Chapter Text
It’s an unseasonably warm January day in Indianapolis, and Mike and Will are walking to the local coffee shop because Mike has a specific pastry craving, when Mike gets the job offer.
“Will, hey!” calls a familiar voice. Tina, who he shares a few classes with this semester, runs up with her usual frantic energy. “Is our first assignment for Renaissance due this Friday or next? I can’t remember.”
“This Friday,” Will says, but he’s already lost her to the apparent distraction of Mike’s existence.
“Hold on,” she says. She’s looking at Mike with the mien of a museum curator who’s just come across a work of art previously considered lost and is simply unable to believe their eyes. “Hi, I’m Tina. What’s your name?”
“Mike,” he says. “I’m, uh, Will’s friend from back home. I just moved here.”
“Mike,” she repeats, like she’s tasting the name. “Do you model, Mike?”
“What?” Mike says.
“What,” Will repeats, with a feeling of foreboding.
“Sorry, who are your other friends from back home?” Tina asks Will. “Michelangelo’s David? The Venus de Milo? Don’t answer. You knew Kevin had to quit, and you didn’t think to bring up Mr. Cheekbones over here? I’m questioning your artistic eye right now. I really am.” She turns back to Mike. “The model from our Life Drawing class had to drop out, we’re desperate to find a replacement and I think you’re perfect. Are you interested? Three times a week, two hours at a time, and the pay’s pretty good. All you have to do is be naked and stand very still.”
“No!” Will protests on Mike’s behalf. “He’s not modeling nude for us!” He looks to Mike, ready to support his refusal. It’s coming, he’s sure. Mike, a nude model? There’s no way.
“Yes,” Mike says. “Actually. Thank you for the offer, I accept. When do I start?”
“Monday, but right now,” Tina says. “Can I introduce you to our professor? She should be in the studio.”
“Okay,” says Mike. Will stares at him, and he says, shrugging, “I need a job.”
“I promise I’ll bring him back in one piece,” Tina says to Will, grabbing Mike’s wrist handcuff-style and pulling him in an easterly direction.
“Was not bringing him back in one piece an option?” Will asks. What feels like confusion emerges sounding more like mild hysteria.
“Wait for me at the coffee shop, okay? I won’t be long,” Mike says, waving goodbye all light-sweatered and cozy-looking in sharp contrast to the complete lack of clothing he’ll soon be wearing.
“Okay,” Will says to the otherwise empty sidewalk. “Great. Okay.”
-
Before all this, before Mike got really into the almond croissants at the coffee shop on Fifth Street and then decided unrelatedly to get professionally naked, there was a phone call.
“I’m moving to Indianapolis,” Mike announced when Will picked up and said hello.
“What?” Will asked. “Why?”
“Don’t sound so excited,” Mike said, wounded. “What, you don’t want me to? Is the city not big enough for the both of us?”
“No, it’s just—what about school? What happened?” Will stopped there, although he had about twenty other questions ready to go.
“Nothing,” Mike said. “I don’t like it here, so I’m transferring. You just got an apartment, right? Have you seen any other vacancies around town? Can you help me look?”
“Yeah,” Will said, because in fact a sign had just gone up by their mailboxes to that end that morning. “There’s a studio in my building, actually. It’s right next door to my apartment. But that’s—”
“Awesome!” Mike said. “Talk to the landlord for me and let them know I’ll take it. You like living there, right?”
“I do, but are you sure?” Will said. It was just that Mike had seemed so fine without him every time they talked on the phone. They were both at their respective colleges, making new friends, living their own lives. “I think we’ll share a bedroom wall. You’re really moving here? Seriously?”
“In two days. Have the landlord call me. And I’m sure. This’ll be great, won’t it? No walkie-talkies needed. We can make up a secret knock to tell each other goodnight,” Mike said.
“Yeah, it’ll be great,” Will said, and he meant it. Really, it wasn’t that he didn’t mean it, or that he was unhappy about this.
It was just that Will was finally getting over Mike. At least, he was trying.
-
Mike slides into the seat across from Will at the coffee shop after putting in his own order. “Are you going to congratulate me or what?” he asks. Despite having his own pastry on the way, he’s eyeing Will’s blueberry scone like he might make a pass at it if Will looks away from it for too long.
“Congratulations,” Will says. He breaks off a piece and offers it to Mike, who darts in and eats it right from Will’s fingers. Mike’s in a good mood, obviously, which is dangerous. Mike playful and a little giddy is the way many stories started in Will’s youth that ended with scraped knees or somebody falling out of a tree. “I can’t believe you’re doing this for a class I’m taking. I have to draw you naked, Mike. I have to draw you naked.”
“You’ve drawn me before plenty of times,” Mike points out with a mouthful of scone, which unfortunately doesn’t make it less inadvertently hot that he just casually licked a few crumbs from Will’s fingertips. Will’s thought a lot about what Robin had to say about signs over the last few years, and he’s come to the conclusion that Mike is just like this. He’s not as casually affectionate as when they were kids, but he’s still a hugger. When he’s listening intently to Will it feels like being caught in the most flattering spotlight imaginable. He flirts when he doesn’t mean to and can’t flirt when he’s trying. Everything he does gets filtered through the lens of how long Will has loved him, and how much. Will’s not a reliable narrator here.
“Yeah, but not all of you,” Will says.
“But you’ve seen me naked,” Mike says. “A bunch of times. Remember? We used to take baths together when we were like, five.” This is actually something that Will tries not to think about, and in fact had hoped Mike had forgotten lest he ever begin to think it had been anything other than completely innocent for Will. Which it had been. They were children.
