Title: Pete Wentz Is the Only Reason We're Dating
Author: allyndra
Fandom: Bandom/JoBros
Pairing: Mike Carden/Kevin Jonas
Rating: FRT
Length: 2,774 words
Disclaimer: Complete and utter work of fiction. Don’t google yourself.
Summary: When Pete Wentz throws a Halloween party, he doesn’t just set out some pumpkins and peeled grapes. After due consideration and some time with the other guests (for values of ‘other guests’ that mean ‘Mike Carden’), Kevin is glad.
Note: Long ago, skoosiepants threw out a plot bunny for a costume party fic, where Pete would decree the costumes, and Mike would wear a skirt. (And yes. Yes, I did write a fic with Jonas brothers in it.)



Kevin was pretty sure they’d been invited to Pete Wentz’s Halloween party by mistake. There was no way that these people – who were currently dancing and yelling and possibly peeing in a corner – had intended to invite Kevin and his brothers, no matter how big Pete had smiled when they’d met him. But Nick had waved the invitation at them triumphantly and dragged them off to the costume shop, and Kevin hadn’t had the heart to point out the fact that it was all a terrible, terrible error.

He’d suspected that it was a joke, actually, especially since the invitation had specified what their costumes should be. He’d fully expected the three of them to walk through the doors in Three Musketeers regalia, only to find everyone else in t-shirts and jeans. He’d been psyching himself up for it so much (telling himself that he could use it as a witty, self-deprecating anecdote for his future memoirs), that he’d been completely caught off guard by the presence of other costumed people. He’d lost the thread of his mental anecdote-narration and had made a squeaky noise instead of saying hi.

He was almost disappointed that the party was legit. It had been developing into an awesome anecdote.

Despite his age and his stupid costume, Nick’s innate coolness shone through, and soon he was sitting by a guy in a wizard’s robes, waving his hands like he only did for really good discussions about music or roller coasters. Joe got swept up in a tide of dancers, and if Kevin stood on his tiptoes, he could see the white plume of his hat bobbing above the crowd. Kevin lurked near a wall and tried not to look like an idiot. It probably would have been easier to accomplish if he didn’t keep jabbing himself with his rapier.

Somebody shoved a red plastic cup into his hands as they stumbled past, and Kevin sniffed it cautiously. It smelled like Hi-C mixed with paint thinner. He took a tiny sip, and yeah. It tasted just like it smelled. He was never going to be able to look at a fruit punch juice box the same way again. He tried to hold the cup loosely and naturally, like he went to crazy Halloween parties every day (or at least every October), and only succeeded in nearly dropping it when someone slumped against the wall next to him.


The guy lifted his chin in a nonchalant nod, and Kevin thought he should be taking notes. This was how you did casual and natural. The guy had messy, dark hair that fell into his eyes, and he was wearing a clingy, black and white striped top, a black skirt that hung low on his hips, and a pair of high heels, all topped with a jaunty scarf tied around his neck. Despite his clothes, he didn’t look the slightest bit uncomfortable or feminine. Kevin watched him out of the corner of his eye, wondering if he could pull off that scarf.

Kevin was trying to be subtle, but the guy totally caught him staring. He smirked and lit a cigarette, lifting one foot to rest against the wall. The whole pose was very Rebel Without a Clue… or it would be, if Kevin could get past the skirt. He didn’t expect to get past it any time soon. “Fucking Pete, right?” he said.

Kevin blinked at him. “Huh?”

The guy waved a hand at his outfit. “You get to have a sword. Patrick got to wear a hat.” He pointed at the wizard talking to Nick. “And I’m a French whore.” Kevin nearly swallowed his tongue. He took a drink to hide the fact and only wound up choking fairly spectacularly. The guy raised his eyebrows and watched him splutter and gasp. “I’m not really a French whore,” he said mildly.

“S’okay,” Kevin rasped out. Geez, if he’d permanently damaged his vocal chords, Dad was going to kill him. “I’m fine.”


“Thank God,” the guy said. He made his eyes wide, like he was going for innocent and sincere, but he failed utterly. Kevin could feel his face all hot and red, and was grateful that he had the excuse of having just choked half to death.

He turned to put his cup firmly on the nearest table, then turned back. “I’m Kevin,” he said, relieved at the sound of his voice. It was a little rough, but probably not ruined forever.

The guy nodded, looking amused. “Mike,” he said. For a second, Kevin wondered if he were telling the truth. If you met a weirdo at a party and didn’t want to give your name, ‘Mike’ was probably a safe alternative. It was the ‘John Doe’ of the new millennium. But then somebody tripping past them giggled and said, “Nice legs, Mike!” Kevin figured it was either his real name, or he’d given the same alias to half the party.

Kevin cast about for something to say that wasn’t a comment on Mike’s legs. “Are you in a band, too?” he asked. Lame. He was so lame. He was mad at himself for putting down the cup, because he didn’t even have anything he could fidget with, to cover up his intense lameness.

