Chapter Text
11th of July, 1991
Monday.
At night, the room belonged to Will.
Not officially. Not in any way either of them would ever admit to, not even in the privacy of their own thoughts. But Mike slept through most things, and Will did not. So the hours after midnight bent themselves around him, curved to the rhythm of his breathing, the soft, faithful glow of the lamp by the window, the way the dark never fully settled when he was awake to resist it.
The lamp was always on.
It had been for months.
Mike never asked why.
Will lay on his side facing the window, knees drawn in slightly, like his body had learned a shape that made pain easier to contain. Outside, the city murmured to itself. A car hissed past somewhere far below. Pipes knocked gently in the walls, old bones shifting. The building exhaled, slow and tired, as if it too had been awake too long.
Behind him, on the other side of the room, Mike breathed.
It was stupid—humiliating, even—how well Will knew the sound of it.
He could tell when Mike was asleep by the way his breaths deepened, softened, grew careless. Like he was finally allowing himself to exist without bracing for impact. Awake, Mike breathed like he was holding something back. Shallow. Measured. As if the air itself might demand answers.
Right now, it was somewhere in between.
Will closed his eyes and did not sleep.
Sleep had become a rumor lately. Something other people slipped into easily, like water. His body went through the motions—hours spent horizontal, eyes shut, limbs heavy—but his mind stayed alert, pacing the same narrow corridor over and over until the thoughts lost their edges and became something dull and endless.
Sometimes there were dreams.
Sometimes there were memories wearing the skins of dreams.
Sometimes there was only the sensation of falling, suspended just before the impact, forever denied the mercy of the ground.
He shifted slightly, careful, trained by habit not to wake the other body in the room. The mattress betrayed him anyway, a soft whisper of sound.
From across the room, Mike stilled.
Will felt it immediately. Like a wire pulled taut between them. Like a held breath shared without consent. He froze, heart kicking, waiting for Mike to say something.
He never did.
Mike had learned how to be silent without leaving.
After a moment, his breathing resumed. Changed. Deliberate.
Awake, then.
Will rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, at the faint shadows the lamp painted along the cracks above him. The light was warm. Forgiving. It softened the room, rounded off the sharp edges of things that hurt too much in daylight. Mike’s side was chaos even in the dark—clothes draped over the chair like discarded skins, notebooks stacked unevenly, a coffee cup abandoned long past the point of redemption. Will’s side was cleaner. Controlled. As if order could stand in for safety.
Sometimes Will wondered what his side looked like from Mike’s bed.
If it seemed distant.
If it seemed fragile.
If Mike noticed at all.
A thought slid in before he could stop it, slick and unwelcome.
Did Mike bring someone home tonight?
Will swallowed and forced it away.
If Mike brought someone back, Will would already be gone. He would pack quietly, movements precise, muscle memory guiding him through the ritual. Keys. Headphone. Medicine. He would pause over his notebook, then leave it behind. He always did. He would spend the night at his boyfriend’s place, in a bed that felt fine and wrong in equal measure, next to a body that fit him in ways that mattered and failed him in all the others.
In the morning, he would return and pretend nothing had happened.
Tonight, though, the room was still theirs.
That was when his body turned against him.
The panic came sharp and sudden, like fingers closing around his lungs. Will gasped, breath tearing out of him, heart slamming so violently it blurred the edges of the room. Heat rushed through his limbs. His vision tunneled. Something old and wordless clawed up his throat.
“No,” he whispered, instinctive, desperate. A plea to no one.
He curled inward, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt, grounding himself in texture, pressure, the undeniable fact of his own body. The room tilted. The past pressed in close, intimate and merciless.
“Will?”
Mike’s voice cut through the dark, rough with sleep, unguarded in a way it never was during the day.
“I’m fine,” Will said automatically.
The lie tasted familiar. Overused. Almost comforting.
There was a pause. Then the unmistakable creak of a mattress. Footsteps crossed the room without hesitation, bare feet quiet against the floor like this path had been worn smooth by repetition.
The lamp caught Mike halfway as he stopped beside the bed—hair sticking up, t-shirt wrinkled, eyes still heavy with sleep. He didn’t look at Will at first. He never did. Instead, he reached for the glass of water on the nightstand and held it out, his hand steady despite everything else about him being so tightly held.
“Drink,” he said.
