Chapter Text
Mike probably got a full forty minutes of sleep, and even that came in shallow, uneven stretches that never quite felt like rest. Every time he started to drift, something pulled him back out, like the heat of Will’s back behind him, the quiet hum of the AC unit filling the room, or the same thoughts circling over and over without ever landing anywhere useful. At some point he became aware of how much he’d been moving, adjusting from one side of his body to the other, tugging at the blanket, flipping his pillow, like there might be a position that made any of this easier. There wasn’t.
If Will happened to be awake, he didn’t say anything, and that almost made it worse. Mike tried to still himself after that, forcing his body to go quiet as if it might make up for the restlessness so Will wouldn’t regret letting him sleep over, but the tension didn’t ease. His stomach churned in a way that made him feel vaguely sick, and he rested a hand on it, staring into the dark as morning waited to confront him. He still didn’t know how he was going to say what he needed to say.
Every version he turned over in his head felt wrong before he even got to the end of it, either too blunt or too careful, too late or not enough, and he kept running through them anyway, like repetition might eventually produce something usable. Part of him wished he could go back and undo the moment entirely, before he avoided everyone and everything for a few days, before he showed up, before he said anything at all, because once you tell someone you have something to talk about, it doesn't just belong to you anymore. It sat with them too, leaving it to eat at them, their minds jumping to the worst possible case scenario of what you might say until you either followed through or made it clear that you never really meant it enough to say it out loud. Mike exhaled slowly, closing his eyes for a few fleeting moments before opening them again, knowing it didn’t change anything. It was already out there now, and there was no way around it.
Suddenly, Will stirred for the first time all night, or rather, morning, rolling onto his other side. The mattress dipped slightly as he turned, closing what little space had been left between them on the full size bed. Mike’s breath caught before he could stop it, his chest tightening as Will settled against him in a way that made it hard to stay still. Will’s arm folded awkwardly at first before he adjusted, resting it across Mike’s side, his head finding a place against his shoulder like it was something he’d done before, even if it hadn’t been like this in a long time. Mike’s heart started doing clumsy acrobatics as Will’s fingers brushed against the fabric of Mike’s t-shirt, curling slightly as if testing the texture, then holding there, not quite gripping but not pulling away either.
Mike went rigid for half a second before forcing himself to relax, though the tension didn’t fully leave his body. Mike became hyper-aware of everything at once, including the warmth of the body pressed into him, the evenness of Will's respiration, and the way his knuckles settled on Mike's middle abdomen like they belonged there.
“Will?” he whispered, the name barely carrying past his own lips.
The only response was a sleepy exhale. Will moved just slightly against him, not enough to pull away, just enough to settle more comfortably, his hand loosening where it rested against Mike’s shirt. Mike waited a second longer, like he was expecting something else, but nothing came. Will was asleep. He realized there was no tension in the way he was holding on or the way he’d leaned into him, just something his body did without consciously checking first.
Mike swallowed, his gaze dropping to where Will's fingers had gathered loosely in the fabric of his shirt. Will was just doing what felt natural, and well, he guessed snuggling in bed with his platonic-with-a-capital-P best friend of fifteen years was natural. Mike let out a quiet breath and leaned the side of his head onto the top of Will's and continued to lie there awake, trying not to read into something that might not mean anything at all.
Light started to bleed through the slats of the blinds, thin lines stretching across the room, and that was when Mike knew he couldn’t stay there any longer. The stillness of it all made it harder to leave, but also made it clear that he needed to. He turned his head slightly and peered down at Will, who had somehow shifted further into him in his sleep, draped over Mike’s arm. His face was relaxed in a way it never was when he was awake, his breathing slow and even, and for a second Mike just watched him. There was a flicker of guilt inside him, though he couldn’t fully pin down whether it was about leaving or about everything he still hadn’t been able to tell Will.
Cautiously, he started to untangle himself. He lifted Will’s arm first, easing it off his torso and guiding it back down onto the sheets, then pivoted his leg out from under the weight without jostling him too much. Will stirred faintly but didn’t wake, just resettled into the space Mike left behind. Once he was free, Mike paused on the edge of the bed for a moment, then pushed himself up.
