Lie to Me (But Please Don't Leave) - goodoldfashioned (2024)

Chapter 1: DAY ONE

Chapter Text

“Being unhappy is comfortable. No one is going to come for your unhappiness, and, really, you don’t have to do anything about it if you don’t want to. Why give that up?” -Souvankham Thammavongsa, from ‘Bozo’

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Since around 2003 Jay has had recurring nightmares about receiving a collect call from a Scottsdale prison. He doesn’t always agree to the charges, but when he does it’s Mike on the other line, twenty-four years old again and calling to blame Jay for ruining his life.

“You’re not even going to bail me out?” Mike says, often while crying hoarsely. “Even though you admit this is your fault?”

“I’ve never admitted that!” Jay will shout, more horrified by that claim than anything else about the situation. “I never even said I was sorry!”

But by then the phone is melting in his hand, or the line has gone dead, or Jay has turned around to find Mike blood-splattered and furious, standing right behind him with a chainsaw.

The nightmare comes to mind when Rich calls him to say that Mike is in the emergency room and that he didn’t know who else to call.

“I guess I was his emergency contact,” Rich says, and Jay can hear him wincing. “Who knew? Anyway, we’re up in Superior and I don’t know what the hell to do, it’s our anniversary trip--”

“Superior?” Jay says, still not sure he isn’t just having a bad dream. Nothing Rich is saying makes sense.

“Superior National Forest! I told you fuckin’ guys, jesus. It’s my wedding anniversary, okay? We’re up here going on hikes and all that shit. What, I’m going to drive eight hours back to Milwaukee to bring him home from the ER? He really has nobody else to call?”

“What the hell happened? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. Well, he broke his leg. Something about his wrist, too. He just needs someone to check him out of the hospital. He’s on pain meds, you know. Has a cast on, can’t drive.”

“How did this happen?” Jay is picturing a fiery car crash or a bar brawl, though Mike hasn’t been that messy in over a decade.

“He fell off a ladder,” Rich says. “Probably doing something stupid, I don’t have all the details. Where the hell were you, by the way?”

“I’m-- I’m here, at my place-- What? I’m supposed to be monitoring him at all times?”

“No, no. I just thought. Never mind. Can you go get him? He’s at Saint Luke’s. My wife will leave me if I have to cut this trip short to deal with Mike.”

“Yeah-- sure, just. Where’s Tilly?”

“Tilly’s been gone for months! Doesn’t he tell you anything?”

“Apparently not.” Jay had been under the impression they were still living together. He hasn’t seen her around in a long time, but he never sees much of Mike’s rotating stream of girlfriends.

“I gotta go,” Rich says, but then he pauses for a long time, still on the phone while Jay tries to get his bearings about what’s just been dumped on him. “Are you gonna fuck this up?”

“How would I fuck it up? All I have to do is give him a ride home, you said?”

“Yeaaaaah, but. He’s hurt and stuff, and on painkillers. He needs some additional attention, I suspect.”

“Oh god,” Jay says, and then he feels terrible for wanting to fling this whole situation away like a frisbee. Poor Mike, having finally tanked his personal life enough to have Rich listed as his emergency contact. “It’s fine, I’ll-- Whatever, I can figure it out.”

Rich sighs like he’s not sure about that, like he might be leaving his best friend since childhood in the care of an incompetent asshole rather than the business partner who’s always had his shit together more than Mike or Rich have, even back when Jay would stay up all night watching porn, eating Oreos and worrying about all the ways that he was dysfunctional. Mike and Rich have always eaten more Oreos than he has, figuratively and literally.

“I’ll take care of it,” Jay says, vaguely offended at this point.

He hangs up and changes out of his workout clothes, resentful already that he’s skipping the run he’d been planning to go on. What was Mike doing on a ladder if Jay wasn’t there to shout directions from the floor about whatever set he was dressing? Surely he wasn’t doing housework. Jay’s little brother is Mike’s regular handyman and has reported, to Jay’s delight, that Mike barely knows how to screw lightbulbs into his fixtures, forget anything more involved. Jay and Rich are the ones who do that kind of heavy lifting at work.

At the hospital, Jay gives his name at the reception desk and is sent to another floor, then to another desk on that floor, where a woman with smiling bumblebees on her scrubs leads him to Mike’s room. Mike is reclining in a bed that seems too narrow for him, his injured right leg bound up to the knee in a heavy-looking cast. The cast and the size of the bed make all of his limbs seem more comically huge than ever, and the pale blue hospital gown he’s wearing makes Jay want to whirl around and apologize for looking, despite the limited privacy of the blanket that’s pulled up to Mike’s chest.

Mike meets Jay’s uncertain stare and starts snickering like he just heard the punchline of some inside joke, probably because he’s on drugs. There’s a brace on his right wrist and he has purplish bags under his eyes. Jay can’t stop feeling like he should avert his eyes out of respect, or out of secondhand embarrassment. He’s never known what to say to people who are in any kind of pain or personal crisis.

“Oh great, Jay’s here,” Mike says, maybe to the nurse, though she’s already turned to go, having explained on the way there that Jay will have to return to the front desk to sign Mike out once they have a wheelchair ready for him. “Now the fun can really begin.”

“What the hell?” Jay says. He’s not looking forward to dealing with Mike while he’s high on painkillers. He’s bad enough drunk. “How’d this happen?”

“I was taking down my Christmas decorations and a slight mishap occurred.”

Jay blinks at him, waiting for the punchline.

“It’s June,” he says when Mike just stares at him.

“So what? I mean, exactly! That’s why they had to come down. The grace period is over. Anyway, where’s Rich?”

“Rich is in Minnesota with his wife. Didn’t he tell you? I thought you talked to him.”

“Oh yeah. Wait, so he sent you? That fucker. What’s he doing in Minnesota?”

“Hiking? I don’t know, I guess it’s an anniversary trip. Um. Are you, like. Ready to leave?”

“With who?” Mike shuffles back against his pillow, trying to sit up straighter. “With you?”

“Yes, with me, why are you saying it like that’s absurd?”

Mike makes a wet scoffing sound and dissolves into laughter again, dragging his uninjured hand across his face clumsily.

“What, you’re gonna take care of me?” he says. “Like hell you are.”

“I--” Jay wants to say that all he agreed to was giving Mike a ride home, but of course Mike will need some further help. He can’t drive, maybe can’t even feed himself with how high he seems. “Did they give you crutches?”

“I have a prescription for crutches. I have to pick them up at the pharmacy. Isn’t that fuckin’ weird? When’s Rich coming back, by the way?”

“I’m not incompetent,” Jay says, offended again. “I can help out a friend in need. Rich is gone for a few more days. Don’t act like I’m going to kill you in the meantime.”

Mike shrinks down against his pillow as if he is afraid of that, actually.

“He can get dressed now,” the nurse says when she pokes her head back into the room, looking irritated that no attempt to dress Mike has yet been made. “If you’re checking him out?”

“Ha,” Mike says. He’s giving Jay a perverted smirk when he turns back. “Checking me out? Yeah, he is. He is doing that!”

“His clothes are there,” the nurse says, pointing.

Then she leaves again, shutting the door behind her, like Jay is going to lovingly put Mike’s clothes back on his prone body.

“Have at it,” Mike says, snickering like this is the height of comedy.

“What drugs are you on?” Jay asks. He can feel his neck getting hot, and knows this heat will spread up to his ears and down to his chest, engulfing him in the kind of fiery shame that only Mike and perhaps his father can still make him feel.

“C’mon, Jay.” Mike sits up in bed with obvious difficulty, grunting, and throws the blanket that was half-covering him to the floor. Jay already has to look away, because Mike’s dick is there, under a napkin-thin hospital gown. The fact that it’s just short of visible makes it seem even more unavoidably present. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” Mike says, leering at Jay when he looks again.

“How the hell are you supposed get pants on over that cast?” Jay asks, turning glumly to Mike’s clothes, which are stacked on a nearby chair, his untied shoes shoved underneath it.

“With spirit and determination. So get to it!”

Jay can smell Mike’s sweat on the clothes as soon as he touches them, almost rank but bringing back memories of times when Jay literally drooled for Mike’s scent and girth and general grossness. Mike must have been miserable, lying in agony waiting for help to arrive, twisting and sweating on the ground, alone. Jay readies himself to absorb more abuse, because Mike won’t let up while he’s vulnerable to Jay’s pity.

“Here,” Jay says, handing Mike his shirt.

“What are you doing?” Mike throws it back at him. “My wrist is fucked up, too.” He lifts the one with the brace on it to show Jay that his dominant hand is out of order. “Why’d you even come if you don’t want to help me?”

Jay can see the drugs are wearing off. The dark circles under Mike’s eyes are so extreme that he almost suspects it’s makeup that Mike had the nurse put on him as a prank, as if he even knew Jay was coming. He wants to run from the room and find the nurse now. Shouldn’t she help Mike get back into his clothes? Who do they think Jay is to Mike?

“I’m helping,” Jay says, suddenly feeling like he doesn’t know how to put a shirt on. He’s never done it from this angle, pulling the collar awkwardly around someone else’s helpless head. Once the shirt is at least bunched around Mike’s neck, Jay unties the back of the hospital gown and eases it down off of Mike’s arms, leaving it in a wrinkled heap over his crotch. Mike huffs as Jay helps him get his uninjured arm into the left sleeve of his shirt first. It’s trickier to get the other arm through, but they manage, and Jay hurries to pull the shirt down over Mike’s back and exposed belly.

“Do you want these on?” Jay asks, lifting Mike’s boxer shorts. They’re enormous in a way that embarrasses him, and Mike has a look on his face like the humor has drained from the situation for him, too.

“Just the jeans are fine,” Mike says. “When I get home I’ll just have to take it all off again. Or. You will.” He sniffs at his armpit and makes a face. “How am I gonna take a shower?” he asks, staring up at Jay with shiny, drugged-out eyes.

“Uhh. Didn’t they tell you? Isn’t there a brochure or something?”

“A brochure?” Mike looks offended.

“For how to go about your routines with a broken leg. Forget it, just. I’m putting the jeans on you now.”

“Great. Do it.”

Jay moves to the end of the bed, remembering Rich asking if he’s going to fuck this up as he resigns himself to do this, one leg at a time. He starts with the left leg, and once that’s on up to Mike’s knee he carefully pulls the right leg up over the cast. It’s slow going, and Mike has to turn onto his left side to help Jay get the jeans on, exposing his bare ass in the process. Jay tries not to look, which isn’t hard. Mike’s ass was never part of the appeal, for Jay.

They’re both slightly out of breath by the time the jeans are miraculously on Mike’s body, buttoned and zipped. Jay only caught a brief glimpse of Mike’s dick in the process, and he’s trying not to think about it, or about the fact that he’s somehow stunned that it’s still as big as it always was, as if it would have diminished in the absence of Jay’s attention.

“Well,” Mike says, still sounding winded and avoiding Jay’s eyes. “You managed to do that without killing me.”

“Why does everyone think I’m some kind of clumsy oaf who smashes things?” Jay asks, though he knows that’s not what Mike or Rich are getting at, exactly, with these remarks.

“I smashed myself,” Mike says blearily, as if Jay suggested Mike was blaming him for the fall from the ladder. “Can we go now?”

Getting Mike into a wheelchair is an embarrassing ordeal that Jay leaves to the nurses while averting his eyes. Then Jay is pushing the thing out of the building, bearing the full weight of Mike within it as they move through the offensively sunny parking lot toward Jay’s car.

“How are we, uh,” Jay says, when he’s opened the passenger side door. He eyes the seat, Mike’s outstretched leg in the cast, and Mike’s bulky body in general. “How are we supposed to, like. Manage this?”

“Ughhh,” Mike says, rubbing at his eyes and wincing like a headache is coming on. “Go get the nurses.”

“I can’t just leave you out here in a wheelchair.”

“I can kinda hop on my other leg, sorta-- Move! I’ll do it. God, Jay!”

“What? Here-- I’ll-- What do you need me to--”

What ensues is an awkward, fumbling progress that involves a lot of grunting from Mike, frantic adjustments made to the passenger seat of the car while Jay is tenuously holding Mike under both his arms to prevent him from going ass first to the ground, and Jay’s burning, red-faced awareness that he hasn’t touched Mike at all since the last time they fucked, which was like three years ago.

Okay, it was almost exactly three years ago. Summer 2021. Before that it had been three years since the last time, and before that over six, then there was the incident in the hardware store basement in 2008, and of course the original act, almost unfathomable to Jay now as something he allowed himself to do back when he considered even having a beer to be a dangerous indulgence he was too smart to want.

“Ahhh, fuck!” Mike says when he jars his broken leg against the floor of the car as he’s trying to get settled.

“Sorry!” Jay says, though he didn’t do anything. “Here, let me--”

He leans across Mike to grab the seatbelt for him, since Mike is just flopped there whining and miserable. Both of them are sweating. The scent of Mike’s sweat brings back more intense, unwanted memories of being in bed with him, though in this moment, like most moments of his life, Jay can’t believe it ever happened.

“This can’t be the way this is supposed to go,” Jay says, straightening up to look around the parking lot as if help might be on the way, a team of nurses dashing out to tell them they shouldn’t be doing this unsupervised, without professional assistance. “Goddammit!”

“Jesus christ,” Mike says, sounding so weak that Jay looks down at him with alarm. “Juh, Jay-- Just. Take me to the goddamn pharmacy. I need my meds. This shit is no joke.”

Jay nods and shuts the passenger side door carefully before jogging around the to driver’s side. His heart is slamming when he climbs behind the wheel. As they leave the lot, he swallows his impulse to groan at the fifteen dollar charge to lift the parking gate.

“How’d you get to the hospital?” Jay asks, feeling as if he should make conversation. Mike is moaning softly under his breath over there, eyes closed.

“I had my phone in my pants pocket,” Mike says after a moment. He’s mumbling and tight-jawed, and Jay regrets making him talk. “I dug it out and called an ambulance for myself.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t great. I actually called Rich first.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“‘Cause Rich told me to call 9-1-1.”

“I suppose that was the right move.”

Jay is still vaguely insulted that Rich was the one who appealed to him for help and not Mike himself. At this point in their lives Mike would probably rather become a ward of the state than accept Jay’s help outside of a professional context. But here he is anyway, somehow: in Jay’s car, in his care, intruding onto his personal territory in this brand new way.

It’s a hot day, and Jay worries about Mike waiting in the car while he goes into the pharmacy, as if Mike is a helpless dog who won’t be able to operate the car door if he needs fresh air. This is the type of worrying on behalf of others that Jay avoids by design. He’s exhausted by the work involved in doing this already, though he’s not afraid of hard work and has spent several decades doing work specifically assigned to him by Mike. This is different. It feels sloppy and mismanaged already, and he’s in a near panic by the time he gets back to the car with the crutches tucked under his arm and the pain pills in hand. Mike is no worse than he was when Jay left him, only irritably eager to take his medication. Watching him swallow it down with two gulps of water from the bottle he bought for this purpose, Jay realizes he does feel like this is somehow his fault. It’s unfair, and he thinks of his recurring nightmare about Mike calling him from prison.

“So am I taking you to your place?” Jay asks.

Mike groans, then makes a punched little noise as if that question was cruel.

“I can’t go there right now,” he says.

“What? Why not?”

“The Christmas decorations are still up. And I don’t have any food.”

Mike sneaks a peek at Jay as if to check to see if he’s buying this. He might not want Jay to glimpse what a mess his place is, though he’s usually not sensitive to being perceived as a mess and hardly has any pride left to guard in the state he’s in: clammy and unshaven, unable to walk and completely reliant upon Jay’s mercy. Jay doesn’t press the issue, just sets his jaw and sighs through his nose, driving instead to his own apartment, which is free of Christmas decorations and stocked with healthy food.

He wants to forget how this all began, that Mike was once the most exciting person he’d ever met. Jay has never liked feeling too comfortable with people. It’s better to be challenged and surprised by friends and admirers who he can orbit from a safe distance and then launch away from when he’s had enough. He wants people to be happy to see him and also content to see him go. Mike has always seemed either miserable or elated in his presence and has never fully granted permission for Jay to squirm free, not really, not even when he ran away to Scottsdale, where he didn’t actually get arrested and call Jay for bail money. He just came home, eventually, and now there’s no definition of home that doesn’t include the two of them.

Jay almost never uses his building’s elevator. His place is on the third floor, and the three flights of stairs add to his step goal for the day, which recently hasn’t been met as often as he’d like. The pandemic unraveled too many of his good habits, and now he feels too old and tired to return to many of them. Avoiding sex with Mike was one of those good habits he had stuck to until worldwide disaster struck. Jay misses it like he misses eating a whole sleeve of Oreos in one sitting: not at all, until a sudden craving for teeth-coating junk hits him and he ignores it for his own good, substituting dried cranberries or frozen grapes for what he really wants. In the case of sex, it’s not even other people anymore. Jerking off is so much easier to clean up than the kind of entanglements he’d find himself in when the lust clouds cleared and Mike was on top of him, heaving his breath and looking like he’d just been declared king of Jay’s world.

Now Mike is hobbling through Jay’s living room on the crutches, going past the couch and straight for Jay’s bedroom.

“Um,” Jay says, standing helpless near the door with the bag of Mike’s pain pills in his hand.

“I need to take a leak!” Mike bellows back at him, though he also passed the small guest bathroom near the foyer. Maybe he forgot it was there. It’s been a while since he was over. “Are you gonna come help me or am I gonna piss all over the place in here?”

Jay puts the pills on the kitchen counter and approaches his en suite bathroom cautiously. Mike is standing in front of the toilet with the crutches, trembling like he’s about to drop.

“Okay, okay,” Jay says, hurrying inside before he can fall. “Let me just, um--”

“I can pull my dick out if you unzip, just hurry, fuck, I’ve had to go for like an hour.”

“Why didn’t you have the nurse help you?”

“I don’t fucking know, I was high! Ungnh, Jay, please--”

“I’m doing it!”

Jay stands behind Mike, his chin on Mike’s back, and circles his arms around Mike’s chest before lowering them to feel below his gut for the button of his jeans, then the zipper. Mike is whining, and when he tries to grab his dick with his left hand he nearly falls over, tipping back against Jay.

“Just lean on the right one!” Jay says, meaning the crutch. “Let the other one drop.”

Mike puts all his weight on the right crutch, braced back against Jay slightly as the left one falls away and he scrambles his dick from his fly. Jay can’t see any of this happening, is staring at the ceiling, but he can feel every minute twitch and adjustment as Mike relieves himself, which is worse.

“Jesus christ,” Mike says, exhaling this in a way that Jay finds way too sexual. “How are you doing back there? I feel like I weigh a thousand pounds.”

“You don’t,” Jay says, though he knows he’d have a hard time getting Mike off the floor if he crashes. He withholds the impulse to tell Mike he can bench press two hundred pounds. “Are you done?” he asks.

“Uh-huh. Wait.” Mike jiggles in Jay’s grip, presumably giving his dick a final shake. “Okay, yeah. Mhm, feeling good again, actually. I think the pills are kicking in.”

“Great. Can you reach the other crutch?”

“Uhh.” Mike looks down at where it’s wedged between the wall and the toilet. “No.”

“Okay. Fuck! Hang on.”

Jay hears himself making embarrassing grunting sounds as he tries to kick the crutch into reach, and when he leans over to grab it he puts his other hand on Mike’s ass to help him stay standing, without thinking. Mike says nothing rude about this maneuver, just accepts the crutch when Jay lifts it for him.

By the time he’s helping Mike into bed they’re both slightly breathless again. Jay props the crutches against the bedside table while Mike gets himself into position, making himself comfortable atop Jay’s bedsheets.

“I’m just gonna close my eyes for a sec,” Mike says, resting his unhurt hand at the center of his chest. He’s starfished across Jay’s bed like he owns the place. “These pills knock me out. I’ll figure out how to shower later.”

“Fine,” Jay says, already resigned to being involved in that process. “Are your keys in your pocket? I could go to your place and get you some clean clothes.” He’s imagining boxer shorts, mainly, or pajama pants, anything that will allow Mike to take a leak through the slit without repeating the whole rodeo that just took place in the bathroom.

“Mhm, yeah,” Mike says. He moans and shifts up onto one elbow so that Jay can reach his back left pocket, where the keys are.

Jay feels weirder about digging his fingers into the pocket of Mike’s jeans than he has about the many other intimacies they’ve shared today and over the years. He manages to free them, and Mike seems to be asleep as soon as he’s settled onto his back again, dipped out by the drugs.

“I’ll be back soon,” Jay says, whispering this before he leaves the room.

Again, he feels irresponsible for leaving Mike alone. It’s just a ten minute drive to his house, and Jay is impatient on the way there, blasting through a yellow light as it turns red. He’s a little nervous to lay eyes on Mike’s place, as if it’s the scene of a crime, and as soon as he’s parked in the driveway he sees the tipped-over ladder and the half-unstrung Christmas lights hanging down over the garage door, also what seems to be a smear of dried blood on the cement that makes his stomach lurch. He can take the most extreme gore in existence when he knows it’s fake, but actual blood makes him squirm.

Inside, the place is less of a wreck than he expected, though dusty and cluttered with crap that Mike clearly should throw away, like a pile of empty Amazon boxes in the foyer. There’s a stale feeling in the air that makes Jay want to open a window, but he doesn’t have time to clean or cheer the place up. He hurries upstairs to Mike’s bedroom, feeling weird as he pulls drawers open in search of boxer shorts. Finally he realizes there are none folded in the dresser and finds a handful of wrinkled ones in a laundry basket near the closet. Though he feels insane doing so, he sniffs them to make sure they’re clean before stuffing them in a Star Trek tote bag that was hanging on the closet door handle. It’s big enough for a pair of flannel pajama pants, a few t-shirts, and some clean socks, all pulled from the same basket of unfolded laundry.

That’s plenty, Jay reasons, hurrying to escape the cave of Mike’s dark bedroom, which feels like a place where he might be trapped. They’ve never had sex here, and Jay has only even been downstairs twice. Usually this is the domain of Mike and whichever woman is currently in the process of realizing she has too much self respect to pick up wherever the last one left off. Before Jay can get back to the first floor, his phone buzzes with a text from Rich.

Everything go ok?

Yes, Jay sends back. He’s resting at my place.

Great!

You’ll be back tomorrow or Sunday?

Not till Thursday.

Jay can’t remember how he got the impression it would only be a few more days before Rich returns home. A lot has happened between that first phone call and now, and he feels newly panicked at the thought of five whole days of hosting Mike in this condition. He’s not even sure Rich will take over when he gets back. He’s the one with a wife, after all. Mike can’t as easily justify his presence in their bed.

Back at Jay’s apartment, Mike is still asleep. Jay stands over the bed staring at him and trying to regain his bearings. They have had sex in this bed, and it’s hard to believe that was three years ago already. At first they confined their desperate pandemic sex to work, but eventually Mike ended up here. Whenever he regains his taste for fucking Jay, he always wants to combine it with sleeping together, though he knows Jay can only sleep properly when he’s alone. Mike is always testing to see how much he can get away with. He stomps all over people’s boundaries like it’s a hobby. Jay knows he’s in for a whole world of unrestrained life-sharing over the next five days. He puts the Star Trek bag full of Mike’s clothes down by the bed and goes to the kitchen to do what he planned to with the rest of his afternoon: meal prep for the week. Now he’ll run through everything faster, with Mike eating at least half of it.

For about an hour he’s able to focus on what he’s doing, working in the kitchen while he plays records at a low enough volume to respect Mike’s nap. He finishes an avocado and chicken salad and is halfway through making soup with the rest of the chicken when Mike calls out from the bedroom.

“Jay!”

He sounds panicked, so Jay drops what he’s doing and dashes into the room, expecting disaster. Mike is still in the bed. He gives Jay a pathetic look and makes an attempt to sit up against the headboard.

“What’s the matter?” Jay asks when Mike just stares at him like he’s only half-aware of what’s going on.

“I’m thirsty,” Mike says. “And hungry. Are you cooking something?”

“Yes, chicken soup. I’ll bring you some when it’s done.”

“And I stink. I need to wash the flop sweat off, it’s awful.”

“Flop sweat?” Jay makes a face and glances warily at the bathroom. “Okay, uhh. I can help you get into the bath? Somehow? With your cast sticking out?”

This already sounds impossible, but the idea of Mike standing on one leg in the slippery shower is worse. Mike moans. Jay leaves to get him a glass of water and to turn down the heat under his simmering soup.

“My hand is shaking,” Mike says when he reaches for the water with his left hand. “Look.”

“I see. Are you cold?”

“A little, yeah. Does your showerhead thing detach?”

“Yeah.” Jay waits for a joke about how he probably uses it to pleasure himself anally. The fact that he does makes the idea of having Mike in there worse.

“I think I have to sit in the tub and just spray myself down.” Mike looks glum about this, which is alarming. Jay had assumed he’d enjoy occupying Jay’s territory without a hint of shame. He still misreads Mike’s confidence levels at the worst times. “I’ll probably need your help,” Mike mutters.

“Fine,” Jay says. “Do you want to get undressed here or in there?”

“Here,” Mike says. He closes his eyes and sucks in an enormous breath. He’s glaring at Jay when he exhales. “I feel like James Caan,” he says.

Jay snorts at the reference, annoyed by the fact that he feels a little bit like Kathy Bates himself, though he hasn’t tied Mike to the bed and in fact feels somewhat like Mike has kidnapped him.

“Would you rather have Rich here doing this for you?” Jay asks, more sharply than he meant to.

“No,” Mike says.

“That’s what I thought. So stop looking at me like I’ve got an axe.”

This makes Mike smile, briefly.

Jay pulls Mike’s shirt over his head, which is easy enough. The sight of Mike’s exposed chest in this bed is a lot for him to grapple with arousal-wise, even though he does stink at the moment. Jay has spent hours enviously sighing into that chest hair while Mike sleeps peacefully, unbothered by the presence of another human. The sound of Mike’s heartbeat against his ear was a small consolation, at times.

“Let’s just deal with the fact that you’re going to see my dick and balls,” Mike says when they both stare down at the crotch of his jeans. Mike has worked the button open with his left hand and is struggling with the zipper while Jay waits to be invited to assist. “There’s no getting around it,” Mike says when Jay drags his gaze upward to meet Mike’s. “I guess it’s not that big of a deal, uhh. Right? Considering your familiarity with the, um. Terrain.”

“Sure,” Jay says, back to watching Mike fumble with the zipper. “Do you want me to--”

“I’d venture to say this dick and these balls are the ones you’ve had the most contact with in your life,” Mike says, loudly and in a way that makes Jay remember he’s on drugs. “Aside from your own. Though, really, I don’t know what you get up to without me. Maybe you’re a monk unless I’m involved.”

“No,” Jay says, primly, and he smacks Mike’s hand out of the way. “Just let me do it, I can hear your stomach growling.”

“Maybe you’re a huge slut in a very secretive fashion,” Mike says. He sounds like he might start crying, though not about Jay’s sluttiness. He gives up on the jeans and just watches as Jay gets them unzipped and tugs them down, revealing Mike’s dick, which is somehow not entirely soft.

“Well,” Jay says, averting his eyes and still tugging on the pants. “I guess I’m not surprised that you’re getting off on this.”

“I’m not!” Mike sounds upset, and looks it when Jay glances at him. “I don’t know what’s happening. Maybe it’s the drugs.”

“Don’t drugs usually make you soft?”

“Me, personally? I don’t know! I’ve never done drugs. I don’t even like weed.”

“Okay, well--”

“Jay, this is a very emotional time for me. I thought I was going to die.”

Jay withholds a smart ass reply and gives Mike a real look of sympathy instead. It’s harder to maintain this attitude when he returns to stripping the pants off and sees Mike is getting not just partially but fully erect, which is also making Jay’s dick stir in his pants.

“I’m sorry you thought that,” Jay says. He moves down to work the right leg of the jeans carefully down over the last few inches of the cast. “And I’m glad your accident wasn’t worse. Don’t go up on ladders without me. I mean-- Alone.”

“What am I without you but alone, Jay.”

Jay makes a disgusted noise under his breath, then feels bad about it. He takes the left leg of the jeans off more roughly, and suddenly Mike is nude and splayed out in his bed, his dick standing up for Jay’s attention like it expects a warm reunion kiss.

“Old habits,” Mike says, and he seems authentically sheepish, shoulders lifting.

Jay can feel that his face is red. He moves away from the end of the bed before Mike can spot the tent that’s forming in his jeans, not sure how he’s going to keep it concealed while he helps Mike get into the bathtub. Maybe it’s not even a bad thing if Mike sees that he’s getting hard. It’s just a type of compliment, and Mike could probably use one right now. Still, for his own sake, Jay wills his dick to stop responding to Mike’s helpless nudity, as if he’s ever been able to will it to do anything but enthusiastically insert itself into the situation when Mike is involved.

“Do you need a hand?” Jay asks when Mike hoists himself off the bed, wobbling a little as he gets the crutches under his arms. His dick bobs with unfortunate attractiveness as he hefts himself around, in a way that makes Jay struggle not to think about how good it feels to get his mouth stretched open around the thick weight of it.

“Let me try this part on my own,” Mike says. He does seem truly miserable, erection and all. “Don’t watch. Just go turn on the water.”

“We should probably get you into the tub before we do that.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause you might slip!”

“Ah Christ,” Mike says, limping slowly toward the bathroom on the crutches. “What did I do to deserve you as a nursemaid?”

“I’m not even being mean.”

“I know that! I’m humiliated in front of my ex-lover, let me sulk about it for fuck’s sake. And don’t dawdle back there looking at my ass, let’s go.”

Jay follows with a snarl, disliking that Mike called him a lover. He also doesn’t feel like he qualifies as an ex. They never dated, or treated each other with the kind of care they’ve shown to official romantic partners, and they’re still together in the most important way.

Getting Mike lowered into the tub without jarring his broken leg is predictably difficult. In the end, Jay isn’t even sure how they accomplished it, just that they’re both sort of panting once Mike’s ass is planted in the tub, his cast sticking out with his foot resting on the closed lid of the toilet. It does not look comfortable and Mike is making pained faces, so Jay goes for the showerhead and grabs the soap. Hesitation can have no place in this. He just has to get to work.

“Too cold!” Mike says when Jay turns the water on.

“Give it a second.” Jay aims the water away from Mike. He wishes he didn’t feel like he’s disposing of a body, and that his dick wasn’t throbbing against the too-tight fly of his jeans. “Take this,” he says, thrusting the soap into Mike’s left hand. It immediately slips free and lands on his chest.

“What is this?” Mike asks when he’s recaptured it, bringing it to his face for a sniff. “Vanilla?”

“Almond blossom,” Jay says. He peeks at Mike’s face when he hears him snickering. “What?”