Mike’s mouth curled into a smirk. Kevin pulled his eyes away from it, intent on not noticing, and got caught up in the strip of skin between the top of Mike’s skirt and the bottom of his shirt. It was kind of hypnotizing. Joe could have saved all the money he’d spent on hypno-rings and pocket watches over the years.

“Yeah,” Mike said, “I’m in a band.” He didn’t elaborate.

Kevin shuffled his feet. The heels on his boots weren’t any higher than the ones he usually wore, but the toes were pointy. If he stared at them hard enough, he could almost pretend they were interesting. After a long silence (for a value of silence that meant ‘full of music and overheard conversation’), Mike relented and said something. “Bet if you took a bomb to this place, you could take out half the label, all at once.”

Kevin smiled weakly. “We should warn Homeland Security.”

Mike laughed, loud and sudden. It lit up his face and made something go hot in Kevin’s gut. His fingers found the hilt of his sword and held on tight. “Oh, man,” Mike said. “Can you imagine if they made us pack up all our liquids in those little plastic baggies?”

Kevin looked around the room and had to laugh, too. There were approximately seven million bottles of alcohol on the kitchen counter, and cups and beer bottles littered every horizontal surface Kevin could see. He felt a moment’s sympathy for whoever had to pick all these cups up.

He was about to ask if Mike thought Pete would need help with the after party cleanup when a very tall, dark haired man slid between Kevin and Mike, leaning back against the wall and wrapping his arms around their shoulders. “Mike!” he said loudly, even though Mike’s ear wasn’t far from his mouth. Maybe he assumed the extra inches in height made him harder to hear. “Mike, you have a Jonas brother!”

Kevin startled. He’d kind of been assuming that no one here knew who they were, but Mike was nodding agreeably, like he’d been completely aware. “I do have one,” he said. Kevin flushed at the idea of Mike having him. Whatever. He straightened his hat and tried to look unbothered by the tall guy’s arm, which was lying heavy on his shoulder. “Patrick has one, too,” Mike pointed out.

The tall man stared over at where Patrick and Nick were still talking, leaning back against the sofa cushions now and nodding at one another earnestly. “No fair,” he said plaintively. “Everyone has a Jonas brother but me.” He looked down at Kevin with wide, soulful eyes. “I watched the video to Paranoid a hundred times. Victoria threatened to take away my YouTube access.”

Mike gave the man’s other arm a tug that pulled him off balance and away from Kevin. “There’s one more,” he said. “Why don’t you go hunt for the other one. Maybe nobody’s claimed him yet.”

The man grinned. It looked oddly childlike, despite his fleet hound features. “That’s brilliant. You’re a gentleman and a scholar, Mike Carden.” He bent down and kissed Mike right on the mouth. “Even if you are a whore.” He practically skipped away, leaving Kevin blinking after him in bemusement. When Kevin looked at Mike, Mike just looked resigned.

“So, that was Gabe,” Mike said. Putting a name with the face rang a bell in Kevin’s head.

“I think we ran into him at an awards show, maybe.” He frowned, trying to remember, but those things were such jumbles of celebrities and flashbulbs. He glanced at Mike and bit his lip. “Does he kiss … people a lot?”

The corners of Mike’s mouth curled upward. “He does kiss … people a lot.” He mimicked the pause in Kevin’s question, and Kevin swallowed around a lump of embarrassment the size of an Oldsmobile. He wondered if it was possible to choke to death on embarrassment. The Heimlich wouldn’t do a thing for it. “Especially when he’s been drinking. It’s no big.”

Kevin shrugged and looked down. The feather in his hat flopped forward and hung in front of his face. He stared at it, his eyes crossing, until a callused finger reached out and stroked it back into place. When Kevin looked up, Mike was watching him with an odd look in his eyes. “So, Jonas,” he said suddenly.

“Kevin,” Kevin corrected. He suddenly and desperately didn’t want Mike to just see him as one of the Jonas brothers.

Mike shrugged. “Yeah, okay. You wanna get out of here? I know where there’s an IHOP.”

“That would be … um. I could. Pancakes are cool.” Kevin’s eyes darted around, on the off chance that he might spot a ravening tiger nearby that could eat him and save him from himself.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Mike told him, looking amused again. It was a good look for him, but Kevin thought he’d be able to appreciate it more if it caused by something not-him. “You need to tell your brothers that you’re going?”

“Yeah, hang on a sec.” He bounced up on his tiptoes, but he couldn’t see Joe anywhere. Shrugging, he figured Nicky was probably the one to tell anyway. He was more likely to be keeping track. Kevin took a quick detour through the kitchen to snag a can from the swiftly dwindling supply of Diet Coke. He stopped by the couch where Nick and the wizard Patrick were talking, and tossed it into his brother’s lap. “I’m going to go to IHOP with Mike,” Kevin said. He was clutching his sword hilt again. It was oddly comforting, even though the sword was made of flimsy plastic. He kept his eyes on Nick, although he could feel Patrick staring at him.