Will pushed himself up just enough to take it. Their fingers brushed.
It was nothing.
It was devastating.
Mike pulled his hand back too quickly, like he’d touched something burning.
Will drank too fast. Water spilled down his chin, darkening the collar of his shirt. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, embarrassed by the weakness of it, by how visible he felt under Mike’s quiet attention.
Mike sat on the edge of the bed. Not close enough to touch. Close enough to stay.
They didn’t talk. They never did, not about this. Mike stared at the floor, jaw tight, like he was standing watch over something fragile and unnamed. Will focused on breathing, counting the space between inhales, then exhales, until the room steadied and the panic loosened its grip.
Eventually, the shaking stopped.
Will lay back down. Mike remained seated, hands clasped together between his knees, shoulders tense, eyes fixed somewhere far away. The room hummed softly around them, alive with all the things they refused to name.
When Will’s breathing finally evened out, Mike stood. He hesitated—just for a second—then reached out and tugged the blanket back up where it had slipped from Will’s shoulder. His knuckles hovered there, almost touching skin, suspended in a moment that felt too honest to survive.
“Try to sleep,” he said quietly.
Will nodded, even though they both knew he wouldn’t.
Mike crossed back to his side of the room. The bed dipped beneath his weight. Slowly, inevitably, his breathing deepened.
Will stayed awake.
He stared into the soft glow of the lamp, listening to the sound of Mike sleeping, to the proof of care that had no language, and wondered how something so constant—so careful—could still feel like it was rotting from the inside out.
--
Morning came the way it always did—reluctant, gray, unkind.
Rain pressed against the window in thin, persistent lines, the sky outside a low, unbroken sheet of dull silver. The lamp had been turned off sometime before dawn. Will didn’t remember doing it. He lay still, staring at the ceiling as the light slowly crept back into the room, exposing everything they had survived only hours before.
The cold had settled in overnight.
It seeped through the walls, the floor, the bones of the building itself. Will curled slightly beneath his blanket, fingers numb where they peeked out, his breath fogging faintly in the air. Across the room, Mike shifted in his sleep, a restless sound catching in his throat before he rolled onto his back.
Daylight made everything worse.
At night, care could exist without explanation. In the morning, it demanded context.
Will sat up slowly. His head ached, dull and lingering, like a bruise pressed too often. The room smelled faintly of rain and old coffee and something familiar enough to feel like home if he let himself believe in that sort of thing.
Mike woke a few minutes later.
There was no dramatic moment to it. No shared glance. Just the quiet rustle of sheets, the soft curse under Mike’s breath as he rubbed at his eyes, blinking against the weak light. His fingers moved to the stack of books on his desk, tracing spines and corners like he could read the world into order by touch alone.
“Fuck,” Mike muttered. “I’m gonna be late.”
Will nodded, though Mike wasn’t looking.
They moved around each other carefully, like two people sharing a narrow hallway. Mike dug through the pile of clothes on his chair, pulling on a hoodie without bothering to check if it was clean. Will stood by the window, watching the rain gather itself and fall again, relentless.
Neither of them mentioned the night.
They never did.
Mike’s movements were brisk now, purposeful in the way he got when he needed to outrun his own thoughts. He shoved books into his bag—dog-eared paperbacks, margins dense with notes, spines cracked from overuse. Literature. Stories about love and loss and longing he could analyze to death without ever letting them touch him.
Will grabbed his sketchbook, fingers lingering on the cover. Fine Arts met later in the morning. Studio time. Long hours under fluorescent lights, hands stained with color, creating things that said what he never could.
“Hey,” Mike said suddenly, already halfway to the door.
Will looked up.
Mike hesitated, hand still on the knob. His eyes flicked toward Will, then away, like even that much was dangerous.
“You—uh. You good?”
It was the closest they ever came to acknowledgment.
“Yeah,” Will said. The lie slipped out easily in daylight. “I’m good.”
Ask me again.
Mike nodded. Relief—or something like it—crossed his face too quickly to be anything else. He pulled his hood up and stepped into the hallway, letting the door shut behind him with a soft, final click.
Will takes a minute longer to get dressed.
Then he exhaled and followed.
The hallway was cold. The building hummed with early-morning life—doors opening, voices muffled, footsteps echoing against tile. Outside, the rain had picked up, wind driving it sideways, sharp against Will’s face as he stepped out onto campus.