“I remember,” Will says, strained. “I think you’ve probably grown since then.”
“Yeah,” Mike, who’s been to one semester of college and kissed three people that Will knows about and now makes innuendos, apparently, says with a naughty little grin, “I have. But I guess you’ll see.”
-
Will’s Life Drawing class isn’t until the following Monday, so Mike’s already sat for two classes before Will’s rolls around again. They’ve been going well, per Mike’s report. The nudity thing doesn’t bother him, which does track—Will remembers Mike’s mother always had a harder time getting him dressed after their baths, with some shrieking and scampering involved before Mike would submit to the indignity of pajamas. And he’s apparently very good at standing still.
Will has heard every detail about it, in fact, because when Will’s not in class or working Mike is attached to him like a barnacle. Also sometimes when he is working, as Will had to hustle to get a job to pay for his apartment and has since been manning the counter part-time at the indie video store near campus. Mike popped in one afternoon to check out the place, saw that there was an extra spot to sit behind the counter, and claimed it. Now if he’s not doing anything else he just comes along with Will and sits back there and reads or does whatever. Sometimes he gets into arguments with film students about various cinematic eras he’s medium-to-well informed about.
Luckily the owner, Rocky, a woman in her fifties with apple green hair and the voice of a pack a day smoker, doesn’t mind Mike hanging around. He picks good movies to put on the TV in the corner. Sometimes Mike gets into arguments with her about old movies. Will thinks she finds it funny.
Mike’s been here two entire weeks and it’s like it’s always been this way. Like last semester never even happened.
-
Mike is already there when Will walks into class, leaning casually in a robe against the windowsill. When he sees Will he flutters his fingers in a little wave. His smile has less of the previous bravado in it, a touch of nervousness that Will didn’t expect to see there.
The teacher introduces him as their new model while they all get their easels set up, and then Mike takes the robe off and there’s all of him. Every naked inch.
If Will can approach this from an anatomical perspective, break Mike down into parts, then maybe it will be easier to get through this. But when he starts with the shape of him, those narrow shoulders and long legs, already it feels impossible to reduce him to lines, shadows on skin, curves of bone. It’s like asking him to draw a self-portrait dispassionately, objectively. He knows Mike’s face as well as his own, from thirteen years of looking at him, watching him become the man he is now. He would recognize Mike from one hundred yards away, from the way he walks, the sound of his voice, the way he stands out in a crowd. Even when Will’s drawing him like this, he’s still drawing Mike from memory.
For an entire semester Mike was just a voice on the phone every week or so and yet Will saw him as if he were in the same room, pacing around like he does when he gets deep into a conversation, the phone cord limiting his distance like a dog on a chain, winding his fingers through the loops of the cord in frustration. He can see Mike so easily when he closes his eyes, and after months without seeing him for real his presence here feels almost illusory. Mike really in front of him again, dropped into this setting like a photograph cut and pasted into a background where it doesn’t belong.
But Mike’s always belonged in the picture, hasn’t he? Everything looks right when he’s in the frame.
The outline of Mike takes shape on the paper in front of him like it was already waiting there for the press of charcoal to coax it out.
It’s only for the details that Will has to really pay attention, to make sure he’s capturing a moment instead of a lifetime. The windowpane shadow that bisects Mike’s shoulder blade, a bright gold rectangle from the setting winter sun. He thinks of Mike on the phone last October talking about a party he went to, how he kissed a girl there whose name he didn’t know, how he touched her face and she startled because his hands were cold. Will wishes he had paint for this one, a palette of yellows he could blend together until he found the perfect shade to capture what the light is telling him, that Mike’s skin is warm now on every bare inch touched by sunshine.
The thick curl of dark brown hair caught in front of Mike’s ear. Will’s always liked it longer like this, wild around his face framing every exaggerated feature. It’s so fucking pretty. Mike’s his favorite person to draw; he’s interesting to look at, alternately sharp and soft, stunning and strange.
Light strokes for each suggestion of bone: elbows, ribcage, hipbones, spine. Mike’s been the dictionary definition of gangly since about age fourteen, long limbs on a slight frame, collarbones like a clothes hanger. Will still remembers seeing him in Lenora again for the first time in what felt like an eternity, how skinny he’d gotten. Mike had hugged him so awkwardly but at the first touch Will didn’t really know what to do either, how to hold so much less of him. All that time apart had left Will filled to the brim with too much love for him and there Mike was, hollowed out. It unnerved Will, then, and it makes him uneasy now seeing Mike thinner like that again. At least this way he can keep an eye on him.
Will’s been so good about not using this as an opportunity to (artistically) check out Mike’s dick. The way Mike’s angled means that Will doesn’t have to get into the details, thank god; it’s more of a suggestion of dark curls and soft length. He wonders if he’ll get marked down for drawing a couple of fig leaves there instead. This spins him off into thoughts about illustrating Mike as Adam, led astray, then as Eve, too curious not to take a bite out of the apple. Mike naked in a garden. Mike as muse, painted into his every work as a lover might be.
Maybe Will should have told him that Indianapolis wasn’t actually big enough for the both of them. Tried to gently dissuade him at the very least. How is Will ever supposed to fall in love with anybody else?
“Alright, finish up,” the teacher says. Will has to step back, blinking at the picture in front of him. It’s well past finished. He drew Mike in record time and it looks pretty great if he’s honest with himself. Maybe drawing somebody you already know in this context is like cheating.
When he looks up Mike is slipping his robe back on, staring Will down. Mike gives him another little wave, and Will nods, packing up his things and pointing towards the door to indicate he’ll be outside. Why make new friends anyway? It’s so much easier when friendship has an element of pre-existing telepathy.
