lifeboat

52.

the best feeling in the world, as mikey soon discovered, is neck kisses and ice cream and holding hands and running across hot sand because your idiot boyfriend told you to leave your shoes in the car and jumping into the ocean with all your clothes on, but it doesn't even matter because the sun is so warm that you'll dry off instantly.

maybe mikey was in love. maybe.

but that didn't matter, because pete was smiling for real, and he rolled up his sleeves when he got too warm instead of suffering for the sake of hiding his ugly scars, and he was just radiating warmth, and wow, a few months ago all of that seemed impossible. maybe it wasn't complete recovery, but it was absolutely, definitely something.

"it's not because you saved my life or anything," pete was saying, lying down in the sand with his head in mikey's lap as the two relaxed, quite a ways away from the water since it was high tide and mikey wasn't up for being soaked.

"what?" mikey asked, running a hand through pete's damp hair, and pete turned his head so that he was looking up at mikey. "what are you talking about?"

"why i love you. it's not just because you stopped me from dying."

"and i would think that because?"

pete shrugged, grabbing mikey's hand and hugging it to his chest. "it happens a lot. like, have you seen that one episode of icarly where freddie jumps in front of a car or some shit and saves carly-"

"shut the fuck up," mikey sighed, shaking his head and smiling. "you can make a point without referencing some shitty tv show from the 2000s."

"icarly wasn't a shitty show! it was my childhood!" pete protested, "and i was getting to the point! i was gonna say that carly falls in love with freddie, or at least she thinks so, 'cause he saved her life. and i was trying to say, before you so rudely interrupted me, that in our situation, we're not them. i love you because you're mikeyway, the mikeyway, in fact, and it's been scientifically proven that there's nobody on this earth that is more deserving of my love than you are."

"that's so fucking lame," mikey said, and pete grinned, kissing mikey's knuckles. "you're an idiot."

"but you love me."

"that doesn't mean you're not an idiot."

pete's eyes lit up and he pulled himself into a sitting position. "so you love me?"

"it's honestly hard not to." mikey affectionately ruffled pete's hair and then kissed him, because they were on a beach and everything was so fucking cliche that it just made sense.

"i love you," mikey said softly, and pete looked absolutely starstruck.

"i love you, too, you dumb fuck."

mikey reckoned that, if he were pete's lifeboat, he could definitely see land ahead.

--
unrelated to the fic but it's gerard's birthday today and like i love and respect and look up to him SO fucking much!! like i don't wanna go on bc this is an authors note and not my spam but he's my favorite person ok

anyways... OH MY GOd i'm not ready to let this fic go!! i feel like it's my baby and now i'm like sending it off to college or something!! that's weird but i'm not ok.

im gonna get sappy now because it's the last chapter. thank you all SO fucking much for reading and voting and commenting and adding lifeboat to your reading lists!! like really whenever i see someone has interacted with this fic i always start grinning like a fucking idiot!! it really means a lot to me that you guys even thought of clicking the read button in the first place and it warms my heart that you actually like my writing enough to have read the whole thing. especially if you've been here since july and have had to put up with my shitty update schedule for nine months now lmao. sorry about that btw.

anyways if you like my writing, i've got another petekey fic up, it's called trees and it'd be great if u could check it out! :^)

i think this a/n is long enough, so i'm gonna say bye now. again, thank you all so much for reading!! i love you all!!
—rue <3