Students hurried past with heads down, coats pulled tight, breath visible in the air. Everything felt washed-out, like the world had been drained of color and left to dry too long.
Will pulled his jacket closer around himself and started toward the art building.
Somewhere across campus, Mike would be walking the opposite direction, books heavy in his bag, thoughts heavier still. Just the storm, the damp air, and the weight of all the things they refused to name.
And tonight, when the cold crept back in and the storm refused to let up, they would return to the same room.
To the same silence.
To devotion left unattended.
--
The studio smelled of turpentine and wet clay, a perfume that clung to him like memory, like something that would not let go. Rain hammered against the windows, a sharp, persistent insistence. Gray light spilled across the floor in fractured, trembling shards, turning every object into a shadow, every shadow into a fragment of something impossible to name.
Will set the palette down. Fingers stained with yesterday’s colors, the day before, the day before that, he flexed them slowly, as though the movement alone might steady the tremor in his chest. He dipped the brush into a pool of blue that smelled like wet streets, like iron and cold air and the kind of gray that presses against your skin. The first stroke hesitated. Then it touched the canvas. Hesitation became rhythm. Rhythm became obsession.
The brush moved as if it had a mind of its own, tracing shapes that felt both necessary and unformed. He smeared the blue into black, black into red, and red into nothing at all, until he could no longer tell where pigment ended and himself began. Each sweep carried the weight of hours, of days, of countless small betrayals to himself.
His shoulders ached. His knees ached. His back groaned with the slow accumulation of motion repeated over and over. But he did not stop. He could not stop. Every movement was the act of keeping himself tethered to some invisible center, some fragile line of order in a world that had a way of disintegrating around him.
He leaned over the palette, nostrils tasting the sharp smell of oil, turpentine, water mixed in and bleeding into each other. He wiped a smear across his fingers absentmindedly, watching it lift the color like he could catch a moment in his hands and keep it from slipping away. But it always slipped. Everything did.
The storm outside flayed the edges of the building with wind and rain. Windows rattled. Gutters groaned. The world beyond the studio hummed with wet, relentless movement. Inside, everything was still except for the scratch of brush against canvas, the pulse of his own blood in his ears, the soft creak of the stool beneath him.
He painted and painted, letting the colors run and merge and tear apart again. There was no story here. No message. Only shape and shadow, light and dark, the trembling of a hand that refused to be still. Sometimes he paused to let the brush hover above the surface, hovering in that perfect, impossible balance between intention and accident, and felt his own heartbeat echo in that emptiness.
He told himself, as he always did, that he was satisfied. That he was making something good. That he was moving forward, building a life around the edges of what he wanted to feel. He told himself that the ache he carried was not part of the work, not part of him, just a shadow from a past that had nothing to do with this moment.
The canvas was alive, and it was dead. It bore color and shadow, form and fracture, and yet it was unfinished, like a body stretched across time and space that could never hold itself together. He wiped the sweat from his brow and reached for another color, fingertips brushing over a smear of crimson that had dried overnight, stubborn and silent.
Hours passed.
Rain fell without pause. The wind whispered through the cracks in the building, through the gaps around the windows, dragging the world into the studio, layer by layer. Will did not notice. He did not move to close the windows, did not pause to eat or drink, did not lift his gaze from the canvas except to let his eyes wander across the scattered brushes, the racks of paints, the scattered sketches, each one a fragment of something that could not speak for itself.
He leaned back on the stool, muscles tight, joints protesting. He studied the painting. It shifted in the gray light. Colors trembled. Shapes bent. Nothing was complete. Nothing was wrong. Everything was exactly as it should be.
And he believed it.
For now.
--
Rain fell in steady sheets, drumming against the sidewalks, soaking the campus in gray light. Mike pulled his hood lower and hustled to catch up with Vale and Dex, who were already a few steps ahead, umbrellas tilted at odd angles.
“Did you even check the weather?” Vale muttered, shaking her umbrella at the rain. A few drops splashed onto her sleeve.
Dex shrugged. “Yeah, kind of? I mean… it’s just rain.”
“Just rain,” Vale repeated, tone flat, like she couldn’t even bother arguing, and Mike caught a small smile at the corner of her mouth.
Mike slowed, letting himself drift between them. “It’s not that bad,” he said. His voice was casual. He didn’t have to be funny. He didn’t have to make it clever. Just speaking was enough.
