Work Text:
"We're hungry." Max says aloud and to no one in particular from where she's fanning Will's nails— something glittering and dark blue she'd stolen out of a drugstore off of Pondfield and Park— and she only has to wait a second before Lucas is bending over the back of the couch to press a smacking kiss to her cheek which she takes with gusto, rolling her eyes and making a face even as she turns to press one back.
"And what does my girl feel like eating today?" Lucas smolders back, dark brown eyes glimmering.
He nuzzles their noses together and Max's grip on Will's hand gets ever so lax, slipping away to caress the sharp curve of Lucas' jawline, her index finger pointed under the soft of his chin and bringing their gaze close. The sweep of her eyelashes brush against his as their lips touch, just faintly enough to have Lucas' hands clenching tight on the fabric of the couch, as he holds himself back from leaning into the almost-kiss.
"I want—" Max leads, slow as molasses and just as sticky. She's already had Lucas' attention from the first breath she took to talk, but it holds firm now, nothing short of another end of the world scenario to keep his eyes away from her now.
"Yeah?" Lucas breathes and, Jesus, but Will is slightly invested now. It's soft-core and tame as anything, but it's sensual and the way Max has Lucas wrapped around her finger is heady. They're both so attracted to each other, like moths to a flame, so overwhelmingly pulled into each other's gravity that it's like watching something awe-inspiring from the heavens, the dust of the Milky Way powdered across the sky, and that's all Will wants with Mike— that easygoing passion, that uncontrollable desire to stay close, to connect.
"I really want—" She says airily and full of meaning, fluttering her eyelashes. Max's index finger sweeps from his jawline to his lips where she plays with the full of his bottom lip, tugging it down to watch it bounce back in place. With how close they all are to each other on the ugly secondhand couch Dustin, Mike, and Jane found from who-knows-where, Will can see the way her pupils dilate at the sight.
"Tell me what you want." Lucas' voice gets all husky, deeper than normal and Will feels a thrill of attraction as it twirls its way through his gut and out of his chest, settling back to hang weighty in the absence of space between Max and Lucas' mouths.
"I really, really—" Max's put-on sultry tones turn comedic, overdramatic, as she playfully sways her head from side to side, "—reaaaally want those burgers from that place on MacDougal!" She gasps between kisses to Lucas' lips, grinning and on the verge of laughter. Lucas, however, does not reciprocate, groaning and falling over the back of the couch to put rest his weight on Max's shoulder, face to her neck, who shrieks, one hand still clutching the half-open bottle of nail polish.
"Not Seventh Street!" He whines in between peppering tiny smacks of his lips to the column of her neck. Will rescues the nail polish from her as it's looking like it's about to add another mystery stain to the couch's exterior. Also so that she can dig her bony fingers under Lucas' arms. It has him yelping, high-pitched and a little girl-like, as he jumps away, hands protecting himself as if he were nude from the neck down. "My weakness!"
"Yes, Seventh Street!"
"There's always a line." Lucas pouts but besides her blue eyes warming, it doesn't do much to soften the line of her brows.
"I don't really need to remind you of mine, though, do I?" Her gaze turns from soft to considering as she gives him one of those crucial once-overs that has dissuaded more than a handful of people from approaching them while they were alone, getting drinks at the bar.
Lucas hesitates, likely trying to test her patience or tease her more, but then she goes in for the kill, "Don't make me call Sue. I'll tell her you aren't treating me right."
Although he knows it's an empty threat, the mom line works and his pout turns into a grimace, rolling his eyes as he pats his pockets to ensure his wallet was with him. "Alright, alright." He turns to yell towards the en-suite bathroom, where Will's boyfriend had skipped to— claiming the nail polish fumes were giving him a headache— to rifle through their cabinet for Will's emergency Excedrin. "C'mon, Mike! I'm not waiting in line alone!"
"And we need some more girlboy time." Max shares a conspiratorial grin with Will. He knows what they've been desperate to talk about and as soon as their boyfriends leave, she's going to absolutely pounce. He's as scared as he is excited.
"Give me one second! Can't a guy piss in peace anymore?!" Mike's yell comes from further in the studio, echo-y and strident.
"What do you want, Will?" Max nudges him with a socked foot and Will blusters, suddenly on the spot.
"Oh! No, you don't have to—" He starts but before he's even finished, Lucas stops him with a gentle pat to his cheek.
"Dude, that's 'cos I'm not gonna. Mike's totally footing the bill."
The bathroom door flies open and doesn't manage to leave a hole in the wall because of the thick, brick walls the studio loft was built out of. The doorknob, however, was literally dented from the uncountable times this has happened. Mike stomps towards them, bitch-face fully in play. "The only thing I'm footing is it up your ass."
"Don't threaten me with a mediocre time, Wheeler." Lucas yawns.
"I already told you my stupid dad cut me off, so no more sugar daddy Mike Wheeler jokes." Mike scoffs. As he passes them on the couch, he ruffles a hand into Will's hair, soft and playful and it's like the touch melts Will's entire insides, turns him into goop that's not going to look out of place on the couch fabric, staining it worse than it already is. He's sure that if he tried to open his mouth now, all that would come out is straight slop, sticky and sweet and all for Mike.
"I'm not paying for Max." He continues, waspish, as they shoulder each other out of the door. Max sneers at his back and then, right before the door closes, they can hear as Lucas snipes back—
"You pay for your girl, I'll pay for mine. How about tha—"
The door slams shut and it's like the air is all but gone from the room, the way his cheeks warm and his breaths get all fluttery and short in his chest. He chances a glance at Max and the expression on her face is enough to have him flushing even hotter, trying to delay the inevitable, hold off the storm with a hand and a prayer and a bottle of glittery blue nail polish that he sets down ever so carefully on the coffee table.
Will tests the coat on his nails with a gentle press of his fingertips, three inches away from his eyes and oh-so-conveniently blocking out the arch smirk permanently sketched across Max's lips— they're dry enough, no minutiae of his fingertips to carve valleys in the mirror-smooth layer that glimmers prettily back up at him. He doesn't care for painting his nails all that much but he does like the way it makes him feel when he's in the mood for it— a little sexy, a little more confident. It makes him feel like dressing up or having fun, playful and kinda comforting when he's not trying to hide the way it looks underneath the sleeves of his sweater.
He likes that Max— and by extension New York— can bring that out of him, so unapologetically herself that it just seems to force its way out of her and corral everyone else to follow suit; a true denizen to the city that just bleeds individuality. Max makes him so grateful she's his friend, that she's here with them, one of the people who can manage to make such a huge place feel like the small-town suffocation of Hawkins, like home, his very own circle.
Will sighs, leaning against the couch and dropping his hands out of his face. He misses El. He wishes she were here.
Last they had heard, she was in a place called Plavinas in Latvia. The postcard had been something she had paid a local artist to draw for Will (and by extension Mike) and it was so beautiful, he had framed it.
Max pounces without warning, "Sooo, did you guys fuck yet or what?" Will takes it back. He does NOT want Jane here right now. It was already just a little awkward if he lets himself think about it too hard— dating her ex and all— but he really doesn't want his pseudo-sister figure hearing about his sex life of all things. "Did you do what I told you to? How'd he react?"
Will's face hasn't stopped burning and he droops even further along the low back of the couch, spilling himself back over the arm of it in unrestrained despair, whining. "Noooo."
She does one of those little scoffs, the ones that sound more like a laugh, and she scoots closer, knees knocking into his. "What?! No, you didn't fuck or no, you didn't do the thing?"
Will just shook his head, hands coming up to curl into his face, embarrassed and a little ashamed. Not about the conversation, but about the fact that he had not pulled any Max-tried-and-approved moves. He said something to that effect into the palms of his hands, vapor of the nail polish strong and dizzying, and leaving the words garbled and hardly understandable.
Max, as astute as ever in these matters, heard him loud and clear, grappling with his grip on his face as she shook him, "And why not?! Mike is such a loser for you, it totally would've worked!"
"I mean, I tried," He let her win, his limp hands held in her firm hold and let his face press into the scratchy upholstery as it chafes against his cheek while he talked, "but I got, like, so fucking nervous. Every time I think it's going to happen, I psych myself out. Or, like, Mike can tell I'm trying too hard and he just settles for— Well, not what I actually, really want. He's playing it safe for me, for the sake of my nerves, and it's killing me." He laments into the sofa.
Loving someone is always such a rollercoaster ride of emotions. He's despondent about not being fucked, frustrated to the point of tears about Mike not just going for it even when Will's reading as anxious, but it's so fucking kind of Mike to also be so careful with him— his chest swelling with feeling, warm and fuzzy and a little tantalizing— even when Will leaves him literally aching for it, can tell when a hand or mouth just ain't enough sometimes. God, he loves Mike so much, so in love he doesn't know what to do.
Well, he does, if only he could stop being so in his head about it.
Max does a real scoff this time, pitiless and unsympathetic. "Settles?! Listen, love the guy, don't fuckin' tell him, but settles?" She rises to her knees on the couch, eyes blazing, "Babe, he's the luckiest bastard on earth that you let him breathe next to you, remember that. He should be grateful you even let him lay a single finger on you." Hers is pointed straight and direct, a centimeter away from his nose. She loses the fire, or better yet, it burns in a different way as she smirks, "Even though I know you want it in you." She makes a crude motion with her hands, stiff finger in the circled hold of her other hand.
"MAX!" He hides his face again, but he's laughing as he shoves her with his own socked foot. She rocks back onto the couch, cackling. As she sits up, she grabs at his leg to move it out of the way, so she can sit closer.