“Aww, you’re a little almond blossom, Jay, it’s true. That’s you, that’s your scent. Bittersweet.”

“Shut up. What-- What do you want me to get wet? Just everything?”

“Everything.” Mike nods solemnly and moves his left leg, which is bent and pressed to the tile wall of the shower, spreading himself open as much as possible in the tiny tub.

Jay feels like he’s in a porno version of a movie about a kid bringing a friendly monster home and having to hide it from his parents, stuck in the montage about the monster being a fish out of water who takes up too much space and makes a ruckus. And yet it has such big, pitiable eyes. Jay keeps his averted from Mike’s as he sprays him down with the now-warm water. He has to swallow a moan of protest when Mike’s dick visibly twitches for the attention.

“Sorry,” Mike says.

“It’s fine,” Jay says, not even sure they’re talking about the same thing.

“It’s just, you know, that feels pretty good.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Obviously you hate this.”

Jay flicks his gaze up to Mike’s and sees from Mike’s smug grin that he’s noticed Jay’s boner. Of course he was on the lookout for it, the arrogant fuck.

“Obviously,” Jay says. He puts the showerhead down on Mike’s knee and waits for him to either do something with the soap or start jerking off for Jay’s viewing pleasure, or both. “Do you want me to get your hair wet? Or what’s happening?”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Mike says. His eyes shimmer with the threat of tears, though he still looks pleased with himself. “This is sort of my nightmare. Being infirm and you having to deal with it. But my dick hasn’t been this happy in months. Years, maybe.”

“Go figure. I’m going to wash your hair. Try not to come.”

“Oh-- Yeah. I’ll try.”

“Do you want me to shave you?”

Asking this, Jay has to admit, at least to himself, that he’s beginning to enjoy some aspects of the situation, now that they both have boners over it.

“Shave me?” Mike moans and twitches, causing the showerhead to fall between his legs, nearly crashing into his unguarded balls. “Shit-- What-- Where?”

“Your face!” Jay can’t hold the sudden urge to laugh, but he keeps it mostly in his eyes and chest, letting Mike see his nose scrunch up as he tries to resist full on cracking up. “Never mind, we can worry about that later. I cannot believe you’re doing this to me, Mike.”

“I’m not doing anything! I’m helpless. There, I said it. You have all the power here, Jay. Go ahead and use it however you want, I can’t stop you.”

Jay gets Mike’s hair wet and rubs shampoo into it. Mike closes his eyes for this part and hums a little under his breath, knocking his knee against the wall of the shower nervously while Jay massages his scalp. Mike has always looked good with his hair all fucked up and wet. The first time Jay touched it was for the purpose of dyeing it bright green. Jay had gloves on, but it still felt like a lot to suddenly be doing that type of thing together. They both pretended it wasn’t a big deal. At one point during the hair-dyeing process Mike had tipped his head over the back of the chair he was sitting in to look up at Jay, and something about the way his throat looked at that angle made Jay’s stomach drop. He’d already known that his developing thing with Mike was something so big and complicated that it had the potential to fuck up his whole life, but he didn’t really know until that moment that his dick would be involved.

“Better?” Jay asks when he’s rinsed the shampoo out of Mike’s hair, using a few more swipes of his fingers to make sure he got it all.

“Mhmm.” Mike nods up at Jay dreamily, looking freshly drugged, though he hasn’t had a dose of his pills since they were in the car. “I’m so hard,” he says, as if Jay can’t see that.

“Do you want me to wash it?” Jay asks. He’s on his knees for Mike, throbbing in his jeans, so why the hell not.

“Yes,” Mike says, sheepish again.

Jay would rather bend over the rim of the tub and suck Mike off with savage skill, to remind him what he’s been missing, as if Mike wouldn’t drop his pants anytime Jay offers. He knows what he’s been missing. They both groan under their breath as Jay’s soapy hand closes around Mike’s big dick. It’s a beautiful sight, Jay has to admit, and he watches what he’s doing to Mike with his lips parted, mesmerized. He’s surprised when he turns to check on Mike’s expression and sees he’s not staring down at Jay’s hand moving on his dick. He’s got his head tipped back in that same way he did on the hair-dyeing day, resting against the tiled shower wall while he watches Jay’s face.

“Jesus,” Mike says, his shoulders twitching like Jay just caught him. “Jay, ah, wha-- Why are you going so slow?”

“I dunno.”

“You want to make this last, huh? This magic moment?”

Jay shrugs. He’s ready to get fucked and thinking about how he might make that happen. He looks down at Mike’s dick again, slowing his strokes even more, and grins when Mike groans in frustration and tries to fuck his hand, mostly failing because he can’t get traction.

It’s always been like this with them. Everything about it seems impossible until suddenly they’re doing it and it’s the easiest thing in the world to fall straight down into the deep, dark danger of how good it feels.

“Jay,” Mike says, begging. His eyelids have gotten heavy, and he’s breathing faster while Jay keeps his grip just a bit too loose, his wrist pumping a bit too slow. “Kiss me,” Mike says, taking him off guard.

“No,” Jay says, not sure why. Except that the last time they unceremoniously stopped fucking felt a little personal in a brand new way and maybe Jay is still really fucking mad about it, actually.

Mike whines and winces, and then he’s coming, because Jay accidentally tightened and quickened his grip just then, needing something to angrily squeeze.

“Oh god,” Mike says, groaning through his orgasm in a way that reverberates against Jay’s left arm, which is braced on the rim of the tub, the whole thing seeming to shudder along with Mike. “Juh, yeah, thank-- Thank you.”

Jay says nothing, just picks up the showerhead and sprays Mike’s dick clean, enjoying it when he whimpers at the overstimulation. When that’s done, Jay picks up the soap and does Mike’s chest, trying not to think about how hard he’s going to come, and how soon, when Mike returns the favor.

“Jay,” Mike says, still in the melted mode that always overtakes him after he comes. He gropes for Jay with his clumsy left hand, and Jay evades him. “You’re so cute,” Mike says. “All blushy.”

Jay doesn’t say that his face is red because he’s pissed off. He doesn’t want to turn this into some incriminating fight. He can just get off and get over it. He’s not twenty-two years old anymore, and he’s made a solemn vow to never let Mike’s sloppiness provoke him into a fury again.

When Mike has been cleaned and rinsed, Jay dries his hair with a towel and helps him stand. Mike’s one working leg is even more unsteady than it was before he came, and now water is involved, so they take it slowly. Jay keeps close as Mike hobbles his way to the bed on the crutches, ready to catch him if he takes a tumble, but he makes it there without intervention.

“Come here,” Mike says when he’s stretched out in Jay’s bed again, naked and unashamed.

“What for?” Jay asks, to make sure Mike won’t try to kiss him.

“Sit on my face.” Mike grins when he sees Jay falter toward the bed, wanting that. “I know your greedy ass has missed it.”

“I can’t just go into face sitting cold,” Jay says, though he’s already unbuttoning his jeans. They’ve gotten a little tight even when not containing his erection, and he’s ready to be out of them, whatever Mike has in mind.

“Cold?” Mike ogles Jay’s tented boxers when he’s got the jeans off. “Not hardly.”

“It’s awkward,” Jay says, trying not to whine. He wants that, but he was usually drunk when they did it in the past. “What, I’m just gonna-- Climb up on you?”

“You’ve climbed up on me plenty of times, Jay.”

“I mean, in your condition.”

“My leg’s way down there, and my face is up here. Stop being such a baby and let me eat that ass.”

Jay’s knees liquefy slightly whenever Mike gives him an order in that angry tone. He’s not proud of it, but there’s no reason not to go all in now that he’s jerked Mike off in the bathtub, so he slides his boxers down and approaches the bed, wishing it was at least nighttime.

“Oh my god,” he says, snickering as he straddles Mike’s gut, careful not to lower himself down to make skin contact yet. This feels like something he’s never done before. It’s always like that at the beginning, with Mike, because they’ve always waited so long since the last time. “You really want me to just, uh. Sit?”

“I’d manhandle you into position if I could.” Mike lifts his injured right hand to show that he can’t. “Have mercy,” he says, then he licks his lips.

Jay opens his mouth to ask how Mike is so somehow good at this while also being embarrassing and terrible in every direction, then decides now is not the time for that discussion and turns around, his face flaming as he aims his ass where Mike wants it.

“Lower,” Mike says, in a gravelly way that makes Jay have to swallow a whimper that he hopes was mostly not audible.

Mike paws at Jay’s ass cheeks without finesse, using his left hand part them before he dives in nose first, then tongue. Jay makes a kind of squawking sound that he can’t feel that bad about, because no one has done anything to him in this area for three years. That’s why he’s mad, he realizes, shutting his eyes and grinding down onto Mike’s tongue as it spears into him. Usually he’s been with someone else between the times he was with Mike, and so has Mike. This time, only Mike had someone since the last time they were together.

He thinks, insanely, of how Tilly gave him a nice bottle of wine the first and only time Mike brought her to one of his Halloween parties. Once she’d seen the character of the party she’d been embarrassed about it. Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings was blaring on the living room TV, one of Jay’s friends from college was dressed as the Greasy Strangler, and the party snacks were themed to look like bloody body parts. Jay had liked her for seeming so out of her depth in his territory without ever getting defensive about, and he’d been annoyed at Mike for not warning her about what they were walking into.

He doesn’t want to think about Mike’s exes while he grinds on Mike’s face, but it’s not really a problem. Soon he’s not thinking about anything except how grossly good it feels. Even the strain in his thighs from balancing like this is wonderful, and he doesn’t touch his dick, because he wants to stay on the edge for as long as he can while Mike devours him.

“Let me breathe for a second,” Mike says, his teeth scraping Jay’s ass cheek when he talks.

“Suh, sorry--”

“Nnh, it’s okay, never mind, just suffocate me.”

Mike yanks Jay back down onto him, moaning when his tongue shoves in again. Jay moans, too, head thrown back, his heavy cock bobbing between his thighs and flicking precome all over Mike’s chest, no part of him caring about what happens after this. It’s the same magic trick Mike keeps bamboozling him with, if not quite fooling him. He still can’t figure out how it works, and Mike will never tell him, if he even knows himself.

Jay laughs low in his chest when he sees Mike is getting hard again, his dick steadily rising as he sighs and slobbers between Jay’s ass cheeks. If there’s one thing Jay truly hates about Mike, it’s that his approval means at least ten percent more than anyone else’s, and usually more like fifty, at times approaching a hundred. Mike’s erections have always felt this way, too, like much more potent proof of Jay’s appeal than anyone else’s claims that they want him. He can’t imagine needing anyone else to want him this much. Somewhere along the way, Mike’s lust became Jay’s lifeblood, and it’s true even during the long stretches when they’re not fucking. It’s still there, pumping in Jay’s veins, keeping him sustained when he feels so low he wants to hide in his apartment for the rest of his life. Mike is still out there somewhere, wishing for him. Jay can always feel it, and he’ll start to believe that denying Mike feels as good as giving in to him does, but only as a coping mechanism. He really knows this is the best feeling, before the big drop: letting Mike claw him open and huddle inside him like an animal seeking shelter.

“Okay,” Mike says when Jay is debating jerking himself to completion or going down onto all fours so he can lap at Mike’s cockhead. “Here, hang on-- Turn around.”

“Wha, what--”

“Get on my dick now, Jay. Ride it.”

He doesn’t need to ask if Jay wants that, too. Jay is already turning to face him, nodding. Mike flings the bedside drawer open with his left hand while still staring up at Jay as he gets into position, bumping his licked-open ass back against Mike’s dick. Jay doesn’t even care that there’s a fat blue vibrator in the drawer, or that Mike’s clumsy searching causes it to tumble out onto the floor.

“Here,” Jay says, bending forward to grab the lube. He really wants Mike to do all the work, his mind sinking toward autopilot in a way that makes even getting the lube cap open somewhat challenging, but Mike is not capable of his usual ferocious control right now. Which could be good. It’s new, at least, a novelty for them.

“I’m gonna last a while this time,” Mike says, issuing this like a warning while Jay reaches behind him to rub his lube-slicked fingers up and down Mike’s cock.

“Good,” Jay says. “I’m not.”

“You need to come,” Mike says, almost gravely, nodding. “I can tell.”

“Yeah.” Jay swallows heavily, knowing he doesn’t need to tell Mike that he wants to wait a little bit longer. Coming on Mike’s cock is a particular humiliating thrill, and it’s been a long time.

When he sinks down onto Mike’s dick for the first time in three years it brings tears to his eyes, but they aren’t tears of emotion. It’s a physical response to strain. That vibrator on the floor is not this thick, and he’s out of practice even with that thing. It doesn’t hold a lot of appeal anymore. Usually he’s just on his back with his eyes closed and his hand on his dick, imagining himself held facedown in a dark forest or abandoned warehouse by someone who is not Mike but not unlike him, screwing him into the ground in a way that may or may not end in murder. There’s often a whole story attached.

Actually riding Mike’s dick is a non-narrative experience. It’s just good, full, grunting satisfaction. Jay comes with a long groan as soon as Mike grabs his cock for a few fast pumps, and he lets himself arch back into it the way he knows Mike likes, though not for that reason. He just does it, with Mike, like a mermaid throwing her hair back as she emerges dramatically from the sea. It’s embarrassing, but only later, when Mike inevitably describes how he looked, which is where he got the mermaid thing from.

“You can’t stop now,” Mike says when Jay goes boneless on top of him, recovering and still squeezing up around Mike’s dick in aftershock spasms. “Did you wear yourself out?” Mike asks, reaching up to give Jay’s left nipple a mocking flick. “Old man?”

“You’re older than me,” Jay says, but it doesn’t seem true, maybe just because he’s still winded and his legs are trembling from all this squatting and bouncing.

“That’s all you got? I’m older than you? Finish what you started, Jay. Ride that cock till I’m creaming you up inside, go on.”

Jay whines and starts moving again, feebly, but Mike doesn’t seem to be in any hurry. His eyes are glittery, almost black with menacing pleasure, just the way Jay likes them. Mike is enjoying himself, broken leg and all.

The thought makes Jay feel powerful, like his body has healing powers that he’s loaning out to Mike’s, and he starts moving with more intention, biting his bottom lip and letting his now soft cock flop pathetically while he rides Mike’s harder. Mike reaches out to tug on Jay’s periodically, not really trying to get him hard. Jay whimpers like it’s too much every time, because he knows Mike loves that.

Because he knows Mike loves it: has he spent his whole life doing things for this reason?

Not the time to think about that, though the forgiving haze of his orgasm is fading and he’s beginning to realize how sweaty he’s gotten, working himself like this for Mike’s pleasure. Mike is looking at him like he’s perfect. Jay is basking in it while he falls apart in a different way, every clench of his ass around Mike’s dick an effort to be perfect for him.

When he can see Mike getting close, he again feels like a powerful being who is performing a benevolent act for his ally. He has no idea how long he’s been dragging himself up and down on Mike’s dick while Mike watches him with leering approval and pinches his nipples, but he’s pretty sure he’d be hard again if he wasn’t completely exhausted. Mike’s attempts to keep his expression cool and stony start to crumble, and his hips are trying to screw up into Jay more than they can in his current state. Seeing this gives Jay renewed energy, a glowing feeling of achievement blooming all throughout him like another kind of orgasm as he watches Mike’s eyes struggle to stay open and his lips parting around broken sounds of a familiar, sorrowful signaling that he’s about to burst.

“Jay,” Mike says and then he’s coming, grabbing for Jay’s waist with both hands and forgetting that he has a brace on the sprained one. Mike shouts in something that sounds like pain and ecstasy mercilessly intertwined. The combination startles Jay, and his own languid satisfaction is flipped into panic when Mike’s whole body jerks underneath him like he’s just been electroshocked at the base of his spine. “Ow, ow, ow, fuck!” Mike says when he can speak again, in a strained and watery voice, his dick still pulsing out his release as Jay carefully disconnects from him, letting it spill everywhere.

“Okay, all right,” Jay says, gently shifting to Mike’s side. He reaches over Mike to get a handful of tissues from the box on the bedside table, though his sheets are already wrecked from their sweat alone. “I’ll get-- Do you need your pills?”

“I’ve needed them for like an hour,” Mike says, still wincing, his eyes pinched shut. “Nnngh, ah, god, shit!” He holds his right arm up as if even settling his wrist down on the mattress again will hurt.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jay sits up to mop at Mike’s dick with the tissues, then realizes he’s attending to the wrong appendage and slides out of the bed to get the pills.

“I didn’t want to ruin it,” Mike says, this confession barely audible through his gritted teeth as Jay turns to leave the room.

Jay thinks he understands, his heart slamming as he makes his way through his apartment, naked and trying to remember where he put the pills. Their arrival from the hospital feels like it happened a week ago. He finds the pharmacy bag in the kitchen and gets a fresh glass of water for Mike before heading back to the bedroom. Mike delayed taking his pain pills so they could fuck. So, that’s something new, for them and their particular dysfunction.

“Here,” Jay says, popping open the pill bottle. “Do you take one at a time?”

“Uh-huh.”

Mike still looks miserable. When Jay has the pill in his palm Mike just opens his mouth like he doesn’t trust his shaky left hand to get it in there. Jay pushes it in past Mike’s lips, feeling weird about this new type of intimacy even while his ass is all blown out and leaking from Mike’s attentions. He brings the glass of water to Mike’s mouth and tilts it carefully so he can drink.

“This has gotta be somebody’s fetish,” Mike says, trying to save face when he’s calmed down enough to be embarrassed. “Right? Using someone who can’t move like a sex toy and then drugging them.”

“I didn’t use you like a sex toy,” Jay says, muttering this resentfully, because he’s pretty sure he’s taking some kind of bait by objecting to that characterization of what just happened. He reads the pill bottle instead of looking at Mike. “It says you’re supposed to take it with food.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you didn’t last time! I’m gonna bring you, uh. I made that soup.”

“Perfect,” Mike says, already back to looking devious and in control. Jay realizes why as he pulls on a clean pair of underwear and a t-shirt. Mike expects Jay to feed him soup by the spoonful, and Jay has no excuse not to do so.

By the time he returns with the soup and spoon, hating the idea of even a drop of it spilling onto his already dirty bedsheets, he can see that the pill has kicked in. Mike looks pleasantly dazed and like he’s finding everything amusing again, the corner of his lips twitching with a smirk. He’s pulled the blankets up over himself.

“Want me to help you get dressed?” Jay asks.

“It’s probably easier to just leave me nude for the duration.”

“Mike-- No.” Jay fidgets and looks down at the bowl of steaming soup in his hands. “You’re gonna make fun of me, but I have a weird thing about this.”

“This?”

“About the idea of someone eating while they’re naked. It’s, like, irrationally repulsive to me, so. If you want to fuck again later, let me at least put boxers and a shirt on you before you eat.”

Mike still looks high when Jay glances up at him, but also like he thinks Jay is insane.

“As if you haven’t enjoyed taking my dick while also being repulsed by me,” he says. Then he shrugs. “Fine, Jay. Do whatever you need to, you neurotic fuck.”

Jay sets the soup down on the bedside table, wondering if that’s true. Has he ever actually been repulsed by Mike? Maybe by some of his puns.

“Where’d you get that?” Mike asks when Jay squats down to rummage through the Star Trek bag full of Mike’s clothes.

“I went to your house,” Jay says. He glances up at Mike, worried. “Remember?”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess. I think I was falling asleep when you told me that.”

“Maybe. You didn’t have a concussion, did you? After you fell?”

“No, Jay, it’s just these drugs. And my mind’s kind of Swiss cheese holey anyway.”

“True.”

“So who’s that guy?” Mike asks, pointing.

Jay turns with alarm, afraid Mike is hallucinating a man in the room with them. He flinches when he sees what Mike is actually pointing to: the vibrator, lying on the floor. Jay had forgotten that Mike flung it there in his quest to get the lube.

“That’s an actual sex toy,” Jay says, refusing to be embarrassed. “Sit up, I’ll do your t-shirt first.”

Mike seems like he wants to make further jokes about the silicone cock, but he’s getting loopier by the minute as Jay dresses him in the shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. Once he’s dressed, Jay picks up the vibrator and deposits it back into the drawer without ceremony, the lube following.

“Scoot over,” he says.

“Mhm?” Mike is dozing off, slumped back against the headboard.

“Mike, you have to eat. Make room, I’ll help you.”

Soup may not have been the best option, but it’s what Jay has and it’s hot. He feels like he’s feeding his pet monster while Mike struggles to stay awake, accepting spoonfuls as Jay offers them. It’s the least erotic thing Jay has ever done directly after sex.

“I feel like I’m two hundred years old,” Mike says when he’s done and Jay is patting his mouth with a tissue. He gives Jay a pathetic, pleading look when their eyes meet. “Do I look like an elderly hobo right now?”

“No.”

“Are you really gonna shave me?”

“Um, sure. But you don’t look bad with a beard, you know.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Mike mumbles, sinking down onto the pillow. His eyes are already closed. “Get in with me,” he says when Jay stands from the bed.

“I have to eat, too. And it’s like three o’clock, I have things to do. Just rest, I’ll shave you later.”

Mike snorts like that’s hilarious, then he’s asleep.

Jay eats soup alone in the kitchen, his stomach feeling too twisty to allow him to enjoy it, though it turned out pretty good. He was so preoccupied with the horror of feeding Mike before that he hadn’t yet noticed how ragged he feels, ass-wise. He just spent twenty minutes bouncing heedlessly on Mike’s big dick after three years of nothing but the occasional visit from that vibrator. It’s the kind of thing he’s always let Mike talk him into. He’ll never age out of it or grow whatever organ he should have to protect himself from this. When they’re in their eighties Mike will still be hovering over his shoulder, breathing heavily onto him and doing something to his nipples. It’s disgusting to contemplate, but Jay knows he’s comforting himself with the thought, too, in the aftermath of going to bed with Mike again. Whatever happens next, however they wreck it this time, they’ll still be together until they’re dust. They tried breaking up once. It didn’t work. They were locked together in an unending mental anguish even when they were physically apart. The mental anguish persists when they’re together, but it’s tolerable, at least for Jay. Sometimes he flatters himself by wondering if it’s driven Mike insane.

After eating, it’s a struggle to remember what he intended to do with the rest of his day. He ends up cleaning, first the kitchen and then himself, taking a shower and spending a long time grooming in the humid bathroom afterward, neatening his beard and trimming his nails, trying to get the swoosh in his hair right. When he pokes his head out, Mike is still out cold, hugging the pillow against his face with his left arm. He’s half turned onto his left leg with the cast awkwardly splayed on top of the blankets. Nobody gave Jay any information on what he should or shouldn’t let Mike do. He feels like he’s failing to police something, like Rich will be aghast when he finds out. Maybe it’s the sex. It’s always felt like something they’re not quite allowed to do, which is part of the appeal.

And now here’s the feeling that always comes with it, self-destructive and irrational: he wants to tell someone. It’s heavy at the back of his tongue like a rock that he’s learned to speak around but not swallow, how badly he wants someone to know everything and then tell him what to do about it. Mike can’t be that person, though he’s the only one whose orders Jay follows. There is no one else to tell, so Jay opens a beer at five o’clock and sits on his couch watching a random Shudder movie, trying to convince himself he’s still the master of this domain.

He’s switched to a movie he’s seen before when Mike finally wakes up hours later, around dusk.

“Jay!”

It’s almost a relief to hear his monster calling out from the den he’s been confined to, needing something.

“What’s wrong?” Jay asks when he comes into the doorway, embarrassed by how quickly he got there. Mike is as he left him, hair mussed and clothes twisted but otherwise fine.

“I’m hungry again,” Mike says. “That soup was like nothing.”

“I was thinking about ordering a pizza,” Jay says, because he’s had two more beers and he doesn’t care about his diet today. It seems allowable to put it aside due to the crisis at hand.

“Canadian bacon and onion,” Mike says, like Jay doesn’t know his usual order. “Also, um. No offense to your ass, but could you wash my dick?”

Jay is offended on behalf of his ass, but he supposes the request makes sense. He goes to the bathroom to soap up a damp washcloth, aware that this is probably going to lead to more sex. He wonders if he should order the pizza before or after whatever’s about to happen in the bed, his dick already getting hard in his jeans at the thought of servicing Mike’s cock because Mike can’t do it himself.

When he returns to the room he laughs helplessly at the sight before him: Mike has pulled his dick out through the slit of his boxers to ready it for washing. He’s getting hard, too, of course.

“Thought this would be the easiest way,” he says, managing to look kind of sweet and insecure while asking for this. He might be in pain again, hence the slight upturn of his eyebrows.

“Do you need another pill?” Jay asks.

“Not yet. C’mere, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, I’m just looking at you.”

“Oh.”

Jay feels dumb for pointing that out. He’s never supposed to be the one who sits back wistfully admiring the other. That’s Mike’s role.

Jay approaches with the washcloth. Mike moves his left leg out of the way, spreading himself open wider for Jay’s attentions. His dick twitches when Jay looks at it, either involuntarily in the process of getting harder or as a way to greet him, if Mike did it on purpose.

“C’mon,” Mike says when Jay hesitates, feeling oddly virginal. Mike has the ability to bring that back for him, too. “I’m starving,” Mike says when Jay looks up at him, like Jay is about to feed him via his dick.

“I think I’m drunk,” Jay says, remembering the beers. He brings the washcloth down to Mike’s cock and tries not to make an answering noise when Mike sighs approvingly.

“Me too,” Mike says. “On these pills. Mhm. Yeah. Nothing feels real.”

Jay grunts, disliking that, though he knows it’s best to pretend these interludes are detached from reality, just like they always have. He gives Mike’s dick a thorough scrubbing, maybe using more pressure than necessary. Mike gets rock hard for it and makes helpless sounds of pleasure that would be hilarious if Jay wasn’t also so turned on by this absurd act. When he can no longer deny that Mike is fully cleaned, he uses a dry towel to remove the soap suds and sternly instructs himself not to lean down and open his mouth around that big, fat cockhead. It looks especially delicious right now, freshly polished with a perfect bead of precome glistening at the slit, but he has some pride left.

“What, that’s it?” Mike says when Jay scoots backward off the bed. “Jay I’m-- Look at me. I can’t jerk off with my left hand.”

“Sure you can.” Jay stands at the end of the bed, trying to improvise something appropriately weird that won’t delay their pizza ordering for too long. “I could help by watching.”

“You-- What? How does that help?”

“I think you get off on me staring at your dick.”

“Well.” Mike huffs and looks down at it himself. “You get all slack-jawed sometimes. It’s cute.”

“I’ll stand here and jerk off, too. Whoever comes first, uh. Wins.”

“Wins what?” Mike is already groping himself with his left hand. “What’s the prize?”

Jay looks around his room like he’s selecting a possession that he’d surrender to Mike if he loses. It depresses him to realize that he doesn’t own anything Mike would want, though that’s only because they co-own the best stuff.

“How about this,” Mike says. “The loser has to stick that blue dick up their ass.”

“No.” Jay’s nose wrinkles. He doesn’t want that thing in Mike’s ass, for a number of reasons that are hard to untangle.

“What’s this look you’re giving me?” Mike grins as if Jay’s disgust pleases him, as usual. He’s jacking his cock casually, which is cheating, because Jay hasn’t even opened his jeans yet.

“You can’t just invite yourself to use my sex toys.”

“Toys!” Mike’s eyes light up. He’s unfortunately very attractive when delighted by someone else’s humiliation. “Multiple? Where are the others? I want to see them.”

“Okay, then that’s the prize if you win. I’ll show you the rest of them.” He only has nipple clamps and isn’t even sure where they are. Somewhere in the closet, buried deep.

“What if you win?” Mike’s hand moves faster on his cock, and there’s a new flush on his cheeks like he’s thinking about those nipple clamps.

“Hmm. If I win, you have to tell me an embarrassing sex story. About yourself. And it has to be true.”

“What if I’ve never been embarrassing during sex?”

“Ha. Yeah right.” Jay smiles, because there’s a look on Mike’s face like something sprang immediately to mind.

“Whatever,” Mike says, really jacking himself now. “I’m gonna win anyway, at this rate. Why aren’t you getting your dick out?”

“I’m doing it, you’re the one who helped himself to a head start.”

Jay gets himself out and gets to work, walking a little closer to the bed so Mike has a better view. Mike has gotten serious, in full competitor mode, his eyes moving from Jay’s dick up to his face and then back down again. He’s breathing hard through his nose while jacking himself dry at a speed that can’t be comfortable. Jay is extremely competitive, too, especially when he’s up against Mike, but he’s not worried that he won’t win, already kind of smiling like he has. Just standing over Mike like this and thinking about Mike having been humiliated during sex in the past is getting him close quickly.

Looking into Mike’s eyes while he does this gives him a burst of intense feeling that seems like it might take him to the edge, then the feeling lasts too long and becomes something else that slows everything physical down, so he has to look at Mike’s dick again.

“Can I use the lube?” Mike asks.

“No,” Jay says.

Mike snarls at that but doesn’t reach for the drawer. Jay isn’t sure why he wants to punish Mike, but he certainly does, alongside taking care of him and obediently climbing on his dick when he asks.

“I want to say things,” Mike says, his voice strained with the effort of needing to come while being blocked by his desire to do so on command, to beat Jay, who is in the same situation after initially being sure he’d win. “But, unh. If I talk that’ll just help you.”

“You want to get off to the sound of your own voice,” Jay says, nodding with mocking understanding. “Without getting me off in the process.”

“That’s right. Bitch. I know you like it when I say nasty shit to you.”

Jay shrugs. Sure, he likes it, but Mike thinks he’s better at dirty talk than he actually is. It’s the threatening rumble of his voice that Jay gets off on, not the corny porn talk.

“You can’t actually talk me into coming,” he says.

“I see what you’re doing,” Mike says. “Trying to get me to prove that I can, so that you’ll win? Huh? You think I’m that dumb?”

Something about Mike accusing Jay of thinking he’s dumb reminds Jay of the the time when they were in their twenties and Mike slapped him in the face ‘jokingly’ when they were shooting a scene for a short film they never finished. This was about two weeks before Jay ‘jokingly’ threatened to kill Mike if he didn’t shut up during another shoot for the same project, which lead to the fight that culminated in a seemingly permanent dissolution of what by then no longer felt like a friendship.

And for whatever fucked up reason, now, in this fucked up situation, Jay lets his eyes sink mostly shut and imagines Mike getting up, his leg suddenly healed, crossing the room and slapping the shit out of him.

Which makes Jay come, in real life, go figure.

He’s so overwhelmed by the sick triumph of this release that he doesn’t notice until he’s almost pumped out every drop that he just blew his load all over the floor like an animal. Mike looks impressed, also slightly scared.

“Jay?” he says, as if to check that it’s still him. He’s jerking his dick, but distractedly now.

“Hnh-- Huh?”

“You just went someplace. Jesus. What was that?”