The air outside the blankets felt noticeably colder, raising a faint chill along his arms that he ignored as he moved around the bed. His shoes were still where he’d left them, tucked near the base, and he picked them up before crouching down to slide them on as quietly as he could, careful not to let the rubbery soles scrape too loudly against the floor. He grabbed his jacket from the floor and the leather crinkled under his fingers. He shrugged it on and moved through the apartment with the same restrained focus, each step measured, avoiding the spots where he knew the boards creaked.
When he got to the main exit, the door opened with a soft click, and he slipped out into the hallway, easing it shut behind him until it nearly met the frame before letting it close the rest of the way. Even then, the latch sounded louder than it should have in the morning quiet, and Mike flinched slightly. He exhaled, reaching into his pocket for the spare key and turning it in the lock.
Mike didn’t even bother glancing in the mirror before he left Will’s place, but he knew he had bags under his eyes. It was almost as if he could physically feel them–that dull, heavy pressure sitting behind his eyes, the kind that made blinking feel like work. His shoulders ached down into the column of his spine. The driver’s seat in his car triggered his sciatica, causing shooting pain down from his hip and down through his legs. His knees were waging war on him like he was an eighty-year-old with arthritis, though that part was nothing new. Chronic pain had a way of making his body feel decades older than it actually was. He was tired of the cycle of it all. Tired of hurting, tired of pretending he could push through it, and tired of waking up every day already worn down before anything had even happened.
This was one of those situations where he couldn’t bring himself to connect CarPlay or Bluetooth or put in a CD so he just drove in silence, only hearing other cars whoosh past the and tires dragging over uneven, pothole-riddled pavement that the government refused to fix. He knew if he heard any of his favorite songs playing right now, he would burst into tears.
You do it to yourself, you do / And that's what really hurts / Is that you do it to yourself, just you / You and no one else / You do it to yourself / You do it to yourself
The summer air was cool enough at this hour that he could crack his windows instead of running the air conditioning, allowing the pleasant scent of dewy fresh-cut grass to fill his car's interior into his nostrils. The breeze distracted him from pulling over and emptying the contents of his stomach which was everpresently churning with anxiety.
He barely registered the drive home. Once he pulled up to his place, he moved through everything in a delirious fog, operating purely on muscle memory. It almost felt like teleporting. One second he was locking the front door behind him, and the next he was standing in the bathroom peeling off his clothes, with no real memory of the space in between. By the time he fully came back to himself, he was sitting cross-legged on the shower floor, nearly scalding water beating against his scalp and threading through his hair before running down his face and shoulders. Steam filled the room thick enough to blur the mirror. The heat stung at first, but after a while it settled into a numbing warm hug.
Sometimes he liked to imagine himself as some paleolithic human sitting beneath a waterfall on a hot day, stripped down to nothing but instinct and exhaustion, no responsibilities beyond surviving until tomorrow. It was easier to think about that than everything waiting for him outside the shower curtain. Eventually he forced himself to stand before the hot water heater in his apartment gave out completely, because the thing was practically ancient and incapable of lasting longer than twenty minutes on a good day.
Knowing he was just spending the day at Will’s, the clothes he laid out were nothing special: a worn band graphic t-shirt with the print cracked and faded from too many washes, and a pair of sweatpants that had gone thin and soft with age, pilling heavily around the thighs and cuffs where the fabric rubbed together the most. He pulled them on, still feeling wrung out from the night before, and drifted toward the bathroom mirror. Both hands braced against the sink hard enough that his knuckles had gone pale. The overhead light was too harsh, washing him out and making the dark circles beneath his eyes look bruised. He stared at himself for a long moment like he was trying to recognize the person looking back. His jaw flexed.
“Will, I need to tell you something.” He stopped momentarily, grimacing at himself. It came off too formal, as if he was about to confess to a crime. He dragged a hand down his face with a tired exhale before trying again. “Look, I know this is gonna sound insane, but–” Mike cut himself off mid-sentence, shaking his head. No. Worse somehow. His reflection looked just as exhausted as he felt. His damp hair was starting to curl at the ends from his shower and his shoulders slumped forward like his body physically could not hold tension anymore because it had already exceeded capacity weeks ago. His throat worked, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and then down the column of his throat.