Mike’s a little ruffled-looking when he comes out, and he shoves his hands in his pockets immediately, turning to walk in the direction of their apartment building. Will has to hurry a little to keep up with him, but not for long before Mike has a little sympathy for Will’s non-gazelle legs and slows down. “So what did you think?” Mike asks. Despite the effort he seems to be putting in to make his stroll seem casual now, he’s not looking Will in the eye.
This has to be a trick question somehow. “About…?” Will asks.
“In there,” Mike says, gesturing back towards the classroom. This not only doesn’t clarify anything, it actually feels like it increases the potential for trickery by several points. Does Mike wants feedback on his pose? His ability to stay very still? His dick? What?
“You did great. You looked great,” Will says, covering all his bases. Well, most of them. “You’re a great subject.” Hopefully he’ll be able to come up with another thing to describe as great, since no other adjectives exist. “It’s probably not fair of me to be drawing you, though. I’ve had a lot of practice compared to everybody else.”
“That’s kind of why I thought I could do it,” Mike admits. “Sorry if it’s weird. I think you just drew me enough over the years that I got used to sitting still for you even when I didn’t really want to. Because I knew you liked doing it, and I wanted to make you happy.”
Will tries not to let his face reflect that this has just shattered him into a thousand pieces. “I didn’t know that.”
“I started to like it, eventually.” Mike shrugs, looking embarrassed. “It’s calming. I figured I wouldn’t mind it if it was other people drawing me, but it’s not the same. Obviously. But it was nice that you were there today. I know you didn’t really want me to do this. It wasn’t as awful as you thought it would be, was it?”
Mike feeling in any way bad or shy is agonizing. “No!” Will says insistently. “No, god, no. It was fine. I don’t feel weird about it at all, I swear.”
“Not even about drawing my dick?” Mike asks, directing big sincere eyes right at him.
“Okay fuck you,” Will says, knocking against him and making him cackle.
“Was it nice? I want your opinion. Be honest, it’s gotten bigger since we were five, right?”
“Honestly?” Will says. “No.”
“Hey!” Mike shrieks, and they bicker about Mike’s dick the whole rest of the way home.
-
On Wednesday night there’s a knock at the front door. Actually four knocks, then a pause, then two more knocks.
“Come in!” Will’s roommate Connor says from the kitchen, where he’s sitting at the table doing a puzzle with his girlfriend. The door swings wide open, revealing Mike in a red sweater with rows of white sheep and one single black sheep on it. “Hey hot stuff,” Connor says to Mike.
“Hey beautiful,” Mike says back, blowing Connor a kiss. To Connor’s girlfriend, Ruby, he says, “Hi sweetheart.”
“Good evening, gorgeous,” she says back.
When Mike joins Will on the couch, where he’d been half paying attention to MTV News while idly fantasizing about meeting Robert Smith and Robert saying he thought Will was cool, Mike’s flushed with the joy of being appreciated. He flings himself down onto his back, taking up the entire two-thirds of the couch unoccupied by Will and making the cushions bounce a little, and arches his neck to look up at Will upside-down.
“William,” he says.
“Michael,” Will says back. “Should I leave the three of you alone?”
So: Will lucked out with this apartment, no doubt about that. In December, when he realized his current situation had gotten too dire to continue, he mentioned that he was looking for an apartment to Connor, one of his friends and classmates in 2D Design. Connor said his roommate in his place close to campus was moving out and Will should come by and see it. Will came by, really liked the place, and then, heart in his throat, said, “You should know that I’m, uh, gay.”
“Oh!” said Connor. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
The casual acceptance implied in this response threw Will off enough that he phrased it as a question when he answered, “No?”
“Alright, cool. No big deal if you get one, just try to at least spend half the time at his place if you guys are hanging out a lot. I have a girlfriend, Ruby, so you’ll see her pretty frequently but I’m at her apartment just as often as she’ll be here, so you’ll have the place all to yourself some nights. You’ll like her. She’s bisexual! Wait, you don’t smoke, do you?”
“No,” Will said with more certitude this time, despite the fact that he was still trying to keep up.
“Good, it’s bad for your health. But if you decide to start, you can’t smoke in the apartment. A little weed is fine. We do have the back porch too. So what do you think? You can move in first of the month.”
“Okay, great,” Will said and then, feeling like he was vastly undercontributing to this conversation, added, “I don’t think I’ll start smoking.”
“Awesome!” Connor held up his hand for a high five.
After a moment, Will high fived him. Not long after, he signed a lease.
He has tried since to be an excellent roommate, although his dream of not being an annoying person who has friends over all the time got trampled within days of Mike’s arrival. Will checked in, at least, pulling Connor aside to ask, “Hey, is Mike here too often? I know you talked about trying to split time with boyfriends and girlfriends and stuff, so if it’s bothering you we can hang out at his place more. Not that he’s my boyfriend. But he is. Here.”
“Oh no, he’s fine,” Connor said. “Mike’s great. Ruby loves him, she’d kill me if I told you to make him scarce around here. I think she thinks of him as a baby brother, kind of. She’s the oldest of seven, did you know that? She really misses her siblings, I think he reminds her of them.” His expression slid into one more thoughtful. “Although she also kind of talks about him the way she talks sometimes about a pet frog she used to have. So she might also think of him as a pet frog.”
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Mike has done everything in his power to make Connor and Ruby adore him. Will has literally watched him overcome his natural urge to be a sarcastic prickly bitch in response to a question in favor of being winsome and charming instead. This ongoing effort has earned him the right to now basically be a fixture in the apartment despite having his own place to live approximately five feet out the door.
