Chapter Text
Most of the time, Will loves being an art student.
It does have a satisfying (and healing) effect to finally be able to fully embrace a passion you have been either reduced to or mocked for, and most of the time, Will feels convinced he has chosen the right major for himself.
And of course, he is incredibly grateful about the opportunity to pursue his very passion on an academic level, this and that— However, studying art does have the tendency to feel incredibly pretentious at times.
Some assignments that Will has been forced to spend entirely too much time on have ranged somewhere from pulling-at-your-hair-frustrating to falling-asleep-at-seven-pm-boring. It’s not that his head has not been overflowing with tons of ideas the moment his professors announced their tasks — but it is more than nerve-wracking to spend awfully long on a sketch or painting, knowing you have to put yourself out there eventually. Knowing you have to hand it in, just to wait to receive judgement on something that you have at least poured part of yourself into.
Having to observe his professors judge his paintings is obviously the most anxiety-inducing sight, but even if it is just his peers (who all seem nice, don’t get him wrong) who spend even a second to scan his brush strokes, Will feels convinced he might pass out any minute. Jonathan has explained to him that this is, in fact, called impostor syndrome, and that everyone falls victim to it at one point or another during their academic careers, but it does still feel incredibly humiliating sometimes.
Anyways, this is why most of his assignments either cause Will to roll his eyes in annoyance or gleam with excitement.
But with some assignments, he has no idea how to feel about them.
Releasing a rather exasperated sigh into the empty living room, Will tries to focus on the current task at hand. One step at a time, his therapist loves to say. And right now, the steps are the following: Easel in front of him, brush in one hand and palette in the other.
Frankly, he has spent far too much time attempting to mix the colors on his palette into perfect precision, he better get around to using them before they dry.
Obviously, he has already done countless sketches before, trying out numerous color palettes before he has settled for the one — and not just because he is indecisive, mind you. His professor insists on having her students document their entire art process, wanting to see all studies and sketches, used and scrapped ones alike.
Luckily, he has managed to map out the entirety of the furniture already. Translating the reference onto his canvas in the right perspective and proportions is always his least favorite task, and so, he is only able to reach the familiar mindless flow-state once he actually starts putting the paints onto his canvas.
The Wish record he has put on a while ago is about to reach the end of From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea when he hears the familiar sound of a key turning in the lock of their apartment door.
Just as Robert Smith sings Will’s personal favorite part of the song and I feel you pulling back I feel you changing shape rings out around the apartment—
“Woah”, he hears Mike’s voice. “What’s going on?”
“What?”, Will asks instinctively, shaking his head to snap out of it. It is sort of cliché, but his brain seems to forget how to execute proper human interaction once he starts painting, almost as if the colors consume his very being. “I mean, hello. Welcome home. How was your day?”
“Why are you painting in the middle of our hallway?”, Mike blurts out instead of answering, slipping out of his jacket to hang it onto their coat rack.
Unfortunately, it seems he is not successful though, all awkward limbs, and the coat plops onto the floor rather dramatically. “Urgh, come on”, Mike says to the coat, and Will suppresses a laugh.
Seizing the opportunity for what it is, his eyes shift from the scene in front of him (which is becoming increasingly boring by the second, now that his favorite drawing reference has arrived in their apartment) onto Mike, who is now kneeling on the floor to retrieve his coat, cursing to himself. “I can’t believe no one invented automatic coat hangers or something, really, I cannot be the only one struggling with this.”
He looked good today. Obviously, if you were to ask Will, he always does, but something about cold and far too windy fall days like today mess the black curls around his head up in a way that causes Will’s fingers to visibly twitch with the urge to be run through the strands.
Truthfully, Will is dying to tuck the strands covering Mike’s face behind his pink ear, just so he can take in the beauty of each and every of his features properly. And then he will ask to cover the flushed cheeks in front of him in an uncountable mass of soft kisses, hearing Mike’s breath catch slightly as—
Urgh.
“How would that even work?” Will cannot help but laugh, okay, sue him for being whipped. Mike could just faintly smile to himself and immediately, Will would feel his own face contort into the biggest grin he has ever shown.
Mike simply shrugs at his reply, and as the coat manages not to fall from the rack this time, he is making his way towards Will, his easel and—
Oh shit, his mixed paints, which he definitely has to prevent from drying out anytime soon. He quickly dips his brush back into the blob of blue on his palette.
“You’re painting our living room”, Mike notes then.
“Yep”, Will simply says, popping the p as he continues to fan his brush over what he is trying to make look like their sofa.
“So? What kind of assignment is this for?”, Mike asks, tone slightly teasing. Because he has obviously been the victim of Will’s ever-lasting rants about his professors before, knowing the extent of Will’s exasperation about some of his tasks.
Will sighs. Not necessarily because of Mike, simply releasing a huff of frustration about the entire situation and the fact that the blue blob on his canvas just won’t look like their goddamn couch. And yeah, maybe he should have prioritized taking a break sometime in the last few hours. “It’s called… emotional interieur”, he says.