“I can’t keep watching you with other people.” The words hung in the bathroom with the vapor for a second. Mike stared at himself, chest tightening after hearing them out loud. His fingers tightened around the edge of the sink. “It’s not even your fault,” he murmured, trying again, talking to the mirror now more than to Will. “You didn’t know. I never said anything. I just thought eventually it would go away or I’d get over it or something.”
Mike gazed down at the drain between his hands. His heart was pounding in his ears. He couldn’t figure out how to say this part without sounding utterly pathetic. It had rooted itself inside him so gradually he hadn’t even realized how bad it’d gotten until seeing Will flirt with somebody else suddenly felt like being skinned alive. He laughed once under his breath, humorless.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered to himself. “That’s horrible. Get a fucking grip, Mike.” He pushed himself upright again and looked back into the mirror, forcing himself not to look away this time. “I think I’m in love with you.”
Mike’s countenance tightened almost immediately after, panic flickering across his face. “No, see, that’s too much. You can’t just say that right away. And ‘I think’? No. I know.” He rubbed both hands over his face again, frustrated now, pacing a small circle across the bathroom before stopping in front of the mirror again like he was magnetized back to it.
“I want you,” he tried instead, voice rough. “I want this. I want…” He inhaled sharply through his nose, eyes squeezing shut for a second. “I want it to be me.”
For a second, Mike could almost picture Will standing there in front of him instead of his own reflection. He could almost imagine the expression on his face. Shock, maybe. Anger. Maybe that wounded look Will got sometimes where he tried to act unaffected but couldn’t quite pull it off around the eyes. The thought made Mike feel vaguely nauseous.
“What if he said no?” he asked the empty room quietly. His reflection, unsurprisingly, didn’t answer.
“Fuck it!” He threw his hands up before slamming both palms down against the counter hard enough to make the toiletries beside the sink rattle. He shoved himself away from the sink and walked out before he could keep staring at his own reflection any longer. The transition from the humid bathroom into the cooler air of his apartment made the hair on his arms and legs stand up. He dragged a hand through his still-wet ringlets and exhaled hard through his nose. He was wasting time and needed to get back to Will’s.
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Mike had no idea how he did it, but when he got back to Will’s, Will was still sleeping, so he just slipped back into bed with him until he woke up.
They practically spent the whole day doing fuck-all. The TV droned on in the background for hours without either of them really paying attention to it, episodes bleeding into one another while they half-scrolled on their phones or laid around in silence. Eventually they paused with a “Are you still there?” message staring at them, but both of them were too lazy to reach for the remote and hit the “Continue Watching” button.
They ordered takeout, and later Will put on their shared playlist low enough that it blended into the apartment as background noise. It should’ve felt normal, or comfortable, even, like the kind of lazy day they’d had a hundred times before. Instead, there was an acquiescence between them that they wouldn’t bring up the night before. Neither one acknowledged it directly, and once again they slipped back into acting like it had never happened at all.
For Mike, that was both a relief and its own kind of torture, because every hour that passed without talking about it just guaranteed the conversation would be worse when it finally happened. And it would happen eventually. It could blow up in his face. He knew that. But every time he thought about opening his mouth and actually saying something, panic clawed its way up his throat and he pussied out before he could get more than a few words in.
He could feel Will getting more impatient with him too, even if he never outright said it. It was there in the little pauses between sentences, in the nearly passive aggressive way Will’s responses occasionally turned short and clipped before he corrected himself, in the glances Mike kept catching out of the corner of his eye that lingered just a second too long before darting away again.
They were acting normal, but it was seeping through the cracks anyway. Every accidental brush of their hands seemed to last too long now, and every moment of eye contact carried this strange weight to it, like there was something sitting just beneath the surface waiting to split open. Mike found himself hyperaware of everything Will did without meaning to be, like the sound of him laughing quietly at something on his phone from the other end of the couch or the way he chewed on the inside of his cheek while thinking, even the warmth of his leg pressed against Mike’s for almost an hour before either of them pulled away drove him mad.
After basking in the somewhat comfortable silence of each other’s presence for hours, the sun finally started dipping lower into the sky, washing the apartment in dim orange light. Mike had nearly drifted off at one point, heavy-limbed from exhaustion.