Also, his front door knock is Morse code for Hi. Even Will has to agree that’s cute.
“No,” Mike says now, in response to Will’s suggestion that he could leave if Mike wanted to have a bisexual threesome with Connor and Ruby. “You can stay and watch.”
“Thanks,” Will tells him. “I appreciate it.”
“I got more work!” Mike announces. “The photos from that test shoot last week turned out pretty well and I guess word got around, so I have a few more shoots scheduled now. I even talked to a couple of people over at Lockley who want to work with me.”
“That’s great,” Will says. “Have you been over there? That’s where you’re thinking of transferring to, right?” Lockley’s one of the smaller liberal arts schools in the state, but Will’s heard good things about it. The campus is only about twenty minutes away too, which is nice.
“Yeah, maybe,” Mike says. “Can we celebrate? You don’t have early classes tomorrow, right?”
Mike knows damn well what Will’s schedule is, but Will confirms it anyway. They get out the vodka that Ruby brings over because she’s actually blessedly twenty-one, and Connor makes and then passes around vodka cranberries. Mike and Will join them at the kitchen table and they absolutely fucking crush that one thousand piece puzzle together while talking about every aspect of their childhoods excluding the monsters and the apocalypse and the general trauma.
While Will’s getting ready for bed he tries to think about what he might have been doing if Mike wasn’t here. Something else, surely. He likes to think he still would have become pretty good friends with Connor and Ruby, but there’s something about Mike that brings people closer together and there always has been. He thrives in a group, with enough space and people to absorb some of the crackling energy he seems to carry inside himself like a live wire sometimes.
Will would be trying harder to make new friends, probably, like he was last semester when he was doing anything he could to not be sitting in his dorm room. He’d be studying more at the library like he was then, instead of studying here on the couch with Mike curled up on the other end quietly reading. One of these days Mike will be gone again, leaving Will back at sea, adrift and grappling for something to cling to. Will could do it. He could go back to being a person living without Mike Wheeler. He’s done it before. It sucked, but he’s done it before.
The sound comes just as he’s sliding into bed, four knocks in quick succession on the other side of the wall.
They had thought about doing the Morse code for “goodnight” but decided it was too long. So they settled for “Hi” again, but a call and response this time.
Knock knock knock knock. Pause. Will raps his knuckles twice against the wall in answer. And with Mike on the other side, he falls into a dreamless sleep.
-
The second day of his life that Will spends drawing Mike naked leaves him concerned for entirely unsexy reasons. He waits around for Mike to get dressed so they can walk home together, then lets him chatter about all the thoughts he had in the last two hours but couldn’t say out loud on the way. When they get back to their building, Mike follows Will into his apartment instead of going into his own. Will had expected this. He’s off work, and they hang out on Monday nights at his place. They have a routine now. Will would desperately love to be able to question this and find it strange and bring up how weird it is, but the thing is he loves it.
Spending this much time with each other is nice. Mike just always has been, and it seems maybe always will be, his favorite person.
When Mike slips off his jacket, Will goes in for the kill and says, “You’re losing weight.”
Mike looks down at himself, quite pointlessly as he’s wearing an oversized band t-shirt. “No,” he denies.
“I spent two hours drawing you naked today. Last week your ribs were less defined.” Since Mike’s still frowning at his shirt like his x-ray vision’s on the fritz and he’s waiting for it to kick back in, Will reaches out and firmly touches his side. “One,” he says, tapping a rib under cotton, “two,” tapping the next, “three,” again, until Mike bats at him. “You’re a model, you have to stay looking the same. That’s the job. Why aren’t you eating?”
“I forget to, I don’t know.” Mike turns the frown on him, but Will has always thought his disgruntled face was pretty adorable, so he remains unintimidated. “Don’t count my bones.”
They have a stare-off. Since Will is going to win this one, it’s really more of a pause while he figures out a solution. Finally, he says, “Go to the grocery store. Get whatever sounds good and bring it back here. I’ll make us dinner. Buy enough so you can take home leftovers.”
“Fine,” Mike says. He gives Will a sulky look, but he puts his jacket back on to go do it. Since that was their first conflict since Mike got here, Will thinks that overall things are going pretty well.
-
It’s been a week and four easy but still pretty tasty dinners when Mike steals up behind Will, wraith-like, and looks over his shoulder at what Will has going on the stove. “That looks good.”
“It’s almost ready,” Will tells him. Mike’s hovering awfully close. “Five minutes.” He expects this update to prompt Mike to drift back into the living room and wait, but Mike lingers until Will turns his head a little to look back at him and then his arms loop around Will’s waist and he hooks his chin on Will’s shoulder, eyes closed, and hugs him.
“Thank you,” Mike mumbles. He holds on tight, and for long enough that Will sets the spoon down so he can pat the back of Mike’s hand, then cover it with his own and squeeze back a little. “I know I kind of just showed up on your doorstep when you were finally on your own and living your big city life, and you could have told me to fuck off but you didn’t.”
“Mike, I don’t think there’s a universe in which I’d ever tell you to fuck off,” Will says.
“You did yesterday when I suggested Picasso was kind of a hack,” Mike points out.
“Well I stand behind that, have better opinions—”
“I think there’s nuance—”
“Shh.” Will very carefully takes the wooden spoon from the spoon rest and taps it gently against Mike’s nose, leaving behind a smear of tomato sauce. Mike scrunches up his face, but lets Will go so he can swipe it away and then lick his finger clean. “I’d never kick you off my doorstep, anyway. You’re my best friend. I actually like you, you know. I’m really happy you’re here.” This admission combined with Mike’s finger-licking makes him feel a little overly warm, and he has to turn away, giving the pan one last stir.