Dex swung his backpack onto one shoulder and wiped a smear of water from his jeans. “It’s wet,” he said, stating the obvious.
“Yep,” Mike said. And that was the end of it. Sometimes, saying nothing more was the whole conversation.
They ducked under the library eaves, the storm hammering the roof above, wind rattling the supports. Mike watched Vale adjust her scarf, watched Dex kick at a puddle without thinking, felt the small rhythm of movement and sound around him. It was ordinary, mundane, and he liked that.
“So,” Vale said, tilting her head, “are we actually going to the lecture, or just…”
Mike glanced at the building ahead. “We’ll get there,” he said. “Eventually.”
Dex nodded. “Eventually works.”
They moved on, boots squelching, umbrellas bumping, quiet chatter filling the gaps between the sound of rain. Mike spoke a little, laughed a little, nudged Dex to get out of the biggest puddle. Vale tossed him a look and shook her umbrella at him. Mike smiled. That was all. Simple. Easy. Nothing forced.
Everything is forced.
By the time they reached the hall, rain had soaked the edges of his hood, dripped down the back of his coat. He shrugged it off, wiped his hands on his jeans. The storm pressed against them outside, relentless and gray, but inside, in this small bubble, it was just the three of them walking, talking, moving together, ordinary and alive.
No one would guess how careful he had to be to appear like this.
--
The apartment was dim, lit only by the small yellow lamp near the couch. Its light didn’t reach the corners properly; it pooled instead, warm and tired, clinging to the furniture and leaving the rest of the room half-formed, unfinished. Shadows leaned against the walls. The air felt thick, as if the room itself were holding its breath.
Will closed the door behind him carefully. The sound landed heavier than it should have.
He set the umbrella down by the door and slipped out of his shoes. His movements were quiet, deliberate. He didn’t want to interrupt whatever fragile balance existed in the room already.
Mike sat on the floor with his back against the foot of the couch, legs bent, notebook open in front of him. A cup of black coffee rested at his side, untouched now, the surface dark and still. His shoulders were tense, drawn slightly forward, as if the words on the page demanded something exacting from him. His curls were a mess, falling wherever they wanted, catching the lamp’s light in uneven places. His clothes looked slept-in, crumpled, worn the way clothes only get when someone has stopped paying attention to them.
“Hey,” Will said softly.
Mike answered without looking up. “Hey.”
The word was quiet, neutral. Not cold. Not warm. Just there.
Will stood for a moment longer than necessary, letting the room settle around him. The lamp hummed faintly. Something outside rumbled low enough to be felt more than heard, a distant pressure that made the windows shiver almost imperceptibly. The sound faded, but the feeling lingered.
He crossed the room and sat on the couch, careful not to brush against Mike’s shoulder. The space between them wasn’t large, but it felt deliberate. Charged. Like touching it would do something irreversible.
Mike turned a page. Paper whispered against paper. He dragged a hand through his hair, leaving the curls more chaotic than before, and leaned forward to write again. His jaw tightened briefly, then relaxed. He took a sip of coffee and grimaced slightly at the taste, as if he’d forgotten how long it had been sitting there.
Will watched him in fragments. The angle of his neck when he leaned down. The way his sleeve slipped just enough to reveal skin. The faint shadow beneath his eyes. There was something deeply intimate about seeing him like this—unaware, unguarded in his focus—something that made Will look away and then look back again.
He shifted on the couch, drawing one leg beneath him. The fabric creaked softly.
Mike paused, pen hovering, then continued writing. He didn’t comment. He didn’t look up.
The room held them in silence. It wasn’t an empty silence. It was crowded—full of unspoken things, of shared history pressing against the walls, of memories that had nowhere to go and so simply stayed.
Will rested his hands in his lap, fingers laced tightly together. He glanced toward the window, then back to Mike. The yellow light softened everything, blurred edges, made the world feel smaller and closer than it really was.
“Working on the essay?” Will asked after a while.
“Yeah.” Mike exhaled through his nose. “It’s… taking longer than I thought.”
Will nodded. He didn’t ask why. He didn’t ask what it was about. He knew better than to crowd the moment.
Mike leaned back against the couch for a second, eyes closed briefly, then opened them again and bent forward to keep writing. The movement brought him just slightly closer. Not enough to touch. Enough to notice.
