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“So, Bret, where do you think I should look for a date?” Jemaine asks for nearly the thirty fourth time that week. Bret knows it’s close to thirty four, but he only started counting after the fifth or sixth time, which is why he includes nearly. He looks up from his paint by number of the Dalmatian puppies in the fire-hat, and makes his eyes big and mournful.
“I dunno. I didn’t know five minutes ago, why would I know now?”
“Oh, I dunno either. I thought maybe you’d thought of something,” Jemaine answers casually, like he hasn’t been asking this question constantly for the last three days.
Bret sighs, carefully filling in one of thousands of black spots, his tongue pushed to the corner of his mouth. “Well, I haven’t.”
“Oh. Well if you think of something...” Jermaine trails off, and doesn’t bring it up again until later that night, when they’re out to dinner with Murray.
Through a mouthful of Lo Mein, he asks, “Murray, where do you think I should look for a date?”
Bret jots down a mental nearly thirty five.
“Are you still trying to find a date to that party?!” Murray asks, eyes widening, fork speared through a particularly sticky looking piece of orange chicken.
“A date to the party he isn’t invited to, so he can ditch his date and steal Dave’s date,” Bret adds before Jemaine can properly respond. As he says it, he realizes it could have come off a smidgen nasty, or at the very least whiny, but he’s had to listen to thirty four, no, thirty five pleas. Plus, its true. The only reason Jemaine needs a date is to get into a mandatory-date party some friend of Dave’s is throwing, so he can attempt to (and fail to) seduce Dave’s sort-of-girlfriend whose name he didn’t even know, but insists he’s in love with.
“Be nice, Bret,” Murray says.
“Yeah Bret, be nice,” Jemaine interjects, crossing his arms. “You should know, Bret has been entirely unhelpful in this situation. The party is in two days and I still haven’t found a girl to go with me, and it’ll be virtually all his fault seeing as he’s made no attempt to help me find someone.”
“You’re the ladies man anyway, do you really need his help?” Murray asks with a wink, leaning on his arm onto the table.
“Well, no, not usually. But I’m on a time crunch, so I’m desperate,” Jemaine argues, glancing pleadingly to Bret.
Murray’s gaze lights up, in that rather alarming I-have-a-life-saving-idea-and-you’re-gonna-love it way. Bret balks a little, fearing the worst and shrinking back into his chair, hands tightening defensively around his bowl of miso soup.
“I got it. Bret, to make up for your unhelpfulness, you should be Jemaine’s date. After all, you’re the small one,” Murray offers.
Oh. Bret relaxes, relieved. That wasn’t so bad. He can think of a million things worse than being Jemaine’s date, although he doesn’t particularly fancy the idea of being ditched in the end. “I suppose I could do that,” He shrugs. “Although no one would believe it. I have a beard after all.”
Jemaine, who is looking rather horrified, shakes his head. His already dark eyes darken as he protests “ Murray don’t you think that’s kind of weird? Taking Bret as my date?”
“No,” Murray and Bret say hastily together, before Murray adds “not at all. If he’s dressed like a girl. And paying reparations for being unhelpful.”
“...but...my beard?” Bret scratches at his chin casually, eyes turning to Jemaine questioningly. He really hopes that this plan will go through, not because he wants to wear a dress or heels or anything, but because he thinks it will be somehow fun to pretend to be Jemaine’s date. He doesn’t think too much about most things, Bret, so he doesn’t think too much about this, either.
“Shave it,” Murray says like its the most obvious thing in the world.
Bret is aghast. “I can’t shave my beard!” He clutches at it affectionately. “It’s attached to me!”
“Well, not permanently. And it’ll grow back,” Murray says gently, but Jemaine has turned to Bret and grabbed his arm, squeezing with a confusing force, heavy brows lifted with a strange franticness.
“You don’t have to shave your beard, you’re not going to be my date,” He urges. “It’s a bit weird.”
“But...I owe you,” Bret says with a flash of brilliance. And he smiles, kind of stupidly because there’s nothing to smile about really, aside from his miso soup and Jemaine’s hand on his bicep.