"I'm serious though." She taps at the cover of his hands with one of hers, cliche five-pause-two rhythm and he peeks at her through the lines of his fingers. "I'm confident as fuck, I mean look at me." She grins, the blue of her eyes striated through with cirrus clouds. Her glasses hang in the cut of her shirt at her chest, tangled in the complicated strings that tie it closed. Her vibrant titian hair is just as beautiful as its namesake, though that's where the Vecellio parallels crash and burn, shorn decisively above her chin minutes after seeing Drew Barrymore on the television, her and El coming out of the bathroom at Dustin's apartment giggling and wine-drunk.
He sees her point and rolls his eyes. She makes a face and rolls hers in return, getting in his face like El would and it makes him just as fondly annoyed as when his sister does it. He puts a palm to her face and she licks it making him yelp, "Seriously! You think I saw Lucas Sinclair and thought I knew what the fuck I was doing?" She gives him a look, raised eyebrow and all, "It's just—" Max shrugs, "It's weird, sometimes it's gross, and it can be funny for no reason, and it'll be awkward! So fucking awkward!" She reddens, likely recalling a memory, "But the thing is, you love each other enough that all of that just falls to the wayside. It's not about being good. It's about whether or not you guys are enjoying it because that's when the real magic happens."
They pause as their eyes meet, Will trying to keep a straight face. "Since when did I start talking to Lucas?" She squawks, offended but gives in once Will stops laughing at her.
"Okay, embarrassing verbiage aside, just to keep the record straight, he also didn't know what the fuck he was doing with all this," She gestures to where she's hunched over, crouching as she intrudes on Will's space, like a gremlin. He sees her point.
"I get it. I really do," Will sighs, "It's just, like, my stupid body doesn't participate! My mind's telling me yes, but my body," he croons, "my body is telling me noooo."
She eyes him, considering. "You know what… You need to get comfortable with yourself."
"With myself?” He raises his eyebrows, “I mean I kinda already am—"
"Don't make that face, Wheeler!" Now it's Will's turn to be, at once, offended by the implication that he makes the same bitchy face that Mike can never suppress, and giddy at the thought of taking his boyfriend's last name. The sound that comes out of his mouth is loud, incomprehensible, and so embarrassing. Max pauses, finger raised to demonstrate the urgency of her point, "Okay, so—"
"Stop! Stop!" Will pleads, "Just— What were you gonna say? My body? I gotta wear my skin better?"
She wrinkles her nose. "Woooow. You're just as much of a loser for Mike as he is for you." The expression on her face tells him that she doesn't like this realization. "You just hide it way better. You're lucky I love you so much— My estimation of you has remained at a homeostatic level." Since she doesn't acknowledge it Will thinks she hasn't noticed, but ever since Lucas has graduated and moved to his more Med-intensive courses at JHU, she's been sprinkling all these medical terms into their everyday conversation. It's as hilarious as it is confusing as it is endearing. Will doesn't need her to tell him, to know that she's been helping Lucas study wherever she can. It's terribly cute.
"Anyway," She drawls with extreme judgment which, uh, ruuuude, "You just gotta have fun with yourself and this is not me telling you to beat your meat, by the way. Jane had the same conversation with me when she started—"
"We don't need to get into the birds and the bees." Will is quick to interject.
"Well, when she can start getting pollinated across the world while her gay brother still hasn't managed to get his flower ripped apart by his bee-friend that he's known for a billion years—"
"You're so annoying."
"Just get in the mirror and start fucking around! Put some music on, or don't, dance around like you're in a crowd of people at Uncle Charlie's! Get comfortable with yourself because I can tell, you still kind of aren't."
He pouts, picking at the couch fuzz. "I am, though. You know I've been… exploring." Will says meaningfully. Her and Jane, and even sometimes his other femme friends, have taken him shopping loads of times, under the lavender-tinted guise of a guy helping his girlfriend out in the dressing rooms, so that he can try on cute clothes, mess around with skirts and shorts and low-cut tops. So far, he's only managed to go through with purchasing a more feminine set of pajamas— shorts cheeky and revealing, the lace-trimmed camisole falling to his midriff soft and a little itchy where it tickled at his skin and he still couldn't bring himself to wear it around Mike, despite his reassurances, constantly petting his hands over it but ultimately skipping over the set to grab at one of Mike's shirts and a pair of boxer shorts.
She softens, understanding, but still firm. "You're still trying to hide. And you don't ever have to do that again. Not with any of us. Especially not with Mike."
It bolsters him, her belief, her steadfast support. He wishes everyone, especially some of the people he knew at art school, could have a Max and a Lucas and a Dustin and a Jane— a love like Mike and a mom like Joyce. A brother like Jonathan, a stepdad like Hop, and the others that circled their tight-knit group, forced in by gravity, held even closer by love, by the bonds they all shared. Will knew he was lucky, despite all that had happened. Maybe it was time he stopped getting so in his head about it. He knows she's right, even if it's hard to remember sometimes, "We're supposed to be talking about how to get Mike to fuck me and you're making me cry. You're bad at this, Max."
Max shakes her head and interrupts the roll of her eyes with a swipe at them instead, "Ugh, you always make me so emotional. C'mon, dude," Her exaggerated dude-bro tone breaks through the fullness of the mood, letting it break down into smaller, more manageable pieces to put away, not as heavy to have to carry, "let's talk dicks!"
Will scrunches his nose but eagerly, less anxiously, dives back in, leaning forward, as if anyone would overhear. Max talking about wanting more them time would queue their boyfriends into taking a detour, giving them the privacy they were asking for, so it's not like they were going to burst in at any random time, but still. "So, um, that one position you were mentioning over the phone last time—" He whispers.
"Oh, hell yeah!" She brightens, "That's a good one! Not only is it, like, a totally quintessential position, but it's majorly hot for the top too."
"And you know this because…"
"My buddy, Rain, told me." Will tries to place him. Can't. Max has too many buddies in too many places.
"Remind me—"
"That big ass bear who works at the record store on East Tenth? I got Madonna’s Like A Prayer album there."
"Oh! Oh, Rain! Yeah! He's a top?"
"You've got a good excuse but your gaydar is mad in need of repair or something."
"Ha! That thing was attuned to Mike Wheeler for the first seventeen years of my life. I think it's too late for repairs. Don't really need it anyway." He grins, a little boastful.
"Not when Mike tells you all that sappy shit he learns at school every day." She harrumphs, folding her arms, "Why else is he eating pocket lint for an English degree?"
He shoulders her, turning to tuck his legs under him, "Okay, not everyone's boyfriend can be a smokin' hot doctor."
She shivers in excitement, turning her folded arms into a salacious hold on herself, falling to her back and giggling as she bounces on the couch. "Shut up! He's so hot, I miss him. Why did we send him away?"
"So we can talk about my boyfriend's dick."
Max gags, finger in the mouth and tongue lolling out, throwing herself up to a sitting position with a groan. "Don't remind me. Where the hell were we?"
"Talking about putting me in a compromising, but totally sexy, position to entice my boyfriend into going to town on this fine piece of ass?" He can't even hold the serious look on his face because he can feel how red he is, warm from his ears all the way down to his chest. Max, however, looks as proud as one could ever look at someone she hadn't spent ten hours in labor for.
She pretends to wipe away a tear even as Will slaps his hands to his burning cheeks. "They grow up so fast."
"Less about me," He urges, "What's so good about— What'd you call it over the phone? Doggy style?" Will scrunches his face.
Max turns her nose up at his tone. "You've got a lot of gall for a backyard virgin."
"I don't like you."
"Don't be such a princess. It's good because he can watch his dick slide into your ass. Or so says Rain." She shrugs, no shyness even as she's vulgar. He thinks he prefers when she uses the slang she's no doubt picked up from all the clubs and bars and the LGBT circles they've started getting comfortable in— cartoonish in their humor, still vulgar but in a way that only sounds like it because you knew how to read between the lines, knew the context.
"Gosh," he breathes, glowing around the edges. "I hope Mike thinks so."
"Mike's a perv— Lucas is his best friend and sometimes he lets things slip—" Max grimaces, looking a little green. It clashes with her hair. She shakes her head. "You've got literally nothing to worry about, let me assure you of that."
"I guess." His back and forth, confident one second and reticent the next must be giving her whiplash, a headache she already has on the daily anyway, because she gives him one of her biggest eye rolls, complete with the neck movement to match and shoves a finger into his forehead.
"I know you want more than the ol' Princeton rub, Will! C'mon! Rise up to the occasion! Mike's dick is going to get lonely at the top!"
"You are such a f-fruit fly." Will stutters, still so shy about being able to be so himself. Max has taken to the scene like a fish to water, gathering every letter of the acronym to herself and he’s never seen her more at home. It makes him feel good about himself and about he and Mike’s relationship, and about being able to talk about it so openly.
"And proud of it, little Dutch boy! Gotta give him props though—Dustin's lucky he's starting to lean, I was about to cut him off." She jokes. "Now, back to the lesson, young pond frog or whatever that nerd shit is called."
"Uh, it's Padawan." Will corrects with the exact amount of attitude that crime deserved.
Max blows a raspberry at him. "Whatever-wan, shut up and listen. What you want is that arch!" She exclaims with a swoop of her hand, fingers pressed together and curved up.
"The arch?" Will asks, slowly. The only thing that pops into his head is the Arc de Triomphe, that big old piece of Paris sitting in the middle of the street and surrounded by traffic. Will feels like it resembles what he thinks of the sex position— a boring kind of everyday thing that you see all the time, vanilla. Kind of plain when the light isn't hitting it right. He’s stared at a picture of the thing for far too long in his art history class when he’s drawing a blank on where to start for a new assignment, when his professor’s voice threatens to lull him to sleep. He crinkles his nose.
