The World Spins Madly On

Wincing, Mike presses his fingers to his forehead and massages until the headache pounding against his skull starts to cease. The sky is steadily darkening above his head but Mike isn’t shivering in his birthday suit, so he figures it’s probably still summer.

First things first. Mike starts towards the clothesline – he must be in a back yard because there’s grass and flowery things and stuff that looks suspiciously green and plant-like – and tugs down a few items: a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, nothing that’ll be especially missed.

When he’s over the fence and safely out onto the street, he glances around, trying to figure out where he’s ended up. The road is familiar enough that he knows he’s been here before but that doesn’t exactly narrow it down. It’s a residential area, pretty nice from the look of it, but he can’t immediately identify it as anywhere anyone he knows lives.

So. Around summertime in fuck knows what year in fuck knows where. That’s helpful. Mike shakes his head to clear it. He’ll have to walk a bit to figure out exactly where and when he's ended up; there’s no convenient newspaper lying around that he can check the date on, the area name emblazoned helpfully across the top. There’s no one around that he can ask, either, not that he would because he’s learned the hard way that that’s rarely a good idea.

“Hey mister, are you okay?”

The voice is high and soft and Mike whirls around, alarmed. Apparently he isn’t as alone as he thought he was. There’s a kid boy standing in front of him with a head full of curls and a concerned look on his innocent face. He can’t be any more than six or seven years old.

Mike’s first instinct is to run, but he quashes it quickly. This is a kid, he doesn’t have to worry about the same things he would if it were an adult he ran into in an unfamiliar time and place.

“You look lost,” the boy continues, blinking up at him with – vaguely familiar? – hazel eyes. “Are you lost?”

Mike smiles wryly. “I guess I am. Could you tell me where we are?”

“Wyckoff,” the boy says dutifully, “New Jersey.”

Mike frowns; he can't immediately think of anyone he knows who lives in this part of town. Strange. “And, um, could you tell me when we are?”

“When?” the boy repeats, looking bemused. Mike just nods; even if he could explain, there’s no way the kid would understand. “September third, 1994.”

Mike frowns. The date is familiar for some reason, though he can’t quite pin it down in his head. “Right,” he says, shaking off the strange feeling. “Thanks, kid.”

“You really are lost, aren’t you?” the boy says, his voice a mixture of wonder and confusion. The way he says lost makes it sound like something else entirely, something almost exciting. Mike tries not to flinch.

“It’s a bit late for you to be out by yourself, isn’t it?” he says instead of answering.

“That’s my house over there,” the boy says, pointing across the street. “I live there with my brothers, and my mom and dad. Do you have a brother?”

“Yeah,” Mike says. He thinks about his family, wonders what they’d be doing September third, 1994. He doesn’t even know what they’re doing back in his own time. “What’s your name, kid?” Mike asks him, honestly curious.

“Paul Kevin Jonas the Second,” he recites, proudly, and Mike’s mouth drops open. “But you can call me Kevin.”

Mike swallows, hard, and he wonders he didn’t realise before. This Kevin is nearly twenty years younger than the Kevin he knows but the eyes are the same, the shape of his mouth, even the way he smiles at Mike isn’t any different. He can see his Kevin everywhere.

His gaze flicks to the house Kevin indicated and, yep, now he looks at it closely, he recognises it as Kevin’s parents’ house – his house, at the moment, because Kevin is more than ten years too young to be living by himself.

“Nice to meet you, Kevin,” Mike manages, but the words taste strange in his mouth. Recycled, almost, like they’re not quite his, because they aren’t his, not really. “I’m Mike. I’m... I’m from the future.”

Kevin’s eyes go so wide Mike can see rings of white around the irises. “Really?” he breathes. Mike nods, unable to help his grin at the look of complete awe on Kevin’s face. He definitely neglected to mention this little detail in the retelling. “Wow! Do you have a time machine?”

“Nah,” Mike says, biting back a laugh. “I just sort of appear places. I don’t really have any say in where I end up.”

“Wow,” Kevin repeats, his eyes still impossibly wide. “You’re- that’s- wow.” He stares at Mike for a minute, drinking him in, but then he frowns. “Is that what people in the future wear?”

Kevin gestures uncertainly at Mike and Mike laughs, shaking his head.

“No, I borrowed these,” he says, figuring it’s okay to lie to a kid if the truth would hurt them more. “I can’t take anything with me when I come from the future, not even clothes.”

“That sucks,” Kevin says with a sympathetic grimace.

