupid but it hurt really bad and the only way I could feel better . . . I just wish I could've accepted it," he finished. "I wish I could have been proud about it. I talk all this shit now, but I was nothing but a coward and I haven't really changed."
"Don't be a fucktard," Zack said with an eyeroll. "Not everyone can do what you did. Come out and battle depression and all that. You're one of the strongest people I know and all you ever do is be yourself."
Freddy turned with a small smile.
"Aw," he drawled. "That's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me, Zack."
He smirked.
"Yeah, I know. I expect you to put out now."
Freddy fell backward with an exaggerated gasp and laid his hand over his heart.
"Holy fuck! Innocent, little Zack just came on to me!" He half sat up and leered. "I'm so hot I made Zachary Mooneyham a slut."
Zack pulled up a pillow and hit Freddy in the face with it. Hard.