"Yeah, like," Max bounces up and runs over to their bed, nearly tripping on Mike's pile of books he keeps at his bedside instead of the bookshelf Karen and Joyce got him for his birthday last year. She falls to her knees on the mattress and then slowly slides her palms down in front of her until her spine curves like a cat's and then she keeps going, chest and chin flat to the comforter and hips raised, the round of her ass up in the air. She slaps it with an exaggerated moan, "Lucas fits right here."
Will's seen some of the more flexible go-go dancers hit this pose before under the colorful strobes with the heavy staccato beat of the music drowning out his own hearts'. He's seen it on morning walks through the park, women his mom's age yelling out 'Now exhale as we get into the Downward Dog!' He doesn't think he'd ever seen it in bed.
"That looks kinda painful. I don't even think my spine bends that way." Usually it's the opposite, the way he hunches over his canvasses and sketchbooks and class assignments in the library like a creature from the sewers. He pokes her right in the dip of her spine and she collapses, tickled.
"Eh, it's a little straining but," She turns on her side and grins up at him, wickedly, biting at a fingertip, "soon it feels reeeaaaally good."
Will flushes. "I wanna try."
She lights up at his decisive tone, sitting up to pull Will onto the bed. He's directed with all of the focus of a stage director, Max's minor in theatre raging its strict head as she pulls his limbs this way and that. "I feel like a bad influence." So she says but she sounds inordinately happy about it.
He still reassures her, "No, you're good! I told you I want to know. I wanna be good for him." It hits as he says it aloud but it's true. Mike's shown him so much love and care and consideration in the span of time after they got their shit together and he'd like to show it in return. He tries to emulate the supine way her back bent, but he feels stiff and awkward instead of gracefully sexy. He frowns down at his hands, squeezing the comforter.
He knows Mike wants him. He can see it in the way the other man's eyes will track him across the room in the morning, the way his hands linger on his body and the way he fits into him as they putter around in the kitchen, or stand talking with friends at a safe bar, chest to Will's back, arms around him whenever he can get the chance— secure and protective and a little possessive in a way that gets Will real hot around the edges. He knows because when they kiss, when they get really into it, Mike can’t keep his hands off of him, pulling Will into him, onto his lap, maneuvering Will whatever way he wants him, as if he can’t get enough.
Will just wants to be able to return the favor, show him just how much he wants him back— without completely fumbling it. The shy deer thing probably gets old after a while no matter how much Mike seems to think it’s cute. "I just wanna be good for him," he says again, voice almost so soft he thinks Max can't hear him.
She scoffs, harsh but in that caring way she always manages to be. "First of all, he needs to be good for YOU. Your orgasm is way more important than his." Her matter of fact tone breaks through his self-consciousness, has him breathing out a surprised laugh.
"Is that how Lucas feels?"
"Babe, that's how MAX wants it." She smiles at him, then shoves his face unforgivingly into the mattress and he can tell through her voice and how it quirks that she's laughing at the way he'd yelped. "Can you breathe like that? Make sure you can. He might get really into it and accidentally start smothering you. Not like I know what that's like— Lucas is a total gentleman fox in bed. Your man, on the other hand? Might get a little too overexcited and wet the bed."
Will's breaths are hot in his face, warming his face even as Max's words stoke it that much hotter, but he thinks it's alright, imagining Mike so into it that he's pressing him right into the mattress, reckless and wild, sending her a thumbs up over his shoulder as he hides his face.
She lets go of his hair, ruffling it as she steps back to examine his form. He peeks out at her, fingers twiddling with the comforter nervously. Over the ridges of his knuckles, he watches her peer at him as if he were his own canvas and she, his illustriously strict Bodies In Cultural Landscapes professor.
"Spread your knees a bit, babe. Juuuust a bit— STOP. That's perfect. How's that? Is it a little more comfortable? Make sure you’ve got a solid center of gravity."
The wider stance is less pressure on the gratuitous curve of his spine but he still feels like he looks like their kitchen table— flat and completely unappealing. "Am I doing it right?" Will lifts his hands to feel at himself and pouts, cheek smushed into the soft of the bed. The sexy curve doesn't feel as acute as Max's had looked, his Y and X axis plotted too directly across from each other to feel sexy. He tells Max as much who rolls her eyes at him and calls him a zeek when he finishes the equation.
“You are terrible at math, so I don’t even know why you thought you could get away with that. Stop fishing. You’ve got a rockin’ bod. What does El still say all the time? It’s bitchin’.”
Will makes another Mike-face that she grimaces at.
His ass feels like it's, like, just sitting there. Like a book on the floor. A can on the shelf. Something unappetizing, normal. He wants Mike to lose it! Slap or something, the way Lucas can't seem to help himself when Max walks by. Something Mike can't take his eyes off of, can't resist putting his hands on, the lure of a No-Touching sign in the museum and the priceless piece of art it's trying to protect.
"Max," he whines, "I don't feel sexy."
She walks around him, like a lioness stalking a lonely gazelle, eyes sharp and assessing, as if she were cataloging his weaknesses and how best to sink her teeth into the marrow of them. "I guess… you are a little… stiff." She tries to gentle the point of her teeth but it's still a bite, draws blood even though she's not hunting for it.
He doesn't muffle his faux gasp of offense, only a little hurt, and she rolls her eyes. "Babe, you're self-conscious. You're gonna feel awkward at first, remember? Just— Here—" She moves to his side and presses down on his spine with the flat of her palm and grabs at his belt loop in a way that he takes as a prompt to position his hips back at the same time. When she steps back this time, there's a different light in her eyes, a pink-cheeked grin on her face. "HELL YEAH!"
Will flinches at her sudden shout, her subsequent and fatally egotistical, "I'm so fucking good," nearly a moan, making him eager to know what it was she's seeing.
"What? What is it? Is it sexy? Am I sexy?!"
"Push your face into the blanket for me real quick." She answers instead, and well—
Max hasn't steered him wrong thus far so he follows her directions and hears her scramble around the room to grab something that clunks noisily. With the way it screeches, in that telltale way wood tends to sound against itself, he knows it's something from the coffee table drawer. He can't recall what's in there that she might need. Magazines, take-out menus, Mike’s extra bic pens and a legal pad for easy reach when inspiration strikes, and maybe a camera they take out for special occasions. He makes a face into the soft of the comforter that still smells like Mike. "What are you even—"
He balks when there's a flash bright enough that he can see even with most of his face crushed into his mattress, the shutter clacking loud. He's about to shoot up and chase her around the room, arms straining when she snaps, "Ah! Ah!" She sounds so like Mrs. Sinclair that it freezes him in place, "Stay put!"
"But—!" Will gives her the eyes, but they only seem to work on Mike and the barista at the coffee place on Third and East 118th Mike hates because of that sole reason, "I feel stupid! Please, drown the evidence in the kitchen sink before I do the same to myself in the bathroom!" He kicks at the bed with his feet, legs flailing as he pleads, in lieu of him stomping like he usually pretends that he never does.
"No! Don't be ridiculous! You look hot, believe me." She's waving the Polaroid film at him with a devious smile curling into her cheek but it hasn't finished developing yet, still that off-white wash of film, blank and teasing as the colors bleed in.
He rises out of the full slump Max had first put him in and looks over his own shoulder, trying to imagine Mike fucking him in this position. Max says he's sexy and she does have good taste, especially out of the Party, so he thinks he trusts her judgment. It's just— It's so embarrassing that he's doing this, that he's playing around like this, but he wants it so badly. "Am I supposed to, like, keep my body up like this while he's doing it? What if I fall? Or do I hold myself up with my hands? Is that sexy too? I feel like I'm looking for one of his contact lenses he's dropped on the shag rug."
Max sets the camera down next to the still-developing photo and clambers onto the bed behind him. "Okay, so he's probably going to do this—" she grabs at his waist and then pauses, hands clutching so tightly he can feel the way her long nails dig into the soft of his skin through his shirt. "—What the fuck?"
Her shock has him stuttering. "W-What? Do— Do I smell? Do I actually look FUGLY from behind? What?!"
"Oh, shut up. Like I said, don’t fish, you know you're gorgeous." She pinches his side and then smooths her hands over him, gripping him again, "Dude, you've got the tiniest waist ever. Soooo unfair." She wiggles him around in her hold and he tries kicking at her with a heel. He misses.
"You shut up first. I do not."
"No wonder you wear Mike's arm like a belt, sheesh. You and Lucas both— I'm the same way with him too, actually. Except he's got, like," she gropes him. Her thinner fingers tickle at the soft of his stomach, "a few inches on you, give or take."
"Better than in me," He mutters, throwing her earlier words back at her.
"You whore!" She gasps, squeezing his waist playfully.
Will giggles as she takes a firmer hold of him, fingers grabbing onto his belt loops and bouncing him in place slightly as she readjusts her own position behind him. The hardware on the belts of her cargo pants jangle brightly as she presses close, the feel of her solid thighs bump against the back of his and he can feel her get biblically intimate with the denim-covered curve of his ass. It's no different than when they dance together at New Jimmy's, all the little underground, hole in the wall speakeasy-like bars they hunt down with their circle.
"He's gonna get all up in this and it's gonna be wicked."
