title: Camisado, Chapter 2
pairing: Jesse Lacey/John Nolan, with some Jesse/Conor Oberst, and quite a bit of Stephen Morrissey/Johnny Marr. Maybe some Adam Lazzara/Michelle Nolan, too. Maybe.
rating: Um. ... PG-13? I hate ratings.
summary: Boys like that aren’t supposed to exist, much less come in to a used bookstore where you, John Nolan, nerd extraordinaire, happen to work.
disclaimer: I don't own the characters, everything is fake, it's very AU, tra la la.

For fadetoxblack, because she pines for JLa/JNo otp!ness. And electricchicken because she'll always be Moz in my head. Annnd private____ryan because. Duh.


Chapter 1



A week later, you’re sitting on the flat, hard silver bench on a row of bleachers as sun beats against the back of your neck. The back of your neck (along with the rest of you) hasn’t been anywhere near direct sunlight in a long, long time and you’re silently praying the SPF 15 you donned five hours earlier will last another three. You’re praying, but only to the patron saint of hopeless cases. You’re also thinking it might have more effect if you could remember the name of said saint. For sure, you’re not watching the field below, though it’s the entire reason you ended up stuck at school, on a Saturday, in the sun.

Well, more specifically, your little sister is the reason, but you just blame her and the field and the soccer team and, as long as you’re on a roll, whoever invented the game of soccer in the first place. The Scottish, or something. Oblivious to your misery, Michelle is seated two benches in front of you, sandwiched in between two other girls, who are sandwiched between two other girls, and so on. All in all, it’s making for a very giggly sub. For sure, she’s not sitting next to you.

Or looking at you.

Or speaking to you.

Or acknowledging your existence in general.

Which is ironic, considering she stormed into your room that morning demanding you accompany her to the match of the century, that if she doesn’t attend she will absolutely for sure die, and no she most certainly cannot go alone. No one goes alone, duh.

Somehow, your logic that she would meet, like, all five hundred of her friends the minute she stepped out of the car (your car, that uses your gas money) was completely illogical.

You can’t understand how every male with a little sister isn’t gay.

You sigh and shield your eyes from the sun, focusing on the mass of dark curls that constitutes your sister’s head.

“Michelle.”

She ignores you, opting instead for pointing down towards the players, and whispering something to the girl on her left. They both giggle, and you try again, louder.

Nothing.

An empty cup lays on the lower plank under your feet, crushed and ice-sodden. You pick it up and toss it at the back of her head, as gently as possible. It smacks the center of her back and tumbles down, leaving a dark streak of wet across her shirt. Instantly, she whips around, features contorting into a deathly glare you’re certain only adolescent girls can pull off. Well, adolescent girls and your mother when you leave the oven on.

“OW. JOHN. What the fuck is your problem?”

You’re not even going to bother arguing that there is no way that hurt, because the cup is paper and partially decomposed anyway. You have a limited time slot here, and it’s exiting fast.

“Can we go?”

The death glare downgrades to a serious-injury glare, then to an incredulous glare. “No, we can’t GO. You’re such a loser. Gawk at the sweaty boys or something creepy like you do.”

Coming out to your sister was definitely the biggest mistake of your life.

“Michelle, I’m leaving in five minutes.” You’re the older, smarter, better, legally-driving brother, and you make the rules.

She tosses her hair and rolls her eyes, turning away from you, and you grit your teeth. You’re the older, smarter, better, legally-driving brother, and the next game she drags you to, you are so making the rules.

An hour and a half later, after a lot more giggling, at least half of which you know was directed at you, Michelle and three Jessica Simpson impersonators rise and simultaneously turn to look at you. You glance up from the incredibly fascinating activity of counting the threads in your jeans.

“Yes?” you enquire as innocently as possible, because not even you, in all your experience, can hold up under three I-want-you-to-die-very-slowly glares.

Michelle rolls her eyes, and you wonder briefly how they’re even still attached to their sockets, and plants her hands firmly on her hips.

“The game’s over,” she sighs, as if she can’t believe you missed the thrilling denouement, or whatever the sweaty soccer equivalent is.

You jump up and promptly lose count of whatever thread you were on (somewhere around five thousand, but only because you’d starting backwards from about a million).

“Thank God. Let’s go.” That ultimatum might have been more effective if your voice hadn’t cracked on the “go”, but at this point you just want to get your message across.