And his smile seems to work, because before he can wonder about the source of the smile, Jemaine settles back into his chair, twists a forkful of lo-mein, brings it to his mouth, and agrees reluctantly. “Okay, fine then. If I can’t find another date, I’ll take Bret.”
And Bret keeps smiling, without thinking too much about it.
~*~
One day before the date-mandatory party, Jemaine isn’t in his bed when Bret wakes up. He comes back sometime after breakfast with a dress in a paper bag, and a rather defeated expression on his face, brows drawn together disgruntledly.
“Well, whose that for?” Bret asks, pointing to the bag and poking his spoon around in his fruit loops.
“You,” Jemaine sighs, eyes sliding closed unfortunately. “It’s your dress. For tomorrow night. I bought one at the Salvation Army.” He opens the bag and pulls out a rather hideous floral shift, better suited for a grandma than Bret. Jemaine deposits it on the table beside the cereal box. “It was only two dollars.”
Bret holds it up, surveying the silky material with combined awe and disgust. “I can see why. It’s terrible.”
“But, you owe me. And I haven’t found a real date yet, so you have to come,” Jemaine whines.
Bret holds up the dress, examining it from all angles. It’s quite awful, a night-gownish floor-length green and pale pink floral number with lace around the collar. “Is it my size?”
“I think so. I mean, I don’t know your size in dresses Bret, I’ve never bought you one before.”
Getting up from the table and heading towards his Crafting Corner, Bret carefully moves his Dalmatian painting, sitting down with a pair of scissors and the dress across his lap. “It’ not even sexy. I need to show my legs.”
“But I don’t want to see your legs!” Jemaine protests, standing over Bret’s shoulder and cringing while he watches him carefully cut and hem the dress.
An hour and a half later, Bret is still hunched over the dress, pinning things and mumbling the occasional “flip, I really need a thimble.” Eventually, he holds it up, a pleased, sloppy smile on his face. “Finished!”
“Mmmghph,” Jemaine mumbles from his bed, where he’s been nursing a bottle of red wine Murray gave him the other night (for his rockstar image.) By the look on his face, he’s not entirely pleased with the enthusiasm Bret’s adopted for sewing. “Well, go try it on,” he slurs, and Bret wrinkles his nose, pretty displeased himself with the whole wine thing.
A few minutes later, he emerges from the bathroom, dress hanging slightly too-big on his skinny frame and glaringly boob-less chest. Regardless, it’s a vast improvement upon the monstrosity Jemaine brought home, seeing as he’s eliminated the lace collar and made the whole thing significantly shorter. “What do you think?” he piourettes.
Jemaine chokes on his wine, which isn’t difficult to do seeing as he already doesn’t like the taste very much. “Wow. You look good,” he sputters, raking a hand through his hair nervously.
“I need to practice being a woman,” Bret says very seriously, always excited for the prospect of an artistic adventure. Also, inexplicably excited to be Jemaine’s date, even if he is going to get ditched. “I should probably stuff the chest of this,” he adds, holding the front of the dress away from his nearly nonexistent pecs and peering down.
Jemaine keeps on looking at him, weirdly petrified from his bed, stiff and quiet. “Um, you’re going to have to shave that beard. And your legs. They look awful.”
Bret cuts a hand lazily through the air, trying to make the gesture womanish. “I’ll do it tomorrow, before the party. You know, for maximum smoothness and realism.”
Finally standing, Jemaine approaches him, cocking his head curiously and smelling like wine. “We should, uh. I mean, do you think it would be weird if we, uh, practiced before hand? Like, to ensure maximum smoothness and realism?”
Bret is staring at his sneakers, thinking he should probably get nylons and heels. “Well sure. Practice what?”
“I don’t know,” Jemaine says solemnly. “Date things.”
“Like hanging out? But we practice that all the time.” Bret is swishing the dress back and forth, looking tremendously infantile and schoolgirlish, much to his own amusement.