"Are you sure?" It doesn't feel very wicked, but Will supposes that's probably because Max doesn't have, like, a big ol' dick pressed up against the cleft of his ass which is kind of what he's expecting when Mike's back there. The stretch feels nice though, even as she presses the flat of her palm onto his lower back where his half-shirt had ridden up, encouraging him to lengthen his spine even further, his upper body flat on the bed now. It's like a guided yoga session. He recalls the women in the park again, "You heard of the Downward Dog?" He breathes, a shade short of breath.
"No, but it sounds kind of hot. Can I watch?"
"It's yoga!" Will reddens, trying to catch her eye from over his shoulder. He can see the round of his own ass, the way the stiff waist of his loose-fit denim jeans can't compensate for the way he's laid out, gap revealing the elastic of his underwear. It's kind of crazy hot to see the stretch of his spine, the little dimples where they sit right above his ass, the way Max is leering down at him.
"Dude, if I was into guys like you and you were into women, I'd be trying to steal you from Mike for me and Lucas." She brags through a toothy grin. The compliment flutters aimlessly in his gut before it flies down the slope of his chest to perch in the very big, very specific chamber of his heart that the Party tends to inhabit, making him flush all over in a wash of honey, his toes wiggling in his socks.
"Aww, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."
She scoffs. "Isn't your man a goddamn writer? He's gotta step it up, like, majorly."
"What about my hands? I feel stupid just—" he flaps them against the bed, where they're laying at his sides, feeling sort of like a snail. Not sexy at all, snails. They're, like, bottom tier sexy animals. He wants to be a cheetah, cat-like and graceful. Like Eartha Kitt! All sultry and simmering sex-on-legs, or rather, sex on the bed. Preferably. Will wasn't too picky right now. Mike could throw him on the kitchen table, bend him over his writing desk where there were always at least two half-drank coffee cups orbiting the reference books and that old school type-writer Mike liked to pretend he was Stephen King on and Will would say please and thank you!
He can hear the roll of her eyes in the cadence of her voice. "Well, if he's good with his dick—"
"Max!"
"—you won't even have the mind to be worried about what to do with them. Trust me."
"Is there anything else you do to, like, be sexy?" He stares absently at the rest of the studio, trying to think of the rare porn mag he's peeked through in the dim light of his friend's grungy basement apartment, but instead of the erotic, sensual, provocative arrangements, tasteful red silk accoutrements and velvet everything— forms of the sitting models in the live paint sessions they'd been focusing on this quarter come to mind and instantly ruin his vibe. The Thinker has its own sort of evocative air that lends itself particularly fittingly in a studio, but not this one, not for Will.
Max hums in thought, fingers sliding up to tap at the dip in his lower back, contemplation heavy in the touch of her fingertips and sending a buzz throughout him where they’re connected at his back. He loves being touched. Even if it’s not by Mike— it’s just everyone else’s made him feel different than the feeling that electrified him when Mike did it.
When his friends, his mom, his brother— Whenever they hugged him or absently played with his hair while they were sitting together or would brush close against him, physical affection free and mindlessly, purposefully given it was as if Will was this unending reservoir and they, a spigot. As if each morsel of touch just kept filling and filling, Will comfortably full, consoled, and at peace. A fuzzy blanket on a freezing November night.
Mike made him feel that way too— and then some. Mike had him floaty and dreamy and soft and hot and buzzing out of his skin with just how close he wanted to press himself against him. He made Will feel so much it was hard to put into words sometimes. That’s why Will wanted to do what he always did, put a little of himself in his art, and show Mike in a way that the other man had always been able to do— Look at Will and know just what he wants to say.
“Oh, I got it. This one’s a doozy, for sure! Lemme see your hands.”
He lifts them and she doesn’t grab his hands but his wrists, her fingers barely touching as they circle, grip tight but adjusting as she gains a better hold on him. It sort of feels like he’s at a chiropractor’s and they were doing an adjustment on his spine— if the chiropractor had their crotch pressed to his ass, that is. The stretch is actually, really quite nice. He should do this more often. Spending hours hunched over in class and in the studio, inhaling paint fumes, completing art projects for hours on end without break for food or water— all of that must be taking more years off of his life than growing up in Hawkins already has.
Will groans at the way his muscles tense and contract as she pulls at his arms.
“Don’t be a baby!” She complains, but Max slackens the angle she’s got his limbs in and he groans again, this time very much whining.
“Please, doctor, do it again. That actually felt so nice on my back.” He huffs into the bed.
Will wondered if Mike was into role playing. One would think— D&D being such an important part of their formative years— that he would probably be a mondo geek about it. Not that Will’s any better. He thinks it’d be fun. He already gets the butterflies when Mike pulls the whole gallant Paladin thing; putting on a deeper voice and talking about oaths and my cleric and opening doors for him in an exaggerated gentlemanly way and using that old poetic prose.
“Barf.” Max protests, very vehemently, “You can’t do sexy doctor role play, that’s me and Lucas’ schtick.”
“You can’t call dibs on sexy stuff!”
“I can and I did. Do your nerd shit instead.”
Will mutters under his breath, “Lucas is a nerd too. I bet you guys do nerd stuff and am I over here vetoing anything? Nooo, because I’m such a good friend—”
“Once you’re done talking to yourself—” Max pulls his arms back again and Will allows the stretch, attempting to loosen his muscles enough that it’s not pulling uncomfortably. “Lucas does this sometimes when he’s really going at it for, like, better leverage. Maximum thrust capacity.”
“Maximum—” Will cuts himself off with a breathy laugh. It sounds like something Hikaru Sulu would say as he engaged warp speed on the Enterprise. “And it’s good?” Will tries to look behind him again at this angle, neck more strained than when he had done so before, and she sends him a fiery look, smirk a third person in the room. “This maximum thrust capacity?”
“It’s definitely good.”
They can’t hold their laughter in, something about the phrase just rings hilarious and Max knows it, probably why she used it in the first place. Will is relaxed and having fun and is even somewhat excited about possibly trying this on Mike later this week when they have date night. Their giggles echo so loud around the studio, Max trying to catch her breath even as she mimes Lucas’ technique which has them cracking up all over again, that they don’t hear the keys— jangling and muffled outside of the thick apartment door.
It slams against the wall, keys tinkling noisily against the hard surface like it always does when you shoulder it open. Max and Will stiffen, their humor cut short, eyes widening in tandem where they meet over Will’s shoulder before they snap over to the door where Mike and Lucas are standing, hands full of brown, grease-stained bags of food and sweating cups of soda balanced precariously in their arms.
It’s dead silent.
The keys have read the room and stopped swinging where they’re still stuck in the lock.
Even the city sounds muffled.
The ice inside of the cups shift against each other to punctuate the abrupt silence, echoing hollowly.
“What the fuck?” Mike breathes, expressive brows furrowed and dark eyes scowling.
“That’s hot.” Lucas says nonchalantly, taking a sip of his drink and nodding.
They’re sitting across from each other now— Lucas and Max on one side, where Max can spill whatever on the couch and it won’t make it any worse and Will and Mike are on their good chairs, the ones Karen had gifted to them last Christmas. She’d been on some refurbishing kick and well, while he doesn’t think he cares much for green velvet, they’re better than anything they’d find on the curb.
Max is grinning shamelessly, an ankle hooked over her opposite knee and arm splayed out behind Lucas’ shoulder. Her boyfriend is setting the food out, unconcerned with the way Mike’s arms are folded defensively, knee jumping as he shakes his leg rapidly, all keyed up and moody.
Will puts a hand on his thigh and it halts Mike’s frenetic movements for a moment as they meet eyes. Will gives him a private little smile and he can see the way it melts at Mike’s mood, shoulders leveling from their perch near his ears but then Max snorts and it starts up again, even faster than before, dark eyes lasered onto the couple across from them.
Lucas moves the polaroid camera out of the way to make room for Will and Mike’s food and pauses when the picture Max had taken is revealed. Will doesn’t even get a glimpse of it because Mike leaps off of his seat and snatches it off of the table so quickly, the napkin Lucas had placed on his thigh flutters to the ground with the force of it. Lucas blinks.
“OKAY!” Mike shouts, “New rules, guys! I’ll preface this by saying just how much I appreciate our continued efforts at keeping our childhood friendships alive—”
“Here he goes,” Max sighs, leaning into Lucas.
“— and while the commitment we’ve all shared to further that bond brings me immense joy and comfort—”
“Oh, brother!” Max throws her head back, limbs akimbo. Lucas just sifts through the bag of food, looking more and more downtrodden as he paws his way deeper into it, napkins and packets of ketchup flying out onto the coffee table.
“Dude,” He pouts, “they totally forgot my fries. Not cool.”
Mike is still talking like anyone but Will is fully paying attention to him. “— however! I have boundaries! Boundaries is not a bad word! Boundaries are healthy and held in esteem. They show respect and consideration—”
Oh, jeez, Will despairs fondly to himself, he’s started pacing.
Will wonders if it makes him a bad person, the way he thinks Mike looks really hot— all annoyed and irrationally jealous and trying to hide it. He gets this flush right along the sharp curve of his cheekbones and his eyes get all flinty and dark and brooding. The way he holds himself is not like his usual relaxed slouch, instead his shoulders are stiff with nerves and wide, standing at his full height. Will starts to bite at a finger as he watches him pace, eyeing the sharp movements he makes with his big, expressive hands, the firm line of his shoulders and the way his sweater clings to the dip in his spine as he talks, sweeping gestures that tight at his arms, the small curve of his ass and the way it leads to long, strong legs—
“Just share mine, babe.” Max shrugs around the mouthful of her burger, leaning in and meeting Lucas halfway where he gives her a light peck to her cheek.