“I would have found that more believable before the tomato sauce assault, but if you say so.” Mike’s voice gets softer, quieter. “Thank you. Me too.” He steps away and Will feels it more than hears it, the warmth of Mike receding from his space. Mike busies himself opening the cupboard, holding out a few wine glasses and asking, “Want to try that wine I got with dinner?”
Will agrees, and Mike gets it out of the fridge, where of course he put it as soon as he came in brandishing it as spoils from a photo shoot. One fun part of Mike’s modeling work is that people sometimes give him free stuff as a thank you, and then he shares it around. He actually got a real catalog job for a local yarn shop and it came with knitted freebies, which is why they coordinate when it’s really cold out because Mike kept the hat and gloves and gave Will the matching scarf.
“I don’t know if this actually goes with what we’re eating,” Mike says, pouring up the pinot grigio. “How do people find this stuff out? Who do you ask?”
“I have no clue,” Will says. It’s wine and they’re having pasta. That works, right? He tries a sip, and it’s not bad. From Mike’s face it’s clear that he likes it a little less, but he’s powering through it.
“So I was thinking, what if I just keep buying the groceries and we do the cooking thing a few nights a week?” Mike asks. “If you want. We can go shopping together and get all the stuff you like. And I can help out more, you can put me to work! I can chop things. We could learn to bake.” Mike looks away as soon as Will catches his eye, twirling some pasta around his fork like it’s fascinating.
They both just had long but pleasant days, Will with his busiest day of classes and Mike spending all afternoon at Lockley doing the photo shoot. Mike came over as soon as he got back, and now they’re sitting at the kitchen table together having Italian food and wine for dinner like real grown-ups, and Mike’s proposing that they keep it going deliberately and more often, because that’s how nice this is.
Will is never, ever going to get over him, is he? He just isn’t. It’s fine, he and Mike can just play house like this until some beautiful girl swoops in and snatches Mike up like an eagle with a mouse and carries him away forever. Will can go without kissing and sex until then, he has an eighteen year record of surviving that so far.
Will says, “It’s a deal,” and they clink their glasses together to seal it.
-
Will’s Thursday 2-10pm shifts at Rocky’s are good for Will’s wallet and that’s just about the best he can say for them. Afternoons can be unbelievably slow. It’s a good time to put on interesting-sounding foreign films with subtitles because he’ll have plenty of time to pay attention to them, but there’s also only so much Antonioni and Godard he can watch before the existentialism starts to get to him and he almost starts to miss when his world was full of external conflicts. Not a lot of time to sit and dwell on What It All Means when the apocalypse is on the schedule. And anyway, how much can it all mean if the apocalypse is actually an option?
This line of thinking usually indicates that it’s time for a little John Hughes to pretend that’s real instead.
The bell above the door jingles, heralding a momentary release from boredom, hopefully, and then Will’s heart genuinely leaps like a pound puppy in a cage when he sees that it’s Mike. Will hasn’t seen him all day, which isn’t that unusual—Will’s classes are mostly in the morning, so he generally doesn’t see Mike until the afternoon or evening anyway—but the hours feel longer when Mike isn’t in them.
It’s not like everything was terrible last semester, Will was making friends and everything. It’s just that none of them were Mike. Not even close.
Mike holds up a bag from the Chinese place down the street. “Dinner,” he says. Will reaches for it like a child requesting to be picked up and held, and Mike laughs, joining him behind the counter and getting everything out.
“What do I owe you?” Will asks, greedily digging into his fried rice.
“One favor that I can request at any moment in the future and you have to do it right then even if it’s annoying. It won’t be anything that will cause you physical harm. Probably.”
“Miiike,” Will says. Last time, as payment for a falafel wrap, Will had to agree to be Mike’s second in a duel in case anybody ever bit his thumb at him. Before that, Thai food in exchange for Will casting a spell to ensure good weather on a Friday morning that Mike had an outdoor shoot. It ended up being sunny out but very cold, so Mike stole Will’s leftover pad thai from the fridge and ate it on Will’s couch while intermittently looking pathetic and coughing like a sickly Victorian child. “I have a job, you are literally at it right now. I can give you money.”
“Fine,” Mike says. “Seventy gold doubloons from a pre-1700 shipwreck. Delivered in a treasure chest. The chest can be a modern copy but the doubloons have to be real.”
“Okay, that’ll be tough.”
“It’s that or a favor, man. You asked. Egg roll?”
Will takes the offered egg roll. Mike’s still kidding around, but he also seems willing to make this into a real argument if that’s what Will wants it to be. And Will doesn’t really want it to be. Mike’s always been casually generous with him ever since they were kids and Mike got an allowance while Will didn’t. He always looked at Will like this back then too, like he thought Will was nuts for even bringing the matter up. Impatient with Will for not understanding.
But Will does understand, now. Mike’s his friend, and Mike loves him, and this is one of the ways that he shows it. Will can take care of himself, yeah, but there’s no point in standing on his pride just for the sake of it. “Thanks,” Will says, taking the egg roll.
Any further discussion is curbed anyway by Will having to actually do his job. The store isn’t that big, so having more than about three customers at a time makes it feel like Grand Central Station. This is arguably better than it being boring, though, so Will keeps it friendly with everybody that comes in, chatting with some of the regulars. Mike contributes recommendations when he has them and sits quietly reading when he doesn’t.
