Hello thar. Yet another slice of Goonie-dom from me, to you. Whoever you may be. I apologise in advance for my somewhat strange writing style in this one, I hope y'all can get your heads around it. Most of all, I hope you enjoy it.

Anyway, usual stuff: please don't sue, sorry about the slash, please don't flame, give me cash. A little poem there, for you.

Maelstrom

Mouth knelt in front of the bedroom windowsill resting his chin on his crossed forearms, the fuzzy stubble scratching the skin a little. Outside, a maelstrom of frenzied rain battered at the glass like thousands and millions of little rocks, desperate to break through and just... get him, or something. Like Gremlins. He grinned, he loved that film. Not just because it was a great film, there were other reasons. Sentimental reasons. See, it was the first R rated film that he and Mikey had ever had the balls to sneak into at the local cinema. Before, they'd always assumed they'd be caught and quite possibly sent to prison, but that one time they just swallowed their fear and went for it together. As it turned out, it was stupidly easy, and they got themselves a free back row and a free night of popcorn tossing, audience baiting, film loving mayhem. Just how they liked it.

Now, I'm sure you're asking why Mouth, hardly the most sentimental of people was drifting away to the good times he'd had with Mikey at this point. Was Mikey lying in hospital bed, or even worse, dead? Well... no. Mikey was probably fine, it was just that Mouth's infamous mouth had finally caught up with him, and he found himself grounded.

"I've had just about enough of your lip, young man!" his father had yelled at him that morning, a godlike finger pointing him up to his room, where he was to stay for the weekend. All alone.

If it was anyone else, he would have disputed it, but he'd learned not to get on the sour side of "Mad" Jack Deveraux. Not that he'd ever been violent, or even threatened to be, but like any good son Mouth didn't really want to give him reason to be. After all, he respected his old man, which was something he couldn't say about many people. He was grateful for the hard work he did to keep them living in the manner he was accustomed to, and while it may not be palatial, it was good enough for him.

He sighed, and stared out of the window once more.

Bored.

Boredboredboredboredbored.

Bored.

He'd been grounded before of course, and was usually okay with it. He'd either hang around in the back garden shooting some hoops, sit downstairs watching television or sit with the phone glued to his ear and Mikey on the other side. But with the storm as bad as it was, the aerial had been thrown violent from the roof (along with a few tiles that he knew wouldn't get replaced) and the garden was damn near waterlogged. Time for the expensive, trouble making option then.

He used to ring Mikey all the time, when the idea first popped into their heads. It was deceptively simple: In the middle of the night, when everyone was asleep and they, being young teenagers full of beans were still awake, they'd simply chat each other to sleep over the phone. Each night they'd take turns ringing each other, and everything was superb. When you speak to someone so much, it almost becomes like therapy. They learned absolutely everything about each other over those few months, before the cord was so cruelly cut by such trivialities as money. By the end of it, Mouth's dad estimated he'd spent half his monthly wage on paying off the phone bill. Of course, he never let Mouth see it so he never quite believed it. But still, it was food for thought.

Right now his father was out of town on an emergency call, his mother was in work and he could do what he wanted with the phone. He smiled. Springing merrily to his knees, he ran his hands through his ever-immaculate hair and trotted downstairs to the kitchen, strangely the only place in the house they had a phone. Picking it up from its receiver and cradling it between his cheek and his shoulder, he fired in Mikey's number as fast as his well-trained index finger would let him.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Mikey hoisted himself up onto the kitchen counter, and impatiently kicked his trainer-clad feet together.

Ring.

Ring.

"For christ's sake, answer the phone." He said, petulantly.

"Pardon?" Came the reply, in the tone of voice only a scorned mother can manage.

Shit.

"Shit." He said, petulantly.

"Pardon?" Came the reply, in the tone of voice only a scorned mother can manage.

Mouth shook his head in a comic manner, his mind imagining all the bad thoughts falling out of his ears and splashing onto the tattered lino of the kitchen floor. He'd have to clean that up later.

"Is that you Clarke?" Came the interruption, Mikey's mother.

"Yeah... Hi Mrs. Walsh." He snapped into his good-best-friend act immediately, even twisting himself into the asinine grin he would adopt when talking to her in person.

"Well?"

Silence.