“You’re so kind and considerate and, like, boundary-ful.” Lucas grins.
“What a great segue into my next point, Maximilian!” Mike ignores her middle finger and waves his hand out in front of them at the mess of food on the table. “You have your fries!” He slaps a hand to his chest, “And I have my fries. If you were to TAKE MY FRIES,” he says with wide eyes, also now indicating Will with a shaking hand, “I would be very upset! Especially if you didn’t ask!” Will watches with a grin smushed into the palm of his hand, Mike’s theatrics very much amusing to observe when they’re not pointed in his direction.
“Can I pretty please pretend to fuck Will?” Max asks, eyes glazed over and monotone, lips shiny with cheeseburger grease.
“FUCK NO, you can’t!” Mike shouts, arms up and then he makes a gracious gesture at them, “But I appreciate you for asking. How hard is that?”
Lucas finally chimes in, already down to his last bite of burger, dipping a fry into ketchup he’s piled onto the outside of the brown paper bag and feeding it to Max who kisses his finger after. “Now that we’re talking about the subject—” He licks at his lips, “What’s that thing you were telling me about? It was really interesting. Sort of an alliteration. You like those a lot.”
Mike blanches, freckles standing out in stark definition on his face. “Wait—”
Lucas continues, his teasing sounding right out of Max’s book, the way it lands unmerciful as he sings, “Safe, sane, and consensual? Isn’t that sort of like having boundaries?” He asks innocently.
Will’s eyebrows fly up.
He and Mike may have not had actual penetrative sex yet, but they had done plenty and Will had friends who loved to gossip about their love lives and all of the sex that included. He’s had way too many still life classes where the mundane beauty of a fruit bowl was undercut with the fascinating whispered passion of the underground BDSM scene. He’s heard the term before: safe, sane, and consensual. Why in the world was Mike talking to Lucas about it? A curl of smoke-like jealousy wisps around him and he frowns, even as his interest is piqued, head tilting to the side and looking over Mike with new eyes.
“Oh?” Will’s breathy voice has Mike jolting like he’d touched a live-wire, his ears reddening as dark eyes snapped to his, wide and panicking.
“No— Lucas is— He’s lying— It’s not even— That’s a— That’s—”
“And that’s-a our cue to leave, baby!” Max crumples up her burger wrapper that she demolished while Mike had been pacing, leaping up to toss it in a perfect arch across the room as it lands solidly in the trash can. She turns excitedly, belts on her cargo pants flopping as she jumps in place, to Lucas who stares up at her with stars in his eyes.
“God, I love you.”
Max flushes prettily but plays it off, winking at him as she wiggles her hands in front of her for Lucas to take. “Don’t get too sappy on me, Sinclair. You’ve got that stalker-ish look in your eyes again.”
Mike rolls his at the display, meeting Will’s to pretend to gag, but he only raises an eyebrow in response and Mike flushes, sitting down, chastised. “Well, I’m not gonna be happy about it. She’s greedy.” He mumbles to himself. Will knows he’s just being dramatic— him and Max’s, and by some extension Lucas’, relationship is funny like that. Sibling-like sniping at each other, real honest annoyance at anything the other does. It’s almost like another Nancy, except Max is softer where Nancy is just a touch more steel-like.
Will just sorta likes seeing Mike fold so easily when all he does is make a face— so attuned to him and his needs and wants and his moods— and Mike knows what to do without Will having to even open his mouth. Will really loves that about the other man. How well taken care of he always is. He doesn’t think he’s wanted for anything lately, literally cannot complain the way his other friends do about their relationships— except this one, tiny thing…
Lucas waves a hand at the coffee table, apologizing to Will, “Sorry to leave you with the mess, man,” he starts and Max cuts him off as she puts her glasses on, squinting as her eyes adjust.
“Yeah, and sorry about all the food trash too.”
“Ha Ha.” Mike scowls.
“I’ll get you back for it, alright? How ‘bout coffee date next Thursday?”
“What’d I just say about boundaries?” Mike sighs.
“That’s why I’m asking!” Lucas laughs, following Max as she pulls him out towards the door. “And I already got plenty of fries of my own!” He kisses the back of Max’s head as he crowds her out the door, one hand on her waist. “No matter how good the other ones look!” The door slams shut on the couple’s combined cackling, Mike grumbling as he stands to clean up the mess of wrappers and greasy napkins.
The polaroid sticks out of his front pocket, angled in such a way that Mike purposefully placed it so that it wouldn’t bend. Will bites at his lip, thinking.
“Hey, we didn’t eat ours. D’ya wanna save it for later—”
Will lunges for the picture and Mike’s reflexes have him catching Will’s wrist almost a second after he manages to steal it away. He doesn’t bother trying to escape Mike’s hold on him, turning in place so that his back is at Mike’s chest, arm extended in front of him so he can look at the photo in full, Mike’s hand still curled around his wrist. And it’s— Wow.
It’s simple but alluring.
Will wonders if it’s strange to be attracted to yourself or maybe that’s not even the right way to say it. It’s just— He looks sexy. Just like how he’d thought Max looked.
Will’s all sultry with any edges he’d thought he was made out of buffed down into sensuous curves. His position has his half-shirt spilling downwards towards his chest and revealing the tantalizing line of his spine, the way his waist cinches in and the spread of his legs, denim pulling tight against his thighs. His ass looks ridiculous. Will is slightly embarrassed at the round of it. It’s almost gratuitous. Is this what he walks around looking like in the summer? When he channels Princess Di and prances around with shorts and half-shirts or when he goes to the club with Max? Is this why she has to glower at everyone, her head on a swivel at the bar? Is this why Mike hates the barista?
Behind him Mike presses closer, his other arm snaking its way around his waist, pulling Will firmer into his chest. His thumb tugs onto Will’s belt loop and the feeling echoes in Will’s gut. “You know, I’d like it more if I could see your face in it.” Mike says, voice low and right into the sensitive shell of his ear. “I like every part of you, of course, but—” He presses a kiss into the side of Will’s neck. Will angles it so that Mike can press his mouth over more of it, little bites of his teeth soothed over with the hot of his tongue.
Will relaxes into Mike, a sigh verging on a moan breathed out, “B-But?”
“But I love the look on your face whenever you look at me more.”
“I don’t make a f-face.” Will stutters. The hand holding Will’s wrist slides teasingly slow up his arm, fingertips rough with callus, a writer’s hand, leaving a trail of heat that sinks into his skin and pumps hard and heavy into his bloodstream. He’s lying. He knows how obvious it shows on his face— he’s always being teased for it even by people who have no idea who Mike Wheeler is.
In his ear, Mike’s laugh curls sweetly. “Then what’s this one?” His big hand caresses Will's throat and his long fingers press into his jaw, his chin in the vee of his thumb and index and Will’s easy to move, so that Mike can speak with his mouth brushing against Will’s, a tease as his dark eyes touch Will’s honeyed-green. Mike can’t keep his eyes on one spot, bouncing from the flutter of his eyelashes to where he’s pouting, cheeks smushed in Mike’s hold and back to the polaroid in Will’s hand. “You look like you want me to—”
Mike stops himself and Will doesn’t mean to groan out loud but he does and it comes out high and whining. His ears flush hot even as Mike’s pupils dilate. “Mike.”
“What?”
“Can’t you just— just say it?” Will can’t keep his eyes off of Mike either. The freckles dusted almost perfectly across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks, the stray few that dot his forehead, the mole on his jawline that Will loves to press his mouth to, his pretty dark eyes the exact same shade he takes his coffee that Will makes in the morning, his wildly curling hair, the angle of his nose— God, if Will had any talent in it, he’d carve his face into marble, immortalize his features the same way they did in Greece, a testament to Mike’s intensity, his handsome physicality. He’d sculpt his resilient spirit into the hollows of his cheeks and press adoration into the severe set of his brows.
Will loved looking at Mike but he loved it even more that Mike never stopped looking back.
“I kinda want to hear you say it.” Mike kisses him, pressure hard and unforgiving and Will melts into it, dropping the polaroid to tangle a hand in those curls, his other gripping Mike’s forearm where it’s still squeezed around his waist. Mike’s fingers are fiddling with Will’s waistband, dipping in and out, hot on his skin and making his pulse jump. His jeans tighten. With Mike all over him, he can feel the other man’s attraction where it presses into the curve of his ass, denim frustratingly dulling the feel of it. Will wants to touch Mike. He wants to be touched. He wants.
Will remembers the things Max was saying, his own thoughts and desires, the uncontainable craving for his boyfriend and the urge to connect, to fuck. It’s flustering to the point of making Will all but ashamed of it except he could never be. Not when it’s him and Mike— Mike who knows Will. Who knows almost every single thing about him that it’s crazy. What’s one more?
When he licks his lips, Mike’s are still close enough that his tongue brushes against his slightly chapped pair. Mike groans at the action and when Will opens his mouth to speak, to ask for what he’s been obsessing over Mike seems to lose any patience he’d been holding because he dips Will back over the arm he positions around his waist and slips his tongue into his mouth, messy and licking into him, chasing after the points of his teeth and the way Will is all too eager to taste him back.
“Don’t you—” Will tries to ask but Mike is too greedy. He takes his spit, his tongue, his mouth, his breaths, and his words with a bite to the swell of his bottom lip, a minute shake of his head. Will’s back is strained as he tries to keep his balance, clutching onto his boyfriend with hands clawed into the thin material of his sweatshirt, shoulders wide and all too suited for him.