“No, I mean like...dancing. I mean, because it’s a dancing party, after all.”
It’s getting dark outside. Bret’s gaze snaps up from his untied chucks to Jemaine’s explosion-dark eyes, bright and glinting even though he’s kind of drunk. Bret’s not spending time to wonder why this is happening to him, but his palms start to sweat, and his stomach seizes up, right below his rabbiting heart. He’s blooming inside, strangely affectionate and stupid over the fact Jemaine’s just offered to dance with him. Even though it’s just to practice.
“Or maybe that’s weird,” Jemaine interjects, because Bret is probably taking too long to answer between all the tight fists and tighter stomachs and darkening skies.
“No, I think that’s probably a good idea,” he says quickly, flicking on the kitchen light now that the sun is setting and they’re beginning to be cloaked in dusky darkness filtering in through the window. Then he holds out his arms stiffly, one slightly higher than the other because in his few and far between dancing experiences, he led.
“Oh. Okay. Right,” Jemaine stumbles forward, holding his hands in front of him, unsure. “You have to...um...” he slaps Bret’s hands down, so they were waist level.
“Oh yeah!” Bret answers. Then he clears his throat, and says in a higher pitched voice, “Oh yes.”
“You don’t have to talk like a girl yet, we’re just practicing,” Jemaine says, hissing gruffly. He places one hand on Bret’s narrow waist, over the shifting, silky fabric. The other interlaces with Bret’s, cringing at the clamminess.
“You’re sweating.”
“It’s hot.” His voice is still high, because he’s trying to make this authentic for Jemaine’s sake. He suddenly is feeling very warm and dizzy and affectionate, and he just wants to be a good Date.
“It’s not.”
“Yes, it is. Actually,” Bret’s suddenly breathless, and his eyes affix themselves stubbornly to the most inopportune of places: Jemaine’s lips. He’s never looked at them before. Not really. Or, he does all the time, but not from this close a proximity, and not when their hands are touching and knees knocking together in places.
Bret’s cheeks get hot, and his eyes are having a hard time staying open, and he can smell the wine on Jermaine’s breath and its making him feel drunk, drunk and dizzy and somewhat like the air isn’t coming in and out of him right. He’s never noticed what nice, plush lips Jemaine has, and because he’s secondhand drunk and whatnot, it seems like a logical thing to do, to kiss Jemaine.
So he does. After all, he’s his date. And they’re practicing.
Jemaine kisses back, at first. He makes this kinda out-of-control noise, big rough hand tightening in an involuntary lurch along Bret’s bony side, but he kisses back, mouth moving wet and sloppily against’s Bret’s. It’s nice, because usually Bret is kind of scared whenever someone kisses him, and she’s too rough or pushy or something. But with Jemaine it’s just nice, soft and gentle, and with the familiar, non-threatening scrape of stubble along this jaw.
Then that warmth is gone quiet suddenly, and Jermaine is springing back, lovely mouth open and snarling and eyes wide. He regards Bret with one narrowed eye, his hands still gripped in the fabric of his dress. Bret stands dazed, peering through his lashes.
“What....what...Bret, that was totally weird! You just kissed me.” Jemaine sputters out.
“I suppose that was rather weird,” Bret answers, but only because he’s fairly sure it’s the expected response from him. He’s tingling all over, and his legs feel weak. And really, that is kind of weird. He doesn’t think he’s ever really felt this way before.
“Why’d you do that?” Jemaine lets go of him, and rubs the sleeve of his button up turquoise shirt across his mouth, though Bret thinks that gesture is a little late.
“You know. To ensure maximum realism,” he offers. With his hands not unoccupied, they hang awkwardly at his sides.
“Bret, you don’t kiss people. Even if you’re trying to be realistic.”
“You don’t?” Bret asks, stunned by a lot of things that are happening right now.
“No. You don’t.” Jemaine’s voice is firm but there’s this strange, halting quality about his movement, like he’s holding back his body from doing something rash. His hands are clasped in front of him like he’s praying, and his teeth grit together. It’s like he wants to do something, hit Bret, or take handfuls of his hair.