Oh yeah.

"Sorry about my language there Mrs. Walsh." He muttered, irritated and little maudlin in tone. But it seemed to do the trick.

"That's okay, Clarke!" Bouncy, buoyant, bristling. "Now, what would you like?"

"Is Mikey there?"

Silence.

"Does your father know you're calling?"

Again with the asinine smile. "Absolutely, Mrs. Walsh, he said it was fine."

"Ah!" Bouncy, buoyant and bristling once more. "I'll go and get him then!"

Mouth grinned widely, a real grin this time, and pulled his feet up underneath him into the lotus position. Jesus it hurt his legs, he didn't know how Buddhists did it all the time. Although there were advantages to being flexible... he grinned, and decided to leave his legs where they were.

"Mouth-o!"

The word and it's voice felt like it pierced his eardrum and surged through his veins straight to his heart, knocking the wind out of him for a few seconds, waiting for him to recover and slay those butterflies before it came back.

"Mikey." He finally said, trying his hardest so sound cool but knowing he was failing miserably.

"Trying to sound cool?"

"Yeah…"

"It worked. I was convinced, I really was. You could have been Mr Cool from Cooltown for all I knew."

Mouth smirked and finally unhooked his legs from the painful tangle they were in, dangling over the edge of the counter again.

They say that the true test of a friendship is when you can stare at each other in total silence, and not have to say anything. That's not just friendship, Mouth thought idly, that's love. Or some crap like that.

He was thinking all this for a reason, of course, because since the few sentences they'd exchange when they'd come onto the phone, they hadn't said a single thing to each other. Just breathed.

It was Mikey that finally broke the deadlock.

"Where are you?"

It was a fair enough question: it was a Saturday afternoon, prime time for Mouth and Mikey's zany adventures. Well, I say zany, it usually involves sitting around in Mikey's enormous bedroom and throwing things at each other. Quite often themselves.

"I, my good friend, am grounded."

"Again? Shit Mouth, what did you do this time?"

"Nothing!"

"Nothing." Mikey scoffed, not believing him for a second.

"Well... I only swore at my dad, but we've all done that, haven't we?"

"No..." Mikey was perplexed. "What did you say?"

"He was pissing me off. Telling me when to come back home and all that..."

"So," Mikey interrupted, "Let me guess. You told him that he was pissing you off, and he got angry."

"Yeah, that's about it."

Mikey laughed, uproariously. It was that sort of social etiquette thing that Mouth just didn't understand, and always landed him in trouble. He remembered with a wistful smile the day he told an off duty cop to "fuck off" after a swift chastising for playing in the road. It didn't go down to well, that's for sure.

"Well, nice one Mouth. How long for? A few days?"

"A week." Mouth admitted, guiltily.

"A week!?"

"Yeah... he'd had it up to here with my lip, boy. Said that a week would teach me to respect authority and maybe I'd miss my friends so much that I'd be able to behave in future."

"He has a point."

"He does, doesn't he?"

Silence once more. A reoccurring theme, it seems.

"Does he know you're on the phone?"

"No... he's out. Some big plumbing emergency."

"Jesus Mouth, you're just going to get into more trouble, and get grounded forever, and I'm never going to be able to see you again."

Those words hit Mouth like a car, so hard he couldn't feel a thing for a few seconds afterwards. He knew Mikey was being his usual overdramatic self and pumping it up to worry over, but he had a point. Not seeing Mikey for a week was going to be bad enough, for sure, but imagine being grounded again? Jesus, it didn't bear thinking about.

"Yeah..." He mumbled, never one to articulate his feelings too well. "That'd suck."

They both sighed, long and together. The sort of sigh you heaved after a particularly long and heavy session of hot sex, but with less passion. Neither of them really knew what to say, it was all so much easier when they were face to face. They could read each other's feature, and they'd know whether to leap on top of each other, or chase each other, or hit each other, or whatever. And it's not like they could talk to each other like they used to, either, what with the constant threat of being sprung.

"How's about this..." Mikey said, the glint in his eye rolling from his tongue. "In a few hours when it gets dark, I sneak out of my window, and make my way down the road to your house... climb the tree in your garden, and get into your window. How does that sound?"