Will’s breath slowed without him realizing it.
Something outside shifted again—low, distant, heavy—making the lamp flicker once. Neither of them reacted. The apartment settled back into itself.
Will stayed where he was, quiet, attentive, letting the moment stretch. He watched the steady movement of Mike’s hand, the way the page slowly filled, the way concentration carved something sharp and distant into his expression.
They didn’t speak again for a long time.
And still, neither of them moved.
Will stayed on the couch a little longer, watching the lamp make everything softer than it really was. The room felt suspended, like it existed only because they were both in it. Eventually he stood, stretching his arms once above his head, joints popping quietly, and wandered toward the kitchen without looking back.
“Did you eat?” he asked, voice easy, already opening a cabinet.
Mike lifted his hand slightly, two fingers brushing the rim of the coffee cup. “Yeah, I—”
He stopped.
Will was facing the cabinet now, light spilling over his shoulders, illuminating the back of his neck, the thin line where his shirt collar dipped. He hadn’t turned around.
“—other than coffee,” Will added, calmly, as if it had always been part of the sentence.
Mike froze.
It wasn’t dramatic. It was small. A pause so brief it barely registered as one. But it landed somewhere precise in his chest, sharp and clean.
“No,” Mike said finally. “I haven’t.”
Will hummed, thoughtful. He leaned down, opened a lower cabinet, the overhead light clicking on above him. The yellow glow from the lamp didn’t reach this far; the kitchen light was harsher, clearer, outlining Will in a way that made Mike’s eyes linger despite himself. The slope of his shoulders. The way his shirt pulled slightly at the back when he bent. Familiar, yes—but familiarity didn’t dull it. It only sharpened it.
“Is spaghetti okay?” Will asked, already pulling a pot from the cabinet.
Mike didn’t answer right away.
He was still sitting on the floor, back against the couch, notebook abandoned beside him. His pen lay forgotten, ink drying at the tip. He hadn’t meant to stop working. He hadn’t noticed when it happened. One second he’d been thinking about a sentence, about rhythm and structure and argument, and the next his attention had slipped somewhere else entirely, quiet and treacherous.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s fine.”
Will nodded, like he’d known the answer already.
Mike watched him fill the pot at the sink. The sound of water was too loud in the small space. He felt it in his jaw, the way he always did when things got too quiet and too close at the same time. He shifted his weight, stretching one leg out, then pulling it back again when the movement felt wrong, too noticeable.
This was normal. This was them. This was what it had always been like—sharing space, sharing time, moving around each other without asking permission. Mike had done this a thousand times. Sat like this. Watched Will cook. Let the room settle into something almost peaceful.
So why did it feel like something was tightening?
Will reached for a box of pasta, set it on the counter, then paused. He stood there for a moment, hands braced on the edge, head slightly bowed, as if he were listening to something only he could hear. Then he moved again, easy, unhurried.
Mike told himself not to stare. He failed immediately.
The overhead light caught Will in fragments—shoulder, jawline, the soft shadow beneath his chin. It made him look sculpted, deliberate, like someone had taken time arranging him in the room. Mike swallowed, throat dry, and leaned his head back against the couch, staring at the ceiling instead.
Get a grip.
He rubbed his face with both hands, pressing his palms into his eyes until he saw spots. When he dropped them, Will was still there, still moving, still close enough to matter.
“You want garlic?” Will asked.
“Yeah,” Mike said automatically. Then, quieter, “Always.”
Will smiled—not at him, just to himself, a small thing Mike had seen a hundred times and never questioned. It still made something twist low in his stomach.
They were good at this. Too good. Finishing sentences. Predicting habits. Knowing the exact shape of each other’s worst routines. Will knew Mike forgot to eat when he worked. Mike knew Will left cabinet doors open without noticing. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t anything. It was just… history.
That’s all.
Mike dragged a hand through his hair, curls catching between his fingers. He should stand up. He should go help. He stayed where he was.
The kitchen filled with quiet sounds—metal against metal, the soft click of the stove, the steady rhythm of Will moving through a space he didn’t need to think about. Mike listened, eyes half-lidded, body sinking into the floor like it belonged there.
He told himself he was tired. He told himself it was the coffee. He told himself a lot of things.
Will leaned against the counter while waiting for the water to boil, arms crossed loosely over his chest. For a moment, he looked back toward the living room, eyes skimming past Mike instead of landing on him, like he was just checking the space, not the person in it.