“I came.” He eyes the mess on the floor, wanting to sink to his knees. He’s not sure if he’d start cleaning or just lick it up, in the mood that he’s suddenly in. “I win,” he adds when he looks up at Mike again.

“What were you thinking about?”

“What?”

“When you came! You thought about something. I could see it.”

“I don’t have to tell you,” Jay says. “I win. You have to tell me your thing, your embarrassing sex thing.”

“Can’t I finish first?”

“No, tell me while you’re jerking off.”

Mike whines, but Jay can already see that he’s going to comply. He’s close and frustrated, and seems to be getting off on Jay giving him orders. Nobody ever tells Mike what to do. To Jay that sounds like hell, but it’s the way Mike designed his own life, very much on purpose.

“You’re still gonna show me those sex toys,” Mike says, bitterly, trying claw some of his pride back while he lies there in a cast, roughly jerking himself through the slit of his boxers as the loser in this arrangement.

“If you’re chafing, you can use some lube,” Jay says, with polite benevolence that he knows will enrage Mike.

Mike grits his teeth, predictably.

“Okay,” he says, but he doesn’t get the lube. “A girl beat me up after I said the wrong name while we were fucking.”

“Oh my god!” Jay cringes. “That’s beyond embarrassment. That’s a one-sentence horror story.”

“Yeah. Mph. And it wasn’t your name, Jay.”

“I didn’t think it was!”

“Bullshit.”

Jay grins, too happy at the moment to hide that of course he thought that, yes.

“Say something that you think will make me come,” Mike says, starting to look distressed. “Or just come over here and suck me like we both know you want to.”

“No. Use the lube if you need it.”

“Goddammit, Jay, say something good! Do it!”

“Uhh. Do you want something derogatory, or praising?” Jay doesn’t know why he’s bothering to ask, already well aware that he won’t come up with anything. He’s never been good at dialogue.

“I don’t fuckin’ know! Anything!”

“What if I just kneel by the bed and let you come on my face?”

Mike groans as if this pains him to hear, and for a moment Jay thinks that did it, but he’s not coming and mostly looks upset.
“If you’re gonna do all that why don’t you just suck my dick? Do you not like sucking dick anymore or what’s happening?”

“I still like it,” Jay says, and then, without thinking, because Mike’s distress is making him panic: “I was kind of saving that for later, like. The best for last.”

Mike groans and comes, letting it avalanche all over his belly while he squeezes it out. Jay should have known what the secret recipe would be neither insulting nor flattering Mike but admitting something embarrassing about himself.

“Jesus christ,” Mike says when he’s done, letting his head loll back. He seems exhausted, and looks at Jay with a kind of cautious admiration when he finally lets go of his dick. “Did you order the pizza yet?”

“When the hell would I have done that? I’ve been in here cleaning your dick and watching you jerk off.”

Mike looks pleased, hearing that, then winces and makes a sobby sound.

“I need a pill,” he says. “Hurry up and order, I’m dying over here.”

“What does it feel like?” Jay asks, glancing at the leg, the wrist. They’re just prone on the bed.

“Like one of the biggest bones in my body snapped into multiple pieces eight hours ago.” Mike’s glower combined with this information is legitimately scary, in a way that possibly would make Jay hard if he hadn’t just come. “If you’ve never experienced it, it can’t be described. It’s agony.”

“Okay, all right, sorry.” Jay backs away from the bed and digs out his phone. “Ordering now.”

“I want garlic bread, too. And a Coke, I guess. Since I can’t have beer.”

“Pop is so bad for you,” Jay says, but he orders everything Mike asked for.

Mike is in a shitty mood while they wait for the food to arrive, but he does allow Jay to help him out of the bed and onto the living room couch. Jay draws the line at eating pizza in his bed. He puts a movie on to distract them from watching the clock, and when he gets a text he expects the delivery app to be warning him that their food is near, but it’s Rich, checking in on him again.

How’s it going?

Fine, Jay sends back. And then, still angry about how Rich acted earlier when he asked Jay to do this, I’m taking care of everything, so don’t worry.

OK

Jay doesn’t like that reply and sneers down at it until it’s replaced by a new text, this time from the delivery app. He gets Mike a glass of water and a pill and waits by the door for the delivery person to make it upstairs, feeling overly connected to Mike, like his bones are aching, too, and will be until Mike’s get some relief. At least Mike has swallowed the pill. The pizza is close enough.

Mike looks sweaty and wan when Jay brings him two slices with a side of garlic bread, though pizza is mostly bread and it’s lunacy to order more as a side dish. He serves it up anyway, with a giant Coke, and watches to make sure Mike can consume these things with his left hand, which is shaky again. Mike looks miserable but seems to be managing fine, food to mouth-wise. Jay still keeps the corner of his eye on him while eating his own two slices, concerned about how listlessly Mike is consuming his meal. He typically inhales things at an alarming pace, especially pizza. Maybe it’s just a slowness on account of using his non-dominant hand.

“Rich thinks I’m gonna kill you or something,” Jay blurts when he can’t go any longer without
asking Mike how he’s doing over there.

“You did threaten to once,” Mike says. “Twice?”

“The second time wasn’t really a death threat.”

“Oh. Good to know.”

Jay stares down at the pizza crusts on his plate. The last place he wants to go from here is back there, to that email he sent after Mike came out of his cave to devastate Jay with a scathing review of Jay’s latest project. This was over twenty years ago, but it still burns. The worst part was how casual Mike had been about it, whereas before that Jay had completely bought into their mutual friends’ reports that Mike was a fragile shell of himself since their fight. Mike had seemed downright jolly while raining cruelty down onto Jay via the internet, and Jay had been so low at the time that he’d believed it: Mike pretending to be an uninvested party who was simply commenting on a work of art, and all of the criticisms that Mike laid out like body parts that Jay hadn’t even realized Mike had chopped off of him until he saw their severing lovingly described in a review titled ‘It’s Okay, I Guess.’ Mike called Jay a once interesting young filmmaker who had quickly proven to actually be boring and repetitive, someone who was always retelling the same navel-gazing, semi-biographical story. He’d known those were Jay’s worst fears about himself, aside from the other one that Mike at least wasn’t evil enough to level at him online, where other people could read it.

“Anyway,” Jay says, after an uncomfortably long silence that Mike may not have noticed, because he’s rapidly fading into the drowsy relief the drug brings him. “I think I’m doing okay so far. Considering.”

“Considering what?” Mike mutters, startling Jay with this reveal that he’s been paying attention.

“I’m not a nurturing person.”

Mike rolls his eyes.

“What?” Jay picks up a pizza crust and taps Mike on the shoulder with it when he doesn’t respond. They’re sitting a few feet apart on the couch, and touching each other again seems impossible, though he suspects he’ll have his mouth on Mike’s dick soon enough. “I’m not exactly a caregiver,” Jay says when Mike looks at him. “You know that.”

“All you ever do is prop other people up,” Mike says. “When’s the last time any of the eighty-five people in your family asked you for a favor and you said no? Never.”

“You don’t know what I do all the time,” Jay says, and then, making it worse because he heard how stupid that sounded, “You didn’t tell me you were climbing up a ladder by yourself. You didn’t even call me when you fell! You called Rich.”

Mike looks lost. Jay isn’t sure he feels differently, though he’s the one who just said that.

“I mean, so.” Jay shrugs and looks down at the pizza crust in his hand. “It’s not like we both know everything the other one does. And I don’t do everything they ask me to.”

He does, probably, but they don’t actually ask for that much. Mike just doesn’t understand. He’s a spoiled youngest child, and seems to have voluntarily become estranged from his family over the past decade.

“I don’t even remember what started this conversation,” Mike says, pushing his plate onto the couch cushion. He hasn’t finished his garlic bread. “I need to sleep again, I’m out of it.”

Jay stands when Mike wobbles up onto the crutches, ready to catch him. He seems like he’s barely going to make it to the bed, but he gets there without needing to be caught.

“Do you need to take a leak first?” Jay asks.

“Oh. I guess that’s a good idea.”

“Do you, uh. Need help this time?”

“No.” There’s a flicker of amusement in Mike’s eyes, like he’s going to make a joke about Jay wanting to watch him piss, then he just hoists himself back up from the bed with a groan and makes his way to the bathroom.

Jay stands in the middle of the room, feeling kicked out of his own apartment.

“Aren’t you getting in with me?” Mike asks, sounding like he might beg for it when he’s back in the bed, the crutches leaning against the side table.

“It’s like eight o’clock,” Jay says.

“You keep telling me what time it is.” Mike settles down fully and seems to be already falling asleep. He also seems authentically hurt, or maybe his voice just sounds like that when he’s tired: wounded and small in a way that makes Jay want to keep his distance even more. “Like. What kind of excuse is that.”

Then he’s asleep, and Jay is free. He stands there for a while anyway, to make sure of something. He doesn’t know what it is, exactly. That Mike is okay? He isn’t, in some pretty big ways, but he’s safe here for now.

Jay knows that for the rest of the night he won’t think about anything except the first time they shared his bed. Mike didn’t ask permission. He just got in, carrying the pillow that Jay had placed on the couch for him. Jay still thinks about that specific pillow. He doesn’t know where it is now, which doesn’t seem possible. It’s so important in his memory, like a kind of magic talisman that glued them together for one night in the best kind of way, and for the rest of their lives in a less great way. It’s unimaginable to think that he’s lost it, but he has. So many things can be hard to believe and true at the same time.

*

Chapter 2: 2005

Chapter Text

2005

The night they spent together in Jay’s bed over the hardware store really started three years earlier, with their fight, but Jay doesn’t like to linger on those details. Sometimes he’s not sure Mike remembers everything, though not because it wasn’t an origin story for his adult self, too, the thing that lead him to every place he’d eventually go. Mike is just better at blocking things out, or so it seems from where Jay has been sitting since all this happened.

What is even left to reflect on about the fight, which Jay spent two years denying he was obsessed with and the rest of his life feeling guilty about: Jay started it, Mike absorbed everything he said in stony-faced horror and then left town, somehow becoming only more omnipresent in Jay’s psyche by doing so, and not just because of Jay’s obsessing. There was still the internet to connect them, and mutual friends, and eventually projects that they pretended to grudgingly collaborate on after Mike started making trips back home, which began about nine months after he’d left, as if he’d given birth to his rage baby in the desert and could now nurture it into something more useful, though still composed mostly of rage.

By 2005 this simmering resentment had mellowed enough that Mike was coming back to town just to find out what they were going on work on once he got there, not needing an elaborate excuse that involved other friends, though usually he drove to Milwaukee with Rich, to protect himself from the full force of Jay. The fact that he wanted to be around Jay at all was hard to understand, at least to Jay. Everyone else seemed to take it as a given, though he can’t imagine any of them thought Mike was infatuated or in love or that it had anything to do with wanting sex. Mike was self-destructive, everybody knew that. Jay was the form of the destructor he had chosen, without meaning to.

Jay was quietly shocked when Mike showed up alone for one of these freestyle creative weekends, a single change of clothes packed into his camera bag as usual, southwestern sand on the floor mats of his car. It was May of 2005, still cold in the mornings and at night in Milwaukee, but offering a coming attractions preview of summer during the daytime. Jay was at work when Mike showed up, as usual, and Jay was slightly pissed off that Mike never arrived at a time that suited his schedule. Then he reconsidered his position in light of his ongoing guilt and was as sunny and deferential toward Mike as he had been since Mike had first returned for one of these ominous visits in 2003, when Jay had thought he would vomit or worse the second they laid eyes on each other. He hadn’t; they’d been in the kind of large group setting that made it easy to passively acknowledge each other and then retreat into a safer situation. Mike did sit next to Jay at the dinner, which had seemed like a threat at first, but mostly he seemed privately confounded by the fact that he was there at all, and nothing even remotely rude was said to Jay, as if insulting Jay had become beneath him. Jay was sweating under his shirt throughout the whole meal, to a degree that made him worry people could smell him.

Since then Mike had gradually returned to needling at Jay in a way that wasn’t quite friendly but demonstrated a comfortable familiarity, and it felt like a strengthening of whatever their new bond would be, this ability to dole out a few earnest criticisms disguised as mean jokes. Jay didn’t dare do the same to Mike, but he wasn’t suppressing the urge to do so. He was sincerely remorseful by then, and just wanted to continue getting along, because every visit from Mike demonstrated that life was better with him than without him, and Jay regretted having driven him away, making these interludes precious and few.

“We should do a man on the street type thing,” Mike said when they were upstairs in Jay’s apartment after his shift, eating barbeque potato chips and stale peanut butter cookies for dinner. Jay was barely scraping by. Mike had inherited an undisclosed but certainly large sum of money following a death in his family, but they didn’t talk about it and Jay never saw him spend much, so they both behaved as if he was broke, too.

“You’d have to be the one asking people questions,” Jay said. “I’m no good at that.”

“People like you, though. You’re less threatening.”

This was one of those deep-cutting comments that would have set Jay’s insecure fury off in the past, but he only laughed and let it silently slice at him. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know it was true.

They went out with Mike’s camera, which by then was far superior to what Jay used, and tried to find people in the park who would talk to them about a range of potentially humorous subjects, most successfully about the band Creed. Mike had taken three shots of vodka at Jay’s place before they left, for courage, and it was working, making him the right combination of charming and cool. It was mostly women who agreed to talk to them. Jay just worked the camera and tried not to ruin the audio track by snickering at people’s comments and how Mike responded to them. Mike had gotten funnier since leaving the midwest, and Jay had a theory that deep misery and loneliness had seasoned his sometimes juvenile sense of humor. He was aware that this was a self-flattering theory, as if Mike could find no joy in life without him. Jay didn’t really believe this, but the steadily increasing frequency of Mike’s visits sometimes made him wonder, particularly since the drive from Scottsdale to Milwaukee took twenty-seven hours.

Back in Jay’s apartment after sundown, they uploaded the footage they’d shot to Jay’s computer and watched together. Jay laughed a lot and Mike smiled in the measured way he did when he was proud of himself. He was sitting on Jay’s bed, drinking vodka mixed with Sprite from a plastic Culver’s cup that was an important part of Jay’s kitchenware collection. That apartment was his first time living alone.

“Now what?” Mike said when they’d watched everything they shot.

Jay spun his desk chair around to face him. Heat crept up the sides of his neck when he realized today was the first time he and Mike had been alone together since the fight. How had it not occurred to him earlier? It hadn’t been nighttime then. The world around them was now quiet enough to make any silence too heavy.

“Uhh,” Jay said. “We could start editing this into something?”

“Editing is kind of a one man job.”

“True. Do you want to watch something else? A movie?”

“Not really. Do you have anything you’ve been working on? Something I could read.”

“Like-- A script?”

“Yeah, Jay, like a script.”

They hadn’t read each other’s stuff in years, unless it was something dumb and short they were working on together while Mike was in town. Jay fidgeted in the chair and made a thinking face, as if he didn’t have only one script he was working on, one he didn’t really want Mike to read. Because it was sort of about Mike.

“I dunno,” he said, fighting the impulse to throw his heart into Mike’s hands like that. He did really like the script and had been wanting someone to show it off to, but nobody he knew well enough to show his writing to could ever read it, because they all knew Mike and the whole story and would connect the dots. This also meant he could never actually make the film, because Mike would see it.

“Drink this and then think again,” Mike said, leaning forward so Jay could take the Culver’s cup. “I know you’re always working on something.”

“Mhm.” Jay took the cup and looked down into it. He’d started drinking on occasion, but rarely enough that it never went well. The vodka was from a bottle Mike had brought with him. Jay didn’t have that kind of money, for one thing. He took a cautious sip and tried to pass the cup back, but Mike shook his head.

“There’s only like half a shot left in there,” he said. “Just finish it.”

Jay did, mostly tasting Sprite.

“The script I’m working on is more navel-gazing, semi-biographical content,” he said, daring Mike to break eye contact. “So you wouldn’t like it anyway.”

Mike winced, and that was enough of an apology for Jay, whose heart was pounding from the risk of bringing up anything contentious, let alone this.

“Maybe I like gazing at your navel,” Mike said.

“Hmm. I heard otherwise.”

“C’mon. I was just trying to get back at you when I wrote all that. I like your stuff. Obviously.”

Jay raised his eyebrows, not sure it was obvious. His heart was still slamming, and his whole body felt kind of jumpy and electrified with the impulse to do something he’d regret just for the slim chance of earning Mike’s admiration. They were already in dangerous territory, actually almost talking about the fight. The script was about someone ruining a friendship due to a bruised ego and becoming a deranged psychopath as a result.

“No one’s read it yet,” Jay said, not sure if he was trying to make the prospect of Mike being the first to do so more or less attractive. “And it’s not, like, finished.”

“I don’t care. I need inspiration. I’m floundering.”

“Yeah?” Jay always wanted to hear about how miserable Mike was in Arizona, away from him, and it only ever came from secondhand sources.

“I haven’t worked on anything real in almost three years,” Mike said.

So: since their fight. So it was Jay’s fault.

Jay nodded and gave in, because Mike was right. Jay owed him this act of potentially profound humiliation.

He couldn’t be in the same room with Mike while he read the script, so he left Mike on his computer after opening the Word doc and paced around the living room, fretting about the other things Mike might snoop and find in his browsing history or porn folders almost as much as about what he would think about the script. The folders were password locked, but he had the feeling Mike could probably guess the password, since it was based off an old inside joke of theirs.

An hour passed, and Jay both wanted to poke his head into the bedroom to find out what the hell Mike was doing, thinking, and feeling in there and to run screaming out of the apartment entirely. He compromised by refilling the Culver’s cup with vodka and Sprite, not measuring the vodka shot for shot but just dumping some in. It still tasted pretty good when he gulped from it, like pop tinged with poison. He’d finished it way too quickly by the time Mike emerged from the bedroom to stare at him gravely.

Jay didn’t dare ask a question, just stared back at him and begged with his eyes and slightly parted lips for Mike to not utterly destroy him with the next thing he said, though he did want the truth. He wanted the truth to be good news.

“That’s the best thing you’ve ever written,” Mike said. His voice was a little tight, and he lifted his fist to cover his mouth when he cleared his throat, tilting his head down while keeping his eyes on Jay’s in what almost looked like some kind of submission. Then he smirked and straightened up, normal again. “Are you drunk?”

“You-- What? How can you tell?”

“I dunno, you’re, like, swaying on your feet.”

“I’m just nervous. Though, yeah, I’m also drunk.”

Mike beamed like that was the greatest news he’d ever gotten. Jay could feel himself smiling back in the same way, unable to stop it.

He wasn’t drunk enough to ask outright: do you realize it’s about what I did to you? He could see it anyway, in the way Mike looked at him differently after reading it, less scared and not as closed off. He knew.

They stayed up until three in the morning that night, watching movies on Jay’s couch and talking over them for long stretches about mostly non-personal things, though as it got later they both slipped in a few things they’d never told each other before. Jay fell asleep on the couch, and when he woke up Mike was stretched out on the floor between the couch and the scummy coffee table, rolled onto his stomach and sleeping with his face buried in a throw pillow.

Jay reached over to poke Mike’s shoulder. Mike was so deep under that it took several sharp pokes to wake him.

“You could have taken my bed,” Jay said, already pushing himself up off the couch so Mike could have it.

“Oh.” Mike looked around blearily, still half asleep. He’d kept at the vodka and Sprites for a while and probably wasn’t feeling great. “Good to know.”

“And I’ll bring you a real pillow,” Jay said, already leaving the room to fetch one.

Once Mike had a proper pillow and a blanket out on the couch, Jay got into his bed. He felt weird about having closed the bedroom door behind him, like he was spoiling some new and fragile trust between them, but he told himself it would have been weirder to leave it open.

They both slept into the afternoon, and when they got up they were too ravenous for real food to settle for chips and cookies again. Jay had the whole day off of work, which was rare for a Saturday at the start of their busy season, and spending the afternoon at a restaurant with Mike felt like the ultimate luxury. They both had bacon burgers with fries, and Mike ate Jay’s unwanted pickle spear. When Mike offered to pay Jay felt kind of emasculated and pathetic but accepted, saying he would cook dinner for the two of them later. He blushed after saying it, as if this was not something a man should do for his male friend if it was just the two of them. Mike just nodded and said ‘cool’ like it was perfectly normal. The fact that he didn’t make some kind of crass joke about it made Jay blush harder. Mike hadn’t even snickered after reaching across the table to take Jay’s pickle, and the absence of this kind of humor felt like it could mean something: either Mike was no longer going to make the sort of cruel jabs that he knew would get under Jay’s skin because his lingering resentment was finally gone, or because he didn’t want to ruin some kind of fresh start between them that had begun when he read Jay’s script.

After eating they went back out with Mike’s camera to ask people who were walking around the Downer area for their opinions on Creed, the Chicago Bears, and Star Wars Episode III. Involving random people in their usual antics made it feel like they were really doing something, not just fucking around for fun on a weekend. People responded to a video camera as if its presence must represent something official and important, and several of them asked which show this was for.

“The Tonight Show,” Mike said, every time, and every time Jay was the only one who laughed.

Jay had forgotten how good it felt to work like this when it was just the two of them. They got less competitive when there was no one else around to impress, and they understood each other’s artistic instincts and sense of humor in a way that felt unique, at least to Jay. He didn’t have to worry about anything when he was behind the camera, aiming it at Mike. It was like he didn’t have to be fully in the world for a while, which was a nice reprieve when he was watching Mike navigate it for him.

By the time they got back to the apartment Jay was feeling floaty and laughing at everything Mike said in his old way, like he had when they first started hanging out and he was always bursting with the anxious energy of needing Mike to like him, wanting to maintain any feeling of connection to him that he could. Mike sat on the couch with the camera and scanned through the footage on the viewfinder while Jay opened kitchen cabinets, trying to figure out what he could make for them to eat.

“Look at this one,” Mike said, calling him over to the couch. “Oh god. This turned out perfect, c’mere.”

Jay happily abandoned the task of coming up with a dinner plan and joined him on the couch. He was in such a good mood that at first he hardly noticed how close Mike was sitting, and then it was all he could think about, the scene that was playing out on the camera’s viewfinder unable to reach past his sudden alarm and attempts to deny his excitement. Mike was right there, close enough that Jay could hear his every exhale, and he was breathing kind of hard, or maybe just laughing under his breath, which still smelled like that pickle. So, if they kissed, Jay thought-- Then he stopped thinking about that.

When Mike laughed for real his whole body jostled even closer to Jay’s. Their shoulders bumped, then stayed pressed together. Mike’s arm hair brushed against his. Jay made approximate laughing noises, trying to decide if he wanted to lean away. Mike was warm and big and that was all Jay could think about, half repulsed by how solid these facts were and half wanting to never be farther away from the evidence of them than he currently was.

They stayed like that for a long time, until Jay’s back hurt from how tensely he was holding his position. There was a lot of footage to watch, and no reason not to go into the bedroom to upload it onto the computer, except that neither of them wanted to move. He could see Mike’s hand start to shake from the weight of the camera. Then his arm shook where it was pressed against Jay’s, then his shoulder. Still they stayed like that, staring at the viewfinder and laughing dryly at the good parts.

When the footage ended they both kept staring at the screen, which had gone black, so they could see a very fuzzy reflection of their own stunned faces. The stunned part wasn’t visible there, but Jay had no doubt Mike felt it, too.

“So,” Jay said, springing away from the couch before he’d given his body permission to do so. He just leapt as if someone had kicked him in the back, comically spry out of nowhere and almost landing on the coffee table. “Do you want quesadillas? I don’t have sour cream. Or salsa. I actually just have shredded cheddar and tortillas. Maybe an onion, but it’s kind of old.”

“Sure,” Mike said.

Jay was halfway to the kitchen, afraid to turn around. When he did, Mike didn’t look angry or hurt. He was still holding the camera like he didn’t know what to do with it now, as if it was a used condom and there was no trash can to toss it into.

Having something to do with his hands was helpful for Jay, who got to work setting the frying pain on the stove and digging out the ingredients from the fridge. Mike asked for permission to upload the footage to the bedroom computer, and Jay granted it. He was doing his best not to come to any conclusions about what was happening, but it kept echoing through his head like a song: he wants you, you want him, this has been the entire fucking problem all along, oh my god, how in the hell did you miss this?

Except that he hadn’t, entirely. He’d just fully believed he must have been insane to even halfway think it could be true. The Mike part, and the part about being in love with a man himself. He had always been afraid that it could happen, based on certain sexual fantasies that had been circulating since before he even knew how to classify them as gay, but up to that point no real world men had affected him. Even what he felt for Mike wasn’t about sex for a long time, though he’d always wanted Mike to need him in a chained-up way, like a captive. Now their arm hair had been entangled here in the real world, on Jay’s couch. The air was charged and the fading light through the windows seemed different, like the sun Jay had walked under all his life had been replaced with a new one, and all this when they weren’t even in the same room.

There was half an onion in the fridge that didn’t seem too old to use, and for a while Jay just held it in his hand, wondering if he should try to chop it. His limbs felt so noodley that he was afraid he might slip and cut off a finger. Then Mike was walking into the kitchen behind him, and he was already holding the onion, so he had to risk it.

He kept wanting to laugh at how his brain wasn’t working anymore and to somehow find a way to ask if Mike’s was doing the same thing. Mike was talking about what they could edit the footage into, based on the best replies they’d gotten. He was hovering but not too close, and Jay liked the feeling of having him just near enough for reassurance, completely unready for anything more. He couldn’t imagine what they might do next, possibly nothing for the rest of their lives. In the moment he felt like he could live off the feeling he’d had on the couch forever, nothing further required.

Then he thought: what would it feel like to see Mike flirting with a woman, from here on?

Probably as bad as it had when Jay called him a sleazy piece of shit who got off on using and discarding people, and other things that made Mike move across the country.

Jay managed to chop the onion without injuring himself, and the shocking elation of what had happened on the couch was morphing into something much scarier by the time he added it to the pan with some oil. Mike had gotten quiet, too, pensively watching Jay cook as if it was some kind of fascinating magic act.

“Sorry I can’t make you something better,” Jay said, imagining what he would choose if he had unlimited funds: ribeye steak, tater tot hotdish, chocolate cake. He thought about kissing Mike with the taste of chocolate frosting his lips rather than pickles. The idea of kissing him after he’d just taken a drink from a beer almost made him groan. He didn’t dare look up from the pan of onions.

“This is good,” Mike said, and the heaviness of his tone told Jay he was dying, too, which was like being kissed, gently, on the back of the neck. Jay’s was burning, surely visibly red.

They ate on the couch with plates in their laps while watching TV, needing something to look at while they continued to get their bearings. Mike had a vodka with Sprite and Jay stuck to Sprite. The last thing he needed to do was try to get drunk to get through this. He’d tried that with women and it had ended in disaster every time. Women were a different sort of problem for him, he was now realizing, but if he had even one shot of liquor he’d relax enough to think he could have more, and things would spiral. Still, it was tempting. His whole body felt unwieldy and weird. Even chewing his food seemed strange and a little gross, like something he’d never done before.

“I have to work a double tomorrow,” he heard himself saying, when they’d stared at the TV for hours and nothing further had happened. Mike was over there on the other side of the couch, stewing in his feelings, maybe expecting Jay to make the next move. He’d be waiting for the rest of his life, if that was the case. Jay was willing to follow his lead, but even showing Mike that script he’d written about their fight was like walking naked onto a stage. He couldn’t do more than that yet, maybe ever.

“Okay,” Mike said, still looking at the TV.

“I have to make up for taking the whole day off today,” Jay added needlessly. They’d had only a little intermitent conversation since they’d eaten dinner, and he was beginning to panic that he’d already fucked this up somehow. The panic was making him want to babble anxiously, which was dangerous, because suddenly he couldn’t imagine what they would talk about except the fact that their arms had been snuggled together for like an hour.

“Soo,” Mike said, slowly, finally glancing over at him. His face was an expressionless mask. He’d had several more vodka cocktails after eating, but didn’t seem loosened up at all. “You need to get up early?”

“Yeah. We open at nine on Sundays. So I gotta be down there by eight.”

“Mhm. Shit.” Mike glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s almost eleven.”

“Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, we don’t have to call it a night yet.” Jay almost bit the end of his tongue off in horror, hearing how that sounded. “But, like, I can’t stay up till three again, is all I’m saying.”

He actually had no idea what he was saying or how Mike was perceiving it. He smiled queasily when Mike glanced at him again.

“I guess I’ll head out in the morning, then,” Mike said. “I gotta be back at work by Tuesday.”

Jay nodded, his head spinning in a whole new way at the thought of Mike driving another twenty-seven hours to get home, all of this effort for two days spent with Jay. How had he not understood what that meant before now? Because Rich was there, too?

“I’m actually pretty beat,” Mike said. “We walked around all day and I didn’t get that much sleep last night.”

“I-- Oh, yeah, sorry, this couch is a piece of shit--”

He stopped himself there conspicuously, his face heating. Mike kept his face composed and then smiled in a menacing way, darkly signaling that, yes, his mind still went back to a particular moment in time when he heard that phrase, too.

“If I made that movie,” Jay said, desperate to win him back before bedtime, “The script you read yesterday-- Would you help me? If, if you could spend some time here, I don’t know, or--”

“Yes,” Mike said. “Though you know how I get when I work on other people’s stuff.”

Jay nodded. Mike tended to take over. Jay had suppressed several tantrums about this before the big one burst through.

“Well,” Jay said, bracing himself to offer his pounding heart up with both hands. “Maybe you could direct it.”

Mike’s eyebrows went up. Jay felt himself hunching forward as his stomach clenched. It was as if he’d just whipped his shirt off and asked if Mike wanted to come on his chest. Submission.

“Wow,” Mike said. “Seriously?”

“I mean, if you’re not interested--”

“I am. Just surprised you’d want me to.”

“Really? Why?”

Mike blinked like he didn’t have a comeback for that.

“It seems so personal,” he said. “But, I guess. Considering the subject. Yeah. It makes sense.”

Because it was personal for him, too. Jay nodded and then couldn’t stand any more intense eye contact. He gathered their dinner plates and took them into the kitchen.

When he returned from his retreat Mike had turned off the TV and was stretched out across the couch with his head on the pillow Jay had lent him. The blanket was still bunched up near his feet, but he was clearly settling in for bed. He’d taken off his wristwatch and placed it on the coffee table.

“Can you bring me the last of that vodka?” he asked, like Jay was his waiter.

Jay turned on his heel and went back to the kitchen, trying to deny the sense of heartbroken disappointment that was swirling up from a dark pit within him, spreading everywhere. What had he thought was going to happen, really? That they were going to make out on the couch? Confess their feelings? Fuck?

“There’s no more Sprite,” he called when he went looking for it in the fridge.

“I don’t care. Just put some ice in, I can drink it straight.”