“It really does,” Mike agrees. Then, like he’s just thought of it, he says, “Hey, do you think you could do me a favour?”

Kevin bobs his head enthusiastically, says, “Of course! Anything for you, Mike-from-the-future.”

Mike bites down hard on what would be a really, really stupid grin. “I just need some clothes, jeans and a t-shirt are fine,” he says, “so I don’t have to borrow them from other people when I visit again.”

Kevin’s eyes go wide again. “You’re coming back?”

“Uh huh. You’re going to be seeing a lot of me in the next few years, kid,” Mike informs him, smiling. For a moment he wonders if that’s too much information, but then he thinks fuck it, Kevin’s told him about his future (past?) before and it hasn’t ripped a hole in the space-time continuum yet.

“Does that mean you know me in the future?” Kevin asks, head cocked in curiosity. Mike nods and Kevin beams at him. “Awesome! Are we friends?”

Mike coughs, delicately. “I guess, yeah.”

(There are some things you just can’t say to seven-year-old kids, even if it won’t result in a hole in the space-time continuum. Just, no, seriously.)

“Cool. Would you like to stay for dinner, Mike-from-the-future?” Kevin asks shyly. “My parents won't mind. Especially if we tell them-”

“You can't tell them about me,” Mike says fiercely, his skin prickling all over. “You can't tell anyone about me, do you understand?”

“Okay,” Kevin says, nodding reluctantly. “It can be our secret.”

“Yeah, our secret,” Mike says, distracted by the pounding in his head, “just don't-”

“Kevin!” one of Kevin’s brothers yells, probably Joe. (Frankie hasn’t been born yet and Nick’s too young to speak, Mike thinks. Probably. He should be able to remember these things, but the details get a little hazy when he isn’t anchored to one place long enough for them to matter.)

Kevin’s head snaps round automatically and by the time he looks back, there’s nothing but a crumpled heap of clothes where Mike was standing.

Mike fades back in to his bed, in his room in his apartment in early 2011. It looks exactly the same as he left it. He’s naked again, as per fucking usual, but at least there are no impressionable kids around this time. Mike grimaces. He shifts, getting his bearings, and in the process jostles the sleeping bundle next to him.

“Hey,” Kevin murmurs, lips tugged up into that same hesitant smile he greeted Mike with when he was seven. “Are you my Mike?”

“Yeah,” Mike says, smiling tiredly at him, “I’m your Mike.”

Kevin makes a sleepy, pleased sort of sound and buries his head in Mike's shoulder. Mike wraps an arm around his waist, pulls him in closer.

“When did you go?” Kevin asks, the sound of his voice muffled.

“September third, ’ninety three,” Mike says, his fingers stroking absently down Kevin’s side. “First day we met, d’you remember?”

Kevin rubs his cheek against Mike’s bare shoulder, mumbles, “’course.” Mike can feel him smiling, the softness of his lips stretching to press against Mike’s skin. “Shouldn’t have talked to you, shouldn’t talk to strangers, but-” He pauses a moment before continuing around a yawn, “You didn’t feel like a stranger.”

Mike doesn’t know what to say to that. He keeps stroking Kevin’s side, skimming over his ribs through the thin fabric of his t-shirt.

“Thought I just made you up, for a while,” Kevin says, his voice soft. “The strange man from the future. My imaginary friend.”

Mike’s arm tightens around him, a knee-jerk reaction. “I’m not imaginary.”

“I know.” Kevin blinks up at him, and for a moment Mike thinks he sees something besides exhaustion in his eyes. “I know, I just- sometimes,” Kevin says, quietly, “sometimes, it’s hard to remember. When you’re gone, I- sometimes I wonder if you were ever really there or if-”

Mike swallows the rest of his words with his mouth before Kevin can finish. Kevin makes a soft noise, almost like a protest, but any resistance melts away when Mike bites at his lip.

“Hey,” Mike says, pulling back enough to rest his forehead against Kevin’s. His voice is gentle, the cracks smoothed over by a confidence he doesn’t really feel. “You know I’ll always come back, right?”

“Of course,” Kevin says, after a beat. “You always do.”

Mike presses a kiss to Kevin’s cheek and exhales, slowly, wishing he hadn’t heard the crack in Kevin’s tired voice.

***

The first time Mike fades out of time and fades in somewhere else, he’s five years old. He isn’t gone for more than an hour, hardly any time at all.

(An hour is a long time to a child, a scared, confused, lost little child trying to find their way home.)