Will’s voice finally broke the silence. “Do you wanna have a couple drinks? I’m bored.”
Mike turned his head slightly to look at him. Will was slouched deep into the opposite corner of the couch, one arm hooked behind his head, socked feet propped up on the coffee table. He appeared casual. Too casual. Like he hadn’t spent the entire day simmering with unspoken frustration.
“Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”
“Yeah, but not until later in the morning.” Will shrugged his shoulders lazily before glancing over at him. “C’mon.”
Mike huffed quietly through his nose, somewhere between amusement and resignation. “I mean, what the hell, sure.”
Will pushed himself off the couch with a soft grunt and disappeared into the kitchen. Mike listened to the fridge door open, followed by the clanking of bottles and containers being displaced inside it before Will reappeared holding a cardboard pack of alcoholic seltzers tucked against his hip. He padded back into the living room and dropped the pack onto the coffee table with a dull thud. Bending over, he hooked his fingers beneath the perforated strip and tore the thin cardstock open. Mike’s eyes flicked toward him automatically, lingering for half a second too long on the stretch of his shirt across his back before he looked away again. Will handed him a can without as much as peeking up, condensation already gathering against the aluminum. He pulled one out for himself too before flopping heavily back onto the couch, the cushions dipping beneath his weight. The crack of both cans opening echoed in the apartment.
“You can’t stay the night again, by the way,” Will said after taking a sip from his can, eyes still fixed lazily on the TV. “I do actually have work tomorrow morning.”
Mike snorted quietly from beside him. “Yeah, but at like, noon.”
Will looked over at him. “No, not noon. Eleven.”
Mike waved a dismissive hand. “Same difference.”
“It literally is not.”
“It’s one hour, man.”
“Y’know, why don’t we ever hang out at your place?”
“Because I like it here more? And, to be fair, we spent our entire childhood in my basement.”
Will rolled his eyes and exasperatedly tipped his head back against the couch cushion. “If I come back from work tomorrow and you’re still here, I’m charging you a subleasing fee.”
Mike barked out a laugh at that, turning toward him. “You know I would pay it, though. And you literally just justified drinking by saying you didn’t have to be up too terribly early tomorrow, so which one is it?”
Will pointed at him vaguely with his can. “Okay, first of all, having a few shitty seltzers on my couch is not the same thing as downing a bottle of liquor."
Mike hummed skeptically.
“And second,” Will continued, “that’s because you’re twenty-one and your mom still gives you an allowance for some reason.”
Mike appeared to be offended. “My dad’s terms for me moving out with his assistance was for me to take classes and I did just that. Also, Nancy is twenty-five and still gets one.”
Will stared at him for a second before groaning loudly and his face in his hands. “That’s not any better!”
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They unfortunately did have a few too many drinks. The living room had blurred into Will’s bedroom without either of them really deciding to move there. They managed to become tangled across Will’s bed in that lazy way people got when they were drunk enough to stop caring about personal space. The only light in the room came from the dim lamp on Will’s nightstand and the glow of their phones reflecting against their faces from the blue light. Outside, the sky had long since gone dark, the window showing nothing but streetlights and blurry reflections of the room.
Mike was sprawled half on his stomach, one leg thrown awkwardly over Will’s comforter while he scrolled aimlessly through his phone. His brain felt warm and sluggish in the pleasant, dangerous kind of way alcohol sometimes gave him. Every thought seemed to leave his mouth before he had the chance to properly contemplate it first.
“Hey,” he said, words dragging together slightly. “Do you remember that chapstick challenge people used to do on youtube?”
Will turned his head slowly toward him, visibly trying to process the question. “Jesus Christ. Yeah. Like ten years ago.”
“Well,” Mike said, “people say 2026 is the new 2016.”
“Do they?”
“Totally.”
Will squinted at him skeptically. “I don’t think they do.”
Mike ignored the skepticism entirely. “Anyway, I used to stay up until like two in the morning under my blankets watching those on my laptop.”
Will snorted softly. “That’s unfortunate.”
“No, listen,” Mike said, holding a finger up with drunken seriousness. “It was always like… two guys doing it before I even knew porn existed.”
Will’s head snapped toward him this time, eyebrows furrowing. “Wait. Seriously?”