The remaining vodka filed the Culver’s cup to a disturbing level. Jay added ice from one of his freezer trays, wondering if this was the drink that would spur Mike into meanness. In case it did, he announced he was going to bed when he brought it into the living room.

“Okay,” Mike said, accepting it. “Thanks. You can just wake me up whenever you need to kick me out in the morning.”

“You could-- I mean, there’s no hurry, if you want to sleep up here while I work, I’ll be right downstairs.” The idea of just letting Mike stay there forever flashed through him like the filthiest fantasy, unbidden.

Mike sighed and looked up at him. His eyes were doing a tired, begging thing, but Jay didn’t know how to give him whatever it was he wanted.

“Goodnight,” Mike said, dismissing him.

Jay wanted to shout down at him: you’re just going to lie there and gulp vodka without me? He felt like he always did in potentially romantic situations with women, like there was something he was supposed to know how to do next, and that any guess he made at what that was would make such a spectacular fool of him that he’d rather just stay a virgin.

Except it was different, actually, with Mike. Jay felt none of his usual self-preserving relief when he walked away and into his bedroom. He wondered if he should leave the door cracked. Would that be insane? Would Mike even notice? He felt like sobbing, maybe getting on his knees and just waiting for Mike to find him like that in the hallway, but the impulse had passed by the time he brushed his teeth. He didn’t shut the bedroom door all the way, just most of the way, without actually pushing it into the frame. There was no hope of sleep coming anytime soon, with his heart still frantic in his chest, but he put out the lights and settled down under the blankets anyway, listening for any Mike sounds from the other room. Whatever he was doing out there was quiet. Jay couldn’t even hear the clink of the ice in the cup.

At one point he drifted off, but it was a thin sleep that felt only about ten minutes long when he woke and began fretting again. The apartment was silent, and it was just fifteen minutes after midnight. Jay picked up the remote for his DVD player and did what he always did when he couldn’t sleep, which wasn’t infrequent. He put on a movie, keeping the volume down low so it wouldn’t wake Mike.

He was almost to the end of The Abyss when his bedroom door creaked inward, just slightly, like a ghost had summoned all of its spiritual energy to gently disturb something in the physical world.

Like a sign from beyond.

Then it moved again, enough to show Jay that it was Mike out there, staring in at him in a way that actually was pretty spooky.

“Are you sleepwalking?” Jay asked.

“No.” Mike pushed the door open enough for Jay to see he was holding the pillow from the couch, sort of anxiously massaging it between his hands like he was trying to work up the nerve to put it over Jay’s face. “I was trying to scare you. Did I?”

“No.” He couldn’t say: but you’re sort of scaring me now. Mike would take it too literally and might not do whatever he was planning to try next.

“I heard you watching something in here.” Mike angled himself so he could see the TV across from Jay’s bed, halfway wedging himself into the room in the process.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Jay said.

“Me either. Oh. The Abyss. I love this movie.”

“Me too. Do you, like-- You can watch with me if you want, I don’t care.”

The ‘I don’t care’ was supposed to communicate that Mike could join him in the bed. Jay’s room was tiny and there was nowhere else to sit, except the floor. He didn’t want Mike down there, or anywhere out of reach.

“This is where it starts to get nuts,” Mike said, meaning the movie, his eyes still on the screen as he stepped sideways into the room, toward Jay’s bed. He sat on the edge at first, holding the pillow against his chest and keeping his gaze pointed at the TV.

“Yeah, this part,” Jay said, staring at Mike’s back. “It doesn’t really work, but I sort of love it anyway. The commitment to, uh. This insane concept.”

“Cameron is such a lunatic,” Mike said, not revealing his opinion on the balls out ending with aliens and romance.

“When I was a kid my brother told me Ed Harris actually dies in this part like they all think he will,” Jay said. “And this whole alien city thing and saving the ship and everything is just some kind of euphoric delusion he has before his brain totally shuts off. I told him he was wrong, but now I sort of wonder.”

Mike made a mildly disapproving noise and turned to place the pillow beside Jay, constructing a barrier between the two of them before he moved back to lean against the headboard with his legs stretched out in front of him. The fact that he wasn’t wearing his shoes seemed to mean something, like he was planning to stay. He’d still had them on when he was out on the couch.

“No, I think Cameron meant the ending to be real,” Mike said, watching the credits roll with his elbow denting the pillow that was pressed against Jay’s side. “I’m surprised he didn’t do this same ending in Titanic, actually.”

Jay laughed hard, more in relief than amusement. Mike looked over at him and smiled, then rolled onto his side and hugged his arm around the pillow between them in a way that seemed like a demonstration of what he might soon do to Jay, who felt underdressed for this moment in his t-shirt and boxer shorts. The boxers were at least hidden beneath the blanket that covered him to his waist. Mike was on top of the blanket but also looking at him like they were now fully in bed together, nowhere to run, and it was true, really happening.

“Sudden aliens at the end of Titanic would have been amazing,” Jay said. He left the credits playing and rolled toward Mike, just at a slight angle at first and then allowing himself to relax and turn fully onto his side, resting his head on his pillow and pressing his knees to the one that Mike was hugging. The pillow between them was a cozy conduit, and Jay could feel his energy racing across it to meet Mike’s, everything in him excruciatingly on offer. He didn’t feel afraid anymore, just so fucking relieved. Mike was there, in bed with him. He’d come. The fact that anything else had ever seemed to matter was ridiculous.

Jay waited for Mike to start speculating about aliens at the end of Titanic: how the camera would follow Leo’s frozen body down to the bottom of the ocean, where aliens who resided in an elaborate ocean floor city would bring him back to life with advanced technology, outfit him in a bespoke tuxedo and transport him to the surface to surprise Kate Winslet and grandiosely invite her aboard their spaceship while all the other survivors clapped and cheered.

But all of this was only playing out in Jay’s head. Mike was quiet, though he didn’t look sleepy. He was studying Jay in an unhurried way, his cheek just shy of resting on Jay’s pillow while he waited for something. Jay wanted so badly to know what to do. More than that, he wanted to be told. He would have done a tap dance on the ceiling if Mike had asked.

The credits ended and the DVD shut off, the screen going to no-input blue. That lighting and the way it washed over Mike hit Jay low in his gut. Mike was looking at him as if from across an ocean he couldn’t cross. Jay felt his dick shift in his boxers, blood rushing in.

This was cinematic, he realized. The way he’d always secretly wanted it.

“I don’t want to go back,” Mike said, mumbling this with his face half-pressed to Jay’s bed.

“To the couch?”

“Well-- No, not to the couch either, but I meant to where I’ve been living.”

“Oh.”

“Just want to stay here. Not even Chicago, like. Here.”

“Well. You could. You have all that money,” Jay added, so it wouldn’t sound like he was inviting Mike to live with him in his one bedroom apartment, though he would have said yes to that if Mike had asked.

“It’s not that much,” Mike muttered, his expression darkening, as if Jay broke some promise by mentioning the money.

“You could go anywhere, though,” Jay said, a little sharply, because it was annoying that he wasn’t allowed to admit he was jealous of Mike’s financial situation. “You could go to L.A.”

Mike went quiet, his eyelids lowered like he was considering faking sleep. When he let go of the pillow and rolled onto his back Jay felt abandoned, as if the pillow had been him all along.

“Do you want me to go to L.A., Jay?”

“Only if you take me with you.”

Mike grinned and turned to look at him again. The gloominess that had seemed to be gathering was gone. Jay felt powerful for being able to bring it on and take it away.

“Don’t worry,” Mike said. “Wherever I end up, you’re along for the ride.”

Jay smiled at him in a way that could only mean one thing: yes, I accept, please never leave me again. He couldn’t say it-- He couldn’t! He just had to trust that Mike would see it in his eyes and know.

Mike rolled toward him, but only to hug the pillow again. Jay exhaled as quietly as he could, letting an outlandish hope he’d held onto drain from him slowly with his breath. Mike was blinking heavily, fighting to keep his eyes open. He really was tired. Jay’s dick was ticking like a clock in his boxers, every beat of his heart traveling down to make it a little harder, but he could keep that to himself that if he had to.

When the DVD player powered off and the room went dark, Jay flinched and made a startled noise. Somehow the sudden change had made him think Mike was moving in to kiss him. That was what it would feel like, he thought: being pitched without warning into a forgiving darkness. A place where he could maybe or maybe not hide.

“Jay?” Mike said.

“Yeah?”

“I was just making sure you’re still there.”

Jay snickered, wanting to rub that joke all over his jittery body. Or it was the sound of Mike’s voice in general he wanted to coat himself with, probably. It wasn’t pitch dark in the room after their eyes adjusted a little. Ambient light from the Downer streetlamps crept in around the edges of Jay’s curtains, just enough to show them the outlines of each other.

The pillow was still hugged between them, both of them kind of curled around it now: Jay with his legs pushed up under it and Mike with his arm resting on it, pressing it down. Mike shifted his arm, and Jay wasn’t sure if it was intentional at first when his hand found Jay’s shoulder. Then Mike’s fingers closed around it and Jay heard him exhale shakily.

“Is this weird?” Mike asked, his grip tensing up a little more with every word.

“I don’t mind,” Jay said. He was in too much shock to offer an answer that made more sense, and the one he gave was so dishonestly lukewarm that he had to physically demonstrate what this touch really meant to him by touching Mike’s arm, too. Clumsy in his desire to be reassuring, he pushed his hand up into the sleeve of Mike’s t-shirt without meaning to go for full on skin contact, then didn’t want to correct it. Mike’s skin was warm, and his bicep was so solid when Jay squeezed it that a puddle of precome drooled out into Jay’s straining boxers, like a faucet had been turned on. Jay held on tight while also letting go of some of the fear that he’d clutched with both hands for so long: that he was gay and attracted to big, muscular guys. It had seemed horrifying before, and in the light of day he knew it still would, but with his hand around Mike’s bicep it was a fair trade. If he had to admit that about himself in order to do this, it was worth it.

He waited for Mike to do something more, trying to find Mike’s eyes in the dark, but there wasn’t enough light for that. Mike’s heavy breathing was gradually softening and evening out. He dragged his thumb slowly across the sleeve of Jay’s shirt a few times, absently stroking him.

Then he seemed to be, preposterously, asleep.

Jay felt himself drifting off, too, which was even harder to accept. His boner throbbed in protest as the rest of him went inexorably limp. How could they finally reach for each other and just stick a bookmark in it? But they’d only gotten a few rough hours of sleep the night before, and the day had been an exhausting marathon of hoofing it all over the neighborhood to find people to interview. Jay’s hand was still clutched around Mike’s bicep, and Mike’s hand felt enormous on his shoulder: heavier now that he was asleep, his grip loosening but the weight even better.

This was a trust exercise, Jay told himself, losing his fight to stay awake and live as long as he could in this moment. In the morning they would wake up transformed.

Into what, he had to wonder. His brain was already too turned off to come up with the word he wanted to use: boyfriends was wrong, nothing else applied, but there had to be something, somewhere, to describe what was happening between them.

Maybe it was more like a shape. A color. A song without lyrics.

Then he was asleep, too, holding on to Mike for dear life.

He dreamed that he woke up in Mike’s body, that they had swapped places during the night and that Mike had known it would happen when he reached over to touch Jay’s shoulder, as part of some dark ritual that he’d been carefully preparing Jay for over the past five years.

“Why would you want my body?” Jay asked, disturbed to find that he was still somehow himself, and that Mike looked the same as he always had, too, though they had switched bodies. It made sense in the dream. “When you could have yours?”

“Watch this,” Mike said instead of answering, and then he started breakdancing.

Jay wanted to beg him to stop but was afraid it would hurt his feelings. They were in a motel room they’d stayed in together three years earlier, and there was a giant window that looked out onto the parking lot, where the actual small and dingy window of that room had been. Through the window, many people they knew were watching, taking photos and videos, and Jay understood with horror that Mike’s breakdancing was actually sex, and that standing in the room with him while he did it meant Jay was having sex with him. Everyone was watching this embarrassing display through the window, most of them laughing but a few weeping and tearing at their hair, as if seeing this was killing them but they couldn’t look away.

He woke up after the dream took some twists and turns that he couldn’t remember when presented with the even more jarring reality of Mike in his bed. Based on the quality of the light that bled in around the curtains it was around five o’clock in the morning, pre-dawn. Jay had kicked the blankets farther down his body in his sleep and was shivering. He’d stopped running the heat in the apartment a month ago, to save money, and it was one of those May mornings in Milwaukee that yanked the temperature right back to winter until the sun came up.

Mike stirred beside him and then was awake, too, his shoulders curling inward when he felt the cold in the room.

“Here,” Jay said, whispering. He lifted the blankets so Mike would know he could get under them, get warm.

Mike blinked, sat up on his elbow and ran his hand through his hair in a way that seemed calculated to make him look even better than he already did when he was groggy and bed-rumpled, though he also seemed too surrendered in the soft way that deep sleep brought on to be thinking about how hot he looked.

“I’m gonna take off my jeans,” Mike said, turning to swing his legs over the side of the bed as if to spare Jay the sight of him unzipping his fly.

“Good,” Jay said, no longer whispering. He was still extracting himself from the clutches of sleep, and hoped Mike would hear the rest of what he meant by that word, that he wanted Mike as undressed and close to him as possible under the blanket he was still holding up, as if it was a portal to another world that might snap shut if he lowered it.

Mike stood up to push his jeans off and turned back to the bed once they were pooled on the floor. He looked at Jay and shamelessly adjusted the outline of his thickening cock. His boxer briefs were gray and old-looking, and Jay wanted his mouth on the sagging cotton where Mike’s hand lingered, show-offy already about what he was packing in there. Jay grabbed the pillow that had been wedged between them with his free hand and pitched it to the floor. He held Mike’s gaze while doing this, showing him he didn’t need the training wheels on anymore. They were going to do this for real now.

“I just had the weirdest dream,” Mike muttered as he climbed in under the blanket. He pulled Jay against him like he had completed his symbolic transformation into the pillow and there was no reason not to hold him.

“Me too,” Jay said, his eyes watering with relief as he squirmed into Mike’s arms and buried his face against Mike’s chest. Mike’s heart was slamming, but the rest of him felt so calm, and Jay was in a similar state. Their legs slid together, and Jay had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing giddily as his boner revived. He could feel Mike breathing, both against the top of his head and in the way his chest expanded and contracted under the blankets. They tangled around each other, greedily seeking body heat and making no comment on the mutual hardness of their dicks.

“Mmph,” Mike said, rubbing his face in Jay’s hair. “What was your dream about?”

“I can’t remember,” Jay said, not sure how he’d describe the breakdancing, the voyeurs at the window, or how they had swapped bodies despite still appearing to inhabit the same ones they usually did.

“Are we awake now?” Mike asked, rolling Jay onto his back so he could loom over him, already moving in for a kiss.

“I dunno,” Jay answered truthfully. He closed his eyes and parted his lips for the first languid sweep of Mike’s tongue. It felt so good that Jay licked back at him without knowing what he was doing, grabbing Mike’s ears to hold him in place while he figured it out. Mike snorted a little laugh against Jay’s lips, but the way he pushed Jay’s t-shirt out of the way and stroked his hand up over his ribs told him this was not a mean laugh. Mike was just grateful for his enthusiasm, already kissing him back with deeper presses of his tongue, hotter breath.

Kissing Mike was like realizing he could breathe underwater. Previous attempts, with girls who had looked at him with pity when they realized he wasn’t doing a bit but actually trying to kiss them like that, left him with a fear of drowning. To discover that with Mike he had gills was a profound vindication. He just let the waves of relief crash and crash over him. Whatever creature he was becoming beneath Mike’s weight was his true form, and here he could fearlessly occupy his body for the first time in his life, gliding down as deep as this current would take him.

Mike took his shirt off, then pulled Jay’s off without asking if he could. Jay loved that. He did not want to be asked. He just wanted Mike to know what he needed. Mike looked wild-eyed in the dim pre-dawn light but not quite unhinged. He would get worked up and then slow himself down, pawing at Jay’s chest like he wanted to get between his ribs and then rubbing at his nipples so gently that it made Jay shiver and hump up against him, wanting the rough stuff again. He liked the back and forth, though, and the sense that Mike was trying to be careful, resisting the urge to just take a big bite out of Jay the way he wanted to.

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Mike said, whispering this into Jay’s ear after they’d spent a while grinding their still boxer-clad dicks together and moaning for how good it felt.

“Like I’ll be able to tell?” Jay said, looking up at him with understanding when he pulled back to meet Jay’s eyes.

Mike smirked and then they were both laughing: how stupid that either of them had ever obsessively tracked the continuation of Jay’s virginity. The only really bad thing Mike managed to say to Jay during the oral and in person part of their fight was that Jay was just jealous of Mike because he’d never been with a woman, and that he would never have sex with anyone if he kept ‘acting like this.’ Jay had wanted to drag him back and make him draw up a diagram of how he was acting in a way that was driving away women, though for the most part he knew what Mike was really getting at.

All that baggage fell away like a mist evaporating. Jay wouldn’t be able to tell if Mike knew what he was doing because he was still a virgin and they both knew it. They kissed each other to celebrate how little that finally mattered, and how soon it would no longer be true.

Mike removed Jay’s boxers first, tenderly, in a worshipful way that made Jay feel like he should do the same with Mike’s rather than passively wait for him to do it. He made an unfortunate Muppet-like noise when Mike’s dick sprang out of them; there was enough light in the room by then that he could see how huge it was even under the shadow of the blankets that were still draped over both of them.

“I’m a grower,” Mike said, apologetically. He was up on all fours over Jay, his dick hanging heavily between them.

“It was big even before you got hard,” Jay said. He knew Mike had wanted him to notice.

“It’s-- Yeah. Sorry?”

“Don’t be sorry.” Jay looked up at Mike, trying to seem unafraid. He wasn’t scared exactly, just confused about what he was supposed to do with a cock of this magnitude. Mike seemed braced for rejection. “Have girls not liked it?” Jay asked, hopefully. He loved the idea of taking this bullet for Mike where others had shrunk selfishly away.

“I mean,” Mike said, ducking his head to look down between their bodies at the imposing presence of his own dick. “No. They’ve liked it.”

Jay grinned and they both started laughing again. When they kissed Mike lowered himself onto Jay with some ceremony, and they moaned into each other’s mouths for how good that felt: dick to dick contact, plus everything else all at once, and then they were literally rolling around in the feeling, still kissing. To Jay it felt like gloating, though there was no one present to sit sulkily and watch them have more fun together than anyone else was managing to, which was their old way of mutual gloating.

“What do you want?” Mike asked when they were both breathless and throbbing, their legs threaded together. “‘Cause I want to do everything to you.”

“That’s it,” Jay said, lighting up all over. Mike just kept flipping bigger and better switches within him, not unlike the way he pressed buttons when he was trying to piss Jay off. “That’s what I want.”

“Everything?”

“Yeah, please, all of it.”

Mike asked if Jay had jerk off lotion. He did, of course, and he placed it in Mike’s hands with complete trust. Jay had hoped Mike would tie him up in some theatrical way and threaten to take pictures, or at least duck under the blanket and suck his dick, but he went right for Jay’s ass once his fingers were slicked. The crazed lust in his eyes when he rubbed at Jay’s hole as if it was a sacred portal to paradise was enough to get Jay on board for what Mike seemed to have in mind.

Jay gasped when Mike wiggled a finger into him, then laughed at the way Mike’s eyebrows shot up, his eyes still locked on Jay’s, as if to ask him wordlessly from across a room if he was ready to leave a party.

“It’s good,” Jay reassured, petting Mike’s hair, though he wasn’t even sure yet. He felt intruded upon in a way that he liked, because it was Mike. “Don’t stop,” he added, and Mike’s eyes got dark again in a way that Jay liked, his finger sliding slowly all the way in.

The rest was organic in a way that Jay would eventually learn he could only ever achieve with Mike: yes, it felt amazing to have those thick fingers up his ass, and even better to get bumped at by the huge head of Mike’s cock. Getting it in took a long time; the sun was coming up like a reminder that they were on a deadline and they were both sweating under the blankets with the effort, but despite the strain it felt good for Jay, too, like a project they were working on together, until his body gave enough to allow him to feel how spine-meltingly hot it was to really let Mike have him, completely, buried to the hilt.

Mike was slow and careful, murmuring into Jay’s ear as he moved his hips in tiny, needy nudges: you okay? Yeah? Good like that?

Sometimes he forgot to ask and just cursed under his breath while grinding into Jay, telling him how good he felt, how he’d never stop fucking him, that he was going to have to live here now, he was never gonna pull out.

Jay nodded and kept his arms wrapped around Mike’s neck the whole time, agreeing to that plan. It felt real, like something they could actually do. They kissed a lot and clung to the sense that they were dreaming together, recreating the whole world around how connected they finally were.

Mike came first, with a groan that made Jay worry his boss would hear it downstairs in the store. Then Jay blew his load for that thought: that he was actually getting fucked up here in the real world, where anybody might find out about it. A remnant of that dream of being watched through the motel window was part of what set him off. He felt like he’d pulled an impossible fantasy into the physical realm with his bare hands, and it was not unlike how he’d once thought making movies would feel.

“Oh my god,” Mike said, still catching his breath from his orgasm and even pulsing weakly in the clenching heat of Jay’s ass, interrupting the end of his own release to marvel at Jay’s. “Did you, just-- You came?”

“Yeah,” Jay said, his voice still stepped on and small, vision slightly blurred.

“You-- With me still-- You came, oh my god. Jay.”

Mike kissed him like he’d just saved his life. Jay whimpered into Mike’s mouth and held him tight, wanting to keep his promise that Mike could stay in him forever, for real. Mike must have wanted that, too, because he didn’t pull out for a long time, just moved from mouthing at Jay’s neck and back up to smooching his cheeks, until his arms were shaking hard enough that Jay could feel the tremble in the mattress.

“What time is it?” Jay asked, hating the question and aware that Mike wasn’t wearing his watch.

“Can’t you call in sick?” Mike asked. His face overtop Jay’s was so sad, like he knew he’d be alone in the wilderness forever once he slid out.

“I need this job.” Jay nudged at Mike’s face with his nose. “If it’s only like six I can at least sleep for an hour. Or, like. Thirty minutes. I need a shower.”

Mike nodded and sighed. He looked down between them as if he was trying to watch while he finally lifted his hips back and eased his dick out of Jay’s ass, as if he could see the good part from that angle. Jay groaned and closed his eyes as what felt like an avalanche of come gushed out of him.

That was the first thing that made him think: oh no. They were in the real world, and now they had to clean this up.

But it wasn’t such a dire thought yet. He rolled onto his side while Mike wiped at the mess with Jay’s discarded boxers. Jay pulled his pillow against his face and closed his eyes, trying to feel like he’d never really awakened from the dream about breakdancing. This was a different kind of surreal, though. He allowed himself to enjoy the feeling of Mike sliding back into bed, spooning up behind him and whispering that it was only five thirty in the morning. This felt like a miracle Mike had performed for him, turning back time just enough to let him have a small measure of post-fuck reprieve.

“You could come work for me,” Mike said, waking Jay from the near-sleep he’d been drifting into.

“Hhm?”

“I-- Yeah, I don’t know. I have a production company.”

Jay said nothing, too comfortable to remind Mike that his production company was about as lucrative as Jay’s, just with more expensive cameras. Mike sounded like he knew this wasn’t realistic, anyway, and like he wanted to cry about it.

“Sorry,” Mike said. He tucked his face to Jay’s neck and let out a long, somewhat invasive sigh there. “Just get some rest. I’ll stand guard. Is your-- Ass okay? Mostly?”

“Yes,” Jay said, though a double shift with an ass that had just been fucked by such a cock would be a trial to get through. He didn’t want to explain this to Mike.

He woke up to the alarm he’d set for work what felt like five minutes later, his mood so dark from the need for real sleep and the knowledge that he wasn’t going to get it that he wanted to slap the alarm clock to the floor and call downstairs to tell them he quit. He considered going back to Arizona with Mike and becoming some kind of unexplainable side character in Mike’s life, letting Mike pay all the bills and therefore having to do everything he said, servant-like. It didn’t sound like the worst kind of life from where Jay was currently trying to hide from the world, in Mike’s arms. Mike was still asleep, his promise to stand guard just empty pillow talk, and the fact that the blaring alarm wasn’t rousing him was a little infuriating, like evidence of moral failure. Jay finally sat up with a kind of growl and smacked the alarm off as hard as he could without breaking it.

“Whoa,” Mike said, waking up with a full-body jerk at the feeling of Jay yanking free from his grip. “What-- Where are you going?”

“I need a shower. You can sleep in if you want, I don’t care.”

He didn’t mean that ‘I don’t care’ to sound so angry, but was afraid to turn back because he was walking across the room completely naked, and Mike was still sheltered under the blankets. Jay hurried into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. He considered locking it, then told himself he was being stupid. Mike would not burst in on him to take a leak or try to be romantic. Right?

He felt like he couldn’t ever be sure what Mike would do anymore, but he left the door unlocked.

Under the hot water, he stood for a while just trying to wake up and make sense of what had happened, also to convince himself he hadn’t only imagined it in the way that Ed Harris may have imagined the aliens at the bottom of the ocean just before dying. The loss of his virginity was easy to accept as reality when he turned to part his ass cheeks so the water could blast him clean and hissed at how sore and raw he felt. It was the most erotic pain he’d ever experienced, and within a few swipes of his soapy hand back there he was rock hard.

He wrapped his fist around his dick and tried to decide what to think about. There was no reason to start out with elaborate fantasies about imperiled women and then segue into more and more vivid thoughts about the cock that was defiling them, until he’d taken the woman’s place. He’d had a cock in real life and he’d loved it, but there was still something about women he desired. His attraction to them almost always took the form of wanting to direct them, order them around, pay them to do what he wanted and have the right to get indignant or condescending if they didn’t do it right. This was sexual in some kind of not-great way, and he didn’t consider it to be something he should or could actually get away with, so he rarely put himself in that position anymore when it came to moviemaking. Most of the roles he wrote now were for men. He’d had periods of his life when he’d read ads for escorts obsessively, though he knew he would never pay for sex, it was too scary. In his script about the fight with Mike, the deranged main character hired prostitutes and comically complained to them about how he’d ruined his friendship before butchering them, mostly offscreen.

He imagined Mike coming into the bathroom and climbing into the shower with him without a word, getting down on his knees and sucking. This was okay but not as good as picturing Mike shoving him to his knees and sticking that big dick in his face like: figure it out. Jay couldn’t imagine getting his mouth around it but he knew he was going to try. He was in a hurry to get off, needing to dress and get down to the store, and thinking about sucking Mike’s big dick while Mike held his head in place wasn’t getting him there fast enough. He switched to imagining Mike coming into the shower to clean his sore hole for him with mocking gentleness, taking his time with it and muttering ‘almost done, Jay, almost done’ while Jay whined and squirmed in his grip, and that did it. Jay blew his load in a rocket-launch fashion thinking about Mike’s voice in his ear, those words being said about that act.

When he left the bathroom he put a towel around his shoulders to hide his skinny chest and wrapped a second one around his waist. It annoyed him that he would have to parade into the bedroom naked and that he had no rational reason to ask Mike not to stare at him while he got dressed. Last night had been so dark and dreamy, only it hadn’t even been night, really. That all of that had actually happened just a few hours ago made him pause mid-stride in the hallway, needing to recalibrate his bearings. Time itself seemed dented by what they’d done.

Mike was dressed and sitting on the bed. Jay glanced at him, probably radiating the kind of ‘pervert leaving the scene of his crime’ energy he’d always projected toward any girl who’d shown him affection or attention. He didn’t know how to stop it, just needed to put clothes on so he could think straight in Mike’s presence.

“Sucks that you have to work,” Mike said.

“Yep. There’s a coffee maker out there if you want some.”

“Do you want some?”

“Um. No, I make it at work.”

Mike said nothing and made no attempt not to stare at Jay’s bare ass while he dressed. Jay pretended not to mind. He wasn’t sure what to do with the look on Mike’s face when he turned back toward the bed.

“Can I come with you?” Mike asked, a little indignantly, like he was bleeding out and Jay wasn’t even offering a band-aid. Jay didn’t think that was fair. Mike wasn’t the one who’d gotten fucked.

“To work?” Jay asked when he couldn’t imagine what else Mike could mean.

“Yeah. It’s not like they don’t know me.”

Jay nodded without thinking, then wanted to take it back. His boss owned the store and was familiar with Mike from previous times he’d let them use it for shoots when it was closed. It still made no sense to bring Mike downstairs during his shift. Remembering that he’d come at the thought of his co-workers maybe being able to hear him being fucked upstairs was like a rug being pulled out from under him now: what the hell had he been doing, thinking, feeling? This was his real life. Mike was toying with it because for him the world was all one big playground for his whims. Jay wasn’t so lucky.

He was half-aware that his terrible mood was just sleep deprivation, but knowing this didn’t make it any less awkward when Mike lurked behind the counter with him at work, sipping coffee while Jay counted out the morning register. They only had five minutes alone together before the first customer of the day was at the door, staring in at them and waiting to be admitted. Jay wasn’t sure it would have mattered if they’d had five hours, unless they could have spent that time huddled together upstairs in bed. In the harsh fluorescent light of the store, it seemed too obvious that there were no words that could convey their astonishment over how brave they’d briefly been, or for how lost in the woods they were in the aftermath.

“I guess I should go,” Mike said around ten thirty, when Jay had been busy with a steady stream of needy customers and phone calls since opening. Mike had tried to keep himself occupied by strolling through the aisles and examining random products, but it was clear that he was just killing time while waiting for Jay to have something worthwhile to say about the fact that they’d had sex.

Jay just nodded, too eagerly, like he couldn’t wait for Mike to be gone.

It wasn’t true. He was distracted by work and stressed out by the literal pain in his ass that was rebounding through him and producing a corresponding pain in his heart. He knew he was letting Mike down, and while he felt bad about it he was also angry that anything more was expected of him when last night he’d done so much. Did Mike even know how hard it was for him to let his guard down like that?

Probably not, because, with Mike, it had actually been easy.

Jay loaned Mike his apartment key so he could get his stuff. When Mike returned he had his camera bag over his shoulder and one foot out the door. Jay had a line of customers and could only smile and wave from behind the counter, hoping that Mike understood how much Jay wished he could go with him and just be his willing servant in some faraway desert. But that was not a real world scenario.

Jay was in a daze by the time his second shift started, and asleep on his feet by the end of it. He went upstairs and hesitated before opening his apartment door, wondering if Mike had left an embarrassing note or symbolic object inside for him. Jay wanted that, and realizing this tore his heart in half, before he opened the door and again when he found nothing waiting for him inside.

