Chapter Text
Cody is definitely not waiting for the sound of the keys fiddling with the lock when the clock rolls around to 9:00pm, and he definitely doesn’t scramble to sit up like a normal person with a normal spine as he hears the lock finally click open. He also doesn’t momentarily mute the TV to listen for the annoyed sigh following the soft woosh the door swinging open a second later. He fucking doesn’t. Whatever.
Pete moved in two months ago. In that time, Cody’s heard him get the lock on the first try maybe three times. When Cody first moved to New York, his parents spent a lot of time warning him about break-ins and made him promise to make sure he’d get a place with a good, thick door. Which was dumb because Cody had eight swords already, obviously he could just defend himself. And hey, maybe he wasn’t on speaking terms with his first couple roommates because they were too fucking lame to be chill about seeing a dope ass katana in their face first thing when they came home from a late shift, or like, with a hookup, but that’s their problem. Most people would consider built-in home security a perk, actually.
(He’s gotta take up the whole scythe in the living room thing with Nasir, again.)
Now, it’s a little bit different. Now, when Cody hears someone messing with the lock like they’re the world’s worst home intruder, the only swords involved are the ones, like, stabbing his heart. Fuck.
“Hey man,” Cody says coolly—disinterested, even, eyes carefully set on the TV instead of staring at Pete all eager like some sort of prep—as soon as he rounds the corner into the living room, floor creaking familiarly underneath his stupid mismatched socks. “How was work or whatever?”
Pete just groans in response, dropping his bag at the base of the TV stand and swiftly crossing the space to collapse on the other side of the couch. Cody counts to three in his head— one fuck gladiator, two fuck gladiator, three fuck gladiator— and allows himself to look. Pete is curled in on himself like a fucking, armadillo or something, with his arms wrapped underneath his legs, feet hanging of the edge of the cushion his face is pressed into, eyes shut.
“You, uh—you good, bro?”
“Mmmmmmph.”
Cody frowns. Pete looks, like, legit sad. He puts down his monster. “Do you, like. Uh, do you want me to come to like, a meeting with you?” At this Pete opens one eye, eyebrows knitting together as he pouts. Cody blanches. Fuck, fuck, why the fuck did you say that that’s so fucking rude you’re not like his fucking sponsor or whatever you can’t just—
“That’s really nice,” Pete says then, very softly. Oh. “ But uh, no, it’s not—just a long day at work. Can I just watch with you?” He tilts his chin over to the TV where Netflix is counting down the seconds until the next episode of Naruto.
“Oh, yeah. Of course, dude.” He shrugs nonchalantly but Cody knows that there is no amount of dudes or bros or mans he can throw into his speech to offset the damning thud of his heartbeat in his ears when Pete smiles around a thanks, small and soft.
Fuck.
It’s not like Cody hasn’t had crushes before. It’s not like he hasn’t dated people before, either. But here’s the thing—Cody has (or had, as of a few short months ago) been a Hot Topic manager for seven years. And he’s been a goth for even longer. These are worlds he is comfortable in. But now, the mall is fucking closed and magic is fucking real and goths are an endangered fucking species, apparently, and he is, in short, out of his goddamned element. He’s out of his league, if you will. Well, if we’re being completely accurate—
Pete is out of his league. The rest of this—sitting at home watching anime and ingesting nothing but Monster and Takis? That is very much in Cody’s league. He owns that league.
Even if Cody had dated people that weren’t also mall goths before, Pete would still be out of his league. For one, he’s the Vox fucking Phantasma of New York, which is honestly way cooler than being the Jersey Devil, just by virtue of power alone. Cody’s got him beat in aesthetics, sure, but Pete is still light years ahead in everything else, including but not limited to: sick battle maneuvers; cooking; knowing what cleaning product to use where; actually having the motivation to do said cooking and use said cleaning product; knowing what the fuck is going on with the magic world; being, like, really fucking hot and having a cohesive look that’s not lame even if it is sort of prep; having a regular sleep schedule; being, like, nice to people, even when they’re shitheads; and looking really fucking cute when he’s curled up on the couch watching anime.
God. Cody watches from the corner of his eye as Pete struggles to get a blanket onto himself. It really and truly does not want to unfold, fleece panels sticking firmly together as Pete flaps it around uselessly, still curled into the cushion. Cody forces himself to look forward and not think about how domestic, how easy it would be to just reach over and drape the blanket across Pete himself, letting his hands linger as he smooths it over his back.
He shivers just at the thought of touching Pete—not even in a horny way, just, like. Contact. Touching another human. A human that is Pete. With his hand, softly, lovingly.