Mike wanders the streets of an unfamiliar city wrapped in a coat he stole off the park bench he materialised in front of so he wouldn’t freeze to death, trying desperately not to cry. He shuffles past adults who barely give him a second glance, down streets he doesn’t recognise that look the same as every single one he’s passed, across busy roads thick with traffic.

He’s lost, so lost, and he has no idea where he is and he just wants to go home and suddenly there’s a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back from the road just as a car hurtles past. The breeze ruffles Mike’s hair. He looks up into soft eyes and a face that doesn’t look like it should belong on a stranger, somehow.

“Easy,” the man says softly. He’s still gripping Mike’s shoulder, but not hard enough that it hurts. “Don’t want you to get hurt, do we?”

Mike shakes his head. The man smiles at him and something about it makes the cold, sick fear in Mike’s chest lessen, just a little.

“Come on,” he says, dropping his hand to take Mike’s. “Let’s take you somewhere safe.”

Mike swallows hard but doesn’t pull his hand free. He knows all about stranger danger but he’s confused and helpless and lost, and the man feels like home.

“Okay,” he says, his voice as small as he feels. “Can you take me home? I wanna go home.”

The man’s face creases, a little, almost like he’s frowning but not quite. “Sure, kid,” he says, and there’s something sort of sad about his voice, “you’ll get home.”

He smiles at Mike and Mike smiles back, hesitantly. They set off, the man’s fingers warm against Mike’s ice-cold hand, but they’ve barely gone a few hundred yards before Mike feels his skin prickling all over like it did before he ended up here.

He starts to panic, trying to twist out of the man’s grip, but he doesn’t let Mike go. He pulls Mike into an empty side street, fingers digging into Mike’s shoulders.

“Shh,” the man soothes, sounding almost pleading, “calm down, come on. It won’t hurt as much if you don’t fight it.”

The man holds Mike steady until he stops shaking, until he stops fighting the energy taking over his body and lets it whisk him back to the past. It’s just as disorientating this time around, finding himself back in his warm, familiar, safe bed, blanket tucked up underneath his chin as if he never left.

When Mike pads out of his room with his lip caught between his teeth and his shoulders shaking, his parents fall upon him and bundle him into a crushing three-way hug.

“Where have you been?” his mom demands, clutching him tighter. “We’ve been worried sick, Mike.”

“Never do something like this again,” his dad adds, trying for stern but failing miserably. “You can’t just wander off without telling us where you’re going, you can’t just disappear.”

“I won’t,” Mike says, his voice muffled by his mom’s shoulder. “I promise.”

(It’s not a promise he’ll ever be able to keep, but Mike doesn’t know that yet, won’t know it for a very long time. It’s not a promise he ever intended to break either, though.)

***

“You didn’t tell me about the ginormous crush you had on me when we first met,” Mike says. He narrows his eyes at Kevin over the rim of his coffee, smirking when Kevin’s cheeks turn pink.

“I was seven years old,” Kevin mumbles. Mike arches an eyebrow, and? “You said you were from the future, okay, I can’t be blamed for being maybe a little starstruck.”

“That’s not the word I’d use,” Mike says, still smirking. “And it really wasn’t just a little.”

Kevin rolls his eyes, but the gesture is fond, as is the foot that kicks Mike’s ankle under the table. “What word would you use, then?”

There’s a beat, a second’s pause in which Mike weighs up the words in his mouth, before he says, “In love.”

Kevin stiffens. Mike watches him swallow, the lump of his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “That’s two words,” Kevin says carefully.

Mike shrugs. “Still,” he says, but he doesn’t push. “Why didn’t you mention it when you told me how it happened?”

“I didn’t want to blow up your already ginormous ego,” Kevin says, the teasing smile back on his lips. “You already think you’re awesome.”

“Because I am,” Mike says, the corners of his lips tugging up into a lazy grin.

“Yeah,” Kevin says, leaning over to brush his mouth over Mike’s, “you kind of are.” He pulls away, smirking, and says, “When you’re not being a complete dick, that is.”

“Kevin Jonas,” Mike admonishes, shaking his head in mock-horror, “you were seven years old yesterday. That kind of language is shocking.”

Grinning, Kevin leans back in and kisses him thoroughly enough that Mike is left in no doubt that this Kevin is very different to the boy he met yesterday.

“Hey,” Mike says suddenly, frowning as he pulls away. “This means- this means it’s been nearly twenty years for you.”

Kevin doesn’t even try to deny it, just says, softly, “Yeah,” tipping his head sideways to rest it against Mike’s shoulder. Mike wraps an arm around him automatically and grins so stupidly he’s glad Kevin can’t see.