When it finally slows down a few hours later Will goes in for a second round on the fried rice. He thinks at some point there was flatware confusion and that he and Mike are now using the same spoon. Whatever. Twenty minutes of eating, five minutes of arguing with Mike over who gets to pick the next movie even though they won’t get to finish it tonight before closing, and then the jingle-jangle above the door heralding the arrival of a customer forces a temporary stop to their heated sidebar discussion about Less Than Zero the book vs. Less Than Zero the movie.
“Oh, hi Will,” says the guy who just walked in. It’s Jamie from last semester's art history class. Will had really liked him the couple of times they’d spoken, although it was mostly towards the end of term when Will had been too preoccupied with his increasingly untenable living situation to pay that much attention to anything else.
“Jamie, hey,” Will says. He had possibly been so preoccupied back then that he hadn’t even realized how cute Jamie is. Tall, with dark hair and bright brown eyes, Jamie’s wearing a concert tee from The Cure’s last US tour and worn-in jeans that look impossibly soft. “How’ve you been?”
Jamie has a sweet smile, too, a little shy. “Pretty good. I was wondering if you guys had a copy of Wyler’s Wuthering Heights?”
“Yeah, let me show you where,” Will says. He almost trips over Mike trying to get out from behind the counter, but Mike just frowns at him like this is Will’s fault while he draws his long legs back up close to himself like a recalcitrant spider.
Outside of the reach of Mike’s web of moodiness and bad Bret Easton Ellis opinions Will’s able to have a pleasant catch-up with Jamie, leaning up against one of the tall shelves while they talk about their classes, and how good Disintegration is, and their latest projects, and finally what they like to do for fun. This last subject has Jamie biting his lip and hesitantly asking, “I’ve seen you at Tucker’s, haven’t I?”
“Maybe,” Will says. He thinks about it, trying to remember if he noticed Jamie either of the times he was there, before realizing, for once in his life in a timely fashion, what Jamie is getting at. “Yeah, I mean, that’s possible. I’ve been to Tucker’s. That’s a place I go.”
“Cool,” Jamie says, but this seems to be about the limit of what he can manage on that front, as he just taps on the video in his hand and says, “Well, I better get going.”
Jamie’s sudden bashfulness is contagious, and Will finds himself a little red-cheeked as he checks Jamie out. “It’s due back on Sunday,” Will tells him, then in a burst of courage adds, “I’ll be here in the afternoon if you want to come in and let me know how it was.”
“Yeah,” Jamie says with that shy smile again. “Maybe I’ll see you then.”
It’s awfully quiet once Jamie leaves, on Will’s end because he can’t believe he just sort of flirted with a guy, and on Mike’s end because, as Will can feel like a change in barometric pressure from Mike’s zone of ambient feelings, he’s gearing up to say something.
Will wheels around on him, ready to cut him off at the pass. “He’s cute, right?” he says, crossing his arms in front of him.
“You could do better,” Mike mutters. If Will were to draw him right now, it would be with a big dark thundercloud right over his head pouring down rain as an externalization of the epic sulk on his face.
“Oh my god,” Will says. “Mike. How. How could I do better? He’s cute and nice and gay. What is your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem,” Mike says. The cartoon thundercloud unleashes multiple bolts of lightning. “I’m just saying you can do better, that’s all. It’s a compliment.”
“It’s a bad one,” Will tells him. He nudges one of Mike’s once again in-the-damn-way legs aside. “I gotta start closing.”
Mike’s not even willing to continue the Less Than Zero argument on the way home; in fact, he lets Will win, his hands in his pockets making Will carry the leftovers as he concedes that yes it’s overly edgy, nihilistic, and clearly written for shock value, but he likes it anyway. He refuses outright to address Will’s assertion that Andrew McCarthy is better looking than Robert Downey Jr. or James Spader, mumbling something about Will’s questionable taste in men, the irony of which is so profound that Will can’t even begin to get into it. He makes Will keep the rest of the Chinese food so Will insists they do a grocery run tomorrow since the whole fucking point of their agreement was to make sure Mike’s eating enough.
Will stays feeling restless after they part for the night, thinking more about Mike than about maybe seeing Jamie again. Mike is weird, that’s all, he’s a little clingy and protective and annoying but it comes from a place of caring, Will’s pretty sure. It’s not like they’re really mad at each other. They still do their goodnight knocks on the wall, anyway.
-
The next afternoon, as Mike’s sitting on the couch and writing in a notebook and Will’s sketching a picture of Mike sitting on the couch and writing in a notebook, Ruby and Connor come clattering in from the cold.
“Beautiful people of the world,” Ruby says in greeting. “We’re going to Tucker’s tonight, do you guys want to come?”
“Sure, we’re not busy,” Mike answers for both of them.
“That’s the gay club,” Will points out. Mike hadn’t asked about it, despite having obviously eavesdropped on Will and Jamie’s entire conversation, but that wasn’t entirely surprising. Mike also lives here, after all, he’s familiar with the neighborhood by now.
“I know,” says Mike. “It sounds cool.” He watches as Will tries to untangle his feelings enough to get another sentence out and then saves him the trouble. “It’s fine. It’s not like they check gay ID at the door, do they? Do I need to get a not-gay person day pass? Will they refuse to serve me unless I kiss a man first?”
“Yeah,” Connor says. “You have to kiss three men just to get in the door. Ruby usually picks mine for me.”
“That’s fine,” Mike says breezily. “No beards or mustaches though. I have delicate skin. I can’t go getting beard burn. What time?” he asks Ruby, so, apparently, they’re all going to Tucker’s tonight.