Mike was still driving home, so Jay wasn’t surprised not to see him online or to get a phone call. They didn’t have the kind of relationship where they’d call from the road to say where they were or to reassure the other person they were safe. Mike had been inside him, but Jay couldn’t ask about his whereabouts without feeling like he was intruding. He picked up the pillow Mike had brought to his bed and held it against his chest. The thought of Mike driving home was newly terrible: he could get in an accident, exhausted from Jay’s use of his perfect body, and just be gone. Any other life circumstance coming down the road in the other direction could similarly take him away. In bed, Jay hugged his whole body around the pillow and slept for ten hours, the smell of Mike that was left behind on his sheets only making him feel lonelier.

When Mike’s name popped online the next day, late at night after Jay again couldn’t sleep, Jay’s first impulse was to sign off. That would be too obvious, also mean, and he didn’t even understand why he wanted to run. He’d been waiting all day to see Mike show up, wanting to know that he was home safe.

Jay felt like he should send the first message, since he’d been kind of cold on the morning of Mike’s departure.

How was the drive back?

Shitty, Mike sent. Had car trouble.

Oh no! Sorry. That sucks.

Yeah I might not be able to come back for a while.
Till I get this fixed.
Gonna cost a fortune, might have to get a new car.

Oh no, Jay typed again, but then he didn’t send it. He felt dumped, though he had no reason to believe Mike was lying. The car was old, and it had endured many long road trips since Mike moved away.

Can I edit what we shot? Jay sent. What else was he going to say? I can still feel you in my ass two days later and I love it, thank you? Better to talk about the things they always had.

Sure, Mike sent. Then he went quiet.

Jay sent a barrage of further messages, all about his ideas for the footage. He wanted to ask Mike if he still wanted to direct the script he’d read, but that seemed as hard to bring up as the sex. Mike had little more to say before signing off.

Guilt and bitterness competed for Jay’s attention in the sleepless nights that followed. He knew he should do something, but why couldn’t Mike do something first? And what would that look like, for either of them? He had no idea and wished desperately for someone he could tell, but there was nobody like that in his life.

Mike started sending him drunk text messages at the end of the summer. Jay accepted them all, though it enraged him that reading each one would cost him twenty cents.

Come here, Mike sent one night when Jay was just home after his shift.

Where are you? Jay sent back, allowing himself to imagine Mike standing down on the street in front of the store, smiling up at Jay after asking him to go to the window and look out.

s-dale

I don’t have that kind of money or time off work Jay sent back, newly pissed off for the sting of letting himself think Mike might have come for a surprise visit.

oh boo hoo Mike replied, which made Jay want to pitch the phone across the room.

He didn’t reply, and in the morning there was no apology via email or AIM. For a few months he didn’t hear much from Mike at all, and it was like that morning in his bed really had been a dream. Then Mike emailed to announce he was moving back to Chicago at the start of the new year.

Hey, just wanted to let you know I’ll be moving home soon. I’ll stay with my parents or Rich until I find a place, whoever annoys me the least (tough contest. My parents think I’m on drugs and Rich lets dirty dishes stack up to the ceiling). Things are not working out for me here. I don’t know if coming home will make it better or worse but I don’t want to lay eyes on this town ever again. If you want to work on something together next year let me know. Since I’ll be around more. PS I finally watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Did You Know: I avoided watching it last year because of you. Hahahahahahaha. OK bye.

Jay read this email twenty times, his face flushed as he tried to figure out what Mike meant by that last thing. In 2004 they had only seen each other three times during Mike’s visits home, at the urging of mutual friends in every instance. Jay had thought of Mike when he saw that movie, of course. The idea of erasing someone from your mind to save yourself from the hell of obsessively reliving your history with them had been a painfully perfect reflection of how he’d felt about Mike at the time, and still he couldn’t quite put together that it was romantic in nature. Mike might have been ahead of him on the romance thing and therefore didn’t even attempt to see the movie, knowing it would hit too close to the bone. The fact that he was admitting this now was a window, an opening, the kind of opportunity to talk about what had happened that Jay had both been craving and dreading.

Jay typed up three different versions of his reply. The one he finally sent was inadequate, but he didn’t know how to make it better.

Hey, that’s awesome! I think? Sorry you had a bad time there. I know you were hoping for a fresh start or whatever. But your support system is here, so I get it. If you ever want to move to L.A. and live under a bridge, I will join you in that endeavor. Until then I think we could do well here, making our weird shit and scraping by. Not that you’ll be here, exactly. But an hour’s drive is much better than twenty-seven hours. From my perspective. →J

He read over it at least thirty times before sending, hoping Mike would see his carefully coded messages the way he’d seen Mike’s, in the mention of that movie. Jay’s were the thing about a support system (me, he meant: me, I’m here!) and the bit about a shorter drive to bring them together being a good thing from his perspective (meaning: I hated being so far away from you and this is the only good news I’ve gotten since the last time you left.)

Mike did not reply to this email, but that wasn’t unusual. He did start to call Jay at times in the months before he moved back, discussing logistics about what they might work on when he got back to town. It was clear to Jay by then that if they ever discussed sleeping together and probably loving each other, it would happen in person. Phone calls came preloaded with enough pressure already, and textual evidence of any kind could never exist.

The biggest surprise was that his certainty that Mike wanted him, cared for him, and even longed for him was not fading as the months passed. If anything it was solidifying in a way that made him all that much more determined not to bring it up. His avoidance of the subject was a combination of cowardice and not wanting to light Mike’s feelings on fire in a way that would made him explode in unforeseeable directions.

He saw Mike two days after Christmas. Mike had come back before the start of the new year after all, to spend the holidays with his family and because he’d decided the fee for breaking his lease was worth it to get away from there sooner rather than later. He’d been back in Chicago for two weeks. Jay was preening expectantly when Mike couldn’t hold out any longer than that before making the drive to Milwaukee. Jay didn’t expect to get swept off his feet with a kiss or even for them to sleep together right away, but he was thinking, the whole time he sat at his mother’s table for Christmas dinner and all throughout the present opening, that Mike had come back for him, that they both knew it, that some of their friends probably even knew it, so something had to happen, eventually.

Mike arrived late and blamed traffic. He looked rough and had forgotten to bring his camera. It was frigid outside and there was nothing to do but go to the movies.

“I might not be in the best mood,” Mike said when they were settled next to each other in the dark of the Downer theater, which was crowded with loud people who were shuffling their coats and scarves and hats around among their many snacks, everybody taking up too much space in the small, old-fashioned seats.

“How come?” Jay asked. It was safe enough to ask about Mike’s feelings there, in the middle of a crowd.

“I fought with Rich.”

“Oh. What happened?”

“He told me he could come here with me today and then he made up some bullshit excuse not to at the last second. It’s ‘cause he got a new video game for Christmas and he’d rather play it all day than actually leave his house. What a fucking manchild.”

The lights went down fully then, the theater’s coming attractions animation starting on the screen. Jay settled back and allowed the misery of what Mike had said to close over him: Mike had not wanted to come alone, had not wanted to be alone with Jay again. He was mad that he had to be, without Rich there as armor.

The movie they were there to see was Peter Jackson’s King Kong. They’d both been excited about it after loving the Lord of the Rings movies, Jay especially.

It was terrible. Mike groaned in agony twice and kept looking at his watch.

They went to a bar afterward. Jay ordered a beer, though he was afraid to take so much as a sip around Mike now. He was more afraid of how Mike would act if Jay didn’t join him in drinking, so he clicked his beer glass to Mike’s when he mumbled a disspirited cheers.

“How’s being back so far?” Jay asked after Mike had enumerated the many ways the Kong movie was a failure.

“How do you think you’d like going back to living with your parents?” Mike asked, with a weird amount of venom, as if Jay was an idiot for asking the question. He softened when he saw Jay’s face, and sighed. “It’s fine for now,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life!” He announced this rather loudly, and someone in the front of the bar whooped in agreement.

“Me either,” Jay said. All he could think about was how he wanted to go back to his apartment with Mike, get fucked, and spend the rest of the year cuddled up in bed with him.

He had been reckless with himself, letting this fantasy even formulate. He gulped from his beer and settled on a new year’s resolution: don’t expect anything from Mike. Don’t get all stupid about what you wish you could expect. Don’t allow him in arm’s reach.

“I just need to find a rich old woman to marry,” Mike said, muttering this over the rim of his beer glass without looking at Jay. “That would solve all my problems.”

Jay forced a laugh and drank more. Mike finished his beer and didn’t get anything else, telling Jay he had to head back to Chicago. His mother was expecting him to help his dad install some new shelving she’d gotten as a Christmas present.

Jay nodded like this made any sense. He paid the tab, since Mike had bought their movie tickets. They walked together to the door, winding scarves around their necks. It had started snowing pretty heavily.

“Are you sure you should drive in this?” Jay asked when they were outside, snowflakes landing in their hair.

“Are you inviting me up?” Mike asked. He smirked before Jay could say yes, of course you can come up, please. “Nahh, I better go. Sorry I’m not, uh. Better company.”

“You were fine,” Jay said. “It’s the movie’s fault.”

“Oh, it’s no one’s fault, Jay.” Mike groaned and tilted his head back, closing his eyes against the snow that swirled down against his face. “Or is it? I guess we’ll find out. Happy new year.”

Jay wanted to call out to Mike as he walked to his car. It seemed too dangerous for him to go, and not because of the snow or the highway or the one beer he’d had. There was a veil being pulled across something that had previously been within reach, shutting it away forever. Jay wanted to beg Mike to understand that he would want access to the thing beyond the veil desperately before long, and that Jay couldn’t hold it open by himself.

He’s never stopped wishing he did something differently, then or the previous time, except for every time Mike makes him feel like shit. Then he wants to get on his knees and thank his coward self for just standing there in the snow with his hands in his coat pockets, watching Mike go.

*

Chapter 3: DAY TWO

Chapter Text

Jay wakes up on the couch as if arriving there by time machine: how can this be his life? Who is responsible? It’s early morning and Mike is calling to him from the bedroom, which is both comforting and alarming.

He had dreams about younger Mike with his younger self all night long, after indulging in the torture of actual memories that still feel dream-like, and now his body feels clunky and Mike’s looks absurd, splayed in Jay’s bed with that cast nearly up to his thigh. The look of expectation and betrayal on Mike’s face is familiar, though.

“What were you doing out there?” Mike asks, indignant. “Sleeping?”

“Yes?”

“What the fuck, Jay? Is this a new thing, you refuse to sleep in the same bed with me?”

“New-- What?” Jay gapes at Mike from the bedroom doorway, wanting to bang his head against the frame. “We hadn’t touched each other in three years before yesterday and you know I can’t sleep in the same bed with anybody.” Except for that one time he did with Mike, the first time. “Do you need a pill?”

Mike scoffs and deflates, looking awful. He’s visibly sweaty.

“You’d love that,” he says. “Just keeping me drugged here between sex acts.”

“You already made that joke.”

“Joke!” Mike makes a high-pitched noise of misery and drags his unhurt hand over his face. “Yes,” he says, jaw tight. “I do need a pill. And breakfast to go with it.”

Jay remembers wanting to be Mike’s sidekick servant, once. Hilarious. All it had taken was one fuck, and isn’t that what he’s become anyway, broken leg or not?

“What do you want?” he asks, meaning for breakfast.

“Leftover pizza,” Mike says. “Unless you wolfed it all down after I passed out.”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“Of course, yes, of course. Hurry up, please, this shit kills.”

Mike winces and reaches in the direction of his broken leg with his injured hand, then growls in pain, remembering his hand is hurt, too.

Jay hurries to get him what he needs.

While Mike eats pizza in Jay’s bed after all, his morning pill swallowed down with a glass of Coke, Jay returns to kitchen for his own breakfast. It’s bizarre to think he ate this same meal yesterday, before he got the phone call from Rich, when he was planning to go for a run afterward: yogurt and blueberries, black coffee. Every intruding interval that Mike slings into the timeline of Jay’s life feels like the branching off point of an alternate reality, detaching Jay from his previous self. This is just the latest example. He scrolls through the usual bullshit on his phone and waits to hear Mike calling for him again.

He’s disappointed to find Mike asleep again when he checks on him. This amount of resting seems like overkill, though it makes sense that pain pills would knock a person out. Jay spends the rest of the morning reading about how to care for a person with a broken leg. The first thing he reads is that the cast should be elevated, and he curses under his breath, trying to remember if the nurses mentioned this in the whirlwind of expelling Mike from the hospital. He’s pretty sure they weren’t supposed to let him wheel Mike out to the parking area in the wheelchair by himself, but who knows which hospital policies have changed out of understaffed necessity since the pandemic. He still has the folded up wheelchair in the backseat of his car, on loan from the hospital in case Mike needs it in the coming week. They’re supposed to bring it back when Mike returns for his one-week checkup. Jay at least remembers being told that part upon Mike’s discharge, with accusing emphasis.

He slips into the bedroom and carefully inserts two pillows under Mike’s right foot, then another one under his knee, elevating the cast. Mike mumbles in his sleep and frowns pitifully but doesn’t wake up.

So that’s done, at least. Jay’s heart is pounding like he’s Jack tiptoeing around the giant at the top of the beanstalk. He stands over the bed, disturbed by his impulse to just climb in and sleep the day away with Mike, as if he’d even be able to after drinking coffee, or with Mike there at all. He’s hyper-aware of people near to him when he sleeps now, Mike especially.

He goes into his office to try to get some work done, but he needs Mike’s input on all his current in-progress projects, so mostly he fucks around reading more broken leg information and anecdotes. Apparently itchiness may eventually become a problem. Dryness and keeping it clean are important, and they probably haven’t been careful enough during meal times, or sex for that matter.

Jay lets his mind drift into their past again, filing through the years to check for signs he might have missed, a bad habit that he can’t kick whenever some new stratum of Mike seeps into the bedrock of his life. Where along the way did he miss the signals that they would end up here together? There are still a million things he can’t evaluate, even the fact that Mike only stayed in Chicago for six months after moving back. He informed Jay that he was looking for apartments in Milwaukee ‘to save money,’ though he couldn’t charge as much there for the freelance production work he was trying to get in Chicago. They could work in both cities, he said, while saving on living expenses by being based in Milwaukee.

The ‘they’ was presented as a foregone conclusion. Mike didn’t ask Jay to work for his company again directly, just presented him with paperwork in 2007.

“You had a lawyer do this?” Jay asked, wondering if he could afford to hire one himself before signing anything.

“No,” Mike said. “It’s a standard operating agreement. I found a template online. If you don’t think it’s fair--”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Jay said, already signing. At the time, he never believed they would make make much money, and he at least trusted Mike not to steal from him financially.

Working together was whatever in that era: mostly weddings, a few local commercials, some concert recordings. They were busy enough between that and the other jobs they had to keep to make rent that they didn’t even conceive of as much creative content as they’d planned to, mostly blowing off steam with sarcastic no-effort projects here and there. In mid-2007 Mike told Jay he had written a script for a horror film and wanted to put actual time aside to work on it, even if it took them years to complete.

“This crap doesn’t have to be good to get distribution,” he said. “We’re running out of time to get that kind of back catalog going.”

Jay read the script and felt like he’d been pushed off the deck of their dull but smooth-sailing ship: it was like a remix of the one Jay wrote in 2005, which he’d never finished after they slept together. That draft was too painful to even look at now, and reading this script was even worse. Mike’s script made a kind of joke of the angsty virgin character, and maybe Jay’s had, too, but Jay’s version had heart, despite the sex worker murders which Mike had left out of his. Instead, the virginal hero transformed into a literal monster who helped uncover the fact that his ex-friend was actually a serial killer. The ending was still a sort of bonkers question mark, with some vague notes toward the two teaming up together and going down in a blaze of glory.

“You can make any revisions you want,” Mike said, looking a little frightened when Jay first met his eyes after reading this. “Obviously.”

“My only request is that I don’t have to play the main character,” Jay said. He didn’t want to Frankenstein his heart back into this script. It wasn’t like he was ever going to do anything with the old version anyway.

“No, no,” Mike said. “We’re getting real actors for this.”

They did for the most part, though the lead was someone Jay knew from college who semi-grudgingly took the role as a favor. Jay agreed to play a small comedic role, because their budget was already blown and then some, and Mike had to play a part, too, but their business as actors in the movie was not the reason they ended up fucking in the basement of the hardware store a year later, ostensibly while working on the film. They were alone there late at night and acting as stand-ins for actors who would arrive in the morning, doing scene blocking with a camera set up on a tripod. It was yet another reason for Jay to later feel like whenever they fell back together it would take place outside of reality, because it was also the first time they sort of role-played during sex without meaning to.

Or maybe Mike had meant to. Maybe it was a whole devious plan to get back to the place he once said he would never leave. Jay has to wonder, sometimes, remembering it.

He checks on Mike again when he hears him shuffling around in the bedroom. Mike is on his way back from the bathroom on the crutches, grunting every time he hefts himself forward with them.

“Don’t go back to bed,” Jay says, watching from the doorway.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, don’t you want a change of scenery?”

“A change--?” Mike sputters and glares at Jay as he deposits himself back into the bed. “Jay, this happened yesterday. Give me a few fucking days to lie here feeling sorry for myself.”

“Okay, I know.” Jay lingers there, wishing he had someplace to be. Normally he’d be at work, with Mike or at least Rich, but he’s not going to go there just to sit alone in his office. “Do you want some company?”

“Yes, but I have one condition.”

Jay’s eyebrows go up.

Mike settles into place and grins, resting his left hand at the center of his chest. It’s been long enough that he could probably take another pill, but Jay can see the routine they’re falling into: Mike will wait an hour or so past when he needs one so they can do some weird sex shit before he’s knocked down by the next dose.

“Your other sex toys,” Mike says. “I want to see them.”

“Great, well. I won that contest, so you don’t get your prize.”

“Oh, jesus, Jay, c’mon. I could use some cheering up. Take pity on me and expose your perversions.”

Jay sighs and walks to his closet, trying not to feel justly praised when Mike cheers for his compliance. Why does it feel good to give him what he wants? Jay is still trying to figure it out while he rummages through boxes that may or may not contain those nipple clamps.

“I can’t find them,” he finally says, sort of disappointed.

“Them?” Mike sits up straighter on the bed, craning his neck like he’ll be able to spot what Jay is seeking from there. “What are we talking about? More plastic cocks? Anal beads?”

“No and no.”

“Blindfolds, handcuffs?”

“Nope.”

“Well, no matter,” Mike says, in a theatrical way that makes Jay turn to look at him with suspicion. “I had a feeling your collection would be inadequate. So I ordered something for you.”

“Something-- What? Oh my god, when?”

“On my phone, this morning! I may have been slightly high from those pills, but don’t worry, I remembered to change the delivery to your address.”

Jay groans and stands, trying to deny that he finds this weirdly sweet, or at least exciting. Mike used to get him strange and slightly insulting little presents all the time, but that was a pre-pandemic thing, like so many things he’d taken for granted.

“What the hell is it?” Jay asks, knowing he won’t be told. Mike looks pleased with himself, which is better than the miserable wincing.

“It’s a surprise,” Mike says. “But in the meantime, I need another bathing session, so. How about that shaving you said you were gonna do, huh? You ready for that?”

Jay tries not to smile at the suggestion, but it’s impossible. Why is this fun? It just is.

“Do it the old fashioned way,” Mike says. “With a bowl of water and hot towels and all that shit. I know you’ve got fancy shaving stuff, I saw it in there.”

“I thought you wanted to be bathed?” Jay says, though he’s relieved by the thought that he can avoid lowering Mike into the tub again.

“You can sponge bathe me.” Mike winks after saying so, like he knows Jay will love this.

Jay takes a moment to think about the logistics and then gets to work. He covers the cast carefully with a folded blanket so it won’t get wet, and gets a stainless steel bowl from the kitchen. When it’s filled with hot water he places it on the bedside table, trying not to be charmed by the patient way Mike is waiting to be tended to, his dick tenting his boxers just a little for the sight of Jay making his preparations. Jay is not entirely soft either. He likes being watched like this, and that Mike can’t just get fed up with waiting and grab him, though he likes that, too, sometimes.

“Sit up,” Jay says, already nudging Mike upright so he can stuff some extra pillows behind his shoulders. He wraps a towel around Mike’s neck and goes to get the shaving brush he has steeping in the bowl of the bathroom sink, the bristles loosening in more hot water there. He was given his first nice-ish shaving kit as a Christmas gift from his sister, and since then he’s invested in this one, which was expensive. He normally doesn’t like sharing his nicest things with anyone, but Mike will just be passively receiving its niceness while Jay controls everything, which is ideal in terms of sharing things goes.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jay asks when he’s foamed up the brush with shaving cream that he’s piled into a smaller bowl. “The beard looks good on you.”

“I can grow another one,” Mike says.

Though it annoys Jay, the easy arrogance of this also makes his dick a little harder. Jay has nightmares about waking up without his own beard, which took forever to get right. Shaving it would be as traumatic as reverting to his old teeth.

Mike stares up at Jay in a familiar way when Jay pats the shaving cream onto him. They have applied makeup to each other in the past, for work. They never speak when they do it, like it’s a sacred ceremony. Being that close to each other’s faces always feels a little bit like getting away without a kiss without actually having to deal with what it might mean.

“Climb onto my lap,” Mike says when Jay reaches for the razor.

“Huh?”

“You’ll be able to get a better angle.”

“With your dick jabbing me in the ass? I doubt it.”

“Think of it this way, Jay,” Mike says, his eyes darkening. “It’s a challenge. Like, what’s that stupid movie where the guy has to write code while he gets his dick sucked? Like that.”

“Ugh,” Jay says. He used to beat off to that scene a lot when he was younger.

“C’mon, c’mon. I won’t make it harder by humping you or anything. Why would I? My face is on the line!”

Jay has to swallow down a whine at the thought of anything happening to Mike’s face, and suddenly his stomach is plummeting as he conjures up the mental image of Mike falling off that ladder, the sound his bone must have made when it broke. Wasn’t he screaming afterward, from the pain? Why didn’t any neighbors come?

“Okay, it’s not that scary,” Mike says, laughing at the look on Jay’s face. He looks like a friendly monster while speaking with the shaving cream on his face. “Hurry up, this stuff’s getting in my mouth.”

“So stop talking!”

After giving this order, Jay does as Mike asked, climbing up onto the bed to straddle his hips. He can still reach the hot water bowl, the brush and the bowl of shaving cream. Mike peers up at him with trusting eyes. He holds Jay’s hip with his left hand, squeezing just softly when Jay takes the first careful swipe of the razor over Mike’s cheek. They both exhale after he has, like this is some kind of big deal. Jay’s boner is poking Mike’s gut, and Mike’s is a comforting presence at the seat of Jay’s ass, sort of bracing him in place.

Like the effects makeup sessions, they both stay quiet and fully concentrated. Jay’s dick is throbbing for attention by the time he’s using the towel to wipe the remnants of the shaving cream from Mike’s newly smooth cheeks. Mike smells good, partially clean but still sweaty, and the way he’s staring up at Jay makes Jay think about how long it’s been since they last kissed.

Three years, maybe more. Something about considering this makes Jay again think of Mike falling off that ladder, and a sickening sense of doom drops through him. How can it be true that it’s been that long? He can’t give in to wanting to reconnect that way now. It will be worse, every time, when they stop doing it again. Fucking is one thing. Kissing like that, holding each other in bed-- Though Jay doesn’t even consider himself an affectionate person, Mike has the power to turn him into one, and Jay can’t endure another painful transformation back into his actual self.

Mike is still holding Jay’s waist, batting his eyelashes and trying to draw Jay down closer to his fragrant face. Jay clears his throat and dismounts carefully, kneeling at Mike’s side on the bed.

“I’ll sponge bathe you now,” he says, eyeing Mike’s dick, which is poking out through the slit in his boxers, visibly sticky across the tip. For a while Jay just stares, then remembers what he was doing and removes the towel that was draped around Mike’s neck, leaning across Mike to dip it into the now lukewarm water.

“This is nuts,” Mike says. “Which reminds me. Hmm.”

“Reminds you of what,” Jay says with a sigh when he can feel Mike waiting for the question.

“I’ve never shaved my balls. Have you?”

Jay’s eyes go wide at what Mike may be insinuating. Then he laughs, because there's no way. Mike’s face remains serious.

“Answer the question, Jay. Have you. Shaved. Your balls.”

“What do you think? Hell no! Why would I?”

“So that someone could nestle them in their mouth when they’re all smooth and shit.”

Jay scoffs and pats soap onto the damp towel, as if he’s not thinking about how he might like that, actually. It’s embarrassing to think of Mike doing it to him, and no one including himself is getting anywhere near his balls with a shaving razor, but if Mike’s could be made magically hairless-- Sure, he’d tongue-bathe them.

“I’m not shaving your balls,” Jay says.

“Why not? Please? I want you to!”

“I don’t care! There’s too much room for error, jesus. I’m not, like, precise enough.”

“Yes, you are. You know you are, Jay. Only you could ever do this for me, c’mon. I would trust my balls to your blade.”

“Noo,” Jay says, whining this half-protest out with a laugh. “You must have taken another pill, you sound insane.”

“I haven’t taken shit, I can’t get it up with those things, you’re right. I gotta get my erections in between doses. That’s why I gotta make the loads I’m blowin’ extra good.”

“What, ‘cause you’re normally coming more than twice a day?”

“Twice! We’re only working our way up from there, sir.”

Jay shakes his head and helps Mike sit up so he can put a towel under his back. He’ll wash the sheets after this, but he doesn’t want water seeping into his mattress. He instructs himself to stop imagining Mike’s freshly shaved balls and how they would feel in his mouth.

“I’d rather suck your dick,” he mutters, leaning over Mike again to grab a washcloth from his supplies on the side table.

“I know that.” Mike reaches up under Jay’s shirt to touch his belly, which makes Jay recoil from the threat of being tickled there. “I told you,” Mike says. “I’m saving that for when you really deserve it.”

“Oh god.”

“In fact! Maybe you can’t suck my dick until you’ve shaved my balls. Yeah, that’s good. A proper incentive.”

“You’ve lost your mind.”

Jay realizes too late that he’s smiling, and Mike has seen this, which means he won’t let up. By the time Jay has scrubbed Mike down and patted him dry they’re both panting for some kind of sex, Mike’s dick having fully emerged from his boxer slit with some help from the way he’s spread his thighs open, shamelessly freeing it. Framed by his threadbare boxers, it look even thicker and more dangerous. Jay’s mouth is watering for it, and there’s no reason not to stare.

“Want that cleaned off, too?” he asks, nodding to it.

“After the balls,” Mike says. His expression is so serious that Jay has to laugh, though Mike is also a little scary when he gets like this, single-minded for some crazed scheme that he needs Jay to help him enact.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Jay asks, scooting down to reach for the hem of Mike’s boxers.

“‘Cause you love it,” Mike says. “I guess I’m just a generous person that way.”

Jay lifts his lip, hating the idea of Mike giving him pity sex, even if it was only a lame excuse for why he’s actually doing this: for his own entertainment and sexual gratification.

“Oh yeah,” Mike says when Jay is spreading shaving cream on Mike’s balls, still expecting Mike to call this off at some point before Jay wields the razor. “Mhm, good. Tend to those balls, Jay.”

“Shut up.”

Jay can’t believe he’s laughing at this, also extremely aroused by it. He can’t believe any of this is happening, and tries to summon a time when he could believe he was having sex with Mike: in April of 2021, maybe, just before they wordlessly drifted back to co-worker mode again. By then they’d been at it for almost a year, the only time their fuckfest had lasted more than a day. He’d started to think things had changed, but he was also always in at least some form of mild disbelief, by then about fact that it was lasting for as long as it did.

“This is so hot,” Mike says when Jay picks up the razor, instead of: okay, enough, you’ve called my bluff, I was kidding.

“Uhh.” Jay moves back down between Mike’s legs, surprised that his hand isn’t shaking. He’s not as afraid of this as he maybe should be, sort of wants to prove to Mike that he can do it. “Do you want them completely bare?”

“Mhm, yeah.”

Mike licks his lips. Jay makes a face at him and then at his balls. They don’t look hot to Jay, covered in shaving cream, but Mike’s dick is right there, and the thought of finally getting his mouth on it is egging Jay on.

“Admit that you like this,” Mike says when Jay continues to hesitate. “You like it kind of dangerous and fucked up.”

Jay frowns, presuming Mike means sex when he says ‘it.’ The first time they fucked was so gentle and felt so safe, though it’s also such ancient history that Jay isn’t sure he’s remembering it right. Every time after that has been some degree of fucked up or desperate, but that element of it has never really been Jay’s doing.

“This isn’t dangerous,” Jay says. “You’re right that only I could ever do this for you. So just keep still and don’t try to make me laugh.”

Mike bites his bottom lip. He’s grinning like a fool, flushed across his cheeks, and his right thigh is twitching slightly. Jay braces his left hand on it to keep it still while he works.

He’s single-minded as soon as he brings the blade to Mike’s foam-covered balls, thinking about only this. Even Mike’s twitching, drooling cock can’t distract him now. He works slowly and meticulously, lifting and shifting them as needed, ignoring Mike’s whimpery moans and the way his thigh keeps wanting to shake under Jay’s steady hand. He’s not sure he’s ever heard Mike keep quiet for so long while awake. Even when Mike’s balls are shaved bare and flushed pink, looking even bigger without their hairiness, Mike says nothing, just chews his lip and huffs his breath while Jay puts the razor aside and brings the damp towel down to wipe the shaving cream from the insides of Mike’s thighs.

“Jesus,” Mike says, breathing this out when Jay sits back to admire his work. “I’m gonna come, Jay, please, just. Do whatever you want, just do something.”

Jay gives Mike’s cock a little slap. Mike yelps and spreads his thighs open open wider, so Jay gives him another one, sharper.

“I can’t come from that though,” Mike says, looking fascinated and panicked.

“I could slap your balls?” Jay offers, fake sweet.

“Jay! No!”

Jay smirks and leans down to do what they both really want, his eyes fluttering shut with pleasure even before he’s got his lips all the way around Mike’s sticky cockhead. God, it’s good, he’s missed it, and Mike won’t last long but Jay doesn’t care. They have three more days here together, and Jay is going to do this a lot. He sinks down onto Mike’s dick with his mouth straining to fit around him, sighing for the feeling and the taste of him, the way it makes him cough a little at the back of his throat but not want to pull back.

“Unnhgh,” Mike says, grabbing a handful of Jay’s hair. He uses his clumsy left hand to guide Jay’s head and lets his overwhelmed whimpers flow freely while he tries not to come.

Jay takes him in even deeper, wishing Mike would push his head down with more force. He lets Mike hear him moan for how good taking this much feels, so Mike can feel the reverberations of how much Jay loves this against and all around his shaft. Mike is hyperventilating for it, then coming. He shoots down Jay’s throat while unleashing a stream of pinched-off curses, his fist still closed in Jay’s hair, keeping him down to swallow it. Only after he’s pulsed every drop out does his grip on Jay relax, and he pets Jay’s fucked-up hair back into place before letting his hand fall away.

