Chapter Text
August 2000
If Davey was honest with himself, a feat that was becoming increasingly difficult as of late, Jade wasn't even that attractive.
For one, he had bad skin and crooked teeth. Two, his hands were freakishly large, and in all sincerity, borderline terrifying when they weren't holding a guitar. Three, the fingers on said hands were so long and bony that they could have belonged to an extraterrestrial. Four, his neck was utterly disproportionate to his head and he always wore that stupid choker, which really just made the problem of Jade's neck worse.
Sipping at his water bottle, Davey eyed the choker in question from across the kitchen. Watched as it hugged the column of Jade's throat, the crest of his Adam's apple. It drew attention to the minute shadows that accentuated the dips of the clavicles just visible above the cut-off collar of his shirt. Davey's watching turned into a narrowed glare because that choker, even if it did make the problem worse, made it hard to discern what exactly the original problem was when it seemed to divide Jade's neck into two separate territories Davey wanted to kiss until the world fucking imploded.
White-hot anger prickled at the base of his skull, spreading towards his ears and eventually his cheeks. Davey slid around the archway between the kitchen and the living room and leaned into the wall, feeling his tensed shoulders wilt. He pulled and peeled and twisted the label on his water bottle until the pieces fluttered to his feet. He came to the conclusion that it didn't matter what the original problem was, the absurdity of Jade's neck or his desire for it despite it absurdity. The choker spawned myriad thoughts that were becoming so inconvenient he feared they would plummet him into either insanity or an early grave. Like now, he'd caught himself fantasizing about catching that choker with his teeth too many times. Too many times, in fact, that he'd thought he might already be crazy. It sent him into a slowly simmering rage that left him wanting to rip the choker off and toss it onto Channing so he didn't have to fucking look at it anymore.
Taking a breath, he regained his composure and ceased the mutilation of his water bottle. Whenever he got thinking like that, no matter how justified it seemed to be or that it made him feel better, he knew it was obnoxious and really mean. Davey was reasonable enough to assume that Jade didn't do these things on purpose. Jade, when divorced from the convoluted equation of Davey's feelings for him, was his friend. A member of his band. His writing partner. He'd gone to AFI's first show before he'd ever dreamed of being their guitarist. Before Davey had equally never imagined that his songs would be brought to life with Jade's deft manipulation of strings. But Davey definitely hadn't spent the last hour mentally cataloging why he hated Adam and Hunter, why he didn't actually find them attractive. Davey sometimes speculated that he did this because he'd been Jade's friend since high school. That didn't add up, though, because he'd been friends with Adam much longer. And Adam's relative level of attractiveness couldn't have been farther from his radar. Rather than do the arithmetic, he preferred not to dwell on the reality that x did not stand for the duration of their friendship. So, his recent thinking was obnoxious and really mean, but it was also necessary. It was his survival, the last rusted bolt that miraculously kept him from unhinging.
Besides, the heat made him the most disagreeable of creatures to begin with. And the scores of drunk people occupying his kitchen, his living room, and spilling onto the front and back porches, had him seething. The drunks were everywhere, buzzing and cloying not unlike the droves of mosquitoes and pestering insects being let in through the open windows; as stifling and sweat-inducing as the stagnant summer air.
A peel of laughter poured from the kitchen to where Davey was standing. He didn't have the faintest recollection of what face that laugh belonged to, which curdled his already sour mood. To make matters worse, the party had brought strangers to his house. Living on frat row, being a part of the Berkeley punk scene, and living with eight other members of said scene rendered all attempts to resist this predicament futile. Strangers, especially drunk strangers, especially drunk, sorority and frat affiliated or punk strangers, were invariably hazardous. In spite of their marked differences in musical tastes and fashion sense, they shared a special proclivity for vomiting in very problematic locations, like in between the sofa cushions or the sink, and a blatant disregard for material possessions. Davey gripped his water bottle, feeling the plastic yield and crinkle.
He braced his hand against the archway and craned his head around the frame to investigate. The crowd hovering around the table had shifted. He saw a guy with a violently green mohawk and an enormous septum piercing chatting animatedly with Jade, Smith, and Adam. He couldn't hear the specifics of what they were saying, but five, Jade had a nasty habit of over-elongating his vowels, and his voice was carrying. Davey caught the unfortunate words "tour", "music", and "you know" and cringed.
When Jade lifted his arm to high-five Adam (which brought Davey to number six on his list of why Jade was actually unattractive and therefore deserving of his hatred; he was embarrassingly awful at social interaction, but it wasn't like Davey was counting for Christ's sake), his sleeve rose enough to remind Davey that Jade also had shitty tattoos. Davey spied the ugly, black, scarred tribal band. The ugly, black, scarred tribal band, which was so obviously unoriginal that it was thoroughly lame and unpunk and made Davey want to scream until his throat was raw.
Suddenly, over the brim of his red plastic cup, Jade's gaze found Davey's. He smiled and gave him a tiny nod, as if to invite Davey into the fun he was purposefully excluding himself from. Davey shook his head, trying to remain unfazed by the slowly sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Jade's tight-lipped smiles were far from unattractive; they often looked simultaneously shy and enticing, even though he never intended them to. Genuine and thusly beautiful because they betrayed his insecurities.