Mike felt seen anyway.
He shifted again, discomfort crawling up his spine. He picked up his notebook, flipped it shut without looking at what he’d written, and set it aside. The assignment could wait. Everything could wait. That was the problem.
“Hey,” Will said, softly this time.
Mike looked up before he could stop himself.
“You good?” Will asked. Not concerned. Not intense. Just… familiar.
“Yeah,” Mike said too quickly. Then he forced his shoulders to relax. “Yeah. Just hungry, I guess.”
Will nodded, accepting it without question, and turned back to the stove.
Mike watched him again, helpless to it, chest tight with something he refused to name. The room felt smaller now, the air warmer, the distance between them thinner than it had been a moment ago.
He stayed where he was.
So did everything else.
--
Mike woke up disoriented, the first thing he noticed not being sight or sound but smell—warm, thick, clinging. Garlic softened by heat. Tomato cooked down until it was no longer sharp. Something domestic. Something finished.
For a second, nothing made sense.
His neck ached. The floor pressed too firmly against his side. The lamp was still on, its yellow light dimmer now, older somehow, like it had been burning for a long time. He blinked, slow and confused, lashes sticking together.
He didn’t remember falling asleep.
He remembered sitting on the floor. Remembered watching Will move around the kitchen. Remembered thinking he should stand up. After that, there was nothing. Just a blank, unmarked space where time should have been.
“Mike.”
The voice was close.
Too close.
He turned his head slightly, and there Will was—kneeling beside him on the floor, one knee down, the other bent, close enough that Mike could see the faint crease between his brows. Will’s hand hovered near Mike’s shoulder, not touching, not daring to. As if crossing that inch of space would break something fragile and irreversible.
“Mike,” Will said again, softer this time.
The sound of his name like that—careful, almost apologetic—sent something sharp through Mike’s chest.
“What—” His voice came out rough. He cleared his throat, blinking again. “What time is it?”
Will shook his head slightly. “I don’t know. Late.”
Mike pushed himself up on one elbow, then stopped. The room tilted faintly, the warmth of sleep still clinging to him, heavy and disorienting. He became acutely aware of how close Will was. Too close for comfort. Too close for something else he refused to finish thinking.
“You fell asleep,” Will said. “I tried to wake you earlier, but you didn’t move.”
Mike frowned. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know.” Will’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “You never do.”
That landed harder than it should have.
Mike sat up slowly, back pressing against the couch, the blanket that had somehow been draped over him slipping down to his waist. He stared at it for a second, then at Will’s hands, still hovering uselessly in the air, like he’d been frozen mid-decision.
The smell of food filled the space between them. Rich. Comforting. Finished.
“You cooked,” Mike said, stupidly.
Will nodded. “It’s… done. I didn’t want it to get cold.”
Mike swallowed. His throat felt tight, his body heavy, like he was still halfway submerged in sleep. He could feel the warmth Will had left behind in the air, could almost trace where he’d been standing, moving, waiting.
“Sorry,” Mike said. He didn’t know what he was apologizing for. Sleeping. Making Will kneel on the floor like this. Existing wrong.
“It’s fine,” Will said quickly. Too quickly. He shifted back slightly, giving Mike more space, though the closeness lingered anyway, undeniable. “You looked… exhausted.”
Mike laughed under his breath. It came out wrong. “Yeah. Guess so.”
They stayed like that for a moment—Mike half-awake, heart still slow and heavy, Will kneeling beside him like he didn’t know what else to do. The lamp hummed softly. Somewhere in the apartment, the stove clicked as it cooled.
Mike became painfully aware of his own body: the stiffness in his limbs, the imprint of the floor against his side, the way his shirt had ridden up slightly. He tugged it down without thinking, then immediately hated that he’d noticed at all.
Will noticed everything. That was the problem.
“You should eat,” Will said. “Before it gets completely cold.”
Mike nodded. He didn’t move.
Will didn’t either.
The space between them felt charged in a way Mike didn’t have language for. Not desire. Not fear. Something quieter. More dangerous. Familiarity stretched too thin, pulled to a breaking point neither of them was acknowledging.
Mike finally shifted his legs under himself, rubbing his face with both hands. When he dropped them, Will was already looking away, gaze fixed somewhere over Mike’s shoulder, as if eye contact would be crossing another line.
