Sheraton Academy

Life, The Universe, And Everything

Rating: PG. Warnings: mild language

Danny loved Meara, and Meara loved him. They both knew that. So did everyone who'd ever known both of them. But it was a brotherly love. Totally heterosexual. Not romantic in any way, shape, or form.

So why in hell did he want to kiss his friend? Danny had never had a problem with gays or bisexuals–Meara was his - very openly - bisexual best mate. Danny just wasn't one. At least, he didn't think so. He'd never really discounted the idea ...he'd always thought it stupid to cut off someone he might fall in love with someday just because of something as insignificant as gender.

But this was different. This was Meara, his lifelong best mate, practically his brother. And now Danny wanted to kiss him and he wasn't quite sure why. He'd had the thought before now, but it had never been quite as strong as this.

Maybe it was because he hadn't been with anyone since his last girlfriend broke up with him a year ago. Danny really hoped that wasn't it, because he cared about Meara more than just about anyone else. If he wanted to kiss the younger boy, he wanted the want to be real.

It was all very disconcerting.

Meara paused his playing, wincing when he hit a sour chord. "Ouch," he muttered.

"Yeah," Danny grinned. "That was painful."

Meara glanced up from his guitar from where he sat on Danny's bed, opening his mouth–probably to spit back a retort much wittier than Danny's statement–but he closed it and hiked an eyebrow instead.

"Something's on your mind," he said. "What? Something wrong?"

Danny tilted his head to the side in thought, his eyes focused on Meara's face–rounder than it was when he was still going to Sheraton four months ago. After he'd graduated his college years and they'd gotten a flat together, once Meara had gotten back into his music as heavily as he'd been before his parents shipped him off and gotten a job as a techie at the small theatre down the street, he'd started eating a lot better and finally started gaining some weight. His eyes were different too, but not really in a good way. There was a constant shadow behind his eyes, now–but he'd been through a lot of hell at that place. Danny was glad he'd finally left and come back to London, instead of staying at the school and going to the nearby university like most of the students there did.

"Would it be weird if I said I wanted to kiss you right now?"

Meara's other eyebrow raised to join the first, a soft pink dusting the fair skin of his ears and nose. He set his guitar down in his lap and took off his glasses, polishing them on the hem of his shirt.

Bloody hell. He was stalling. Not good.

"Kind of, yeah," Meara finally said as he slipped his glasses back on, his voice endearingly squeaky.

"Oh," Danny said. Good job, Danny, he thought. I like how tactful that was. Nice. "Well." He paused. "Never mind, then." Not that kissing Meara was something he needed to do. It probably would have been uncomfortable, anyway ...but the younger boy was really cute when he blushed like that.

"Okay," Meara replied. He ran his fingers through his messy brown hair, looking thoughtfully at Danny before deciding he probably shouldn't ask and going back to his guitar. He really did need to finish this song, as he'd been recently booked for his solo project at a nearby venue and he'd told his friends that he'd have some new material, and he'd promised Bryce that he'd have Josephine record his set so he could mail it to him at the school. But the solo was giving him issues and for some reason kept coming out as a bastardized version of a Tegan and Sara song. 'Not With You', specifically.

Meara had always thought Danny was attractive–bloody hell, everyone did, including straight guys and lesbians–and occasionally he had the brief 'well, what if' thought, but he'd never dwelt on them because while Danny had never expressly stated that he was straight, he'd only dated girls and had never shown much of an interest in guys, so Meara had just assumed. It was a logical conclusion to make.

Meara aimlessly plucked at the strings of his guitar, broken out of his musings a few minutes later when Danny sang, very loudly, "Darling you've got to let me know!"

"What?" Meara asked, looking up at the older boy.

"Well, that's what you were playing," Danny said. "So I thought I'd sing along."

Meara grinned, picked up the song again, and sang back, "Should I stay or should I go?"

"If you say that you are mi~ine–"

"I'll be here 'til the end of time!"