“I could suck yours,” Mike says, still breathless when Jay sits back to wipe his mouth.

Jay shakes his head, already opening the fly of his jeans.

“I’ll sit on your face again,” he says, feeling as if he’s earned the right to ask for what he wants and get it. “And jerk off.”

“Yes,” Mike says, reaching for him with both hands. He rests the injured one down before actually grabbing Jay’s arm with the other, getting him closer. He’s trying to drag Jay down for a kiss, but Jay is too spry and determined. As soon as he’s out of his pants and boxers he turns and lowers his ass over Mike’s face, parting his cheeks with one hand and already gripping his dick with the other. He’s close, too, and quickly indifferent to Mike’s need to breathe, pressing himself down flush against the wet, greedy heat of Mike’s mouth. Mike’s efforts are too slow and soft at first, maybe to tease him. Jay worries it’s because Mike is making out with his ass in the way he wants to be kissing his mouth, mournfully.

He’s able to turn his mind off when Mike gets more into it, spearing into him with his tongue, and the sight of Mike’s vulnerable, hairless balls under his deflated dick gets Jay close to the edge. Mike reaches around with his left hand and puts it over Jay’s on his dick, struggling to get the angle right at first, then rubbing his thumb roughly around the leaking head while Jay jerks himself even more urgently. Jay sprays his come all over Mike’s chest and belly and stays perched over his face a little longer, reveling and rolling his hips back, wanting to linger within his shameless self the way that Mike lets him.

“Oh my god,” Jay says without meaning to, sort of falling off of Mike and onto the mattress, bouncing once and then dissolving into relief. He’s on Mike’s right side, so he’s careful when he rolls back toward Mike to clutch at his bicep. Holding on to him in the aftermath feels good, and he moves closer, pressing his face to Mike’s shoulder. He wants to curl up under Mike’s arm and lick at his throat, and he’s waiting for Mike to make that happen. It’s only his wrist that’s sprained. He can still wrap his big arm around Jay and hold him.

“Sorry,” Mike says when Jay looks up at him, wondering why he’s not trying for something sweet like that now, when Jay is all drowsy and soft for him. Mike makes a face and an uncomfortable sound. “I really need another pill,” he says. “And lunch to go with it.”

That snaps Jay out of his surrender like cold water over his head. He sits up quickly and nods, feeling guilty for wanting comfort when Mike needs it more, differently.

“Sorry,” Mike says again as Jay cleans up the shaving supplies and gathers all the towels they used, easing the big one out from under Mike’s back.

“It’s fine,” Jay says. He retrieves Mike’s t-shirt from where they dropped it on the floor and hands it to him. “Sorry I took so long to finish.”

“You didn’t take that long.”

Jay mops the come he sprayed all over Mike up with the damp towel he used to clean up the shaving cream. He helps Mike put his t-shirt on first, then his boxers. The pill is more urgent, but Jay doesn’t want to leave him naked in here, as if they might resume what they were doing when he returns. He leaves the room wearing only his t-shirt, his arms full of bowls that need to be returned to the kitchen. The smell of the shaving cream on them seems mocking to him now. He feels stupid and rejected, regretful that he let his guard down post-orgasm, but there’s no time for self pity. He washes his hands in the kitchen and returns to the bedroom with Mike’s pill and a glass of water. He can feel Mike staring up at him with more sheepish apology in his eyes, so he avoids looking down into them, just turns and puts on a pair of boxers before going back to the kitchen to get Mike a sandwich.

“What is that?” Mike asks when Jay brings it in on a plate.

“Chicken salad with avocado. I use yogurt instead of mayo.”

“Unngh, what?” Mike says, recoiling. He glances up at Jay with a kind of pleading humility. “Is there no more pizza?”

“There are two more pieces, you can have them for dinner. Eat this. You can’t just eat nothing but crap while you’re recovering.”

Mike sighs and reaches for the plate with his left hand, sitting up against the headboard. Jay stands by the bed and watches him take the first bite, enjoying this. He’s long wanted Mike to come to him for diet and exercise advice. It never happened, but now he’s trapped.

“Do you have anything else?” Mike asks after he’s swallowed his first bite.

“Sure,” Jay says. “Yogurt, blueberries, and more chicken soup, but you’ve got to come into the kitchen if you want that.”

“The soup is too humiliating,” Mike mutters. He takes a reluctant second bite of the sandwich. “I guess this is fine.”

“You’re welcome for serving you my nutritious food that I made for myself.”

Mike just snarls, chewing.

Jay goes to the kitchen and eats his own sandwich at the table, feeling judged in retrospect for sitting like this for so many of his meals, eating alone. He has friends, he goes out. He even dates people sometimes. But mostly it’s this: carefully planned meals eaten at home. Calorie conscious and economical. He’s not as slavish about it as he was in his thirties, but he likes having a responsible plan and sticking to it. If he lived with someone, he would be bossy about this, and about cleaning, spending. He’d need a separate bedroom because he can’t sleep while someone breathes near him. He’s never even tried to live with someone, outside of his roommate days in his early twenties.

Anytime Mike gets a girlfriend he can’t fucking wait to move her into his house, have her there in his bed, take her out for every meal and bring her to work, parties, concerts, show her off all over her town. Jay wishes he could relate, though he doesn’t want to change for the sake of being perceived as normal. He’s always wanted to keep the people he dates hidden and isolated from the rest of his life, in part because he knows they’ll be harshly evaluated by Mike.

“All done?” Jay asks when he returns to the room, surprised that Mike finished the whole sandwich. The plate is on the bedside table and Mike looks drowsy.

“Yeah,” Mike says. He moves over with a grunt, making space on the left side of the mattress before patting it with his hand. “Where are you going?” he asks when Jay picks up the plate and turns to take it to the kitchen. “You can get back in with me now.”

Jay stares at him, holding the plate and trying to decide if he feels smug or touched by Mike’s announcement that he’s ready to cuddle now.

“I’m gonna wash up,” Jay says, pointing toward the kitchen with his thumb.

“What’s the fucking rush, you expecting company?” Mike smacks the mattress now, glowering. “Put the plate down and get over here.”

“Mike, I have stuff to do--”

“I’ll be asleep in ten minutes, just give me this, fuck!” Mike’s expression softens, and Jay can’t tell if he’s being manipulative or sincere. It’s often a little of both, mixed in with additional motives. “Please, Jay?” he says. “I’m in pain over here.”

Jay gives in, telling himself it’s because he’s feeling lazy and tired after a poor night’s sleep on the couch, not because he wants to be held. He puts the plate back on the bedside table and climbs into the bed, depositing himself into the space Mike made for him. Mike grunts with approval and gathers him close, pulling Jay in with his left arm and tucking him to his side. Jay rolls onto his side against Mike’s chest and rests his cheek on Mike’s shoulder. Mike’s t-shirt smells so good against his face that he wants to rub his nose there in an overly obvious way. It smells like their past, somehow. Like being young together.

“Tell me about the other men you’ve slept with,” Mike says. He’s playing with Jay’s hair, clearly drifting toward drugged surrender.

“Why would I do that?”

“‘Cause who else are you going to talk about it with?”

“I have other friends who know I’m gay.”

“And you talk with them about your sex life?” Mike sounds a little scared this could be true, though he knows Jay too well to believe it.

“No,” Jay says. “Just like I don’t talk about it with you.”

There’s a heavy silence, and Jay wonders if Mike is sober enough to also be thinking: including the sex we have with each other.

“Go on,” Mike says. He sounds pretty high but not like he’s going to fall asleep anytime soon. “Who else are you gonna tell? Gonna take it to your death bed? I know you don’t go to therapy or anything.”

“I don’t need to go to therapy about my sex life.”

Mike scoffs in what sounds like disagreement.

“Please?” Mike says. “You’re the only man I’ve ever been with. I want to know what it’s been like for you when I’m not around.”

Jay doesn’t say, but you’re always around, or that he’s mostly alone when they’re apart.

“I didn’t sleep with a man until I was thirty-five,” he says.

“Uhhh?” Mike says.

“I mean other than you, obviously.”

Jay doesn’t think of Mike as anything so pedestrian or easy to handle as ‘a man.’ He’s something else. He’s just Mike, a category of his own in terms of Jay’s potential mates.

“How’d you meet that one?” Mike asks. “When you were thirty-five?”

“Through mutual friends. You met him, actually, one time.”

“Oh jesus, that tall guy? That scarecrow?”

“He wasn’t--” Jay starts to say, and then isn’t sure why he feels like he needs to explain that the first man he slept with after Mike wasn’t a scarecrow, as if it’s a literal defense against an accusation that Jay used a Halloween decoration like a sex toy. The guy was tall and thin and way too nice for Jay.

“That guy was a huge sap,” Mike says. “I knew it wouldn’t last.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“What was he like in bed? Eugh, never mind, I don’t want to know.”

Mike says nothing for a while, tightening his grip on Jay and breathing harder in a way that Jay likes. It’s no secret that Mike is furiously possessive of him, and Jay has never pretended not to like it. It’s been decades now. No one can define how, especially not Mike and Jay themselves, but they clearly belong to each other.

“Actually, forget that, I do want to know,” Mike says, and he tugs on Jay’s hair like a warning that he might pull harder if his demands aren’t met. “What was sex with that guy like?”

“Boring,” Jay says, though he knows this will please Mike. If he was less comfortable right now, not resting against the heat of Mike’s big, soft chest like it’s the perfect pillow, he would make something up: oh, he was phenomenal, made me come so hard, so many times, did everything just the way I like it. Mike wouldn’t believe him, anyway.

“Ha,” Mike says, but he doesn’t sound amused. “So, what, like. He was on top?”

“Ughh,” Jay groans. “Yes.”

“You’re never on top?”

“I didn’t say that.” Jay tries to think of the last time he topped someone. “I’m just old enough now to know what I like.”

“Did he have a big dick?”

“Mike. You really want me to describe my exes’ dicks?”

“Ah god, you consider him an ex? Yes, fucking tell me!”

“It was unexceptional. Nothing I’ve ever had compares to your monster cock, Mike. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Only if you really mean it.”

“How would you like it if I asked what sex with Tilly was like?”

Jay can feel Mike go tense as if a line has been crossed, which is so unfair. Mike is a huge hypocrite when it comes to needling Jay into talking about his feelings and then refusing to offer up anything real in exchange.

“That’s different,” Mike says. “She’s a lady. There are different rules for talking about that.”

“Why’d you guys break up?” Jay asks, muttering this perfunctory question he doesn’t really want an answer to, especially while he’s huddled up at Mike’s side, trying to continue drawing comfort from him.

“I dunno,” Mike says, after he’s waited long enough to answer that Jay is surprised he’s saying anything. “She said I was ignoring her. That I didn’t really listen when she was talking. I just have things to do, Jay. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“I know you do, Mike.”

He pets Mike’s chest with sympathy, as if Tilly leaving wasn’t his fault. Jay is sure that it was. He can’t help finding solace in the fact that they all leave Mike eventually, even the ones who really love him.

“Why’d you leave that scarecrow?” Mike asks.

Jay appreciates the incorrect assumption that he’s the one who ended things.

“Turns out I’m allergic to straw,” Jay says, proud of himself for this joke. Mike doesn’t laugh, and he’s staring up at the ceiling ponderously when Jay glances up at him, probably thinking about Tilly and his related regrets.

“What about after him?” Mike asks.

“There were other guys. Nobody serious.”

Mike moans in a way that makes Jay look up at him again, now with concern. Mike’s eyes are closed and his brow is pinched, though he took the pill twenty minutes ago. It should be working by now.

“What’s wrong?” Jay asks. He touches Mike’s smooth jaw, admiring his own handiwork. Maybe he’ll do some ball-sucking later. “It hurts?”

“Yes,” Mike says.

“The leg or the wrist?”

“It’s-- I’m fine. I feel weird. Like, drunk, but different. I want to ask you more terrible questions.”

“Like what?” Jay is genuinely curious. He wonders what would happen if he took one of those pills, too, incapacitating himself at Mike’s side and going under with him. He likes the idea of going on some mind-bending psychedelic adventure together, though he knows it wouldn’t be like that. His hand is curled under Mike’s jaw while he waits for more questions, and he can feel the thump of Mike’s pulse against his fingers.

“Did you really like Lou’s music?” Mike asks.

Jay hopes he didn’t just stiffen up in the same incriminating way Mike did when Jay brought up Tilly. Mike is right, that’s a terrible question. Jay doesn’t want to answer, but he doesn’t want Mike to know that.

“Sure,” he says. “I liked some of it.”

“She got married, you know.”

“I know, you told me.” Jay had known already, informed by another friend before Mike’s drunken mention of it.

“And had a kid.”

“Hmm.”

“So when she told me I’d ruined her life, that eventually became untrue.”

“I guess I’ve never had an ex like that,” Jay mumbles, wishing he had, so he could lob answering bombs back at Mike. Louie was Mike’s girlfriend for four years. She and Mike used to write songs together, which is the only thing that has ever rivaled what Jay has with him, girlfriend or not. There was talk of marriage at one point, but never a ring. “Did you like her music?” Jay asks, thinking of a specific song, the one that Jay only listens to when he’s really wasted.

“She had a good voice,” Mike says.

“Do you miss her?” Jay does, a little, when he listens to that song. She was one of them, unlike the other girlfriends. Part of the gang.

“Not enough.”

Jay waits for him to elaborate. Talking like this, in the middle of the afternoon while Mike is fucked up on painkillers and Jay is similarly fucked up on being held, makes him want to delve into dangerous subjects. Maybe Mike is right that he likes it dangerous, and fucked up.

“I worry that I drive people away on purpose,” Jay says, hoping that Mike will admit he does the same thing.

“Now why would you do that,” Mike says instead, meanly.

“I dunno.”

Jay closes his eyes and thinks about that morning after the first time they fucked, the way he vaulted out of bed and acted like Mike was an idiot for hanging around the store during his shift. Was that a way of driving him away, and was it even slightly on purpose? They were both so tired that morning, also young and confused. Jay had wanted Mike back the moment he left the store, and never knew how to make it happen. He still can’t figure it out, though Mike keeps coming back. It never feels like a thing that Jay has set in motion, just a circumstance of where Mike is when he needs something that only Jay can give him.

“Maybe it’s ‘cause of my dad,” Jay says, dangling this over Mike like bait.

Mike says nothing. Jay hugs himself closer, clutching at Mike and silently begging not to be battered too severely by whatever he says next.

But Mike remains quiet. Jay lifts his head just enough to see that he’s fallen asleep.

For a while Jay tries to sleep, too, but of course he can’t. He shifts around feeling overheated and awkward until he finally detaches himself from Mike’s side, wide awake with the pain of conversational blue balls. He knows he should be grateful. That wasn’t going anywhere good.

He gets out of bed with the idea putting his headphones on and listening to one of Louie’s old songs, maybe even the song that he’s still certain was written about him, by Mike. Not wanting to fully nuke himself, he puts on the DVD of the horror movie he made with Mike instead, gets a beer from the fridge and settles on his living room couch to watch.

It’s hard to keep looking at the screen when his first scene plays and he’s confronted with one of the alternate reality Jays he’s since detached from. He wasn’t awful-looking when they filmed this, but many things had yet to be improved. His teeth, mainly. Mike claimed to love them right before Jay finally scraped together the money to get them fixed. That was 2011, when Jay was at his lowest, and just a few months before Mike met Louie. Mike touched Jay’s teeth with his fingers and his tongue and told him he loved them, right after the third-ever time they’d had sex. Seven years before the next time he’d lay a hand on Jay.

Watching this movie of course makes Jay more vividly remember the second time: that hardware store basement fuck, the one that happened while they were shooting a scene for this. It was late, and they were somewhere between ready to tear each other’s throats out and collapse laughing over everything, punch drunk and overworked. Nobody else who was working on the movie really cared about it. Even the most well-meaning actors they’d hired were confused about what it was supposed to be. Mike and Jay were alone with the burden of it, together, and they were as helplessly close to each other as they’d ever been, co-directing and eating buttered noodles for dinner every night to save money. The movie had no real budget but every element of it was bleeding them both dry. Jay hated the thought of Mike’s money going to waste. He wanted the movie to be good, having given up any resentment he might have held about the script that had inspired the one they were actually making.

The scene they were blocking that night would be violent and bloody. The serial killer character was scripted to grab a victim and put his head down in front of the whirling blade of a bench saw. They would have to do the effects elsewhere, but the actual bench saw was there in the store’s basement, so they were going to shoot as much as they could on location, without actually splattering fake blood all over Jay’s workplace.

“It has to be fluid,” Mike said, meaning the way the killer would slam the victim’s head down to the bench. “Because it’s a comedy shot.”

Their horror movie was also a comedy. Jay just nodded and waited for Mike to try to demonstrate on him. He could already feel Mike’s hand closed around the back of his neck, how Mike’s fingertips would pinch carelessly into his soft throat. They didn’t have the heavy leather gloves that would be used in the actual scene, because the actor who played the killer had taken the costume home with him. So Mike would have to use his bare hand.

They hadn’t touched since Jay leapt out of bed to get ready for work that morning after they had sex. Not even incidentally. The care that Mike put into staying just far enough away made Jay certain he was always thinking about it, too. This had been going on for three years. They were that mutually chickenshit about being the first one to offer himself up to the other.

It made Jay wonder who the brave one had really been last time: Mike, shifting over to sit so close to him on the couch when they watched their man on the street footage? Jay, leaving his bedroom door open just enough? At this time he still had that pillow Mike had wedged between them when he came to bed, and he slept with his clamped between his legs every night, angrily imagining it was Mike down there keeping his dick warm.

“So, like this,” Mike said, reaching for Jay without discussing which of them would play the victim and which one would play the killer. Mike was bigger, like the killer’s actor. It made sense for him to do that part.

Jay sucked in an astonished breath when Mike spun him around without further warning and pushed him down hard, so that his head would have smacked painfully on the bench if Mike’s other hand wasn’t cupped around his forehead, providing a buffer. He also held Jay just short of making contact, but it still made Jay’s heart start slamming like he was under some kind of real attack. It made his cock hard, too, so rapidly that the blood rushing there contributed to Jay’s lightheadedness as Mike held him in place, bent over at the waist. Mike was breathing audibly behind him, as if this one maneuver took great effort.

“His hand should be here for the push in shot,” Mike said, shifting his grip from Jay’s forehead to his throat and cupping it around the front with surprising gentleness. His other hand was between Jay’s shoulderblades, holding him down.

“Okay,” Jay said when Mike just kept him there, breathing like that. He wanted Mike to understand that he meant: I am okay with whatever is happening. You will receive no notes from me, please proceed.

“What if--” Mike said, and his hand flexed on Jay’s throat in a way that made Jay’s eyes sink shut. His t-shirt was oversized enough that it would probably conceal the fact that he was hard in his jeans, if Mike let him stand up and turn around. He lowered his head to rest it on the bench, his shoulders and back already tense from holding the position. The actual saw blade was right there, turned off. “What if we make it a little weirder?” Mike asked.

“Okay,” Jay said again. He forced his eyes open and tried to think about anything except how big Mike felt behind him, holding him in place. Mike’s body felt like a prophecy that had come to claim him, like a kind of fate. “Weirder how?” he prompted when Mike hesitated.

“He doesn’t really have a motivation,” Mike said, meaning the killer character.

“Well, he’s a psychopath.”

“Right. But we could do it, like. Like it’s a sex thing.”

Jay grunted. He would never go through with it in the actual movie. It was the worst kind of cliche.

“I can’t see that working,” he said, hoping this would make Mike want to prove that it could.

“Mhm. I don’t know. What if he just starts spanking the guy? Is that funny or stupid?”

“Hard to say.”

“Yeah. Here. I’ll try it.”

That was all the warning Jay got before Mike removed the hand that had been on Jay’s back and brought it down against his ass, hard.

“Oh fuck!” Jay said, pinching his eyes shut to fight the feeling that he might come just from that. He didn’t, but the choppy way his breath stuttered out afterward was post-orgasmic in nature.

“Yeah?” Mike’s voice was ragged, too, his breath short. “What do you think?”

Mike was going to make him ask for another. Jay moaned and pushed his arms up over his head on the bench, crossing his wrists like they were ready to be tied. How much more obviously could he surrender? How could Mike not figure out that he was unable to talk about this but more than willing to have literally anything done to him, by Mike?

“Mike,” was all Jay could manage to get out, his eyes shut and his ass curled out, begging.

Mike received that message and answered with a grunt: disappointed, probably, that Jay wasn’t asking for what he wanted more directly. As punishment for this he smacked Jay’s ass again, and Jay shouted again, wordlessly this time, his back arching as the blow seemed to reverberate back through him and throb along the length of his dick like a squeezing fist.

He had been hit before, by a bully, in middle school. Mike didn’t know about this, and Jay tried not to even think about it, because of the humiliation that still lingered fifteen years later and because the memory was so tied up with other things he didn’t like about himself.

It made no sense that being bent over and spanked by Mike would wash over him like some kind of magic spell that was undoing that old pain, but it was coating him with pure relief, body and spirit, undeniable: he loved that Mike kept him down with one hand, shifting it to the back of Jay’s neck for better traction, and kept raining blows onto his pressed out ass with the other. Being handled like that felt like being fixed, because it was Mike, the only person Jay would ever trust to see him this way.

“Okay, okay,” Mike said when he was breathless with excitement, as if Jay was demanding more and Mike had to be the levelheaded one for a moment. He put his hand on Jay’s burning ass, gently now, rubbing him through two layers of fabric, then pushed Jay’s t-shirt up in back so he could tuck his fingers into the waistband of Jay’s jeans. “I’m gonna explode,” he muttered, pulling Jay back by the pants so he could feel the bump of Mike’s erection against his sore ass.

“Me too,” Jay said meekly, blinking his fuzzy eyes open on the bench.

“Yeah? From that?” Mike let out a shuddering breath and leaned down over Jay’s back, properly jamming his dick against Jay’s ass. “What would they do next, then?”

“They-- They’d fuck, right here.”

“Doesn’t that change the whole story?”

“Yeah. I don’t care. It needs changing.”

Mike sniffed a laugh that was warm against the back of Jay’s ear. Then he licked him there. Jay groaned and flexed underneath him. His hands were still up over his head on the bench, and he was drooling for it when Mike reached up and clamped his hand around both of Jay’s wrists, keeping them pinned. Fat beads of precome were already leaking from Jay’s dick. He felt like he would come for the first brush of Mike’s fingers between his stinging ass cheeks, if they even got that far.

“Oh, so this guy wants it?” Mike asked, his lips moving hotly against the back of Jay’s ear. “Your guy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Even with that saw blade right there? And his ass all beat up?”

“He wants it.”

“Okay then, wow. Let’s just see how this plays out.”

Mike stayed bent over Jay while opening his jeans for him. Jay closed his eyes again and thought desperately about what they could use for lube. Over the past three years, Mike had developed a way of looking at him that took him right back to the feeling of being filled up by him in bed. It was a look that could shunt Jay back into place without a word, and Jay was sure Mike was doing it on purpose, thinking about the same thing. Jay’s knees got weak for it every time.

“There’s a first aid kit,” Jay said when Mike was mouthing at his throat and grinding his still-trapped cock against Jay’s ass, which was throbbing and hot, sensitive from being spanked.

“Hmm?” Mike pushed his hand into the front of Jay’s boxers and jacked his dick a few times, drawing an embarrassing noise out of Jay as he squirmed forward into the touch. “First aid? Shit-- Are you bleeding or something?”

“Bleeding?” Jay had no idea what he meant until Mike pulled his pants and boxers down so they pooled around his ankles, checking his tender ass for injuries. “Oh-- No, I’m fine. I meant for lube. There’s burn ointment in there.”

“Jesus,” Mike said, sound impressed and annoyed at the same time, as if Jay was being overly analytical by thinking ahead. “You’re gonna have bruises,” he said, sounding regretful about this as he continued checking over Jay’s ass. Every touch there was intense. “I actually can’t believe I did this.”

“It’s fine,” Jay said, as if it was just that and not the most erotic thing that had happened to him in his life. He wanted to fall farther into it, not pull back and take stock. “Can you get the ointment? The kit’s over there on the wall, mounted by the door.”

Mike spanked him again, and Jay had to stuff his hand in his mouth to keep from shouting in a way that might have brought cops to the store. His balls pulled up and his dick twitched but he didn’t come. The pain got him there and left him right on the edge, dangling.

“Giving me orders, huh?” Mike said.

Jay made a whimpering noise as if to apologize and wiped the drool from his mouth. He stayed bent over the bench and listened to Mike crossing the room, doing what Jay had told him to anyway. As soon as Mike was far enough away, the insanity of what they were doing crossed Jay’s mind: it might be two in the morning but this was still his workplace, and the camera was right there, not recording but pointed at what they were doing like a threat, more dangerous-looking than the saw blade.

“Look what else I found,” Mike said when he returned from rummaging through the first aid kit. He placed a roll of gauze on the bench so Jay could see it. Jay was still bent over for Mike, too afraid that moving would break the spell. Plus, it felt good to slump there, resting and waiting. He was tired on top of being blazingly horny, and just wanted to be worked on like something Mike was constructing on this bench.

“What’s that for?” Jay asked, staring at the gauze.

“What if my guy tied your guy’s hands behind his back? He’d do that, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Jay said, already moving his arms into position. There was nothing he wanted more than less agency in this moment. Let it all be Mike’s idea: please, god, finally.

Jay’s heart started slamming for the first layer of gauze Mike used to bind his wrists together. It was tight when Mike was done, finishing it off with some kind of knot, and the small of Jay’s back was beginning to ache. Having his bare ass exposed to the room and his hands tied while Mike stood back observing him was making Jay’s dick leak so steadily that there was probably a sticky puddle forming on the floor.

“So your guy is a little freak,” Mike said.

“Uh-huh.” Jay nodded against the bench, dimly aware that he would never again smell sawdust or come down here for supplies without getting a little hard. “Mike?” he said when Mike had been lurking back there for a while in silence. “Did you find the-- Are you gonna--?”

“Who’s Mike? I’m the Downer Woods Killer, as we’ve established.”

Jay rolled his eyes, glad Mike wouldn’t be able to see it. He’d had fucked up fantasies about this kind of thing for so long, but he’d still rather just do this as themselves.

“Okay,” Jay said, squirming. He turned his cheek, trying to see where Mike was standing. “Are you gonna leave me here like this or finish the job?”

“Do you have a death wish, buddy?” Mike had his pants open, finally, and was popping the cap off the tube of burn ointment.

“No,” Jay said, feeling too much like himself as he said so, because what would happen after this? Nothing, again? Anything else seemed impossible. He didn’t want to endure the killing blow of going on as if nothing had changed, but also didn’t want to be set free.

“Your ass looks good like this,” Mike said, palming it when he came close again. “All bright red and hot.” He squeezed a little and snickered when Jay yelped. Any pressure was too much after being spanked like that. It would be brutal when Mike was pounding into him back there, and perfect.

Jay kept his neck craned so he could watch Mike take his cock out and slick it up with the ointment. Jay had only seen Mike’s cock in the dark before, shadowed by the blankets. Up close, under the basement’s overhead lights and coated with glistening lubricant, it made Jay want to throw himself down onto his knees and open his mouth. It was too late for that, though, unless he wanted a mouthful of ointment. He could tell by the smell of the stuff that he did not, and felt a pang of regret for what they should have done, already and all the time, all that fertile wasted space between them that just sat there going fallow for a million uncompelling reasons.

“Oh my god,” Jay said when Mike stepped up behind him like he was ready to go. Jay was, too, more than ever, but he also felt like he wouldn’t survive getting what he wanted.

And he wouldn’t: he’d be a new Jay after this, the previous one’s chapter again closed by Mike’s hand.

“Fuck yes,” Mike said when he started to sink into Jay’s ass, leaving Jay speechless for how good and sharp the burn felt, already. Mike’s voice was gravelly, and he moaned in a maniacal serial killer way that would have been funny if Jay wasn’t such a slut for the way Mike got when he was arrogantly hamming it up. “Yeah, you like that,” Mike said, pushing his hand up over Jay’s melting spine. His other hand was on Jay’s hip while he kept his dick coming, going slow but not stopping. “Yeah, you do. Mph. Jay, fuck. Hnhh, yeah--”

So he was Jay, at least, even if Mike was hiding behind the script. Jay huffed and shuffled his feet apart more widely on the concrete floor, trying to make room for more of Mike inside him. There was so much, and Jay was sweating under the effort of taking it. He felt calm despite the strain, and comfortable, like he was in the right place at last.

After the spanking and the hand-tying Jay had imagined something frantic and similarly violent when they actually started to fuck, but Mike seemed too overwhelmed to do much of anything once he was all in. He groaned and sort of squeaked at the end of it, hunching down over Jay’s back and nosing at his throat. He was shaking, or maybe that was Jay. Mike’s dick was deeper than it had been last time, Jay was sure of it: this angle was better, scarier, connecting them more completely. Jay’s muscles would be so sore tomorrow, every single one of them.

“I won’t last long enough,” Mike said, muttering this against the back of Jay’s neck, not pretending to be a killer anymore.

“Me either,” Jay said, absolving him. It wasn’t Mike’s fault. Everything they did wrong was mutual. Jay understood in the moment, while they were so connected.

“So just-- Let me-- For a second.”

As if Jay was in a position to stop him. He had the impulse to laugh at how ridiculous they were but held it in, sighing and clenching up around Mike’s dick, in a weird kind of heaven.

“Why’re you squeezing me like that?” Mike asked. He licked Jay’s throat as if to say it was okay, he was just curious. “You’ll make me come, Jay.”

“Sorry. I can’t help it. Feels so good.”

“Fuck,” Mike whispered. He closed his teeth around Jay’s ear lobe but released it without biting. “I almost thought. Last time. Like I dreamed it or something.”

“I know,” Jay said, whining this out because it hurt to know Mike felt that way, too. “Can you move-- Just a little? I want to feel it, please?”

“I will. I want to, just--”

“I know,” Jay said again, understanding. They were both so worked up, breathing hard and wound tight. They just didn’t want it to end. “Maybe untie my hands,” Jay said, because Mike was heavy on his back and kind of crushing his arms.

“Shit-- Sorry.”

Jay moaned with relief when his arms were free and stretched them over his head, flexing his fingers to get the feeling back. Mike did the same, resting his bigger arms on top of Jay’s. When Jay turned his cheek to look at the uncovered saw blade just a few feet away on their left, Mike did the same.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Jay said, his ass clenching up tight around Mike at the thought of interacting with his co-workers here tomorrow during his shift.