Fucking christ. He doesn’t call on Bazathrax now (he is not going to do that song and dance while Pete is sitting three feet away) but he makes a note to ask him tomorrow if he can grant Cody a, like, remove feelings spell or something like that.
Pete manages to sit up not too long after he gets the blanket on himself properly, and half an episode after that he speaks up for the first time since asking if he could watch.
“Oh, that’s like, Sasuke, right?”
It’s not Sasuke. It’s Itachi, which normally would be a rookie mistake, (and one that Cody would have no hesitation roasting him for) but—Pete doesn’t watch anime. Just last week he’d given Cody a blank stare when he told Pete that a possessed stock broker’s ass they kicked had total Vegeta energy. So, honestly? It’s pretty fucking cool that Pete even knows Sasuke is a Naruto character at all.
“No, that one’s Itachi.” Pete frowns at that, so Cody quickly adds, “but he’s Sasuke’s brother, so you were close. They look pretty similar.”
Pete hums. “Oh. Okay. Well, what’s his deal?”
“What’s his deal?”
“Yeah! Like, what’s he all about?”
Cody takes the glint of challenge in Pete’s eye as his cue to explain, thoroughly. It takes him until the end of the episode to get through just the backstory that brings them up to where they’re watching, but Pete never interrupts or lets his attention sway. The are you still watching? prompt pops up but neither of them make a move to click away because Pete just keeps asking more questions, and, like, actually listens to what Cody’s telling him instead of just nodding and trying to change the topic like those poser creeps that always came into his Hot Topic just to flirt with the younger cashiers. No way—in this metaphor Pete is the dude that sorts through the pins to find all the good ones, and lets Cody talk his ear off about the new shipment of Nightmare Before Christmas merch all the while. And he’s asking good questions too, not just boring shit you can look up on wikipedia or whatever.
Once he’s caught up to speed, Pete urges him to play the next episode so he can see what happens next, truly invested. Cody feels intoxicated from the attention of it all, like Pete just picked him off the high school gym wall and asked him to dance. He feels… understood, in a way that’s not entirely foreign to him but still thrilling in its unfamiliarity. It makes him want to get up off the couch and run to Uncommon Knowledge and read every single book in the store just so that he might know Pete the tiniest bit better for it (and to find out what made him sad today, then beat the shit out of it). Except then he’d have to, well, actually get up and leave and he doesn’t want to do that if Pete is still here beside him, so for now he’ll settle for holding the feeling in his chest, quietly. He sits with it as Pete gasps, pulling his knees in and resting his chin on top, fully captured by the episode as it plays out. Cody feels what is probably an inappropriate amount of pride swell inside him—like, fuck, he’s not responsible for Pete’s awe right now; it’s not like he’s the legendary Masashi Kishimoto or anything—but he lets it wash over him anyway as the epic sounds of Yasuharu Takanashi play in the background.
Then, Pete says, “Hey, can I braid your hair?” and it’s all downhill from there. Cody feels his blood pressure plummet then skyrocket again, life just about flashing before his eyes at the merest, most peripheral glancing thought of Pete putting his hands into his hair.
He wants to say, No fucking way no fucking way that’s fucking gay and I can’t fucking handle it I can’t even remember the last time another person touched me so I would probably be really fucking weird about it anyway especially because I have a fucking crush on you or whatever and like also my hair would probably be really bad to braid and then you’ll think I’m even lamer than you probably already do and then I’ll get all sad and shit and probably mess stuff up more or piss off people or whatever and I’ve been doing so good since I met you and the other magic people and I don’t want you to hate me so like no fucking way please don’t braid my hair dude, but it comes out more like, “Yeah, sure, whatever dude.”
Well. At least he got the dude part.
“Sweet,” Pete says, swiftly ushering Cody further into his internal crisis with a chilled out, “Can you sit on the floor? It’ll be easier.”
And with that he’s helpless to do anything but fulfill the request, slinking onto the hardwood as Pete bounces—fucking, like, bounces, god Cody is so beyond screwed—to the middle of the couch to sit behind him, crossing his legs neatly. “You have really nice hair,” he remarks as he runs his fucking hands through it like it’s nothing.
Cody is profoundly grateful that Pete can’t see the involuntary flutter of his eyelids as fingernails rake over his scalp, goosebumps prickling all over his skin in a full-body shudder he just barely manages to suppress. “Yeah, it’s whatever. Th-thanks, I guess.” He thinks he hears a soft, short exhale from above, and an image of Pete smirking enters his mind on its own accord. Fuck.