"So you got to let me kno~ow–"

And they sang the last line together, very loudly, "Should I stay or should I go!?"

They grinned at each other again, watching each other for a moment before Meara went back to his guitar and Danny flopped back on the floor, staring at the ceiling.

After a few more minutes of aimless playing, Meara asked, "Did you mean that?"

Danny sat back up, his eyebrows raising at the part fearful, part hopeful look in Meara's golden-green eyes. "What?"

"What you said earlier. About wanting to kiss me? Were you being serious or were you just mucking around to see how I'd react?"

Danny opened his mouth.

He closed it again.

He did mean it when he said it and he still meant it now, but he wasn't sure if he should say so. He was positive that admitting it wouldn't hurt their friendship, and if Meara didn't want the same thing, it wouldn't hurt it, either. Nothing could. They'd been friends for almost eight years and would be until they were loony old men who couldn't remember anything but each other's names.

So when Danny opened his mouth again, he said, "Yes."

"Yes what?" Meara smiled, obviously amused. "I gave you two options. You need to be more specific."

"Yes, I do want to kiss you," Danny said. He paused for a moment. "But if you don't want to kiss me, that's fine, too."

Meara stilled for a moment. He was not expecting that. He was not expecting it at all. He'd been sure that Danny was just trying to prank him again, but he knew Danny well enough to know that his friend wouldn't toy with his emotions by giving him an answer like that after all of the bad relationships he'd been through.

So when Meara opened his mouth, he said, rather stupidly, "Oh."

Danny smiled a little at his friend. "You're really cute when you're at a loss for words."

Meara blushed and looked down. Danny paused, gnawing on the lip ring he'd just gotten done. "Was that not okay?" he asked unsurely.

"No," Meara started, then looked up. "I mean, no, not no, it wasn't not okay, it was ...wait." He paused, looking up at the ceiling as if it would make what Danny was saying make a little more sense, but it didn't seem to want to offer any advice or insight today. It must have decided to take a holiday without giving Meara notice. "Wait," he said again.

"Okay," Danny said.

The room was silent for a few moments.

"Wait," Meara repeated.

"Okay. Waiting. Take your time."

The room was silent for a few more moments while Meara continued to consider the ceiling and Danny continued to contemplate kissing Meara.

A few minutes later, Danny said, "Still waiting."

"Quiet, you," Meara said, still speculating the still quite unhelpful ceiling. "Wait longer. I'm trying to work this over in my head."

"I'll help," Danny said. "I want to kiss you and you are trying to decide whether or not you want me to. Also, that ceiling you're looking at is a sort of creamy beige color, if that helps."

"Not really," Meara said, not breaking his gaze away from that damned ceiling. Danny finally looked up at it, too–it must have been incredibly interesting, he thought, if it held Meara's attention for so long. Perhaps it held the secrets to the meaning of existence, but one couldn't unlock them unless he stared at it in just the right way.

"Forty-two," Danny murmured under his breath. No change. Apparently the ceiling wasn't much of a Douglas Adams fan. After a few more moments of ceiling-staring he began to feel rather like a trainspotter, only much less interesting, so he decided to look back at Meara instead. "You don't have to answer me right now, you know," he said. "You can think about it."

"I am thinking about it," Meara said.

"I mean later," Danny said. "You don't have to think about it now." Meara was still looking at that ceiling. "Eat your vegetables and be nice to people," Danny said.

"What?" Meara finally looked away from the ceiling and back at Danny again, an adorably confused look on his face. Apparently Meara appreciated obscure Monty Python references as much as the ceiling appreciated much less obscure Douglas Adams ones.

"That's the meaning of life, isn't it?" Danny grinned. "I mean, that's what you were trying to get the ceiling to tell you, wasn't it?"

"It isn't," Meara said.

"Isn't it?"

"No."

"Oh."

Meara looked thoughtfully at Danny for a bit. "If I kiss you, will you shut it so I can finish my song?" he grinned.

"Probably not," Danny said honestly. "But it would make me very happy. But you don't have to if you don't want to."