Nick gave him a measuring look and nodded. “Bring us back some pancakes,” he said. “Clown face for Joe.”

Kevin rolled his eyes. As if he didn’t know that. “No problem,” he said. “Stay out of trouble.”

This time, Nick rolled his eyes. “But, Kev, I was gonna snort cocaine off a hooker. Otherwise, what’s the point of even coming to a party?”

“I keep telling you, not until you’re eighteen,” Kevin said, tugging on the brim of Nick’s hat. “Catch you later.”

He turned to find Mike watching him, head cocked to the side like Kevin was a curiosity. “What?” Kevin asked. He looked down, but there was nothing spilled in his tabard.

Mike shook his head and gestured for Kevin to lead the way out of the house. “You’re all taking care of your brother, with the sealed drink.” His eyes were amused again, but there was something warmer there.

Kevin shrugged. He’d been thinking more about making sure that Nick had a drink with no sugar in it than making sure he had one with no roofies in it. “We take care of each other.”

Mike smiled then, a flash of sudden sweetness. “My band takes care of each other, too,” he said.

Kevin almost wanted to protest, to point out that it was different when it was family, but he kept his mouth shut. After all, it wasn’t like he knew what it was like to be in a group like that, tied together by bonds they chose, instead of ones they were born into. He looked back over his shoulder as he opened the door and saw Joe dancing over to talk to Nick, the feather in his hat hanging limp and bedraggled down the side of the brim. Nick said something to Joe, and Joe twisted around face the door, mouthing the words ‘clown face’ at Kevin. Kevin grinned. He thought he would have picked them, even if they weren’t his brothers.

Kevin followed Mike out, trying not to notice the way his high heels made his hips roll when he walked. Judging from the way he had to forcibly pull his eyes upward when Mike stopped, he’d been failing miserably. Mike was looking at him with a smirk that said he knew exactly where Kevin’s eyes had been.

“Um,” Kevin said, in a desperate attempt to distract him, “Do you want me to drive? ‘Cause I only had a little bit of that punch, and I know that even one drink can be enough to impair your reflexes, but one sixteenth of a drink probably isn’t enough to do much, right? Unless you-“

Mike pressed two fingers to Kevin’s lips. Kevin might have kept talking, because he knew from experience that even a whole hand over his mouth was enough to muffle him, but not enough to make it impossible to talk, but … But it was Mike’s fingers. Touching his lips.

“You can drive,” Mike said. “I had more than a sixteenth of a drink, and I don’t like driving in heels anyway.”

Mike took his fingers away, but the knowledge that Mike had worn heels often enough to have formed an opinion kept Kevin’s mouth silent. Dry and silent. He led the way over to his car. Well, it was a rental, and it was in his dad’s name because Kevin wasn’t 25 yet, but it was a car and Kevin had keys to it.

Once they were in and buckled, Kevin turned the key in the ignition and looked over at Mike. He was slumped in the passenger seat with his legs spread and his head lolling back against the headrest. It was stupid, but the first word that shot through Kevin’s head was ‘unladylike,’ and the heat in his belly fired even hotter. The way Mike was so very, very much a guy despite the skirt made Kevin’s head buzz.

“Where to?” Kevin asked. His voice was lower than usual. He cleared his throat.

“The IHOP is that way,” Mike said, pointing left. “But there’s a good make out spot that way.” And he pointed the opposite direction.

Kevin froze. It was a good thing Mike hadn’t sprung that on him after the car was in motion, or they would have been a cautionary tale on the morning news. He sucked in a wavering breath, and Mike laid a gentle hand on his knee. “No big,” Mike said. He sounded different than he had a second ago. Tighter, more controlled. “We can just get some pancakes and get you back to your brothers.”

And Kevin knew he should grab at that offer. He should act like Mike had misunderstood, and he should drive directly to the haven of Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity. But Mike hadn’t misunderstood, and Kevin felt the heat in his stomach spreading out to burn through his whole body.

He licked his lips. “Nick and Joe are expecting me to bring them back pancakes,” he said. Mike drew his hand away from Kevin’s leg and looked out the window. Kevin shifted into drive and pulled out, turning to drive down the road to the right. “So we’ll still have to hit IHOP, after.”

He had to keep his eyes on the road, so he didn’t see Mike’s expression, but he did feel the hand sliding back onto his knee and up his thigh. “Okay,” Mike said, “but I’m paying. The whore thing is just a costume.”

Kevin laughed. He freed one hand from the wheel to twine with Mike’s. If he was lucky, this was going to be a story that would never, ever be repeated in his memoirs.