Michelle sighs and offers her friends an incredibly sympathetic smile. “Sorry, guys,” she whimpers. Always the martyr.

“It’s okay, I have a brother. I know they suck,” the one her left offers helpfully, and smiles sweetly at your sister. Michelle smiles back and sighs again, holding out her thin arms.

“Call me later, okay?” she requests, and wraps her arms around both girls in a weak embrace. “My brother’s just a geek.”

You’re a lot of things, but not stupid, and you know when you’re being abused. Most of the time. You grab Michelle’s arm and yank her away from the others, down the row, ignoring her squealing proclamations of pain. Only, before you’ve made it a third of the way to the haven of your car, pain shoots up your forearm. You let go of your sister promptly, snatching your arm up to your chest. Four crescent-shaped incisions crease the skin, and she snickers.

“That really fucking hurt,” you mutter as she picks pieces of your epidermis from under her talons. That’s right, talons.

“You’re not supposed to rough-handle a lady,” she snaps, and you glance back at her, lips parted in a half-formed retort. The words never launch off your tongue, though, and your entire momentum comes crashing to a halt as your frame smacks straight into something very solid and very warm.

Your head snaps forward, the bridge of your nose colliding with something (bony?), and you recoil. The frame of your glasses hangs askew off your ears, and a guttural grunt replaces whatever biting witticism you were about to bestow upon your sister. Your sister, who is, in fact, oddly silent considering her brother has just done something remarkably stupid. Namely, running in to solid objects. You push your glasses awkwardly up to their proper position on your face and blink at the offending barrier, which seems to be… blinking back? Indeed, as your eyes focus properly, you’re staring straight into another pair, looking just as dazed.

“Ow… Sorry…” the mouth belonging to the eyes mumbles, and a hand raises to rub the jaw under the mouth where a red welt is rising. You squeeze your eyes shut briefly, attempting to force down the congested aching in the cartilage of your nose, but snap them open again as realization hits you. You definitely know that voice. Silky-smooth, confident, and definitely belonging to—

It’s him.

Instantly, whatever color may have remained in your pseudo-vampiric face drains. You attempt a smile, sweeping your eyes downwards in a feeble attempt to distract yourself from the perfection of the features swimming into view. And instantly snap them up again, as you realize what a bad idea looking down is. His jeans are dark, dark blue with fashionably frayed hems and pockets, but somehow you get the feeling they hadn’t been bought that way. More than that, though. They’re tight. Tight like maybe he had a little sister and somehow their clothes had gotten mixed up and God that was a good thing. His shirt is faded and fitted, like the one he’d been wearing the first time you [met?][saw?][lusted over?] him, but this one is black, and a silkscreened keyboard spreads across his chest. “Cursive” is scrawled underneath the vaguely distorted image, and there is no way that can mean what you think—that he enjoys your third (okay, fourth) all-time favorite band that no one else in Amityville or Levittown or possibly all of Long Island has heard of.

So, you bring your eyes straight back up to his cherubim face and mumble your own apology. His lips part to reveal a row of perfect, blindingly-white teeth that make you wish you’d invested in some kind of orthodontia.

“It’s okay. Hey! Hi,” his smile becomes less apologetic and more genuine, and for one flickering second you wonder if maybe, maybe he remembers you.

“You work at the bookstore, right?”

You knew all those Sunday mornings spent in Church would pay off. Thank you, Jesus.

“Er. Yeah. You don’t.” Too bad Jesus couldn’t have bestowed upon you the gift of eloquence, or suavity, or at least anything other than total social incompetence. “I mean, you came in. Obviously.” Okay, John, close your (un-orthodontured) mouth now.

But he laughs and his smile grows wider, and for no reason at all, you relax. You’re not comfortable, per say, but for a very odd reason you don’t feel like stammering. Or blushing. Or running as far and fast in the opposite direction as possible.

“Yeah. Thanks again for your help. I’m pretty hopeless at French anything. I’m Jesse, by the way,” he offers his hand, and you really had no idea people still shook hands, unless you were meeting an adult or something. But, you take it, and whatever you were expecting, the result is a thousand times better. His palm is cool and smooth, and momentarily you’re surprised that yours isn’t hot, or sweaty, and that you aren’t worrying about it either way.

But that’s too much thinking, and you smile back. A real smile, not a half-grimace, and push your glasses up again on the bridge of your nose. “I’m John. Did your friend like the book?”