“Can’t believe you ever let me touch you,” Mike said, and some actual anger in this statement seemed to give him the motivation he needed to pull back just a fraction before pushing back in.

They both moaned. Jay closed his eyes and let go of everything he was still holding on to: mentally, physically, he just drifted while Mike slowly picked up the pace. Mike was grazing his prostate, and Jay was going to come, but his own pleasure seemed incidental to something bigger that they were moving toward. A cliff, probably, but falling over it together was going to feel amazing.

Once Mike really got going he leaned back to hold Jay’s hips, cursing in a way that sounded like it was producing actual flying spittle. Jay wouldn’t know; he couldn’t see or think straight, could only lie there taking it while Mike’s thrusting hips made the ache on his tender ass cheeks just painful enough to keep his orgasm at bay, despite the holy perfection of the angle at which he was currently being fucked. Mike was pummeling his prostate, probably not even realizing this as he got more unhinged, chasing his own pleasure and calling Jay nasty names that barely registered. Maybe he was being the killer character again, focusing on that to hold back his own release. Jay barley knew his own name by the time he finally got up on his tip-toes to get the inward slide of Mike just that much more in the right spot. He came with howl of so much relief that it hurt, the best kind of full body unspooling sending him back down onto his heels as Mike fucked him through it.

“Oh, you fuck, fucking-- fuck!” Mike said, graceless and maybe on the verge of what sounded like tears as he screwed himself in deep to blow his load. He heaved forward onto Jay with a slightly alarming noise, like he might have dislocated a rib by putting too much force into getting the most out of that last grinding push. Jay wanted to reach back and pat at him reassuringly but couldn’t move, drained of everything while they breathed through the last mindless moments of it together.

“Unh,” Jay said when Mike started to pull out, partly in protest. “Use-- Use the gauze, um. Don’t let it get all over.”

Mike grunted in understanding and grabbed the gauze that he’d unwound from Jay’s wrists, bringing it down to catch as much of what slid out of Jay’s wrecked ass as he could. Jay hissed and felt like he wouldn’t be able to hold himself upright when he pushed off the bench, his legs and arms shaking from exertion he hadn’t even realized he was using to hold himself in position.

“Here,” Mike said, seeing this and helping him. He wiped at Jay’s ass with the gauze before pulling up his pants and boxers for him. Jay braced his palms on the bench and winced when even having fabric touching his ass felt like too much. He was beyond overstimulated, afraid he wouldn’t be able to walk out of here, that Mike might have to carry him home.

He pushed himself up and turned toward Mike, leaning back against the bench for just a fraction of a second before that proved to be way too much for his aching ass. When he jolted away from it he crashed into Mike’s chest. Mike caught him there before he could self-correct, wrapped his arms around Jay and held him close. For a while they just stood like that, trying to breathe normally and pretend they weren’t mutually stunned. The smell of Mike’s post-sex sweat through his humid t-shirt made Jay hungry for something he couldn’t name. It was sex-like but not quite that. Whatever it was, he was so starving for it and so close yet far from having it that he was afraid he would cry. He wanted to keep hiding against Mike’s chest until he magically woke up in his bed, but he knew it wouldn’t work like that, so he pulled back. There was resistance in Mike’s grip, an unwillingness to let him go, but his expression was cool and collected when Jay looked up into his face.

“Are you even gonna let me come upstairs?” Mike asked. Jay still lived in the apartment above the store, the place where they’d done this last time. The whole building, already historic and heavily imbued with a sense of the past, was now haunted by their sex ghosts.

“What?” Jay said. Mike’s place was a ten minute walk away. “You want to spend the night?”

“I mean, it’s fucking three AM and I just nutted in your ass, yes?”

“Yes?” Jay said, not sure which part he was agreeing to. He’d been wanting Mike back in his bed for too long. Now the idea of actually having it seemed a little perverse, worse than letting Mike tie him up and spank him while pretending to be a psychopath.

“Do you do this with all your friends?” Mike asked, unwinding his arms from Jay. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared down at Jay like he was some stranger who’d just had the nerve to bump into him in an alley.

“Yeah, Mike,” Jay said, annoyed at him for being this defensive, already. “Everyone we know just bends me over whenever they want.”

The previously stony expression on Mike’s face flinched between amusement and rage in a way that made Jay want to get down on his knees again. Then Mike just looked sad, and this brought on Jay’s impulse to bolt, as usual.

“Are you gonna make me sleep on the couch?” Mike asked.

Jay shook his head, though he’d been planning to. Now it was like he’d be backing down from a dare if he didn’t welcome Mike into his bed.

Walking through the apartment with Mike trailing behind him made Jay feel like he was seeing his life from within a dream, outside of himself, as if he’d find the real Jay asleep in the bedroom when they got there. The bed was empty except for the two pillows: the one Jay rested his head on when he slept and the one he crushed vengefully between his thighs while thinking of Mike, to soothe himself to sleep with the thought of controlling him.

He wondered if the whole room smelled like the rancid phantom of a lonely guy’s accumulated jerk off sessions. Mike’s bedroom would probably smell like the women he’d had there, a bit: lotions and hair products, sweet and soft things. Jay stood watching as Mike took his jeans off and climbed into his bed, helping himself to the thigh-squeezing pillow and stuffing it behind his head as he stared up at Jay, waiting to see how he would react to this.

“I shouldn’t have left last time,” Mike said, speaking as if he thought Jay was thinking this, too. “I hated it, the whole way back. I was sick. Like, for real. I threw up twice.”

“What?” Jay was too tired for this, whatever it was. He wanted to get into bed but there seemed to be no room. Though it was a double, Mike took up so much space.

“But you’re just, like, unflappable, I guess,” Mike said, flicking his hand in Jay’s direction. “Look at you. You’re like an alien.”

“Fuck you,” Jay said. He turned away and took his pants off, not wanting Mike to see his face. It hurt badly to be accused of not being like other people, because he knew it was true and that it would always be hard for him to live among them, pretending. What was wrong with him was up for debate, but it felt alien-like, and Mike hadn’t called him that fondly.

“Hey, hey, sorry,” Mike said, as if Jay was crying or something. “Jay?”

Jay turned off the light and walked around to the other side of the bed. He got in without looking at Mike, turned his back on him and scooted to the very edge of the mattress so they weren’t touching. His ass was on fire, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to get anything resembling sleep before they had to get up at six, so they could shoot the scene downstairs with the actual actors before the store opened.

“I mean obviously I’m into it,” Mike muttered.

“Shut up,” Jay said. “Go to sleep.”

Mike moaned and moved over to spoon up behind him. He must have been keeping Jay’s overworked ass in mind because he didn’t press his hips there as he curled the rest of himself around Jay, pulling him back against his chest. Jay huffed but let himself be manhandled, though this would make sleep even more impossible. It was downright insulting that Mike passed out within a few minutes, his steady exhales just short of snoring and hot against the top of Jay’s head.

Jay wasn’t sure what he’d wanted instead of Mike just drifting off peacefully while holding him, as if the matter was resolved: what matter? What good would more talking have done? They were semi-professional when it came to finding ways to make things worse. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. He could feel Mike’s heart beating against his back, and Mike’s arm hair tickled under his nose. Jay left his face pressed into the crook of Mike’s elbow anyway, wondering what tomorrow would bring. Mike wouldn’t drive back to the desert, at least. Jay grinned in the dark at the thought of him pulling over to barf on the side of the road because he’d left Jay back in Milwaukee instead of packing him into the car and whisking him away to a new life. It was funny and kind of wonderful, knowing this. He wanted to write a script about it someday.

On the couch watching the DVD of the script they actually turned into a horror comedy, he thinks about how he might approach that narrative now. Is the punchline the fact that Mike has now made it back into his bed, forty-five years old and asking to have his balls shaved? Maybe Jay would leave that part out, and the whole script would be about Mike’s mysterious life in Arizona without him. Jay knows most of it now, but back then he’d imagined Mike living a kind of derelict life not dissimilar to Patrick Swayze’s in Roadhouse, as if losing Jay had hardened Mike into a guy who got into bar fights and became nocturnal. Mike did smoke cigarettes during this time, something that Jay found scandalous later, and he claimed to have done more drinking there than he ever had elsewhere, which was already a lot before he left Chicago.

Jay goes into his office and stares at a blank word document for a while. He’s never liked the idea of writing about himself, but what if he wrote an alternate reality Jay’s life, the one that would have unfurled if he’d gone back with Mike that day, dropping everything else? Would Mike still have pulled over to throw up, for different reasons? When they woke up after their second time sleeping together, three years later in the timeline of their actual lives, they just went down to the hardware store basement and got back to work on the movie. There was no word between them about what happened, and they didn’t do it again for three more years. Jay still can’t figure out the science of it, if there is any. It’s always been like they need to find the perfect way back in, and if it doesn’t materialize they’ll obediently die every day, waiting for it.

This time feels less perfect and more messy, like their experience during the pandemic. That phenomenon had prolonged the one that sometimes happens in individual bursts: they were the only two people on the planet, effectively, for a while. Now they’re back in that mode until Mike’s leg heals, maybe.

Mike is awake when Jay peeks into the bedroom to check on him, but he doesn’t seem fully cognizant, his eyelids heavy and his responses to Jay’s questions only grunts or shrugs.

“Maybe we should start weaning you off that stuff,” Jay says.

“You’re sadistic,” Mike mutters, and Jay is relieved that he sounds like himself again.

“I think I’m more of a masochist,” Jay says. “For example, I just watched Monster Man’s Milwaukee Misadventure.”

“Seriously?” Mike grins. He doesn’t have the same thorny regrets about their past projects that Jay does.

“It’s such a terrible title,” Jay says. “But some parts are still funny.”

“I always think about fucking you on that bench.” Mike’s eyes drift shut and he smiles as if he’s privately enjoying the memory. “How come I never spanked you again after that?”

“I have no idea,” Jay says. Can they really talk about all the not-talking-about-it, finally? “Do you need anything?” he asks, because he’s still afraid spelling it all out would ruin something. “Food? Drugs?”

“I need your companionship, you cold little devil. Get over here.”

Jay fidgets in place for a moment, as if he’s not going to give in. Mike finally has the right to demand affection from him directly. Jay isn’t hating it so far.

Mike makes a production of moving over to give Jay more space on his left side. Jay helps him with this, shifting the pillows under his propped up leg. He lets Mike grab for him, and when Mike hooks his hand into the back of Jay’s jeans and uses it to yank Jay to him he wonders if Mike is remembering that he did this right before they fucked over that bench.

“I want to write a new script,” Jay confesses when he’s cradled in Mike’s left arm, which seems as big as Jay’s whole body when they’re in this position, covering all of him that needs it. “Even if we don’t do anything with it,” he adds, quickly, because he doesn’t want what he writes to be on brand, also doesn’t want to take any risks right now. “I miss when I used to do that, with my head in the clouds, like I thought I was going to fucking produce all this stuff. But I don’t need to have that fantasy anymore. I just want to do something new.”

“What’s it gonna be about?” Mike asks.

“I don’t know. Still working on that part. But watching Monster Man made me want to try to write something. That’s all.”

“That’s all.” Mike turns his head to press a sneaky kiss to the top of Jay’s head, as if he won’t notice. “Well, I’ll read it whenever it’s ready. If you’ll let me.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“I should write something, too. We could do it together but not really. Just sitting in the same room.”

As if that’s not what they do all the time, though usually they’re editing. Maybe it’s more of a metaphor for how they’ve lived their lives in general. Mike does his writing alone at home and seemingly while drunk, at least lately. Jay closes his eyes and hums in half-agreement, picturing them in bed together with laptops, anxiously tapping away at their separate projects, wondering what the other one is writing about over there. He’s not tired enough to be lounging around in bed in the middle of the day, and only a little horny after watching Mike in that old movie. Mike was really something back then. He still is, when both of his legs are working, but nothing compares to how hot they were for each other when Mike was twenty-nine, and they only did anything about it that one time. Other times had different energies, less raw sexual need.

“Remember when you asked me to direct that script you wrote?” Mike asks.

He doesn’t need to elaborate: there’s only the one. Jay keeps his eyes closed and nods once.

“That was like a marriage proposal,” Mike says. “To me. At the time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t ‘uh-huh’ me, Jay. How come you never asked me again?”

“I dunno. How many times did you need to be proposed to before you took it seriously?”

Jay keeps his eyes closed and smiles as if he’s amused and not alarmed by the trajectory of this conversation.

“Did you even finish it?” Mike asks, letting that drop.

“No. I never touched it again after you read it.”

“What-- Why? Because I loved it? You took that as a sign it was actually shit?”

“Jesus, no.” Jay blinks his eyes open and frowns at the ceiling, feeling Mike’s scrutiny and attention against him and all around him like a barrier that’s continuing to keep him from interacting with the rest of the world, in ways both good and bad. “I got too scared of messing it up, after,” he says, truthfully, though he’s never thought of it like this before now. “Because you said it was the best thing I’d ever written. It was like I wanted to preserve that behind glass and just never touch it again. Because it meant a lot to me. At the time.”

He exhales slowly after saying so, not wanting Mike to think he’s also talking about the first time they fucked and how perfect it was, though he is, of course, mostly talking about that.

“Interesting,” Mike says, in an indecipherable way that makes Jay finally shift under his arm to look over at him.

“Do you need a pill?” Jay asks. Mike’s arm has been getting progressively tighter around him, maybe tensing up in response to pain he’s trying to grit through.

“Hm? Yeah, in a minute.” Mike shuffles his left leg around, bending his knee to rest it against Jay’s hip. “Can you jerk me off first? Or blow me, I don’t care.”

Jay glances down at Mike’s crotch. The ‘I don’t care’ hasn’t exactly set him on fire, and he feels exhausted already by this sexual schedule that Mike is adhering to. Jay would rather be surprised and acted upon without warning, grabbed by the throat and bent over a bench next to a table saw. But Mike isn’t exactly capable of that right now.

“It was nipple clamps,” Jay says, looking up into Mike’s face again, wanting to see something of that twenty-nine-year-old who spanked him raw.

“Excuse me?” Mike says after a pause, sputtering this out with a laugh.

“The sex toy I was looking for in my closet. Nipple clamps. I can’t imagine what I did with them. Maybe someone stole them.”

“Someone-- There was-- You used nipple clamps with someone? Someone used them on you?”

At first Jay thinks this was the wrong tack after all, because Mike looks sincerely heartbroken. Then a shadow of possessive rage clouds over that, and Jay has to stop himself from smirking brattily in triumph.

“Is that what you ordered for me?” Jay asks, reaching down to rub Mike’s belly, a suggestion that he might move his hand lower if Mike plays along. “Wouldn’t that be a crazy coincidence?”

“Sorry,” Mike says, still staring at Jay with darkness in his eyes, some kind of warning. “That’s not what’s coming.”

“Oh boy. What’s coming.” It’s not a question. Jay pushes his hand up between Mike’s squishy pecs. “All you want is a hand job?” he asks, as sweetly as he can.

“Who used nipple clamps on you?” Mike asks. He has a look in his eyes like he’ll hobble to that person’s house with the crutches and kill them immediately. Jay starts to get hard for that look, and shifts his hips forward to press his fattening dick to Mike’s thigh.

“A woman,” Jay says.

“What woman?” Mike has never been above coming down on hard on women who dare to flirt with Jay in his presence, usually by trying to make them feel stupid.

“You don’t know her. We met through a service.”

“What the fuck?” Mike starts to sit up, like he needs to pace around the room while contemplating this, then deflates against the pillow again, looking winded. “A sex worker?”

“No. Just someone looking for men who wanted to be, you know. Clamped. I didn’t pay her. She didn’t pay me. It was mutually, uh. Arranged. By this third party, this service I used to pay for.”

“This is-- Jay, you’re blowing my fucking mind right now.”

“I know. I don’t do it anymore, but about five, six years ago, that’s what I was into. Easier than dating.”

Mike seems to need to breathe and gather himself for a moment, so Jay allows this, lightly humping Mike’s thigh and hugging his left arm, peering up at him with pretend submission.

“I knew it,” Mike says, surprising him.

“Knew what?”

“That you weren’t just some-- Monk. I knew you were doing some weird sex shit in secret, Jay. Goddammit.”

“Why shouldn’t it have been secret? You were having sex, too. Just because you went on dates with the people you were fucking doesn’t mean-- We’re not entitled to the details of each other’s sex lives.”

Jay is getting worked up now, and needs to regain control of the situation. He scoots down to close his thighs around Mike’s wrist, and groans in relief when Mike turns his palm and gropes his dick, feeling him through his pants. Jay gets harder in Mike’s grip and noses at the sleeve of his t-shirt, wanting to lick him.

“This woman,” Mike says. “Did she. What else did she do to you?”

“There was more than one. I never let them match me with the same one twice, that was part of it. They did all sorts of things to me.”

“All sorts-- What about men?”

“Like I was going to let some strange dude on a kink app come to my place and tie me up? It was dangerous enough with women. I actually can’t believe I did it, now.”

“Why’d you stop?” Mike asks. His jaw is tight, maybe from needing a painkiller. He squeezes Jay’s dick more roughly while waiting for him to respond.

“I started to have nightmares,” Jay says. “That someone else showed up, you know, other than whoever I’d agreed to. Or that pictures of my dick were posted on the internet.”

“Jesus Christ, Jay. Are you fucking insane? Of course that could have happened. What the fuck were you thinking?”

“Mike,” Jay says, as if to complain about how audibly furious Mike is. He knew that this would be the response, if Mike ever found out, and he’s not actually complaining. He’s grinding against Mike’s palm, wanting Mike’s grip on his cock to get even meaner.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” Mike says, angrily, like he believes Jay thinks so. Jay is enjoying Mike’s jealousy-fueled groping too much to even realize what he’s talking about until he continues. “You were so hard up for it you had to put your whole entire ass on the line to get laid. Your life, just-- Offering it up! To whoever! I should have been bending you over for routine maintenance at work. Daily. To keep you from abusing yourself.”

Jay is half into this narrative of himself, trying not to scoff with laughter against Mike’s arm. He keeps his eyes closed there and ruts against Mike’s hand with pathetic need. It would be nice if Mike could do what he surely wants to right now, throw Jay down and climb on top of him, but maybe it’s differently nice that he can’t. He can feel Mike’s frustration building like a big wave, needing to crash somehow. If this was a different sort of conversation Jay might mention that he could offer some criticisms about how recklessly Mike has conducted his own personal life, but he doesn’t want to get into it now.

“You little shit,” Mike says. “Letting women do things to your nipples. On my watch.”

“Your watch?” Jay can’t help but laugh helplessly, feeling like he might come in his pants just for the way Mike is handling his cock like it belongs to him and they both know it.

“Did they spit on you and stuff? Call you names? I bet you’re into that.”

“I would never be into anyone spitting on me for any reason.”

“Look at you, you’re giddy. Is this even true, Jay? Are you just saying all this to piss me off?”

“Mhm, Mike. You’ll never know for sure, will you?”

Maybe there’s some real bitterness in this taunt, because of the things Mike has kept from Jay and given to other people. Jay knows why he doesn’t qualify to fill certain positions at Mike’s side, all the reasons that are his fault and the ones that aren’t. He’s not mad about it, not anymore, at least not at the moment.

“Are you going to come like this?” Mike asks, still squeezing Jay through his jeans like he can’t stop himself either. “Humping my hand like a crazed gremlin?”

“Nhn, I dunno, maybe. What do you want?” Jay tilts his head back to meet Mike’s eyes, which are swimmy with indecision, like he’s not sure how angry he should be. “Mike?” Jay says, sweet again, rolling his hips just a little. “Tell me.”

“Tell you, what? What to do? I’ve got to be the one giving all the direction, all the time? That’s what drives me fucking nuts about you, Jay, and then you just-- You order the other people you have sex with on a fucking app. What the fuck am I supposed to take away from that? Huh?”

Oh. Jay stops twitching like a horny bunny in Mike’s grip. Mike is really mad, and also looks like he might cry.

“My leg is killing me,” Mike confesses. “But--” He looks down at his dick, which is tenting his boxers, peeking through the slit, fully hard. “So,” he mutters, miserably, when Jay meets his eyes again.

“Poor Mike.” Jay sits up on his elbow and pushes Mike’s hair back, then combs it down with his fingers again. Mike just peers up at him, either trying to regain his composure or basking in the attention. “What do you need?”

Mike shakes his head and pinches his eyes shut. For a terrifying moment Jay is sure he’ll burst into tears, but he just groans, sounding like he’s in several different kinds of pain but not looking like he’ll cry about it anymore when he opens his eyes and sort of glares at Jay.

“Give me a lap dance,” Mike says. “One that’s good enough to make me come.”

“Uh. Okay. Can your dick be in me while I do this?”

Mike considers this, pursing his lips and studying Jay’s face.

“Okay,” he says, softly. “Yes.”

They end up having sex the way they did during the pandemic, sort of lazily, indulging in the comfort of it. Mike pinches Jay’s muffin top and nipples to get him to squirm better on his dick. Eventually Jay gives in to Mike’s commands and does the best approximation of dancing that he can while seated on Mike’s cock. This display makes Mike laugh hard, which feels really good inside Jay, reverberating all the way up through him like the best kind of praise, gut deep and earnest. It makes Jay laugh, too, until the way his stomach spasms from it is part of why he’s coming all over Mike, the other part being the desperate way Mike starts grinding up into his clenching ass, screwing Jay as hard as he can while lying on his back and using only one leg for traction.

Jay feels good after, not in a hurry to get away or even clean up, though he does grab a handful of the dirty bedsheets to wipe himself mostly dry. He does Mike’s dick after.

“Need to wash these and put clean ones on,” he says. “So you’ll have to get up for a minute.”

“Not now,” Mike says, whining this out like he’s going to have to beg Jay. “You’re on the wrong side,” he says, because Jay flopped over onto Mike’s right.

“Don’t you want me to get your pill and the cold pizza?”

“I need this more,” Mike says, reaching across his chest to try pull Jay against him with his left hand. “Like, what-- You’re not going to kiss me anymore? I don’t even know what the hell you’re mad about.”

“Ugh.” Jay puts his palms over his eyes, the good post-fuck feeling rapidly fading. Mike couldn't even let him bask in it for two minutes. “I’m not mad. Do I look mad to you?”

“I’ve never been able to tell until it’s too late,” Mike says. Jay looks over at him and knows he means that first time, the fight, those bad things Jay said. “Get over here,” Mike says, jaw clenched.

“Are trying to kiss me or bite me?”

“Only one way to find out. Unless you’re too scared?”

Jay can see this trick from a mile off with his eyes closed, Mike thinking that pointing out his cowardice will get him to do what Mike wants. He’s not sure what he’s afraid of either. If heartbreak is going to happen, it’s already in progress.

It’s still like remembering he can breathe underwater, bringing his lips to Mike’s and opening for his pushy tongue. He can drift down so deeply into this without worrying about how he’ll get back to the surface. Jay has never liked kissing anyone else, not even a little. That’s why it’s the worst-hurting part, that he keeps letting Mike have it one more time. It’s not the only thing Mike has that Jay doesn’t want from anyone else, but it’s the one that makes him feel the most exposed when it’s gone again, washed up on a desolate beach with his gills gasping.

“It’s fucked up how much I miss you,” Mike says when Jay pulls back, too soon. “‘Cause you’re right here.”

“I know,” Jay says.

He really does.

“Wait, wait,” Mike says, holding Jay’s arm when he tries to scoot away, to get Mike’s supplies and some clean sheets and all the things they need that aren’t currently in this bed. “Not yet, c’mon,” Mike mutters, already pushing up onto his elbows to bring his mouth to Jay’s again.

Jay huffs a little protest that isn’t one really. He opens for Mike again, pushes his tongue against Mike’s again: again, again, they’ll do this for the rest of their lives, but not often enough, he fears.

Once he’s identified what he’s afraid of he should be able to pull back and protect himself from it, but he doesn’t. He flops more completely onto Mike and rubs his face against the dusting of stubble that’s already growing in on Mike’s cheek. Mike paws at Jay’s hair and the back of his neck, kisses his eyelids. Everything about the way Mike’s body responds to his always says so clearly: don’t go away from me, stay forever or I’ll die. Jay always feels like his body is saying back, gracelessly and too loud, that he wants nothing more than to be the reason Mike is alive. They’ve both kept at least some of this unspoken promise to each other.

Mike limps out to the couch on his crutches to take his pill and eat his pizza. Jay busies himself with the bedsheets, putting the dirty ones in the washing machine. He spreads fresh sheets onto the mattress and feels stupid, because these will be sweat damp and come crusted so soon. They should have just gone on wallowing in their original mess.

*

Chapter 4: 2011

Chapter Text

2011

Their Monster Man movie had been released to little fanfare. They’d gotten a distribution deal that quickly fizzled into nothing financially, and had done little more to promote it beyond holding a screening at a neighborhood bar where Mike was friendly with the owner, having gotten in the habit of going there nightly. Jay joined him there more frequently as the years passed and they did not fuck over any more benches or make any more movies, struggling to keep their production company afloat by booking anything they could get hired for, still mostly weddings. They both gained weight. It looked worse on Jay, at his height, and in general he was starting to feel repulsive a lot of the time, like the jumble of his various physical quirks came together in the worst way.

Their production company had an internet presence that was segregated from the site where they advertised their wedding package pricing, and they posted short comedy videos when they could, trying to get a cheaply made web series going. It was going nowhere when Mike uploaded an unrelated video that got a lot of attention, out of the blue but also in a way that felt like validation for what they’d been always working toward: they were funny, they had things to say, and Mike at least was handsome enough to be famous. There were requests to interview him from several middling media presences.

Jay thought Mike had to be out of his mind when his idea for a new show, in the always-fading glow of this opportunity to get more eyes on their work, featured Jay on camera in every episode.

“No,” Jay said, at once. They were at their usual bar, and Mike had waited until Jay had finished two beers to bring this up, which was shitty and made Jay wonder if he had another operating agreement template up his sleeve, a pen in his pocket. “I’m not good on camera,” Jay said when Mike just stared at him like he didn’t know to process the word no when it came from Jay’s mouth.

“Yeah you are,” Mike said. He’d had three beers.

“Since when?”

Jay hadn’t been in anything they’d made since Monster Man, except for a few non-speaking parts where he wore a mask that fully covered his head.

“The whole idea of the show is our dynamic,” Mike said, gesturing to himself and then to Jay. He was looking at Jay as if he was exceptionally slow, like this idea was an obvious winner. “Plus, you’re the only one who I can count on to show up for filming.”

“Right.” Jay drank from his third beer, insulted by that, though he knew it was true, and the real reason Mike wanted him around. He was unflinchingly dependable. If Mike was too hungover to show up on time for one of their wedding bookings, Jay made excuses for him and worked twice as hard until he got there.

Things were not going great for either of them. It was a weird time to suddenly have the chance to make money, get famous, have dreams again.

“I don’t think our dynamic translates into anything that interesting on film,” Jay said, not drunk enough to add that he didn’t even understand what was so great about it in real life, half the time.

“Are you crazy?” Mike said. He was starting to get angry, and Jay didn’t care. It was actually kind of hilarious to finally say no to Mike and see him react like this, with entitled outrage. “Look at how people stop talking and listen to us when we’re in a group. Right? When we’re really just talking to each other. On movie night, at parties, at this fucking bar. Haven’t you noticed that?”

“No.”

He had but didn’t want to admit it, or that his status as Mike’s favorite person to talk to felt like his life’s greatest achievement when other people enviously observed this.

“Jay,” Mike said, devolving into whining when he saw that Jay was serious about denying him. “C’mon, please? I don’t-- Don’t know what to do, but I can’t do nothing, with this.” He meant the interviews, the increased visits to their website, the spark of people’s curiosity about him that would either ignite or flame out fast. “Can’t you see I’m freaking out?” Mike asked, leaning over to say this part softly, near Jay’s ear. “All the time,” he said when Jay turned to look at him, surprised by how sincere he seemed, if also a little drunk. “It’s been like a nonstop anxiety attack. I can’t sleep, all I can think about is how not to fuck this up and how I won’t get another shot if I do. I thought I’d solved it with this idea, you know? By bringing you into it. That’s the only way I can handle this. Please, just. Please don’t abandon me right now.”

Jay was tipsy enough to want to leap off his barstool and put his arms around Mike. If they hadn’t been in public he might have done it. He stared at Mike with his mouth hanging open, speechlessly sold on giving him whatever he needed.

Sometimes he really did manage to forget how much he loved Mike, and then there it was, holding him hostage.

“Okay,” Jay said, quietly, like his compliance could be kept a secret. “We can try it. Sorry. I didn’t know-- All that. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll help, it’s okay.”

Mike’s eyes got warm in a way that made Jay remember what it felt like to kiss him. They both turned away from it to drink from their beers.

“Thank you,” Mike said, slightly breathless from gulping the last of his down. “It’s gonna be great. You’ll see.”

Jay did not believe it would be great, but he was serious about not wanting to leave Mike alone with his struggle to make the production company something more than what it was. It was true that they could potentially parlay their newfound audience into a way to actually get funding to make movies, and Jay was still working on scripts, mostly in secret. They were in their thirties and it was time to start making things happen, now or never.

Mike rented studio space in an old manufacturing building in town, near the river. He still had some reserves of inheritance money, and Jay was a little surprised to learn this, considering how frugally Mike lived, practically in squalor at times. He’d always been planning to put it into the company, apparently. The more their plan to launch a new show came together, the more it felt like their last hope for any kind of success beyond getting by with freelance jobs, and in the light of this new opportunity they both came to realize how unhappy they’d been in the stagnating years that had followed the release of Monster Man. Jay could only wish he hadn’t spent that time wearing his own unhappiness like a costume, because there was nothing he could do to change his appearance quickly enough to make a difference. He couldn’t stand the sight of himself on camera in their test shots, and he couldn’t tell Mike this was the reason he was feeling so gloomy about the project. It was vain and small and dumb, but it was there on his shoulders all the time, heavy. Mike of course looked fucking great, even in the dumpy coveralls he’d chosen for his costume.

“I gotta fix my teeth if I’m gonna be on camera,” Jay finally said when they’d wrapped their first episode shoot and were watching the footage together at the studio, hunched around their single computer after the friends who’d helped them had gone home. “This is fucking brutal,” he said, meaning watching himself like this, with the video currently paused on shot of him laughing, open-mouthed.

“Fix?” Mike said, looking over at Jay as if he’d never noticed his fucked-up teeth, which was almost but not quite funny. “Like how?”

Jay silently debated whether or not he really wanted to get into it, seething with resentment that Mike didn’t deserve.

“There are ways,” he said, tightly. “They’re expensive.”

“Sounds like a waste of money.”

“Yeah, that’s what my parents thought, too, so, great, now it’s way worse than it would have been then, so, thanks for that.”