“Oh,” Bret says, disappointed.
“Are you sure that’s why you did it? Because we’re practicing?” Jemaine asks carefully, his hands still tangled and unsure.
Bret thinks for a moment, really tries to remember why exactly he kissed Jemaine on the mouth. Let’s see. He was dancing with him, practicing. Practicing feeling small and feminine and looking up, gazing adoringly into Jemaine’s chin and sweating nervously like a proper date. Then, his eyes fell on Jemaine’s lips, and he just wanted to kiss him.
Oh. “Oh I kissed you because I wanted to!” Bret announces. Then that statement, and everything that it means, hits him.
“Oh, I guess that is weird...”
As Bret’s face slowly falls, Jemaine’s miraculously lights up, eyes widening and mouth parting, a flush rising to the surface of his skin. And as Bret ponders the gravity of wanting to kiss Jemaine, his thought is obliterated by the reality, and Jemaine grabs his waist in one hand, places the other at the back of Bret’s neck, and kisses him.
Bret can’t really think. He’s too busy not falling down. Or feeling like he is, but resisting that plummeting sensation. It’s like his whole, tiny, be-dragged body is reduced to the square two inches of his lips, mauled and slicked under Jemaine’s overwhelmingly kissable mouth.
Jemaine is solid against him, his skin incinerating under the cotton of his shirt. Bret imagines sliding his hand under the collar of that shirt, to feel the scalding reality of flesh and blood, and then realizes as his stomach drops that he’s not imagining touching Jemaine on the sternum, he is. And it feels good. And he stops thinking about things after that, because it all just feels really good.
Bret doesn’t like the taste of wine, so he’s trying to lick it out of Jemaine’s mouth with a rather determined vengeance when Jemaine pulls away, fingers snagging against the dark curls of hair that coil near Bret’s neck. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he says urgently, other hand cupping desperately to the side of Bret’s cheek, so he can’t even keep his eyes open with that warm pressure there, that thumb against his lip.
“What? Tell you what?” Bret says, every word seeming meaningless and feeble when his mouth has better things to do. Like kiss. Now that kissing is bizarrely unscary and actually really a wonderful pass time.
“Tell me that you wanted...that you want. Well, you do, don’t you?”
“You’re not using nouns.”
“Me,” Jermaine says emphatically.
And Bret stands there stupidly, chewing on his newly swollen lip and putting words together. Finally he gets it. “I do. I always have I guess, I just didn’t notice, because it’s kind of weird, you know?”
And then they’re kissing again, because apparently that whole lip-chewing thing is better for getting Jemaine to kiss him, rather than getting Jemaine to listen to him. They fumble along each other and the wall, stumbling over chairs and accidentally upending Bret’s paint by number, sending the Dalmatians clattering to the floor. Bret doesn’t really care though. Better pass times.
They end up on Jemaine’s bed, eventually, and Jemaine keeps trying to get Bret’s knees apart, but the dress is getting in the way. “Can I get this thing off now?” He mumbles into Bret’s beard, and then they’re too suddenly busied with the removal of clothing, clumsy and unceremonious.
“We’re not practicing anymore, are we?” Bret says, dazed, mouth wet and hands along the broad, tensing flex of Jemaine’s shoulders, which are somewhere near his white, hairy splayed thighs.
And when Jemaine laughs, it feels wonderful, too good and Bret stills under the vibration, eyes tightening to bunched slits.
“I’m not even going to the party anymore, Bret,” he says before he resumes what he was doing.
“Oh, right,” and Bret remembers the whole date business, and how apparently Jemaine doesn’t need a date anymore because he’s not stealing Dave’s date anymore because he doesn’t need to get laid anymore because he’s getting laid now. And not by some girl whose kind of his kind of best friend’s girlfriend, but by Bret, whose is his actual best friend. Which is much better, Bret decides.
Relieved he doesn’t have to shave his beard, which is attached to him, Bret stops thinking entirely.