Jade quirked a brow, smiling again as he mouthed, "You good?"
And what sent Davey over the edge is he knew Jade smiled that way because Jade knew his teeth were a fucking travesty. Floundering, Davey turned on his heel, stormed onto the front porch, and slammed the screen door shut for emphasis. There were people congregated into groups there, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. Their mingled conversations blissfully muted the rage pulsing behind Davey's eardrums. He went to the farthest corner of the porch, clamped his fingers around the railing, and cut his losses. He'd rather be engulfed and steadily poisoned by tobacco smoke and alcohol fumes than endure another second of Jade's presence. He found Jade's presence to be just as engulfing and poisoning but far more potentially damaging to his health.
Now that they weren't on tour and squished inside the van and smelly hotel rooms like sardines, Davey's primary strategy concerning Jade was avoidance and disparagement. He told himself that if he ignored the issue, mocked Jade until he was irredeemable, and ridiculed him, the issue would go away. Since tour, Davey had been coming up with the dumbest shit imaginable to avoid Jade, which was kind of hard considering that they did everyfuckingthing together. Jade hardly even slept in his own bed, anymore. So he did things he knew Jade had no interest in participating in, like jogging around campus until his knees felt like to burst and his calves and lungs alike were on fire. Or sneaking into said campus's student gym and running mile after excruciating mile on the treadmill. Basically, it was a lot of running, because Jade, despite his (seven) utterly ridiculous claims regarding his efficiency as a ninja and his status as the buffest guitarist this side of town, did not enjoy physical activity. That he chose to avoid Jade by running was not lost on Davey.
Davey had to avoid and disparage Jade lest he looked at him too long or succumbed to the yawning ache in his chest and kissed him in the middle of the goddamn living room or something just as assuredly earth-shattering and life-ending. Because he did want to do those earth-shattering, life-ending things to Jade. He'd thought about them and their consequences on a near consistent basis ever since they'd finished writing Black Sails. If he was honest with himself again, not that he was going to be, he'd probably always wanted to, but Black Sails had been when it crept into his consciousness with all the subtlety of a traffic collision on I-5. Black Sails had been when what he'd ascribed to his respect for Jade's incredible musical talent and appreciation for his dry, sarcastic humor had morphed suddenly, with no warning nor preparation, into something less distinguishable, what he might have called a borderline obsessive fascination.
He'd seen those freakishly large hands and bony fingers become lithe and graceful. Watched as they swept across the fret board so effortlessly that Davey almost missed the careful, calculated purpose Jade put behind every single note, every single stretch it took to make a chord. He'd heard Jade's breathing above the slightly metallic squeak as his fingers slipped over the strings. Seen Jade's lips part, eventually going slack in his concentration; the gentle furrow of his brow, the lashes around dark eyes ghosting the prominent rise of his cheekbones as his lids fluttered closed.
The hours he spent writing with Jade, talking about everything and nothing with Jade, passing out with Jade in his bed because they'd been writing and talking about everything and nothing for too fucking long, were the happiest Davey had probably ever been. They were becoming more cathartic than going to shows, more cathartic than playing shows, and they took him on a high that floated him from the ground and into the atmosphere. They caused Davey's body to become a symphony of contentment and pulled him, so close to drowning, from the turbulent waters of his depression and fear. Jade and what they created together encouraged pride to settle deep in Davey's chest, warm and undulating until it glowed bright and left him feeling as if he could conquer the universe.
Tour had crystallized his growing fascination into a fat, bloated infatuation that gorged itself on every miniscule moment of contact Davey had with Jade. Davey had found himself making excuses to grab Jade's shoulder or tuck a curl of hair behind his ear or to hand him a water bottle just so their fingers would brush. He'd done that shit at home, he did that shit with everybody anyway, but on tour, he noticed just how often he manipulated the circumstances so he could do it to Jade. On stage, his infatuation hungered endlessly for the gust of hot air that Jade left in his wake after spinning around with his guitar and the press of Jade's rib cage through his sweaty t-shirt when he shared Davey's microphone. Jade let Davey slam into him, touch the small of his back, throw an arm around his neck and make a fist around sopping cotton while they sang together. Davey started doing the grabbing and touching more frequently as a test, but Jade didn't seem to care. He'd laugh and smile, returning Davey's bear-hugs and other unwarranted physical affection with matched enthusiasm. He let Davey do all of it, no matter the frequency, because, well, eight, Jade was a huge pushover.
It was hard to admit that, to be honest, because as Davey began to realize on the return trip to Berkeley, half asleep on Jade's shoulder, that these things meant he was in love with Jade, these warm feelings were dampened with the acutely sharp pain of wanting something desperately that he could not have. And it pissed Davey off to the most extreme of ends that he could have anyone he wanted but he wanted Jade fucking Puget and his fucked up teeth because the world was complicated and seriously unfair.