Feeling the tension in his back, Mike pulls him up and around, their chests pressing firm together, the tent in their jeans brushing and turning Will’s insides thick and molten hot. It spills out in a breathy moan that he can feel Mike grin at even as he returns it when Will grinds against him, chasing the feeling.
He’s walked back, foot toppling Mike’s stack of books as he gets pushed onto the bed, bouncing as his breaths come fast, chest heaving. Mike spares the books a glance, bending down to place one specific book onto the nightstand with a careless toss that belies the particularity in which he tended to it. It’s red and not as thick as some of the others Mike likes to leave around, a unique brand of tripping hazards only found in their studio apartment.
Will makes out the word DUINO before Mike is bullying his way between Will’s legs, hands spanning over the thick of his thighs as he pushes them apart and settles in, “Make way, Cleric, your Paladin requires healing.” He wiggles his eyebrows.
He rolls his eyes but he’s so fond it’s ridiculous. “Oh, dear Paladin, may I speak now or shall I busy my lips elsewhere?” Will teases, hands running up Mike’s sides, feeling the ridges of his ribs before he sweeps them up the other man’s chest, fiddling with the sharp angle of his collarbones. Mike’s fingers find his belt loops and pull, Will’s lower half lifting in the air, legs akimbo while Mike shuffles his way underneath him.
Mike’s denim jeans make the bulge at his crotch difficult to ignore as it presses against the dip of his spine, rough and hard. Will wants it bad. He wants Mike’s big, thick dick inside him— the silk-soft heat of it as it drives in and out and fuck— Will’s not laughing anymore. He doesn’t want the roleplay right now, as hot as it might get, all he wants is Mike. His Mike.
He interrupts Mike as he begins to speak, a truly infuriating smirk already etched into the corner of his mouth. “Mike, can you—” He stumbles over his words, “Can we fuck? Can you fuck me? Please?” The smirk falls, shock taking its place and leaving his jaw loose, mouth open.
Mike’s eyes are wide, nearly black as his lashes flutter as he blinks as if he heard him wrong. His breaths come faster, echoing Will’s as he bites his lip, looking up at Mike with the eyes, eyebrows arched in a silent plea. Those eyes look over him now, settling at random points Will doesn’t know why Mike likes to fixate on, but they end at where they’re pressed intimately close, Will’s waist and ass settled on Mike’s crotch. His knees squeeze at Mike’s sides, a socked foot kicking at Mike’s back. It seems to bring Mike back to himself, stuttering, “W-Would you— You really wanna—? I mean, I do. I really, really do. But you—”
“I want the same thing.”
Even as he feels Mike’s attraction grow ever bigger, he stills himself, big palms on Will’s knees at his sides, caressing them with soothing motions. “Just because we’re in the mood doesn’t mean we have to do anything about it.” Mike reminds him and while some may find the concern annoying, a buzzkill, completely ruining the mood— Will does not. It only fans the embers further, turning the kindling in his gut to something approaching a wildfire.
“I want to do something about it.” Will insists, reaching to pry Mike’s hands off of his knees and intertwining their fingers. Their palms kiss sweetly, and Mike may fit in between his legs just as nicely, but Will loves the way their hands piece together, Mike’s grip always firm, as if nothing could ever tear him away. Mike watches him talk as if transfixed. “I want you to do something about it.”
Mike looks frozen but at Will’s next, “Please?” Mike moves so fast, Will’s legs are tossed to the side, making him giggle in disbelief, sitting up on his elbows so he can watch as Mike throws himself to the floor, kneeling at the edge of the bed and tugging out a small trunk from underneath the bed and unlatching it.
Will heaves a great sigh, head lolling back to stare exasperatedly at the ceiling before he looks back at Mike. “Magic tricks. Right now. Really, Mike?” He is genuinely not even that turned off and that’s something he’s taking to the literal grave. No one can know this— Least of all Mike.
He just really doesn’t want the first time Mike’s fucking him to involve picking a card or pulling some inanimate object from some as of yet undiscovered crevice.
The excited flush on Mike’s face deepens as he sputters, embarrassed. “It’s not—! Listen, you never go into my magic kit so I knew it was safe to keep some stuff in here and I didn’t wanna leave it laying around in case you saw it and felt, like, pressured to do anything because you know I never want to make you do anything you never feel like doing and it’s not like I don’t want to do it either but—”
Will flips onto his knees and crawls forwards to hang off the edge and reach for Mike’s face to plant a big smooch right on that rambling mouth. If he slips in a little tongue, a little lap of it to Mike’s chin, then that’s just— Well, he has no real excuse. His boyfriend’s consideration is hot and he ruts against the mattress a little as he curls his tongue in Mike’s mouth, getting wetter at the thought of Mike going shopping for them, thinking about what he wanted to do with Will, for Will.
“Mike,” Will breathes, looking into the soft brown of Mike’s eyes, “Thank you. I love the way you always keep me in mind. You treat me so well.” His finger sweeps along the length of his jaw and Mike inhales like he’d lost track of his breath.
“Yeah?”
He sounds like it too.
“Yeah.” Will leaves something featherlight and sweet to the corner of his mouth before his eyes dip to the unlatched trunk Mike’s got a deathgrip on. “What’ve you got for me down there? Besides the obvious.” He jokes and Mike presses their foreheads together while he laughs, pulling back to smolder at him. It’s super effective.
“It’s just, you know,” Mike shrugs, lifting a velvet liner to reveal a pack of cards and right next to them, condoms, a bottle of lube. It’s cute because they already have lubricant. They’re not new to Mike getting his fingers, or their other toys, into Will but the thought that Mike has been ready, has been waiting is sort of really hot.
“You wanna use those on me?” Will can’t deny the thought of Mike wanting to be prepared, wanting to be good for Will is heady but the sight of the condoms make him hesitate. “What if we, like, don’t?”
Mike blinks up at him, lips red and inviting as he stops biting at them to gape. “But—”
“I know.” Will flushes, looking down in a moment of vulnerability before he steels himself, Mike’s dark gaze tracking every minute movement he makes as he tucks his hair behind his ear, gold hoop warm against his finger. “But, you’re the only one, you know? You’ve only ever been the only one.”
Mike drops the trunk to the side with a clunk, standing with the small bottle of lubricant in hand as he looks down at Will who stares up at him, questioning with a tilt of his head, eyes fluttering. Will knows what he’s doing because Mike’s told him before, just how weak in the knees he gets when Will does this. Says it makes him look way too pretty to the point of Mike wanting to keep him inside all the time. The possessiveness curls pleasantly in his gut.
“Looks new? You ever used it before?” Will brings himself to his knees, sitting with his chin still angled up at Mike, batting his eyelashes, “What are you gonna do with that?” He asks, coy and teasing. Mike likes it though, tossing the bottle next to Will on the bed and slipping his shirt off over his head. Will bites at his lip, staring at the sinew of muscle spread firm under his freckled skin, the hair at his chest, the angular shape of his body, the thick trail of hair between deep hipbones, begging for Will’s thumbs to trace so he does, scooting towards Mike on his knees and reaching.
“Hopefully you.” Mike clears his throat when it breaks as Will’s finger plays with the button of his jeans. His erection is tenting them in a mouth-watering curve that Will wants to feel inside, skin on skin.
“Hopefully?” He tugs the metal of it through the buttonhole roughly, Mike letting himself be tugged towards Will. “You don’t sound very confident.” He pulls the zipper down slowly, turning seconds to minutes, teasing himself as much as he’s teasing Mike. He likes swaying on the edge, keeping the gratification ‘til the very end, making the crescendo that much more satisfying. His knuckle brushes as light as a butterfly’s wings over the bulge that slips through the open fly of his jeans, Will parting denim like he was unwrapping a gift and Mike’s hips jerk.
“I am.” Mike breathes, chest heaving a little when Will looks away from his clothed dick. He’s already a little sweaty, dampening the curls at the back of his neck. Will watches one drop slide down the side of his neck and pulls away to tug his half-shirt off, tossing it to join Mike’s on the floor and then he’s sidling back onto the mattress, arched into a curve that he teases for a moment before he leans forwards and pulls the waistband of Mike’s boxer briefs down to watch the bounce of his dick as it recoils, hefty and long, the way it curves, just a little, to the right. Will’s mouth waters.
“May I?” Will asks and Mike looks up to the ceiling as he groans, long fingered hand brushing into Will’s overly long hair and grasping tight. The sting twangs a lovely little thing in his gut, jeans almost painfully tight.
“Go ‘head, baby.” Mike directs him forward and Will licks a fat stripe at the underside of his dick from root to tip, where he rounds his tongue around the head of it, flattening at the tip and giving a tiny suck, kissing at his slit and letting Mike grab at it to smear the pearl that drools out over his lips. “GOD.”
“It’s Will, actually.” He licks the slightly bitter taste of Mike clean.
Mike laughs, chucking him under the chin and returning his grip to his dick, pushing it back to his mouth and adjusting his hold on his hair. “C’mon, what’d you say about busying your lips, my Cleric? I don’t think I should be hearing you talk when you’re supposed to be drooling over my dick.”
When Will sticks tongue out at Mike, he’s quick to slap his dick to it and Will’s just as quick to soften his mouth around the hot length of it, lips curling under his teeth and cheeks hollowing as he takes it in, “Fuck, yeah,” Mike groans, “That’s it, baby.” Mike smells so strong here, the musk of his skin clean and masculine and it makes Will squirm, thighs pressing together and humping at the air. He hangs onto Mike with two fingers through his belt loop where his jeans hang open, his other hand fisted around the length of Mike he’s not currently trying to swallow down.