Pete begins to run his hands through his hair in earnest, now, detangling. Every time his fingers catch on a knot Cody finds himself twitching involuntarily, deeply and fully aware of each and every square millimetre on his head. He tries his best not to, like, make sounds about it, his brain firing full blast on whatever fucking chemical makes you feel like you’re gonna throw up through your skin. It’s not entirely unlike that time he made a triple americano with monster instead of water that time he and his college roommate stayed up to put together a last minute cosplay for Comic Con—maybe now with a little less urge to cry and a lot more bisexuality.
(The barista at the night owl café down the street from their dorm hadn’t even given him a second look when he’d asked for just a triple espresso at two in the morning. He remembers thinking, fucking New York, man! and that was before he found out there was like, actual magic and shit.)
Pete finishes brushing and Cody starts to think that maybe he’ll be able to handle this, but then it gets even worse. “Dude, you gotta stop squirming,” he says, knees bumping into Cody’s back as he unfolds his legs and plants his feet on the floor, squeezing Cody’s fucking shoulders between his fucking knees. “I’m starting for real now,” he mutters, sectioning off a portion of hair at the edge of where the shaved part begins with a quick little scratch.
Cody coughs out of a sigh, Pete’s leg flexing against his shoulder as he violently whips his arm up to his face to cover the sound. “Uh, shit, yeah, sorry. I’m—I’ve never, like, done this before,” he admits quietly.
“That’s okay. Just—just try to relax. You’re like, super tense.”
“Shit, sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Pete repeats, softer than Cody was expecting, just as his fingers sweep over his hairline to grab another piece, smaller than the first time. “Let me know if I’m hurting you, though.”
“You’re not,” he says, way too fast. Fuck. Fucking homo.
“Good,” Pete says, weaving the pieces together with what feels like, to Cody, great ease. Why is he so good at everything? Maybe being a like, dream god or whatever makes you good at hair braiding, too.
“You know,” he starts again, pulling Cody out of his thoughts, “I’ve always kinda wanted to dye my hair. Yours looks really cool when it’s braided with the black.”
“I know, it’s fuckin’ sick.”
He hears Pete laugh under his breath again, and bites back the I could dye your hair if you want that’s sitting under his tongue as Pete falls silent again. Don’t be weird about it, he tells himself as he sighs silently when Pete pulls the strands tight by his temple. Don’t be weird about it, he tells himself as he leans back ever so slightly into the touch, Pete’s leg hair tickling the sides of his arms as he melts into the floor, just a bit.
Don’t be weird about it, he tells himself as he closes his eyes—he’s seen this episode at least eight times and he has all the dialogue memorized anyway so it’s okay—and imagines Pete twisting his hair back tight and out of the way before a fight. Don’t be weird about it, he tells himself as he thinks about, like, just slashing the shit out of a gladiator drone as Pete magics it into even smaller pieces and then turns to him, brushing a loose strand behind his ear and saying something like, shit, I guess I’m not that good at braiding hair.
Don’t be weird about it, he tells himself as he imagines responding, all suave and shit, yeah, you definitely need more practice. He thinks about making Pete blush, mid-battle, like he’s done to Cody so many times. Don’t be weird about it, he tells himself as he imagines going home, bruised and bloody and fucking exhausted, and having Pete grabbing him by the collar and pulling him close, pushing his hair out of the way as he presses his lips to Cody’s, desperate and wanting.
Don’t be weird about it, and fucking christ, don’t think about that, he tells himself as he brazenly ignores his own pleading and thinks about stumbling up to the attic with no less than two points of contact the whole time, tripping over tangled feet and giggling through bruised lips as they fall onto the sheets and Pete’s hands once again make their way into Cody’s hair and pull—
“Alright, you’re all done, Night Angel.” Real Pete pats his shoulder and retracts his legs from Cody’s sides, crossing them up on the couch again. “Go look in the mirror. I did a bomb-ass job, honestly.”
Cody, in this moment, is so internally manic that he is barely tethered to the concept of space and time so he simply does as he’s asked without comment or challenge, just shuffling quietly to the bathroom with the vague knowledge that Pete is following behind him excitedly. The harsh fluorescence succeeds in both snapping him back to the present reality and making his eyes fucking sting, so it takes him a second to register the image in the mirror as himself. But when he does—
“Wait, I look, like, pretty.” It’s the first thing that comes tumbling out of his mouth, filter decimated by the pure shock of seeing the way his hair is folded back out of his face, ribbon of electric blue running through it like a signature. He doesn't normally see much of the left side of his face, but he looks—he looks pretty. “I look legit pretty,” he says again, just to drive the point home, and Pete titters excitedly on the balls of his feet, leaning up against the doorframe with a massive smile on his face. They meet eyes in the mirror before Cody has to look away, red rising on his cheeks and giving him away. Fuck.