Mouth grinned, and leaped down from the kitchen cabinet with an effervescent spring. "It sounds brilliant!"

A few niceties later, and he was ready to hang up the phone, with a final and terminate click. Smiling at the receiver as it hung on the wall, as if it was the object of all of his affections, he cocked his head slightly.

"Love ya, Mikey."

Turning around, Mouth ambled back through the house and up the stairs into his bedroom.

He had to get ready.

He had a date.

Mouth pulled his faded, battered and burnt Purple Rain t-shirt over his head and stared into the mirror, satisfied smile on his face. He loved that t-shirt, it'd been everywhere with him. It didn't even really fit anymore, stretching across his chest with every breath he took, but still... it's not like he was going to stop wearing it any time soon. Too many memories attached to it.

"Well, Clarke..." He said to himself, twirling around in front of the mirror with a plastercast grin. "I think you look pretty damn nice."

Mouth smiled.

"Thank you Clarke."

Taking a sip from his long, thin glass of lemonade, his eyes looked past the glass and stared out the large bedroom window. It was dark out now, the only lights being the pin pricks of porch lights in the distance. On a clear day, he could see far across the small town of Astoria, it was quite beautiful. Of course, it was made easier by a present Mikey had bought him for his last birthday. He remembered it vividly, everyone crowding around him and thrusting badly wrapped presents in his face, as if they were the most important things in the world. To tell the truth, Mouth didn't really care much for parties, too much of a hubbub for him. He would rather have a quite night in with some movies and some popcorn. However, after the party, when it was just him and Mikey left, Mikey thrust another equally badly wrapped present at him.

"Open it!" Mikey said, sitting on his hands to stop himself from fidgeting.

Mouth did so, tearing back the paper to reveal a garish box, imprinted with the picture of a telescope. He didn't really care for astronomy.

"It's a telescope..." He said, nonplussed.

"I know!" Mikey gushed. "I've been snooping around in your room, and I reckon that from your window, you can see right into my window! It's at the crest of the hill, it should be easy! I have one, we can write messages on bits of paper and... well, you know... stuff."

Mouth had grinned at the time, and for a long time after. It was a good idea, and he did get a lot of use out of that telescope. A lot of use.

His wistful ruminations were spoiled by the shrill ring of the doorbell, almost making him jump out of his shoes. The shoes he wasn't wearing, so purely hypothetical shoes. Shaking his head to clear all shoe-based though, Mouth bounded down the stairs two at a time, and smiled at the familiar silhouette waiting behind the frosted glass of his front door. Wrapping his fingers around the corroded faux-brass handle, he pulled open the door and let loose his most sleazy, Fonz-like voice.

"'Ey! Mikeeeey!"

"Jesus Mouth..." Mikey said, barging past his shoulder, "You sound like one of the fuckin' Fratelli's."

"Hey! I sound cooler than that."

Mikey laughed derisively and kicked his shoes off into the hallway, making a beeline straight for the couch, where he slouched down and grabbed the remote immediately, flicking through channels like he had ADD.

Bringing up the rear, Mouth hurled himself down next to Mikey with aplomb, and immediately swung his legs up over the younger man's lap. Comfortable to the extreme and no less.

"Thanks Mouth." Mikey said, punching at Mouth's shins.

"Hey, it's not my fault you're unusually comfortable. You should be punching yourself in the shins if you're punching anyone's. Not that you should be punching anyone anyway, you crazed... masochist. Is it masochist or sadist?"

"Is what masochist or sadist?" Mikey asked, his interest peaked.

"Like... you just hitting me then because you blatantly like hitting me. Does that make you a masochist, or a sadist?"

"That would make me a sadist."

"Sadist."

"Yeah."

"Cool."

There was a lull for a few minutes as they settled into a happy pattern of finding a television show, not liking it and then switching again. It didn't take long for them to run out channels, of course, and that's when Mikey piped up again.

"When's your dad getting back?"

"Oh, he rang just after I rang you. He's caught up in the storm, so he's staying with a client up in the hills until it, like... stops being a storm."

"Stops being a storm?" Mikey laughed.

"I couldn't think of the word."

"Fair enough. So we have the house to ourselves all night?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Cool."