-
“What are you going to do if someone hits on you?” Will asks him once they’ve walked in and Mike’s looking around avidly like he’s on an anthropological study. Will’s been here twice: the first time he went in alone and then lost his nerve and had to leave even though it was just about the least scary queer club he could imagine, mostly other college students and a fairly even mix of men and women. The second time he went with a couple of acquaintances from his dorm and had a pretty great time dancing. He got propositioned by two guys, one super nice but intimidatingly burly, and the other good-looking but obviously older and just creepy enough to make Will consider once again if he could maybe like girls even a little. He for sure cannot. Will remains unkissed but it’s nice to know that that doesn’t have to be forever if he doesn’t want it to be. It’s also nice to know that he’s not yet desperate enough to just let anything happen.
“Hmm,” Mike says. “First of all, I don’t think anybody’s going to hit on me—”
“You are insane,” Will says. “Somebody’s definitely going to hit on you.”
“But if that does happen, which I don’t think it will—”
“Insane—”
“I’ll just politely decline. If he’s a jerk about it, you have to swoop in and rescue me and act like you’re my boyfriend and scare him away. If he’s hot, I’ll let him take me out back and ravish me.” Mike gives him a dazzling smile. “Let’s dance!”
They dance. Since Hawkins wasn’t exactly a hopping party scene Will wasn’t even sure if Mike liked dancing, but it turns out he does. The pre-gaming at home may have had an effect on this, as Mike definitely moves like a guy three shots deep. Ruby seems to be a regular and friendly with half the clientele, so they’re dancing surrounded by a swarm of queer women and Connor, who’s treated as a sort of honorary girl and also has some mean moves. It’s easy to give into it all and have a good time, all of Will’s anxieties draining away with Janet Jackson blaring, tequila in his bloodstream, the cinematic party scene unreality of multi-colored lights washing over them all paired with the familiar comfort of Mike’s presence.
Of course, Will leaves him alone for two minutes and calamity occurs. When he comes back from the bathroom Mike’s at the bar being leered at by a guy that Will recognizes from Life Drawing. His name is Greg and he’s one of Will’s three secret enemies in class who look at Mike in a way Will doesn’t appreciate. Greg’s ogling freely now and leaning way too far into Mike’s space even though Mike’s obviously not into it.
“Hey,” Will says. The look of relief that Mike sends him gives Will the courage to slip an arm around Mike’s waist like every instinct was telling him to do, and Mike immediately angles himself into it, pulling Will closer.
“I told you, I have a boyfriend,” Mike says. The bartender sets a few glasses in front of him, and Mike pushes some cash across the bar, thanking her before glaring again at Greg. “So you can take no for an answer now, thank you.”
“You’re dating this guy?” Greg asks, looking askance at Will. “What do you two do, just get in bed and stare at each other?”
“What’s that supposed to—” Mike starts, outraged, which will absolutely give up the whole boyfriend game up, so Will cuts him off by getting between them and taking one of the glasses.
“Babe,” Will says. Sure, babe, why not. “Is this for me? Do you wanna go sit down?”
“Yes,” Mike says, still trying to murder Greg with his eyes. “It is. Darling. Let’s go.” Will steers him away from the bar, arm still around his waist, as Greg rolls his eyes. “I knew that guy was a fucking creep,” Mike says to Will, fuming. “He’s always staring at my dick in class. Like I can see you, asshole. Buy a guy dinner first, god.”
“Do you wanna leave?” Will asks.
“No, he’s not ruining our night,” Mike says. “Fuck him. Ugh, gross, as if I’d ever fuck him. Let’s just sit down for a minute.” Will lets him go to slide into an empty booth, and Mike follows him in, nudging him over instead of just getting in on the other side. “Hey, comfort your boyfriend, would you?” Mike leans into him, wriggling a little.
“I don’t think he’s still looking,” Will says. He puts an arm around Mike’s shoulders anyway, and Mike settles against him with a huff.
“What was he trying to say back there?” Mike asks. “About us staring at each other in bed.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Will tells him.
“I am worried about it,” Mike insists. “Explain it to me. I need to understand how I’m being insulted.”
Will should never have let him insist on coming out with them tonight. He should have told Mike to just stay home and do something heterosexual. “Oh god,” Will says. “It’s just stereotypical bullshit. It’s not even insulting, it’s just stupid.” Mike folds his arms and frowns at Will surly kindergartener-style, so apparently Will’s not getting out of this one without teaching Mike about the gay birds and the gay bees. “Okay. So, when men have sex with each other and there’s, uh, penetration,” kill him now, somebody, please, “someone obviously has to do…that, so that the other person can take…that,” lightning striking the club, an anvil falling from the sky and landing on him Bugs Bunny-style, anything, “and some guys prefer it one way or the other, so you’re a top or a bottom,” Mike is smart, he can infer which is which, “and I think he looked at us and just assumed we’re both…bottoms. For, like I said, kind of bullshit reasons. Because we’re not overly masc or whatever. That’s short for masculine.”
“What’s not masc about you?” Mike demands, looking Will over. “You’re a guy in normal guy clothes. You’re handsome. Like what, just because you’re maybe a prettier kind of handsome that dictates what you do or don’t get to do with your dick? That’s fucked up!”
“It’s fine,” Will says. Maybe a Will-sized sinkhole will open up beneath his feet and just swallow him whole. “I don’t know, it’s complicated, people assume things. You’re masc too, that guy’s just a jerk.”
“I don’t even care about being ‘masc’,” Mike says grumpily and with strongly implied air quotes around masc. “Everybody knows gender is a fucking construct anyway. What?” he says off Will’s raised eyebrows. “I did a photoshoot with Trilby from the Women’s Studies department at Lockley and she asked me to pretend to read this book called Gender Trouble so instead of pretending I just started reading it and then she let me borrow it. It’s good. You should read it too.”