Pretty isn’t something he’s ever considered himself, and it isn’t something he’s ever considered wanting to describe himself. Pretty is for preps. Cody is not a fucking prep, but god, maybe he’s pretty? This is super gender, his mind supplies then, once again of its own accord and once again very unhelpfully, a phrase from Pete’s vocabulary that Cody’s heard him say a handful of times before, mostly under his breath or behind the counter to Zee while he’s scoping the meagre manga section at Uncommon Knowledge.
Cody lets his eyes drift back up to meet his own gaze in the mirror again, annoyance at the persisting blush falling into background noise at the confirmation of yeah, gender, that’s sounding off front and centre. Interesting. Interesting.
“You’re legit pretty, man,” Pete says then. And it’s not—Cody nearly tells him to fuck off, but it’s not teasing, like, that’s fucking weird that you would say you’re pretty. It’s encouraging, and with a kindness that is so benign (so wholeheartedly benign, save for what is maybe the tiniest glimmer of self-recognition and mischief in Pete’s eyes, which is something that Cody will not be unpacking tonight, or anytime soon for that matter) that he nearly has to hold onto the sink just to stay standing.
“Thanks,” he chokes out, cringing internally at how pained it sounds. Fuck. God, fuck. He decides in that moment that he needs to crush another monster to cope with all of this—and mutters as much when he breezes past Pete outside the bathroom—but of course that backfires, because—
“Dude, it’s like, midnight. You’re not—I’m not letting you have another monster. Let me make you some tea instead.” Cody doesn’t even have time to scoff and roll his eyes (and then, after another carefully timed five seconds, begrudgingly accept with the guise of annoyance even though he is thrilled, heart fluttering at the kindness of it) before Pete is padding over the creaky floors and flipping on the kitchen lights, buzzing low and far too bright for how exposed Cody feels right now, no hair to push over his face. But still, he is defenseless to do anything but pause the TV and quietly follow Pete into the kitchen, anyway.
He hopes it doesn’t give him away when Pete holds up a mug that says World’s Best Grandpa and the smile he was biting back slips through his teeth. But if it does, Pete doesn’t say anything about it before he turns and gets to work. Cody leans against the counter and watches as Pete bops his head slightly as he flips on the kettle and pulls a box of tea out of the cabinet. There’s no music playing or anything—Cody stops for a second to listen, just to make sure he’s not like, losing his hearing or some shit—but Pete continues to subtly groove through his task anyway, shoulders joining his nodding in a rhythmic little shimmy, so small that Cody might not even notice he was doing it if he wasn’t acutely zeroed in on, like, everything Pete does and says.
This continues to be a problem, because then Cody’s brain goes, hey, don’t make it weird, but what if you guys, like, slow danced in this kitchen like a fucking, a couple, like in one of those stupid fucking romance movies? And he doesn’t even know how to slow dance but that doesn’t stop him from imagining it anyway, Pete leading him around the kitchen to one of those lame soft rock songs he’s always singing along to in the shower in the mornings. He can nearly feel their hands clasped together, pulses thrumming in time as they sway aimlessly over the linoleum. The tempo of the song wouldn’t even matter—they’d just be in their own little world, breathing together in whatever time signature they so pleased. Maybe they’d inch closer and closer until they could lean their foreheads together, breath mixing in the ever-shrinking space between their lips, almost magnetic. And then, finally—
“—okay?”
“What?” Cody snaps to attention as Pete blinks at him expectantly, tail end of a question Cody most certainly did not hear hanging in the air. He glances down at the mug in Pete’s hands, held out like an offering, then to the milk on the counter.
“No, milk is for wimps,” he says, taking a stab at what he thinks Pete’s question might have been. He would have seen the confusion on Pete’s face and heard his quiet That’s not what I… if he wasn’t so busy burying his face into the mug, hiding the blush he’s sure is lingering on his cheeks as he goes to take a sip. One downside to being, like, Dracula pale, is that his stupid face gets stupid red stupid easily. And okay, sue him, maybe he blushes just imagining stupid shit like that. He’s a romantic, okay. And if that’s—oh, jesus FUCK.
“Cody!” Pete shouts his name just as a splash of tea goes spilling over Cody’s mug, entire body jerking at the contact with freshly boiled water. Pete’s entire face contorts, a cartoonish mosaic of concern. “I said it was too hot so you should give it a minute,” he whines softly.