He’s heavy on his tongue, a bitter tang he tastes when Mike gets too stressed about school, about their bills, and sneaks out onto the fire escape to smoke. Will’s nose crinkles even as he takes him down further, spit wet on his chin and dripping down onto his fingers. Will wants to take him down all the way, ‘til his head is pushing past the tight hollow of the back of his throat, drink him down like he’s parched but Mike tugs at his hair and pulls on his earring gently, a sign he wants him to get off. “Come here.” Will listens dutifully but presses another kiss to his head before he wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Can you stop smoking?” Will whines as he reaches up to slink his arms around Mike’s neck, Mike pressing sucking kisses to the length of his neck.
“What? I thought you thought it was hot.” Mike licks at his earlobe, lips rolling it between his teeth, earring clicking hard against his enamel and Will makes a sound of commiseration.
“I do.” He plays with the damp curls at the back of Mike’s neck, winding his fingers through them so he can direct Mike back where he wants him, licking into him tenderly. “But you don’t taste hot.” Will crinkles his nose again and Mike kisses it, sliding big hands down the length of his back and pressing them closer, Mike’s fat dick wet in between their stomachs. He ruts up against Will who tries to do the same, still trapped in his denim.
Mike coos, “Aw, sorry. I’ll throw ‘em out. I’ll blow my savings on gum or something.”
“You could use your mouth on me if that helps.” Will giggles as Mike tackles him to the bed, pressing big smacking kisses to his cheeks, his forehead, his mouth, his chin.
“Oh? Even if I wake you up in the middle of the night or find you in your live model class? Hm? Even then?”
He reaches down between them to unbutton Will’s jeans and the relief coupled with the thought of Mike swooping into his class and kissing him breathless, touching him where everyone else might see tangles hot and low in his belly, dick twitching. “Yeah, even then.”
“No.” Mike bites at his neck, licking over the sudden sting of it with a pleading kiss. “I don’t want anyone seeing you like this.”
Mike moves away to pull at Will’s jeans and underwear, tossing them over his shoulder and leering down at him, all dark eyes and intense eyebrows. Will sometimes can’t believe that he can have this and it’s like Mike can read his mind, the way he often can, because the glint in his eyes softens to something liquid, dark chocolate and decadent as he leans down, hands tracing heavy and meaningful up the sides of his thighs, sending a tingling mix of anticipation and pleasure straight to his dick. “I love you.”
The words mollify an always there wound, stitches it up for the time being, whole and holding as it renders straight through the solid of his sternum and bleeds into his heart. Will reaches for him, fingers intertwining at the back of Mike’s neck and pulling him down to taste the words deeper, to swallow the shape of them where they collect under his skin, buzzing when Mike stands close, magnetized. “I love you too.”
He lets Mike take in his fill of him, gazing over where he’s spread out against the bed and wanting, letting Mike touch for the sake of touching, like he’s memorizing the feel of him, the shape of his bones where they sit under his skin. His finger brushes from above his lip down to his neck and then from one side of his chest to the other, zig-zagging a path only Mike knows until he reaches his belly button. He’s so sensitive here that when Mike drags a rough fingertip down, Will’s dick jumps as if it were trying to touch back.
“Eager.” Mike laughs.
“So?” Will sighs when Mike skips past the length of him, desperate and wanting.
“I like it.” Mike grins, lips wide, “I like you.”
It’s so sweet that Will finds himself tearing up a little, frowning up at Mike who spots the sheen of his eyes and hums, eyes lowering, lids heavy.
“Touch me.” Will grabs Mike’s hands and they attach themselves firmly to his skin without hesitation. And they touch, they brand, they sear. Will wants to tattoo the feel of Mike’s hands on his body, so that he can carry around the ache of them, the weight. Mike pulls away for a second to rip his own jeans and boxers off, sliding back into place, the sound of the click-snap of the cap bright.
“As you wish.”
Mike’s teeth trace the paths his fingers leave and his tongue follows, soothing the heady ache of it as his other hand busies itself between Will’s legs, where he pushes against the plush fat of his ass and circles his rim with easy motions, his long finger slipping in, the feel of him, the thin shape of his finger unsatisfying, Will too hungry for the real thing to be sated on a tease like this. “More, Mike. Gimme—”
“Wait,” Mike kisses him, filthy and hard, dipping down to nose at his jaw, suck a hickey into the skin of his neck as another finger slips in, a third impatient and pushing. “You’ll get there, baby, I promise. Just let me—” He tugs at his rim and Will throws his arms up to grasp at the blanket at the sides of his head as Mike’s fingers spread into him, making space. “I’ll fit.” Mike says, reassuring Will or promising himself, he doesn’t know, he hadn’t asked.
“Oh, god,” Will moans as he gets fucked with four long fingers, lube slippery and wet and reaching. It’s better than when Will does it himself, the length of his own fingers too unsubstantial to do anything but keep himself on edge for hours and hours, resorting to fisting his dick to bring himself to orgasm. Mike doesn’t need to touch his dick though because soon enough, he’s angling for that specific spot that makes Will see stars, makes his toes curl, his calves cramp as a breath punches out of his lungs.
“Mmm. Right there, Mike, right—”
Mike massages at him relentlessly to the point where Will doesn’t know how much time has passed, like he’s been pulled right to the brink, body shivering as he breathes through his teeth, eyes squeezed shut—
Then Mike pulls his fingers out and before he can complain, Mike starts to talk. “I love your moles. You know that, right?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before he continues, mouth hot on Will’s skin as he bows over his body, “They call them beauty marks and baby, you’re covered in them.” Will feels a wash of heat that pulses out of his dick. He can’t stand it when Mike calls him beautiful, calls him pretty— if only because it makes him instantly weak, far too gone to even protest like he usually might brush off any other compliment.
“Remember what I said about these?” Mike’s pressing suckling kisses to the mole off center of his left pec, to the one next to his nipple on his right and the sensation is so nearly there Will’s hips are bucking and his legs are squeezing Mike where he’s slotted in between them. His mouth moves to every spot he’s been marked— the two at his clavicle, the one between his pecs, the one that sits right below his belly button, the couple at his neck; it’s innumerable to Will though he’s sure if anyone asked Mike, he’d know the exact answer. He can barely speak, barely respond, can’t bring any words from his mind to his mouth, just nods at Mike, his breaths short and airy through lips that stay parted, slick with spit.
“Think I did this to you. I made these.” Mike bites at his pec, tongue laving over his nipple, playing with it, with the point of his teeth gentled with a kiss, “In some other life before this one, I found you and marked my way so I wouldn’t ever get lost finding you again.” Will keens, rutting his hips against Mike’s, the hot slide of their dicks wet and good but not enough. “I made these for myself. I did this.” Mike’s voice gets gravelly, possessive as his thumbs press hard against the hold of his hipbones, keeping him in place as he adores every little mark he’s claimed as his.
“M-Mike,” Will doesn’t need to say anything else. Mike breaks the surface of his adoration, coming up for air from beneath Will’s waistline where he’d been sucking hickeys over the moles that dotted his thighs and the one at the back of his knee, pressing a sweet, soft kiss to the one above his lips.
“This one was the last.” Mike whispers as he slides his hot palms under the muscle of Will’s thighs, hiking them up to spread indecently around his hips. His long fingers pull at the fat of his ass to part them, Mike’s dick kissing wet and hot at his hole. He clenches around nothing, his next breath nearly a sob as he pleads.
“Please, please,” Will grabs at Mike’s sides, nails digging in and clawing as he hiccups, looking down to try to catch a glimpse at Mike’s dick where he wants it the most.
“You’ve never seen this one because it’s just for me,” Mike groans as Will tries to angle his hips down, sticky head of Mike’s dick slipping against him and rubbing against his sac. Mike’s thumb caresses lovingly just to the side of his hole before he slips it in, as if he couldn’t help himself. “Whenever you let me down here, I always kiss it, for good luck.” He laughs breathily. When Will opens his eyes, not realizing they’d been closed, Mike is staring at him with low-lidded eyes, gaze dark as molasses and just as thick, heady as he leans over Will, one hand fisted in the sheets at the side of Will’s head.
Mike’s other hand grips himself and Will bleats out something that could’ve been Mike’s name but felt like a sob as the head of Mike’s dick slides torturously slowly inside. Will’s not making it any easier for either of them— it keeps slipping out because Will’s clenching around it prematurely and he tries to apologize, tries to explain that he just wants it so badly but Mike quiets him with a palm over his mouth, brows furrowed as he concentrates.
Will takes a steady breath, hands on Mike’s shoulders for support as he relaxes, a shuddering exhale leaving him as he feels the press of Mike’s dick slide in, the thick girth of it making him cry out, the slip of the lube promising wet and easy and it is, “F-uck!” It’s good, it’s so fucking good. Even the slight burn of the stretch of his hole around the fat of Mike’s dick is good. Everything is so good he can cry. His dick twitches where it’s aching, drooling and crying in tune with the tears that spill over wet on his cheeks and Mike coos at him, voice as soft as a snowflake, weightless and uniquely for Will. Only ever for Will.
“Hey, baby, it’s okay, you’re doing good. You’re doing so good.” Mike swipes a gentle thumb over the curve of his cheek and Will swears he can feel the heft of his dick jump as it slips further inside. “You know that, right?” Will nods but all higher thought is routed down into his waist where his dick pulses and drools onto his stomach and where Mike’s does the same inside of him. It sounds wet and obscene, Mike going in raw like Will had fantasized about and he’s so hot it’s unbelievable, the feel of his pre-cum and the mix of lube— Will is drenched but Mike keeps touching his face, wiping at his tears, murmuring sweet little nothings that make no sense to Will’s overwhelmed senses.