“Yeah, okay,” Will says, ready to agree to anything to end this conversation. “Sounds great.”
“So then are you—,” Mike pauses. No, god, please. “You know. Is that what you like. Or.” They can’t possibly be really doing this. Will can’t possibly be sitting in a gay club with his best friend that he’s been in love with since they were kids while said best friend grills him about his sex act preferences. Will must take too long to respond, because Mike says, getting a little whiny about it, “Come on! We’re best friends. We can talk about this stuff.”
“Okay,” Will says. Enough of this, he can outmaneuver Mike on this one. He extracts his arm from around Mike’s shoulders so he can face off against him like they’re going into battle. “Fine. You go first. What do you like in bed, Mike? Tell me everything.” There, gauntlet thrown. Mike will duck so as not to be struck by the gauntlet. They’ll go back to the bar and drink to forget.
Mike takes a very deep obvious irritated breath. “Fine,” he hisses. Will realizes, suddenly and intensely, that he has underestimated how far Mike will go to get the information he wants. “Well as you know, Will, I’m going mostly on theory here. I think I would probably like sex. I imagine fucking somebody would feel good. I’m pretty sure I’m into people who are stronger than me, which I know doesn’t significantly narrow down the field, but in retrospect the superpowers thing for me might have been a feature and not a bug. I think I’m a romantic at heart so I’d want it to be with somebody I love, or at least really care about. I don’t really want to always be the one to make the first move because it stresses me out, so I guess I’d prefer somebody a little more aggressive. Even including maybe getting a little rough with me, I don’t know. While we’re theorizing. And,” he says, really getting into it in a way that can only herald catastrophe, “for the record, if I were to have sex with a guy, I think I’d like it either way! Getting fucked sounds kind of hot and I’m a little curious now! And I think even if I liked it better one way or the other I wouldn’t want to just do it that one way forever. Is there a word for that?”
“Vers,” Will says in a very, very small voice. He has lost the battle. He was, in fact, foolish to even try to go up against Mike when he’s committed to having feelings about something.
“Vers,” Mike repeats triumphantly. “Great. How about you?”
“Uh, same,” Will says. The response this gets from Mike face-wise is reminiscent of a charging bull that’s just gotten a red flag waved in front of it. “And,” he continues hurriedly, “also theoretically, I always kind of figured I’d,” it’s fine, he can say words, “bottom. Because, you know,” words, Will, words, “it sounds nice.” Fine, those count as words. “But I’d fuck a guy too, if he wanted.” This, out of all of it, feels the most daring to say. “I guess it seems like most guys want you to pick one, so I assumed that’s what I’d do. But you’re right,” wow, wild thing to say about a gay culture-related observation to your straight best friend, “you don’t have to.”
He’s silent for long enough after that that Mike finally gives in and says, “There. Was that so difficult?” sounding awfully superior for someone who is also vividly blushing.
“Yes,” Will stresses. “God. Are you happy now?”
Mike grabs his hand and gets up, pulling him back towards the dance floor. “Thrilled. I knew that asshole was wrong. We wouldn’t just lie in bed staring at each other. We’d have a really fun sex life switching off fucking all the time and it would be awesome. He wishes he could be as cool and sexy and vers as we are.”
They slip easily back into the school of fish-like crowd of Ruby’s friends, Mike still holding his hand like he’s making a point, though Will cannot imagine what that point might be. When Ruby sees them she pulls them further in, asking, “Do we need to go kill that guy?” with a gesture in the direction of the bar, where Greg is now hassling another hapless freshman.
“Yeah,” Mike says, as Will says, “No, it’s fine.”
“A light maiming,” Mike bargains.
“Not that either,” Will says.
“Why don’t you ever want me to have a good time even once in my life?” Mike demands.
“We are having a good time,” Will tells him. They’ve been dancing near enough to each other all night that it seems harmless enough to pull him closer, to dance with him. They’re all dancing with each other as friends, anyway, and Mike’s been passed around the group like an exciting new toy all night when he’s not been the filling in a Ruby and Connor sandwich. Will actually should be keeping a better grip on him lest he be picked off again. Enjoy the Silence comes on, and Mike loops his arms around Will’s shoulders, bringing him in close, and Will’s hands automatically go to his hips. It’s not exactly slow dancing at the Snow Ball—thank god for that, actually—and certainly not anything he could have imagined happening between him and Mike back then. But it feels good, Mike knowing the truth about him and still being comfortable doing this anyway. “You are, right?” he asks, leaning in closer so Mike can hear him, saying it into his ear. “Having a good time?”
“Yeah,” Mike admits. When Will pulls back, smiling at him a little, Mike’s matching smile is almost too much from this close. Will doesn’t know how he ever thought his life would be worth a damn without him. He’s so glad Mike’s here now.
The next hour or so dissolves in the crush of the crowd, the dance floor a tighter fit as the club fills up. Mike sticks close to him, more so after Greg attempts an approach and then gets elbowed pretty hard by a member of their party, although mysteriously enough no one saw what happened so there was nobody to blame for it due to a lack of witnesses. They head out not long after that, walking home together with Ruby and Connor splitting off to her place, Will and Mike parting at Will’s door.
All in all it was a great night. Will gets ready for bed, knocks four times on the wall and gets Mike’s answering two knocks in return, turns out the light, settles under the covers, and closes his eyes. The conversation with Mike starts replaying in his head.
Will sits straight up in bed. “‘Getting fucked sounds kind of hot?’” he echoes.