“Thanks,” Mike said.
Will glanced back at him. “Yeah.”
Their eyes met for half a second too long.
Then Will stood, smooth and quick, like he’d been waiting for permission that never came. He offered a hand out of habit—then stopped himself, arm freezing halfway before he pulled it back like it burned.
“I’ll—uh. I’ll get plates.”
Mike watched him turn toward the kitchen, the overhead light catching his shoulders again, outlining him in that same quiet, unbearable way. The smell of garlic and tomato followed him, lingering in the air, in Mike’s clothes, in his chest.
Mike leaned his head back against the couch and closed his eyes.
His heart was beating too fast now.
He stayed there for another second, letting the moment settle, letting the warmth and confusion and proximity sink into him fully—knowing, distantly, that something had shifted while he was asleep.
And that he hadn’t been awake to stop it.
--
Will is stacking the plates because he doesn’t know what else to do with his hands.
The kitchen feels narrower than it should. Like the counters have inched closer while no one was looking. He lifts one plate, then another, balancing them against his hip, the ceramic cool and a little damp from half-hearted rinsing. His shirt rides up without him noticing — it always does when he stretches, when he forgets himself for half a second.
He hears Mike before he really registers him. The soft scuff of socks on the floor. The sink creaking as someone leans against it.
“I’m just gonna—” Mike says, already there, already too close.
Will freezes in that way that isn’t obvious to anyone else. His shoulders stay loose, his hands don’t stop moving, but something inside him goes rigid, alert. Like a wire pulled too tight.
Mike turns on the tap. Water rushes, loud in the small space. Will shifts to give him room, a half-step to the side, plates tilting slightly in his grip. He’s suddenly aware of everything at once — the cold air on his lower back, the way his shirt hasn’t fallen back into place, the fact that he didn’t mean for that to happen and now it’s too late to fix without making it obvious.
He tells himself not to think about it.
Then Mike moves.
It’s barely anything. Not even a full touch. Just an elbow brushing past where Will’s skin is exposed — quick, accidental, unintentional in the way that hurts the most.
Will flinches.
It’s stupid. It’s humiliating. It’s like his body reacts before his brain can catch up, a sharp inhale that he immediately regrets. His hand jerks, plates slipping, the sound of ceramic clattering too loud, too sudden.
One plate hits the counter and survives. The other skids, then drops.
Crack.
The sound feels like it echoes longer than it should.
“Shit—” Will says, too fast, already crouching, already apologizing even though no one’s blamed him yet. His face feels hot. His ears are ringing. He’s aware, dimly, that his shirt has fallen back down now, like it’s mocking him for caring in the first place.
“Hey, hey— are you okay?” Mike says, turning fully toward him, hands still wet, panic in his voice that makes everything worse.
“Yeah,” Will says immediately. “Yeah. I’m fine. I just— I wasn’t paying attention.”
He reaches for the broken pieces, fingers shaking just enough to be noticeable if someone were really looking. He hopes Mike isn’t. He hopes Mike is staring at the sink, at the water, at literally anything else.
Mike crouches too.
Their knees knock, lightly. Will feels it anyway.
“I didn’t mean to—” Mike starts, then stops. “I didn’t even realize you were— I mean, I should’ve—”
“It’s fine,” Will says again, sharper this time, because he needs it to be true. “Really. It’s just a plate.”
But it wasn’t just a plate. It was the way his body betrayed him over nothing. It was the way a fraction of a second, a stupid brush of skin, sent his heart racing like he’d been caught doing something wrong.
He gathers the shards carefully, too carefully, like precision might undo the moment. Mike hands him a towel without touching him this time, leaving space. The absence of contact almost hurts more.
There’s a silence that settles between them — not heavy, just… aware. Like both of them know something weird happened but neither of them knows what language to use for it, so they don’t use any at all.
Will stands, drops the broken pieces into the trash, washes his hands even though they aren’t dirty. The water runs over his knuckles, grounding, cold.
Behind him, Mike steps back. Gives him room again.
And Will hates himself a little for wishing he hadn’t.
Will keeps his hands under the water longer than necessary.
It runs over his knuckles, his wrists, the thin place where his pulse insists on being known. The sink hums. The kitchen light is too yellow, too forgiving. He stares at the pot beside him like it has personally wronged him. Like it should apologize for cooling so quickly.