“Emotional—“, Mike deadpans. “What? Interieur? Isn’t that French?”
Will cannot help but roll his eyes fondly. Mike is genuinely such an idiot sometimes. Lovingly. Obviously, because Will loves him. “That’s just the name of the coursework”, Will replies, resisting the smile that wants to materialize on his face.
“Okay”, Mike says, and he must be standing super close to Will, like, very much behind him, actually, because he almost feels the faint rumble of his chest as he speaks. “So why are you painting our living room?”
“I have to paint a room”, Will explains. “A room that I attach meaning to. Emotions.”
“You’re attached to our living room?”, Mike asks, and there is some sort of wonder in his tone, like the very idea of Will not hating their living room is unbelievable to him.
“I mean, what else should I paint?”, Will says, growing self-defensive all of a sudden, because something about this feels exposing for some reason. As if Mike knowing that Will likes their living room equates to him finding out that he likes him. As in, like-like. “My own bedroom feels too intimate to paint, kind of? And our kitchen is like way too small, and sort of ugly, and—”
Trailing off, he looks up from where his eyes must have been boring holes into the canvas at this point, fixating on Mike, who—
“You’re painting our living room”, Mike repeats, and he seems almost awestruck, except that does not really make sense. And equally, the emphasis Mike put on our does also not seem comprehensible to Will.
“Yeah…?”, Will hesitates, because he feels like he is missing out on a vital piece of information. “Obviously, it is our living room. It’s not like we have our individual living rooms.”
Instinctively, he drops his eyes towards Mike’s lips, obviously only because his tongue darts out to lick them, Will is just attentive, alright, it is not because of their attractive shape and their color resembling one of the paints Will has mixed a while ago. “No, yeah”, Mike agrees, blinking rapidly. “It’s just… does this mean a lot to you?” And he has the nerve to almost sound hopeful. Will’s head is sort of spinning by now.
Mike looks around their apartment, which makes Will feel like this is about more than just their living room and his stupid assignment.
“Yeah”, Will breathes, because he cannot really find it in himself to lie unprompted, especially to Mike. “It does.”
The stupidly attractive grin taking shape on Mike’s face almost knocks the air out of Will’s lungs, and the fact that it is directed towards him out of all people, Mike is looking at him like that, Mike is smiling this way because of something he has said.
Before he does something incredibly stupid (like, perhaps, grabbing Mike by the overbearing amount of material on his adorable oversized sweater, pinning him against the nearest wall and kissing him relentlessly), he darts his gaze back onto the canvas.
“I’m pretty sure our sofa is not blue, though”, Mike remarks after a while, all as Will is still attempting to steady his heartbeat and quell the blood rushing into his face, very much failing to do either of these things.
It is, in fact, not blue. Their sofa has been acquired second-hand, after Mike has spotted the brown furniture in the window of a thrift store. After carrying it home, scrubbing it properly with the help of their mothers’ individual and vastly different cleaning advice and placing it into their shared space however, they have quickly found out it is not brown, instead being an off-white color.
Will sometimes still gets shivers when he thinks about the implications of that color change.
“It is not”, Will agrees. “The assignment is about… using colors. To express emotion.”
This does not seem to mean anything to Mike at all, who still has the nerve to look confused. “And why exactly is our sofa blue now?”
“Seriously?”, Will laughs. “Aren’t you an English major? Shouldn’t you be all-familiar with metaphors and color symbolisms and whatever?”
“Color symbolism”, Mike echoes, almost as if he is trying to rack his own brain for information. “Oh, but, blue. Does— does our sofa make you sad, then?”
“What?”, Will huffs, shaking his head in disbelief. “You know blue does not only equate sadness, right? It is one of the blatantly obvious meanings, sure, but it can also imply tranquility, loyalty, trust, peace, and—"
Shut up, shut up, shut up, the voice in his head screams by now, but one cannot interrupt Will in the middle of one of his art rants. Impossible. No chance. “And with the vastness of the sky or sea, blue is also often associated with distance, longing, yearning, and— stuff.”
“Distance”, Mike echoes, and only then does Will truly understand what he has just admitted into the air freely, completely unprovoked and voluntarily. “Longing. Yearning.”
Obviously, this is the exact moment Robert Smith decides to sing about the fact that it is Friday, and that he is very much in love.
Sometimes, Will’s life is so undeniably ironic, tragedy laced with comedy in such an awfully iconic way, that he feels compelled to look for the invisible cameras.
“Theoretically”, Will tries, tone entirely unconvincing. “Hypothetically.”
“Okay”, Mike says, and Will can hear the wide smile plastered on his face without even looking up from his paints. “Theoretically. Hypothetically.”
I don’t care if Monday’s blue, Robert Smith supplies.
“Yeah”, Will breathes. “Maybe I just want to see our sofa in blue.”