"You keep saying that."

"I know. I just don't want you to feel pressured."

The room went silent again, the two boys watching each other until Meara gently placed his guitar down on his bed, sliding down to the floor and crawling over to Danny until Danny was leaning back on his elbows and Meara halfway on top of him, the two nose to nose, close enough to feel each other breathe. Danny's breath caught slightly in sudden apprehension, his brown eyes locked on Meara's green ones. He swallowed nervously when Meara murmured, "Why?"

"Because ...I don't know," Danny whispered. "It's just ...I want to every now and then and I don't know why. I mean, you're my best mate, you're practically my brother, so it's like ...I know I shouldn't feel that way. But I do anyway. And I guess I don't know when to shut my bloody mouth because I just said it earlier without even thinking about it and it obviously wasn't something you really wanted to hear today."

"I don't think we're like brothers so much," Meara whispered back. "More like ...the same person in two different bodies. And it's not so much I didn't want to hear it ...I just wasn't expecting it. It surprised me. Because people don't ..."

A long pause.

"Don't what?" Danny asked.

Meara closed his eyes, tilting his head down just slightly, his cheek accidentally brushing across Danny's mouth. At least, Danny thought it was accidentally. Meara's skin was so soft, so warm, familiar and comforting ...

"Meara," Danny whispered, his own eyes slipping closed. "Your ex-girlfriends were stupid bints and your boyfriend at that boarding school was a bloody wanker. You're much too good for any of them and really, they didn't deserve you if they weren't going to treat you like the amazing person you are."

Meara was very startlingly suddenly very startlingly aware of just how close they were–their fingertips just barely touching where their hands rested on the carpeted floor, Danny's thigh pressed against the inside of his knee, the contrast of his friend's warm breath and the cool metal of his lip ring tickling his cheek and messily spiked hair brushing against his forehead. And the closeness wasn't awkward like it had been with either of his girlfriends and it wasn't overwhelming like it had been with Drake–it was just comfortable and warm and right, like Meara always thought it should be.

He opened his eyes halfway, his gaze landing on the fair, snowy skin of his hand playing against the dark, tawny brown of Danny's, the contrast of his perfectly cut and lavender-painted nails against his friend's bitten and chipped black ones. Absently, he played his fingers over Danny's knuckles, toying with the silver rings on his fingers, running over the red fishnet glove covering his hand. His eyes slipped closed when Danny closed the millimeters of distance between them, pressing a gentle kiss to his cheek.

"There. That wasn't so terrible, was it?" Danny whispered.

A soft smile spread over Meara's lips and he looked up again, his mouth twisting into a mischievous half-grin when he said, "I suppose it was bearable."

"Only bearable?" Danny asked, a pout playing at his lips as he did his best to look put-out. "That hurts, Meara. That hurts. Right here," he said, tapping his chest, right above his heart.

"Well, it certainly wasn't a proper kiss, was it?" Meara said, quirking an eyebrow and pursing his lips.

"Fine, then," Danny said, a slow half-smile, half-smirk crawling across his mouth. He shifted his weight onto his left arm as he lifted his other hand, running his fingers through Meara's messy hair, trailing down his neck, fingernails grazing across his collarbone and Meara shivered, his eyes slipping closed and Danny wanted to lean forward and kiss him but at the same time he didn't, because Meara was so ...lovely like that, with a soft flush on his fair skin and his eyes closed, eyelashes fluttering slightly and just barely biting down on the left corner of his lip. He was torn, but a few moments later Meara made the decision for him, closing the distance between them and gently pressing his lips to Danny's and Danny's eyes fell closed.

There weren't any fireworks or crashing waves or angels singing but neither of them minded, because Meara thought that things like that were overrated and Danny hadn't been expecting any of it, anyway. And what it was was so much better than that–warm and comfortable and familiar and right, and a few moments later nothing else mattered because all there was were slow, soft kisses and gently wandering hands and whispers of nothing in particular.