He cooked.
That’s the stupid part.
He had timed it badly. Or maybe perfectly, if this is the outcome things always wanted. The noodles have lost their steam. The sauce has tightened into something dull and matte. It smells faint now, like memory instead of food.
He turns the tap off and reaches for a towel, presses it into his palms harder than necessary.
“I’m gonna—” he starts, then clears his throat. “I can heat it up.”
Mike looks up from where he’s standing, already halfway to the table, chair pulled out with his foot. He shakes his head once, easy, automatic.
“No, it’s fine. I like it cold anyway.”
The sentence lands wrong. It always does. Will doesn’t look at him when he replies, because if he does he’ll see the lie sitting there, plain as anything, wearing Mike’s mouth.
Who the fuck prefers cold food?
Who actually says that shit and mean it?
Will nods instead. Of course he does. He brings the plates over like this is normal, like this isn’t another small ceremony they’ve learned by heart. He sets them down carefully, as if sudden movements might bruise the air between them.
They sit across from each other.
The table is too small for the distance it holds. Scarred wood, uneven legs, something borrowed from a previous tenant who probably thought of it as temporary too. Nothing here ever feels owned. The chairs don’t match. The walls are bare except for what they haven’t bothered to take down.
It never feels like a home.
So it makes sense the food isn’t warm.
Warmth would imply care that expects something back. Warmth would be another practiced lie.
They eat.
Fork against plate. A soft, almost apologetic sound. The pasta tastes fine. That’s the worst of it. It tastes like something that could have been good if eaten at the right moment, in the right version of this room.
Will chews slowly, staring at a crack in the wall behind Mike’s shoulder. He traces it with his eyes, watches where it thins, where it almost disappears before starting again. He wonders how long it’s been there. He wonders if Mike’s ever noticed it.
Mike eats faster. He always does. Like he’s trying to outrun the silence before it notices him sitting still. His knee bounces under the table. He doesn’t look up much. When he does, it’s brief, like touching something hot.
“This is good,” Mike says, eventually.
It sounds rehearsed. It sounds like something he learned to say a long time ago.
Will hums in acknowledgment. He doesn’t say thank you. That would make it a thing. That would make it harder to swallow.
They sit there, two people doing their best impression of people who eat dinner together. Steamless plates. Lukewarm mouths. Everything about it slightly wrong, but not wrong enough to justify stopping.
Will watches the way Mike cuts his food, uneven, careless. Sauce stains the edge of his plate. There’s a dot of red near his thumb that he hasn’t noticed yet. Will wants to say something stupid, something easy.
You missed a spot.
You’re messy.
You always were.
He doesn’t.
Because every small kindness feels like it risks turning into something else.
Mike leans back when he’s done, chair creaking. He glances at Will’s plate, still half-full.
“You don’t have to finish it,” he says. Not unkind. Almost gentle.
Will shrugs. “I’m good.”
Another lie, smaller, but still alive.
The room feels tighter the longer they sit. Like the walls are leaning in to hear better. Like the table is narrowing, inch by inch, forcing their knees closer without ever letting them touch.
There is so much they don’t say that it becomes a third presence. It eats with them. It listens. It waits.
Will thinks, briefly, irrationally, that if the food had been warm this would have hurt less. Or more. He can’t decide. He only knows that cold things are easier to pretend don’t need tending.
Mike stands first. He takes both plates without asking, stacks them slightly off-center, carries them to the sink. The sound of porcelain meeting porcelain is sharp. Will flinches anyway.
“I’ll get these,” Mike says.
Of course he will. He always does. They are very good at dividing labor. Very bad at anything else.
Will nods. He stays seated for a moment too long, hands folded in his lap, staring at the empty space where Mike just was. The chair across from him looks abandoned. Like it’s waiting to be forgiven.
When he finally stands, the room already feels altered. Quieter. Less charged. Like something important has slipped out while neither of them was looking.
Mike turns the tap on. Water fills the sink. The sound is loud in the small kitchen, unignorable.
Will goes to his room and pauses in the doorway, listening. The rhythm of dishes being washed. The clink of cutlery. The ordinary intimacy of it all.
He closes his door softly.
On the other side of the wall, Mike keeps washing plates that were never warm to begin with.
And something, unnamed and patient, settles deeper into the apartment with them.