They lounged on that 70's throwback couch for a few hours after that, doing what teenage boys do when they have the house to themselves: playfighting, stealing beer and generally making a mess. It was what they usually did when they met up, often without the stealing of beer. They could only do that at Mouth's house, his dad got through so much that he didn't tend to notice when six cans went missing.

So, two hours and six cans down, they had retired to Mouth's bedroom. Mouth always had a good eye for aesthetics, and tonight had lit his bedroom wonderfully, if a little dangerously. He had haphazardly arranged candles of varying sizes on his windowsill, the bright glow juxtaposed by a dim light in the corner: a table lamp with a red t-shirt thrown over the top of it. It leant an acute calm to the room, like floating out in the middle of the Red Sea, if you helpfully ignore the fact that it isn't red.

They were sprawled out on top of Mouth's bed, staring up at the ceiling, on which Mouth had recently struck several glow in the dark stars, blinking down at them every time the candles flickered.

"Mouth." Mikey said, his head resting on the top of Mouth's soft, surprisingly sweet smelling hair.

"Mmhmm?" Mouth responded, his head comforted by Mikey's slowly moving chest, thin and warm.

"Did that telescope get you interested in astronomy, or something?" Mikey asked, nodding with his head towards the stars on the ceiling.

Mouth laughed, "You know full well what that telescope got me interested in."

"Yeah..." Mikey trailed off, joining in the laughter before scratching affectionately at Mouth's soft hair. Mouth always had great hair, he said to himself. Always. When they first met, Mikey assumed that Mouth actually spent every single second of his time in the bathroom, armed with hairspray and a comb. He, of course, learned that it wasn't true. He went out sometimes too, but only to buy new hair products. Mikey smiled.

Mouth curled an arm over Mikey's chest and pulled him closer, partly for the warmth and partly because he just liked the contact they had. It made him feel safe, something he wouldn't readily admit to. He was too strong on the outside to admit to it, and he had only ever told Mikey once. But it was something that Mikey never forgot, and he rewarded Mouth pulling him closer by planting a small, soft kiss on the top of his head.

"Hey." He muttered, as if putting normal Mikey on the shelf for a while and introducing Mouth to sexual, beautiful Mikey.

"Hey." Mouth replied, sultry as ever.

It was all they needed, really. It was all they ever needed, and it was exactly how it had happened the first time. Like an unspoken agreement between the two of them, that when they were alone, they were together. It made perfect sense to them, and they certainly couldn't see any boundaries. If it made them feel happy, who were they to say no?

Mouth smiled, hearing the familiar smack of Mikey's lips, and slowly splayed his fingers out across his chest, stroking idly at him. Meanwhile, Mikey was softly kneading Mouth's shoulders. He gave the greatest massages, did Mikey, and he absolutely loved doing it. He could do it for hours, gladly. But Mouth stopped him, pulling his hands away and holding them above his head so they were lying chest to chest, staring deep into each other's eyes. Grinning like cats. Mouth's feet curling around Mikey's, holding him down more so. Grinning like Cheshire Cats.

They kissed... Of course they kissed, they loved to. To feel the softness of each other's lips, to feel flesh brushing against flesh and the delicate tip of a tongue flicking across skin. Both of the their first kisses were together, first in the guise of practicing, and then far deeper.

Mouth let go of one of Mikey's arms, which instantly shot up and pulled them closer together, t-shirts riding up and skin meshing together, heat dripping between the two young men. It didn't take long for Mouth's tongue to wander, exploring every inch and contour of Mikey's body, every taste and every feeling. He loved to hear the moans of pleasure escape Mikey's lips, gasps of air going up into the air and falling down over them like fine, cold rain, soaking them through.

"Mouth..." Mikey mumbled, hands still running haphazardly through his hair.

Mouth had no time to answer, he was far too busy engulfing Mikey piece by piece, atom by atom. Mikey's body tensed, back arching and lips parting as Mouth's famed tongue did its devilish work.

Ten minutes later and they were laid together once more, smiles still plastered on their faces, but different smiles this time. Contented smiles, serene smiles. Smiles of men who could lie there all night, all week even, and never want to move. Not once.

"What were you trying to say earlier?" Mouth said, interrupting the constant patter of the rain.

"Nothing. Just wanted to tell you I love you."

Mouth smiled. "Sweet."

FIN