Cody shakes his head, pained. “S’fine,” he lies, and wills himself not to scream, “Jersey Devil powers. I, uh, it doesn’t affect me.” He takes another sip to prove it, the tip of his tongue immediately going sandpapery and numb as the liquid—which, even in his now limited tasting abilities, he will admit is pretty good—scorches down his throat. He urges his lips into a smile and says, “Yummy.”
“Yeah?” It sounds like Pete’s trying to hold back a laugh, but the pleasantly surprised look on his face is genuine.
Cody swallows, throat pulsing with pain. “Uh, yeah, it’s—it’s good.”
Pete sighs deeply, laugh easing out of him and dissolving into something more reserved. “Good. That’s—that’s good. I’m glad your powers keep you, uh. Safe,” he finishes, sheepish.
“Yeah. Uh, thanks,” Cody croaks out. He’s definitely going to have to call Kingston tomorrow. Hey man, I know I’m like annoying and new here still but do you think you can take some time out of your very busy day being both the Vox Populi and a nurse to heal my burnt tongue? Yeah, no, I’m fine, I was just being gay for your like cosmic counterpart or whatever and poured a mug of boiling liquid into my mouth. Oh, you won’t heal me because I’m pathetic? Understandable, have a nice day.
“—episode?” God, Cody has to stop letting his brain go off on its own. Maybe there’s a hold attention or stop thoughts spell. He blinks and Pete starts again, cluing in. “I asked if you wanna finish the episode? It’s kind of late but I could probably stay up a little longer if there’s not too much left. I’m kinda invested, now.”
Cody tears his eyes away from Pete’s and squints at the TV. “Oh, yeah, this episode is almost done. Like ten minutes?”
“You know that just from one frame?” The shit, that’s impressive goes unspoken but it is more than evident in Pete’s voice.
He tries not to be smug about it. “I’ve seen Naruto like, at least ten times all the way through.” Okay, maybe Pete’s still out of his league, but Cody is feeling pretty fucking cool in this moment, watching Pete’s eyebrows raise as he takes a sip of his tea, humming appreciatively.
“Wow.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Wanna finish the episode now?”
“Sure.”
Pete sits down decidedly not on the opposite side of the couch from Cody, like before, but in the middle, so close Cody can feel the couch dipping beside him whenever his roommate shifts. It’s an agonizing, very long ten minutes, and by the time the credits roll Cody is nearly sure that this is the least amount of attention he’s ever paid to a Naruto episode. He finds his hands floating up to his head every few seconds or so, fingers gingerly pressing into the divots of the braid all by themselves. He doesn’t want to mess up Pete’s hard work, but he can’t stop himself from checking that it’s still there—that there’s evidence Pete’s hands were on him, that something so beautiful and intricate was made from hair growing out of Cody’s own head. He wonders if Pete’s hand was in the exact same place as Cody’s is now. It’s not un likely. And that—have they held hands now, technically? If there’s an alternate universe where Pete started braiding Cody’s hair twenty minutes later, is he holding that Pete’s hand right now?
He should totally figure out a way to ask JJ about alternate universes, next time they see him.
“Thanks for letting me watch with you.” Pete turns to Cody as the screen falls to black, eyes fixed on the cushion between them. “It was fun.”
“Of course, dude. Thanks for the tea, and the, uh—” he gestures vaguely to his hair, still pulled back in the braid.
Pete nods eagerly, smiling at his handiwork, still intact. “Yeah, of course. Oh—” He reaches a hand up, hesitating slightly before he brushes his fingers over Cody’s hairline, softly tucking a stray piece behind his ear. “You got a… here.”
Guess you need more practice, Cody’s brain supplies. Not fucking helpful, he responds, swallowing thickly at the contact of Pete’s hand travelling down his ear and settling on his jaw, featherlight.
“There you go,” Pete finishes, hair secured safely away from Cody’s face. But he doesn’t move his hand, and time grinds to a halt in which Cody finds himself thinking wait wait holy fuck holy shit wait no way? Their eyes are locked, unmoving from each other as Pete’s lips fall open, just barely, and then Cody feels the couch shift under their weight.
“Okay, well, I should be getting to bed,” Pete says, pulling his hand back and standing abruptly, “Have uh, have a good night!” He does not meet Cody’s gaze as he speaks or as he reaches down to grab his mug from the table.
Both of them freeze, just for a second, before Cody responds. “Yeah, of course, uh, goodnight dude.” And then Pete is beelining it for the stairs and Cody is left alone in the dark once more.
Fuck.