“You’re doing so good for me. Tell me you are. Tell me.” Mike’s voice is rough around the edges, his thumb pulling at him down where they’re connected and the throb of the stretch, the slip of Mike’s thumb as it presses in alongside his dick— Will feels stupid.
“Huh?”
“Say it.”
Mike’s thumb hooks inside and Will shakes. “I— I’m good?” Will doesn’t know what Mike’s on about but he presses in further and his eyes roll back, the girth of him making his toes curl, his knees reflexively trying to shut but Mike’s in the way and god, it’s all so much but he needs more.
“So good.” Mike agrees, bending down to kiss at his eyes, tongue lapping at the tear tracks on his cheeks.
Mike keeps sliding in and out, little thrusts like he’s trying to let Will get used to the feeling of him, the thick cut of him and it’s almost driving him insane. It’s not enough, it’s barely approaching something, a push and pull, a catch and release— Will keeps being brought to the boundary line of white-hot pleasure and then he gets pulled away from it in the next second, so suddenly it nearly hurts. Will cries, “Mike, if you don’t actually fuck me, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
In the next moment, Mike indulges him, thrusting in to the point of overwhelming fullness, a pressure filling Will from the inside, hot and swelling and it’s never been more good— Will loves Mike’s fingers but they’ll never match up to the way this feels, so full of Mike that it’s insane. He doesn’t ever want to part and he doesn’t realize he’s sobbing when Mike starts to fuck him until Mike’s pressing hard kisses, more teeth than lips, to his, shushing him in a voice too soft to cover up the wet noise of them fucking.
He tucks his face into the nook of Will’s neck as he grips his thighs. “Spring would understand.” Mike rasps, breathless and sudden. Will wants to listen, he always wants to listen to Mike but god, the feel of him inside and on top and around and— he’s blanketed by Mike’s devotion and it’s as smothering as it is igniting. “You’ve got in my blood, the Spring ‘s growing full of you, fig tree so full of me—”
Will’s being fucked too hard to know what Mike means. It sounds like he’d put all his words in a blender and is trying to spoon feed it to Will. He sounds like his favorite Cocteau Twins song, romantic and unintelligible, words beating in tune with his heart. He can’t hear anything over the crests of pleasure that wash over him. With every thrust of Mike’s hips, every slide of hot, hard silk inside him, it flints against the kindling in his spine, sparks that Will can see as his eyes roll, vignetting the view of dappled sunlight on the height of their ceiling. Will’s own cries are echoing back to him but it’s background noise to Mike’s husky voice at his ear, his breaths searing against the sensitive curl of it, “Not only the days, so gentle round flowers,” Mike’s hands brand trails from hip to chest as his thumbs circle firm around the stiff peaks of his nipples, “Oh, Angel,” Will feels it more than he hears, the tug of sensation on his chest a direct livewire tangled around his veins and to the deep ardor that peaks in his gut with every filthy drive of Mike’s dick into him.
He feels wholly taken over by pleasure, so much so it almost feels crude— the wet obscene sounds of Mike’s cum as his hips clap against the round of his ass, the biting sting of Mike’s teeth wherever he feels the need to taste, the big hands, the long fingers as they sweep delicately over Will’s brow, where they caress, spanning over what feels like the entirety of his skin until they settle firm at the backs of Will’s knees and then Mike shoves.
Will loses his breath, knees to his shoulders, Mike crowding and looming and fucking with even more fervor than before, eyes so fucking dark and all over him. The curls hanging over his eyes are threaded through with sweat, a drop slipping down the angle of his nose and raining down onto Will’s cheek, tepid against the fever of his skin. Will wants to open his mouth and let it drip onto his tongue, taste it like the first snow of the season.
He’ll have bruises the shape of Mike’s fingers at the muscle of his thighs, a garter he could never remove and only Mike could ever slip back onto him. His calves press into the breadth of Mike’s shoulders, fitting with room to spare, his ankles tucked into the space at Mike’s neck, right below the sharp angle of his jaw. Mike turns to buss a kiss into the arch of his foot and Will keens. “Stop—”
“No, you’re perfect everywhere.” Mike teethes at the tender pad of his foot, mouthing at his little toe. Will feels embarrassed at the string it pulls, electric and sudden in the chorus of feeling he’s already being smothered with. Mike’s everywhere and he’s consuming every single bit of Will he can get, ravenous for it, hunger seemingly unending and Will can only provide, keep hand feeding him, the point of his teeth nipping at his fingers. Will’s fingernails are raking reddened lines down every part of Mike he can reach, clavicle to sternum to waist, from his biceps and down his forearms where Mike tangles them together with his and presses them down into the mattress at the side of his head with all his weight.
Mike’s thighs are thin and muscled but pressing tight as he fucks him, sweat making them slip easy against each other, groans turning reedy as each thrust gets rougher, less rhythmic. Will’s on fire now, genuinely feeling turned inside out, nerve-endings replaced with lightning rods and Mike’s a storm brewing above him, a force unto himself, clouds thick and hanging, waiting.
“The way I fit so well here, you’d think you were made just for me.” Mike says, on the cusp of a grunt, voice in his throat. Will’s body shakes at the sound. He doesn’t want Mike to stop talking, loves hearing him say the quiet parts out loud. Will loves knowing Mike can touch him with all the tenderheartedness of their youth, sticky candy fingers and gangly awkward elbows. The way he can touch him softly, can adore him with all the gentle handling Will has deserved his entire life.
But he thinks he yearns for the words as they tumble out of Mike’s mouth, unrestrained and explicit, raw and greedy and filthy. Will wants it all. Every single part of Mike he can take, wants him with the charcoal under his nails and the paint that never washes out of the minutiae of his fingers— And he wants to give himself back, a feedback loop, a leash, a line of a song stuck in his head.
Will begs for a kiss and Mike all but falls into him. Will wants to sear himself onto Mike’s tongue, wants to slip underneath every word Mike speaks, curl around his canines and carve his initials at the trunk of his molars. He wants to spread like a parasite in Mike’s brain, so he’s all he can think of. But the way Mike treats him, the words he presses like a brand of his own initials on Will’s skin, he knows he already has him.
Mike pulls away and Will chases after him, sloppy and eager, tongue pressing flat against Mike’s. It makes the other man moan, breathy and on the verge of a laugh. Will understands. He’s giddy and hot and Mike leans into him even further, the stretch of his legs, the weight of Mike on him makes him groan. “Aren’t you?”
“Hm?”
“Made for me?”
Will nods, aching to please. “I was. I am! I’m all yours. Just for you.” Will babbles, gut pulling heavy, weighted and threatening to pull him under. His legs are shaking where they’re pressed against Mike’s cheeks and his boyfriend nuzzles against them as he looks down at him through his eyelashes.
“Yeah, yeah.” Mike’s eyes flutter as if he can’t bear to keep them open, eyebrows arching upwards and Will wishes for a brief second Mike could stop fucking him so that Will could keep his own open for a moment longer to watch him come apart but then Mike shifts a little, moves his hips a different way or something Will doesn’t know but— It’s like the storm Mike’s been looming over him finally breaks, lightning striking the vulnerable bundle of nerves with each thrust, getting shallower and shallower with every movement, as if Mike couldn’t stand to keep himself out of Will.
It’s white-hot. It’s a blizzard— a white-out. There’s no vignette the orgasm teases.
“You called me your heart before.” Mike’s lips touch featherlight against his cheek and Will’s eyes are squeezed shut, stuttering out whiny moans, too succumbed to look. “Remember? Well, you’re mine.” Mike says, low and private, as if they weren’t alone, as if even the air didn’t have the privilege, jealously keeping them only for Will and Will takes it, letting it curl possessively inside, a locket he can never take off, full of Mike. “You’re my Rilkean heart, my sweetest song,” Mike croons and Will’s gone— pushed over the edge and pulled apart and put back together again with all the carefulness Mike can manage, always a touch too eager to press close, knocks him off balance and rights his equilibrium in the same breath.
Will comes back to himself, shaking. He’s crying, breaths shuddering as he tries to take in air but it’s tinged with Mike, the tang of his sweat, the allure of the cologne Will bought for his birthday two years ago, but it’s oxygen so sweet he thinks he’d suffer the weight of it even as he feels himself slipping under. Right before, he sobs in a weak breath, “We didn’t even do it Doggy style…”
He doesn’t hear Mike’s surprised laughter, doesn’t feel the slide of his dick out of him, but he feels sleepy and content as he dozes off.
When Will wakes next, it’s to his entire body sore in places that he didn’t think he could be. There’s no way he can pick up a pencil, paint anything but a lazy line of acrylic the way his fingers feel, still aching from Mike’s iron grip on them. Mike is curled around him, snuffling snores into his neck, his curly hair tickling at his chin. Will doesn’t feel sticky or tacky with sweat, skin wiped down and soft and cooled with the studio window open, letting the sunset bleed into the air alongside the breeze. Will should get up. He should do something, maybe clean up the mess on the coffee table or neat Mike’s fallen books, but his boyfriend in his arms has always played precedent to most everything else so he settles deeper into Mike’s hold on him instead, arm around his head and tucking his face into the riotous mess of Mike’s hair, breathing in, at peace and in love.
He doesn’t fall back to sleep, well-rested and well-fucked so his mind is content to whirl around lazily ‘til it attaches on a stray thought— the arch and the position he’d been mentored to try out— and he sighs.
At least there’s date night at the end of the week.