Mike froze. There was a beat of silence as his own words caught up to him. His eyes widened slightly before he slowly lowered his phone onto his chest. “Did I just say that out loud?”
“It appears so,” Will said, openly gawking at him now.
Mike groaned and scrubbed a hand over his face.
Will started laughing quietly beside him, shoulders shaking against the mattress. “Mike.”
“No, because I didn’t mean for that to sound–” Mike stopped himself midway through the sentence, already too drunk to figure out how to recover it. “Whatever.”
Still grinning, Will rolled onto his side to look at him better. “You were secretly watching two dudes kiss on your computer under your blankets at two a.m. and somehow didn’t question anything about yourself?”
Mike stared at the ceiling for a long moment. “In my defense, I was like ten and incredibly stupid.”
“You’re twenty-one and still incredibly stupid.”
“Touché.”
Will laughed again, softer this time.
Mike’s eyes drifted back down to his phone before another terrible idea entered his brain with the confidence only alcohol could provide. “What if we did that?”
Will blinked at him. “What?”
“No, no,” Mike said quickly, already nervously laughing at himself a little. “I mean like–the challenge thing. You have alllll those flavored tinted lip balms and…”
Will stared at him for a second longer now, the kind of stare that felt a little too focused despite the alcohol. “I mean,” he said carefully, “you can just try them if you want to, Mike.”
“Yeah, but wouldn’t it be fun to do the challenge?” Mike insisted, words starting to slur together around the edges now. “Like, it wouldn’t even be gay. We’re just…” His voice trailed off completely because he honestly had no idea how he planned on finishing that sentence. We’re just bored? We’re just drunk? We’re just friends? Every excuse sounded flimsy even inside his own head. Mike could practically feel himself trying to convince himself more than he was convincing Will. “Friends. We’re just friends.” He declared.
Will’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly as he watched him struggle through it. “Mike,” he said after a moment, voice lower now, “I don’t think a straight guy usually pitches making out challenges to his guy friend.”
Mike buried his face into Will’s pillow with a muffled, horrified noise while Will laughed hard enough beside him to shake the bed.
“I need another drink for this,” Will said immediately, rubbing a hand over his face like Mike had just presented him with the worst idea imaginable.
Mike pushed himself up slightly onto his elbows. “Wait, so you’ll do it?”
“Slow your horses, cowboy.”
Will snorted quietly to himself as he climbed over Mike to get out of bed, one knee sinking into the mattress beside Mike’s hip hard enough to make him grunt. Mike watched him stumble slightly when his feet hit the floor, Will catching himself against the dresser. The room spun a little when Mike turned his head too fast to keep watching him leave. Will shuffled out into the kitchen, scratching absentmindedly at his stomach beneath his oversized shirt. Mike could hear cabinets opening and closing followed by the unmistakable sound of a bottle being set onto the counter.
“I’m going to be so fucking hungover tomorrow morning,” Will said to himself.
Mike overheard the comment. “You say that every time you drink.”
“Because every time I drink I wake up feeling like I died and then I do it all over again. I never learn my lesson.”
Then Mike hears the sharp hiss of Will inhaling through his teeth followed by a loud, disgusted, “Oh, that was evil,” before coughing like a toddler.
“I thought you could take your liquor.”
“I think we both know from my birthday that statement is a crock of shit.”
A few seconds later Will wandered back into the bedroom holding the bottle by the neck, face pinched up dramatically from the shot he’d just taken. His cheeks and the tips of his ears had gone pink from the alcohol accumulating in his system, and his hair was mussed from unconsciously running his hands through it all night.
He stopped beside the bed and pointed vaguely at Mike with the bottle. “Okay,” he said with consideration, like he was making a life-altering decision. “Maybe.”
“Really?!” Mike asked, sitting up straighter so fast the blankets bunched around his waist. The excitement in his voice was completely undisguised, like a little kid whose mom had just told him he could grab whatever he wanted from a candy store. His eyes widened despite how glassy they’d gotten from the alcohol, and for the first time all night he looked fully awake instead of half asleep and drunk off his ass in Will’s bed.
Will stared at him for a second before laughing incredulously. “Oh my god, you are way too excited about this.”