Jesse—you can officially call him that now, as in, by his name, as in, not “Him”, as in his name, as in Jesse—shrugs and slides his palm back out of yours in one fluid motion. His lips twitch from a smile to something cooler, more bemused and his palm slides into the pocket of those gloriously tight jeans. “I think so. He and his… thing… are speaking again, sort of. So, I guess it worked.”

“His thing?” Your eyebrows lift inquisitively, and normally you would feel totally weird asking about someone else’s friend’s problems, but for some reason you feel like Jesse doesn’t mind.

Jesse shrugs again, that same small smile hovering on his lips. “It’s just this on-again-off-again catastrophe made all the worse by that fact that they’re completely, disgustingly in love.”

You laugh, quietly, because it isn’t very funny but the way he said it makes you feel like it is. “Wow. Well, then my condolences and my congratulations.”

He catches his lower lip in his teeth and inclines his head slightly. “I’ll be sure to let them know,” he says sarcastically, but without the slightest hint of malevolence. “But, hey, I have to go. I was supposed to leave before the fourth quarter, or whatever they call it in soccer. Anyway, if you want, I’ll give you my number? If you ever want to hang out or anything, just call? You go here, right? St. Mary’s? I’m assuming you do because they aren’t letting people from the other team on this side of the bleachers.”

Your brain has lapsed completely back into blubbering adolescent-boy stage, mostly at the mention of his number. Barely, you manage a nod and another quick smile, clearing your throat before you can actually speak. “Yeah, I go here. Uh, that’d be rad. To hang out, I mean.”

Damnit, John, who uses “rad” anymore? You had ten fantastic seconds of almost-coolness, or at least non-dorkyness, and you’ve blown it all with 80’s vernacular.

“Totally rad,” he grins, and the little self-deprecating voice in your head is silenced, because he’s making fun of you, but his eyes are jovial.

You laugh and work your cell phone out of the pocket of your straight-legged, unfitted, unflattering, and unfrayed jeans. “Shut up. Okay, what is it?”

Jesse rattles off a number, simultaneously fishing keys off a clip hooked to his belt loop. “Okay, I gotta… fucking… fly or something. Bye, John.” And he spins on his heel and starts sprinting in the direction of student parking.

You’re staring at the inch-wide display of your phone and the seven pixilated numbers black against the sickly green light, grinning grinning grinning. Somewhere in the heady haze of the digits your nerve endings register vague pain in your shin, and a dull shriek in the background of your ears.

”John! JOHN!”

You jolt back to reality, sort of, and find yourself facing a very rabid-looking sixteen-year-old female. You’d pretty much forgotten you even had a sister, much less one that was standing right behind you the entire time. Which leads you to wonder why, exactly, she was so quiet, instead of whining or moaning or hissing or shrieking about how he could flirt with his loser friends later.

“What?”

Apparently, your “What?” isn’t up to par with the gravity of whatever situation she was apparently dealing with, because she shrieks again.

“JOHN, ohmyGod. John! Did you just get his number?” Her eyes are huge discs in her delicate face, and could that be… respect? Yeah, right.

“Um,” you hold the phone up to her face, watching those huge discs scan over the number.

“Oh my GOD. John! That’s Jesse Lacey!” Her fingers are pressed to her cheek in sheer amazement.

You blink at her, frowning slowly. “What? You know him?”

Long curls toss over her shoulder and the usual scorn replaces whatever sense of wonder might have flickered within her. “God, you’re such a fucking pariah. Everyone knows him. He’s Jesse Lacey. He’s, like, the coolest kid in the school.”

You’re aware you’re probably gaping at her now, but you don’t have the willpower to close your jaw. Whatever elevation you’d just been on—somewhere close to a million miles above sea-level—has just avalanched you straight back down to Earth. And deposited you very unceremoniously onto the ground.

“Coolest kid in school? How come I haven’t heard of him?” Your voice sounds hoarse even to you, and there is no way this can be happening.

“Because you suck. Obviously. Seriously, John, he’s, like, friends with everyone on football and lacrosse and doesn’t even play sports. Haven’t you heard of the Lacey parties?”

You have. Oh, you have. Everyone in town has. The Lacey parties were the high school parties no one else dared to have. Upperclassmen only, with the exception of dates, and invariably every person in school would be talking about it two weeks before and four weeks after.

Which, of course, meant only one thing. Jesse Lacey, after realizing that you were a complete and utter nobody, would probably most definitely not want anything to do with you, ever.

Ever.