He wasn’t sure if he was aiming this outburst at his parents or at Mike. He shoved his chair away from the computer and walked around the room, wanting to get away from the worried look Mike was giving him, and also impossibly from his own body, everything that couldn’t be shed or changed. The studio space was small, crammed with their set and desk and costumes. There was nowhere to run from anything, really.

“Are you mad at me right now?” Mike asked, sounding so afraid of the possibility that Jay felt a little better and laughed.

“No,” Jay said. He kicked a beer bottle, not hard enough to shatter it when it bounced against the wall. “Sorry. Fuck. Sorry.”

“What’s wrong?” Mike stood up, then sat again when he saw the warning look Jay gave him. Jay did not want to be coddled about this. Mike wouldn’t understand. “You’ve been pissy at me all day,” Mike said. He still looked scared, edging toward heartbroken. “You really don’t want to do this, do you?”

“No, I do,” Jay said, because by then he’d gotten into the idea, and their first day of shooting had gone well. Mike was right about their dynamic. “I just wish. I don’t know. I don’t really want all these people seeing me and having opinions.”

“Opinions about what? Your taste in movies? You’ve never cared what--”

“About things like my fucking teeth, Mike! Jesus!”

“Oh. What? C’mere.”

Jay stayed where he was, feeling like shit. He’d given up on Mike bending him over anything ever again. Surely he couldn’t mean something like that by ‘come here.’

“I love your teeth,” Mike said.

“Fuck you.”

“I’m being serious. Come here. I want to show you something.”

Jay walked back to him, thinking it would be something on the computer. Maybe Mike would just change the subject. Jay would have let him, would have been grateful even. But he was much more grateful for what Mike actually did, which was to grab Jay and pull him down into his lap like he weighed nothing.

“Hey,” Mike said, sounding offended, like he was the one who’d just been yanked into a startling new position, a new reality as far as Jay was concerned. Mike’s arms were wrapped around him, his face was close, he smelled like the beers they’d had together to celebrate the wrap on the shoot. His thighs were huge and warm against Jay’s ass, making him realize that the last time they’d touched each other had gotten so far away that it didn’t feel real anymore, until now. “I’m serious,” Mike said again, bringing his hand up to Jay’s jaw and gripping it, not gently. “You want to know how often I think about your mouth? I’m never not thinking about it. And I fucking love everything about it, okay? So shut up.”

Jay was dumbfounded. He could not recall the last time someone had paid him a compliment about his looks. Maybe never.

Mike kissed him, still holding his face, and sighed into his mouth like he’d been dying for it. Jay was stunned, his mind fully blanked by the shock of this, but his body knew how to respond to Mike’s kiss with an instinct that was more powerfully physical than any others he’d ever had: breathing underwater, eyes closed, he opened his mouth for Mike’s tongue and let himself sink into the massive relief of having it probing and hot in his mouth, sliding against his teeth. There was no reason to be coy now, he needed this too much. He put his arms around Mike’s neck and shifted so he was straddling Mike’s legs, his dick getting hard for the way the new position held his thighs open around the shape of Mike’s gut. He wanted to say so many things: I think about your cock all the time, do you imagine it in my mouth like I do? Why aren’t we doing this every day? Where the hell have you been, why ever hold any of this back, why me, how can you possibly want this as much as I do, and what if you don’t?

He didn’t trust himself to speak without a terrible shake in his voice that was still concealed comfortably within him, also didn’t want to stop kissing Mike long enough to say anything.

Mike did enough talking for both of them, that night.

“There’s no part of you I can live without,” he said, and Jay’s first thought was: he’s so drunk, but he didn’t really seem to be. Something else was happening to Mike. He seemed panicked, his grip on Jay’s waist almost mean with need. “Your teeth, your eyelashes, every fucking armpit hair. All of it. And every time you laugh I want it to be for me. Like that Weezer song, it really feels like that, like it’s killing me if anything other than me makes you happy. I’ve been jealous of movies. If I tried to do anything without you I’d just shrivel up.”

“Why?” Jay managed to say, holding back the ‘me.’

“Why?” Mike looked at him like he was insane. “I mean, I didn’t get a fucking explanation either, I just saw you and I knew. Didn’t you know about me?”

“Know what?” Jay wasn’t really in the mood to explain that of course he’d found Mike instantly attractive, magnetic, essential. Many people did. He was about to become famous, for fuck’s sake.

Mike looked hurt by that question, so Jay kissed him again.

“I thought you’d leave me in the dust once you got to know the real me,” Jay said when he’d regained enough composure to make sense. He could feel Mike’s erection against the seat of his ass, and he was resisting the impulse to throw away the rest of what they were doing and just grind on it until he came in his pants. “And I’ve never felt more like the real me, lately. In a bad way.”

“What the hell?” Mike said, and then, “I know. Me too. That’s why I need you so much. I mean, I always do, but. I’m scared shitless, Jay.”

Jay moaned sympathetically and leaned in to kiss Mike’s neck. Mike made a helpless noise of pain-tinged pleasure when Jay used his teeth there, dragging them over the spot where he could feel Mike’s pulse pounding.

“It’ll be okay,” Jay said, whispering this against Mike’s skin. He arched greedily into Mike’s touch when he pushed his hands up under the back of Jay’s shirt. They were still wearing their costumes.

“Someday you’ll see yourself clearly,” Mike said. He was rubbing his hands all over Jay’s trembling back, as if to soothe himself more than Jay, his hips starting to move under Jay’s ass like he wanted more, too. “And on that day you’ll dump me in the garbage, probably.”

“No, never,” Jay said, almost sobbing this out with his face pressed to Mike’s throat and his arms locked tight around Mike’s shoulders. He was burning up with something too big to fit inside his body, and trusting Mike to hold it in for him. Mike’s hands felt big enough to do that, strong enough to do anything. “I would never do that. Oh my god. Mike.”

“I know, I know.”

Mike wasn’t saying that he knew Jay would never leave him. Nothing Jay could do would convince Mike of that, not since the fight that had happened almost a decade ago by then. He was saying he knew how good it felt to hold each other like that again and how fucked up it was that they’d waited so long, only responding to the oh my god of it all when he said he knew what Jay was feeling, and that he felt it, too.

“What would make you happy right now?” Mike asked when he had Jay’s face between his hands again, his lips fat and soft from being kissed. “Is it the same thing that would help me feel okay?”

“Yes,” Jay said. He was pretty sure Mike meant fucking, being connected like that while they were in this bizarro mode where they were just saying everything, doing whatever they wanted. But if he’d meant something else, Jay would have agreed to that, too: marriage, murder, burning down the city. Whatever Mike needed that night was what Jay needed, too. It felt so good to be on the same side again. Nothing else they did gave Jay that feeling as completely as kissing did. It was like being freely given something he’d previously had to steal with great shame, something he couldn’t live without.

“Do you want to be naked?” Mike asked, carefully unbuttoning the work shirt that Jay was wearing under a similarly oversized jacket.

“God no,” Jay said.

“Me either. Too weird to be naked here.”

Mike turned to glance at their set, still unbuttoning, then at the room’s only window, which was covered by heavy curtains to preserve their lighting effects. They’d made the curtains themselves the day before, using Jay’s ancient sewing machine. He’d inherited it from his grandmother in high school, back when he sometimes tore up his clothing and remade it to seem punk-ish, since his parents wouldn’t buy anything “offbeat” for him. He and Mike had made the curtains here at the studio and the sewing machine was still sitting in the corner of the room while Mike reached in past the unbuttoned shirt to wrap his arms around Jay’s bare back and pull him in for another kiss. That sewing machine and those punk clothes had been the tipping point, in high school; even his nicest brother had started asking if he was gay. Jay had loathed the machine for that, had considered smashing it, but that seemed like it would only be a confession. He was so glad that it was intact and with him in this moment when he was about to have sex with the love of his life in this den of weirdness they’d built together. This became another thing about that night that threatened to make him start crying, but he held it back.

“What can we use?” Mike asked when he had both hands down the back of Jay’s unbuttoned pants, pushed into his boxers and squeezing his ass cheeks. “For lube,” he said when Jay just stared at him, lost in how good it felt to have Mike’s hands on him like that.

“Oh.” Jay looked around. They didn’t have a first aid kit yet. He made a mental note to get one, then wondered if he should also buy actual lube. The question of whether they would start doing this here all the time made him fret and doubt himself, but Mike pulled him away from those feelings by standing up with a grunt, bringing Jay with him. Jay’s arms tightened around Mike’s neck, his legs winding around Mike’s waist.

“I got it,” Mike said, carrying Jay into the studio’s tiny kitchenette, which was just a sink with a small counter and a mini fridge. “Good?” Mike asked, shifting his hand under Jay’s ass so he could hold him up with one arm while reaching for the giant value bottle of vegetable oil that they kept on hand for making fake blood.

“Uh-huh,” Jay said. He was still waiting to feel embarrassed by the fact that Mike was carrying him around like that, unwilling to let him go. Mike handed Jay the vegetable oil and brought him back to the chair by the computer, resuming his seat there with Jay straddling his lap.

“We will need to take your pants off,” Mike said. “But check this out.”

He nudged Jay back toward his knees so he could look down between their bodies and watch as Mike revealed the coveralls had a hidden button release that opened a crotch panel. Practical, of course, for taking a leak during a work day, and extremely hot, to Jay, in the context of any other dick usage. Jay laughed breathlessly at the sight of Mike’s bulged-out boxers, and he got quiet again when Mike pulled his cock out, spreading his legs wider as if to show off how big he was when he got this hard, like Jay didn’t already know.

Jay got his pants off quickly, shoving his boxers down with them and leaving his socks on when he straddled Mike’s lap again, sinking back into his circling arms with relief. He was flushed and so hard it hurt, ready to sit on that dick. Mike was getting himself ready, his fist slicked with the vegetable oil as he stroked himself. Some had dribbled onto the floor. They were already dirtying up the place with their antics.

“Let me get you ready,” Mike said when Jay lifted up to get his ass into position.

“You don’t need to,” Jay said, though he wasn’t sure this was true.

“I want to,” Mike said, smoothing his slick hand down between Jay’s ass cheeks. Jay let the tension drain out of him for that touch, tamed by it. He collapsed against Mike’s chest and pressed his hips back for Mike’s hand, his head resting on Mike’s shoulder and his face turned in against Mike’s throat. The powerful beating of Mike’s heart against his own chest felt as good as any of it. Jay closed his eyes and moaned for the way Mike stroked and circled his hole, taking his time.

Yes, okay, good, Jay thought, clinging to Mike’s shoulders with both hands while Mike worked one finger inside, needlessly slow. Mike was indulging himself. Jay was happy to let this go on for a long time. He closed his eyes and huffed his hot breath against Mike’s throat.

“I don’t want to embarrass you,” Mike said. “But you can’t go around not knowing how much obscenity you inspire in my brain.”

Jay clenched up around Mike’s finger, thinking about his own dirty mind and the things Mike did to him in his imagination.

“You’re usually tied up,” Mike said, pressing his finger in more urgently. “But I always save you by the end.”

“The end?”

“Yeah. It’s like a movie that plays out in my head. When I can’t sleep, or. If I’m bored at work and you’re there, being so perfect.”

Jay scoffed at the idea that he was ever perfect. Mike grabbed Jay’s shoulder and made him sit back with Mike’s finger still buried in his ass, meeting his eyes in a way that caused Jay’s whole body to tighten up around Mike’s touch, reminding him this was real.

“I’m a disaster on my own,” Mike said. “You should have seen me-- When I left. All I knew how to do without you was make a fool of myself. You’re holding the fabric of the universe together for me. Don’t fucking forget it.”

Mike seemed kind of angry about all of this, but he was sweet again when he leaned forward to kiss Jay. His finger was still digging insistently and hitting Jay’s prostate, which made the sweetness of the kiss even better. Jay was both under and above the waterline, sighing and screwing himself back against Mike’s hand, wanting more and also for this part to never end.

“Do you want me to shut up?” Mike asked when he broke the kiss.

“No,” Jay said, though it embarrassed him to admit he wanted to hear more about how much Mike needed him, wanted him, thought about him. He knew what Mike meant about that Weezer song. Seeing him admire anyone else was torture. Jay just never let it show.

Mike muttered a stream of worshipful madness into Jay’s ear while they kept this up, between bouts of hungry kissing. You’re so good, he said, the best person I’ve ever met, I can’t believe you even like me, I get a boner when you just fucking do what I tell you to, when it’s the stupidest fucking thing but you just do it.

Jay has all of this written on his heart somewhere, but he only let himself half-hear it that night, afraid he’d do grievous injury to himself if he took it too seriously. He snickered and squirmed and hid his face under Mike’s jaw until Mike pulled him back upright again, gently, using Jay’s jacket collar like a handle and making him meet his eyes. Jay was sweltering inside that jacket but didn’t want to shed the protective shell of it, just let himself drip sweat into his costume like he was infusing the whole project with good luck by doing this, the unbuttoned work shirt stuck to his skin inside the jacket.

He was still facing Mike and straddling him in the chair when Mike finally pulled his fingers out and guided Jay up and onto his cock, breathing hard through his nose and trying to hold Jay’s gaze while watching his face as he took it. Jay couldn’t keep his eyes from fluttering shut, but he snapped them open again when Mike gave him a soft clap on his left ass cheek. Mike grinned like he knew what Jay was remembering when their eyes met again.

“What if we’d never met?” Mike asked when Jay was fully seated on his dick and sort of lolling in his arms, just letting himself enjoy how not-alone this made him feel, having company inside his own body. “I’d be dead,” Mike said, this connectedness apparently making him think about being alone, too. “Dead inside, anyway, by now, if I didn’t have you.”

Have me, Jay thought, almost moaning it out loud. He just nodded and started to bounce a little, whining for how good it already felt. The impulse to hold perfectly still to prolong this was strong, but his need to feel that good friction scratching the itch deep inside him was stronger.

They did make it last a long time, between periods of Jay’s bouncing and Mike reaching under Jay’s thighs to hoist him up and down. Both things took a certain amount of physical energy, so they would rest while catching their breath, kissing and waiting for the next wave to come and make it impossible for at least one of them to keep still.

“You said it’ll be okay,” Mike said when he was still half-kissing Jay, their lips bumping together. “Did you mean it?”

“Yes,” Jay said, bouncing on Mike’s dick, for emphasis and because by then he was sort of losing it, needing to come but feeling too shy to touch his own cock while Mike watched.

“You just want to give me whatever I want.” Mike put his hands on Jay’s thighs and held them down to stop the bouncing. Jay whined and tried to fix his gaze on Mike’s, not wanting to hear harsh truths about himself mixed in with all the praise. “Why is that,” Mike asked, his grip on Jay only tightening.

Look, they both knew what he wanted to hear. Jay still forgives himself for not saying it. He was always the more vulnerable one, especially that night, and though everything Mike had said up to that point of course amounted to a love confession, Jay felt like letting himself hear it was one, too.

“I can’t help it,” Jay said, not even sure if he was talking about his devotion to Mike or his continued attempts to fuck himself on Mike’s cock.

“Why not?” Mike asked. Trying again.

“It just feels good,” Jay said, shaking his head. He was too gone to think about anything except how ready to burst he was, and how having Mike’s big dick inside him was just short of enough to get him there. “I don’t know-- I don’t know. Mike, please, I need it, please--”

Mike was close to coming, too, so he didn’t get too broken up about Jay not saying the right thing, at least in the moment. If Jay couldn’t surprise Mike with his improvised responses he wouldn’t have been the partner Mike wanted anyway. Being predictable or just spitting out lines Mike had half-fed him would have ruined it.

“Will you--?” Jay asked, grasping Mike’s right hand and bringing it down to his cock. Somehow this was less embarrassing than just jacking himself to completion.

“It’ll get on this,” Mike said, meaning his costume. He could see that Jay was about to blow.

“There’s already-- The oil, sweat-- We-- I’ll wash them tomorrow.”

Hearing this promise that Jay would do their laundry after they’d fucked it filthy, Mike groaned and wrapped his fingers around Jay’s dick, pumping him until he threw his head back and came all over the front of the coveralls.

“God yes,” Mike said, hugging Jay against him while he shuddered through it. He was grinding up into Jay, his moans transitioning into desperate whines. “You, ah, god-- Nothing’s better than feeling you come on my cock, Jay. It’s like a drug.”

The comparison wasn’t all that flattering, as Jay came down from his orgasm with his face pressed to Mike’s shoulder. Mike didn’t do drugs and was judgmental about their friends who did. It was a particular point of pride for him, maybe a defensive justification for how much he drank. Jay had theorized for a while that one of the reasons Mike had fallen for him back when he looked like a high schooler was Jay’s complete isolation from anything that might have corrupted him: not even willing to bring a beer to his lips, clearly a virgin, idealistic about art and integrity in the most naive ways. Mike had wanted to be the one who made Jay fat and happy with any vice he could push into him, but he still liked the idea of Jay keeping clean in certain ways. Sleeping only with Mike was one of them that went without saying, while Mike plowed through women like a tornado. Their friend group had dwindled down to the handful of people whose ex-girlfriends or current crushes hadn’t ended up in Mike’s bed.

Jay didn’t want to be thinking of any of this while Mike groaned and held him down on his dick, coming inside him, but it happened every time they began to descend from the highest peaks of what they’d done: everything that had faded into irrelevant nothingness around them became real again so fast. He kept his arms around Mike’s neck and his face ducked under Mike’s chin, wanting to pretend that it wasn’t happening again. Mike was still breathing hard, pushing his hands up inside Jay’s shirt and jacket again to find his skin.

“Oh man,” he said. “You’re soaked.”

“So are you,” Jay said, rubbing his face where sweat was trickling down along Mike’s jaw, sliding across Jay’s nose.

“Yeah, we-- Wow.”

Mike coughed, and Jay could feel him looking around the room as if remembering its dimensions. Jay didn’t want to do that yet. He stayed curled up and hiding even as his ass began to itch with the need to get Mike out of him and the sweat-soaked state of the two of them grew less exciting and more gross.

Mike broke the spell by moving his foot and knocking over the uncapped bottle of vegetable oil that had been precariously sitting beside the chair the whole time. He cursed and tried to grab for it, making Jay groan when this shifted Mike’s still-hard cock uncomfortably inside his overworked ass. It was too late: the bottle was glugging out all over the floor, just out of reach.

Jay didn’t want to accept this as a bad omen. His hands were shaking when he went to the kitchenette, still pants-less, to try to clean himself up. He brought a handful of paper towels to his ass, feeling disgusting, like they had defiled a temple. This was supposed to be their new creative home, and here they were, splashing come and cooking oil all over it.

Mike washed his dick in the sink, which was a thousand times more sacrilegious. Jay made a face at him when he was drying it with paper towels.

“What?” Mike said.

“Did you have to do that right in the sink?”

“It’s not like we’ve got dishes in there,” Mike said. Then he leaned over the sink again, checking to make sure.

“Yeah, but-- Never mind.”

“Let’s go home,” Mike said, as if they might have zipped up and returned to the computer to start editing. “To my place, I mean. We could, uhh. I like sleeping with you.”

Jay scratched at the back of his head. He knew he wouldn’t get any sleep with Mike’s massive presence looming so literally beside him, but he couldn’t say no after everything Mike had done to make him feel better about himself. It hadn’t worked, in the end, but it still meant a lot to him.

“I’ll just put my pants on,” Jay said, turning to look for them.

“Yeah, good idea.”

Everything was extra awkward in the aftermath: cleaning up the oil, both of them criticizing the way the other did it, walking to Mike’s car, being in the car together. Normally they didn’t have to contend with the echo of so much dialogue after fucking, Jay thought, then he had to reconsider the word ‘normal.’ They had only ever done this twice before. There was no play book and no way to know what to expect.

He used Mike’s shower at his apartment, which made him feel even more like a piece of dough that had been kneaded into uselessness. Earlier it had seemed as if Mike’s words were reshaping him into a creature of pure light, unshackling him from the boundaries of his human form with adoration. Now he saw in Mike’s toothpaste-flecked bathroom mirror that he was still savagely himself, looking like a drowned rat with his hair wet from the shower. He winced at Mike’s comb, which had dark brown hairs matted between every tooth. The towel he was using was supposedly clean but so ratty that drying himself with it made him feel dirty again.

Mike was sweet when Jay emerged from the bathroom, offering a t-shirt to sleep in and clean boxer shorts. Putting Mike’s underwear on made Jay feel better and cleaner than using his moldy shower had.

“Sorry the place is kind of nasty,” Mike said, pulling back the blankets on his bed to invite Jay to join him there. The sheets smelled like they hadn’t been washed in a long time, and only the fact that Jay was so into the scent of Mike’s sweat made this bearable. “You know,” Mike said, looking over at him apologetically from the other side of the bed. “Been busy with all the work stuff.”

“It’s fine, I don’t care.”

Jay almost gulped out an apology for saying those three words, which according to his years of over-analysis of their first time together seemed to have disrupted the scene back then. He moved into the center of the bed and settled down with his head on Mike’s only pillow. He already felt overheated, but didn’t protest when Mike arranged the blankets over him and then pulled him close beneath them.

“Man, what a day,” Mike said when the lights were out.

“Yep.”

“Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah. Just tired.”

“Mhmm, me too.”

Mike was asleep within a few minutes of falling silent, like Jay had predicted and even sort of feared. Jay felt safe, cared for, and also trapped, with Mike’s arm draped heavily over his side and his breath ruffling through Jay’s wet hair.

Jay made an effort to sleep, but having to do so doomed him to wakefulness. He had trouble with sleep under the best of circumstances, prone to waking up late at night and worrying about things until he just gave up and got out of bed to get some work done. Napping happened in jarring five minute spurts during the day, as needed. He tried rolling over, almost wanting to wake Mike up in the process, and kicked the blankets away with the same hope. Mike stayed asleep even when Jay wiggled out from under his arm and slipped out of bed.

He put his jeans on and walked around Mike’s apartment, noting the details and feeling like an intruder. He’d been there before, of course. This was a new apartment, not the place that had been a ten minute walk from the hardware store. Jay no longer worked there and had moved, too. They had talked about being roommates at one point but had quickly nixed the idea because of their differing habits and the threat of being too cooped up together in their personal space ruining their working relationship. Jay had assumed that Mike was also making it clear they would never be together romantically, for the same reason.

Now he wasn’t sure what to think, squatting in the moonlight that spilled in through Mike’s living room window to examine the books on his shelves. The things Mike had told him at the studio were churning around strangely in his head, twisting in the powerful winds of his self-doubt. In the world Jay knew, men didn’t speak to each other that way. It was like a language he only half understood, picking up words here and there and afraid to spit out some garbled, graceless reply. He knew he’d already hurt Mike by just clinging and sweating all over him, unable to do anything grander. The longer he stayed awake, sitting on the floor paging through some of Mike’s old textbooks from film school, the more he began to fear the coming morning and what it would be like to look each other in the face again.

“What are you doing?” Mike asked, scaring the shit out of Jay around five AM by sneaking up behind him with this question. Jay had been almost dozing but was still sitting upright, bent over an open copy of German Cinema Since 1933.

“Jesus,” Jay said, his heart pounding with a feeling like he’d awakened in the wrong apartment, like he should just apologize and go. “Sorry, uh. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh.”

Mike blinked down at Jay like he wasn’t fully awake either. The longer they stayed like that, with Jay looking up at him from his cross-legged position on the floor, surrounded by books, and Mike towering over him looking disappointed, the more certain Jay was that they would not navigate what had happened successfully.

“This book is interesting,” Jay said, aware that he was being idiotic. He didn’t know how else to behave, in this situation.

Mike stared down at him with hooded eyes that communicated what he was thinking clearly enough, that Jay was both pitiful and exhausting.

“I don’t recall it being all that great,” Mike said, deadpan.

Jay couldn’t make himself move. The books were laid out around him like a fence. He felt like an insect that had been caught building a nest in Mike’s life.

“I have trouble sharing a bed,” he said.

“I’m beginning to understand that. Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s-- Not you. Not limited to you.”

Mike rolled his eyes at the idea that Jay had attempted to share his bed with others. He had, just once, with a girl he’d dated the year after Mike moved back. It had gone about as well as trying to sleep with Mike had, and the pathetic amount of sex they were able to have when Jay’s dick cooperated wasn’t great either.

“So you’re going to stay out here reading about-- What even is that?”

“German cinema,” Jay said flatly, doing a sheepish voice and posture for comedic effect as he held the book up so Mike could see the title.

“You’re going to stay out here reading about German cinema all night?”

“It’s basically morning. I’ll-- Uh.” Jay flipped the book shut and stood up, looking around at the other books on the floor. “I’ll clean this up and come back.”

“You know what, don’t bother.”

It hurt so bad and hit Jay so swiftly that he could have dropped to his knees, but he remained standing, staring at Mike’s bare feet.

“You clearly want to leave,” Mike said. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I have so much invested in this show. Literally everything I have left. I can’t fuck this up by getting weird about you.”

“Okay,” Jay said, pretty sure he was being fired. He still couldn’t look Mike in the face, ashamed of himself for not knowing how to explain that he was just scared, that he needed to be let off the leash sometimes but would always come back.

“It’s like we could either be each other’s downfall or hold each other up,” Mike said. He sounded upset now, shaky, his stoic delivery flickering. “I’m trying to figure out how to hold you up. I don’t think it’s this.”

Jay said nothing, though he knew this would be taken as agreement.

“You can go if you want,” Mike said. “I won’t be mad. I know you don’t mean to.”

Mean to what, Jay thought? But he knew: break my heart.

“Do you want your key back?” Jay asked when he finally dragged his cowardly gaze up to meet Mike’s.

Mike’s eyebrows went up. He shook his head slowly, looking lost.

“What fucking key?”

“To, to the studio, the keycard, for the--”

“I’m not letting you quit the show,” Mike said, shifting so suddenly into quiet rage that Jay was fuzzily aroused by it, underneath everything else. “That’s not what I’m fucking talking about.”

“I-- Oh.”

“We work well together. That’s our thing.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s how I’m gonna use this.”

Jay nodded, resisting the urge to ask what Mike meant by ‘this.’ If he didn’t know for sure, he could assume Mike meant his obsession with Jay which would be lifelong.

“Okay,” Jay said instead, and, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just get out of my sight, man. You’re making me want to break windows.”

“Ah-- Okay--”

“And be at the studio by noon, bitch. We have work to do.”

“I will, okay. Yeah, sorry--”

“If you say sorry one more time, I swear to god.”

“Okay, okay! I’m going, jesus, suh-- Bye!”

Walking home, Jay tried to tell himself he was relieved. The sick thing was that a part of him was, even as he felt his heart crumbling to dust in his chest, just fucking blowing away. He was still wearing Mike’s shirt and boxers, and his jeans smelled like vegetable oil, because they had been in the path of destruction when it spilled everywhere.

At home, he took off his jeans and Mike’s shirt and sat in the center of his bed, still wearing Mike’s boxers. To punish himself, he imagined what would have happened that morning if he wasn’t such an unloveable freak: waking up in Mike’s bed, probably having sex again. Breakfast and TV, easy chatter about what the upcoming work day. He might have finally, finally sucked Mike’s cock. Now that was off the table forever. Mike’s face, when he told Jay to go, had been worse than it was post-fight, when he was too taken off guard by Jay’s secreted-away hatefulness to conceal that he was destroyed by it. This time he’d been ready, burned before, prepared to close parts of himself off to Jay even after everything he’d said while he held Jay in his lap. That was how badly Jay had wounded him by sitting in his living room with those books instead of staying in his arms.

Jay dug a fingernail into the center of his bottom lip, still puffy from being kissed, and made himself confront his real crime, which wasn’t just being awake while Mike slept. Mike had asked twice, in not so many words, don’t you love me, too? And Jay had not said he did.

He put his headphones on and arranged himself in bed as if sinking into his coffin. The sun was coming up outside and he was a vampire, eternally separate from the world he walked through. He listened to the Blue Album twice, and had to skip over “Say It Ain’t So” both times. Your drug is a heartbreaker. It wasn’t the song Mike had been talking about, but it was the one that always dragged Jay too deeply into his feelings, even when he wasn’t having a morning that was like attending his own funeral. This was one of the CDs Mike had in his car back in the old days, and they would listen together while driving around Milwaukee aimlessly during Mike’s visits, talking.

When Jay could feel himself starting to drift to sleep, he stopped the music and pushed the headphones off. He’d set his alarm so he could get to work on time. He could at least do that much for Mike to show him he cared, and he fell asleep thinking maybe he could fix the other things, too, because his conscious mind was shutting down, and only then did he imagine he could be what Mike wanted.

At the studio, Mike was cold to him and preoccupied with editing yesterday’s footage. Jay paced around looking for little things to do and finally said he was going out to buy a first aid kit.

“Why?” Mike asked, not turning from the computer. “You think I’m going to injure you?”

“No.” Jay stood near the door, aware that Mike was offering him a chance to apologize, maybe get down on his knees and beg for a second chance.

Then he thought: to do what? Be Mike’s boyfriend? Were they going to come out to their families and the people who would watch this show? Fuck no. Mike wanted easy access to Jay’s ass while he kept his rotating stream of hot women on his arm outside of these walls. Okay, he also loved Jay, and Jay was so in love with Mike that he couldn’t help but perceive him as a weapon, something dangerous that needed to be locked in a safe, unloaded. That didn’t mean Jay should grovel, or put out on demand. Mike was offering a serious partnership as his creative co-command. Jay was far more suited for that anyway. Mike was right.

“Why are you still here?” Mike asked, turning to look at Jay like he smelled something rotten. “Get more paper towels, too. We used ‘em all yesterday.”

To clean the vegetable oil off the floor, Jay’s ass, and Mike’s dick. Jay just nodded and left. He didn’t buy more vegetable oil to replace the bottle that had left a still-shiny sheen on the floor by the desk where Mike sat editing their potential big break and hating him. It would have seemed too revealing to buy that, as if to suggest Jay might secretly be hoping it would happen again: the unplanned fuck, the need for makeshift slick. He bought corn syrup instead. It made better fake flood anyway, in Jay’s opinion. Mike was the one who preferred vegetable oil as a base.

Jay of course obsessed over what he might do differently anyway, in the weeks and months that followed. They worked diligently, long days, late nights, and Mike avoided Jay’s eyes whenever he could. Jay stared at him with a kind of open worship, something he hadn’t realized he was probably always doing until he started editing the footage of further episodes. The first one was released to relatively unenthused reviews, and several people in the comments asked who the hell Jay was, where did he come from? It was Mike they knew, from the video that had gone viral. Nobody said anything about Jay’s teeth, at least where he could read it. They added a forum to their website and Jay policed people’s conversations there, which didn’t require much of him in the beginning. Some nights he lay awake worrying more that the show wouldn’t be a success than he worried about Mike never touching him again.

Mike was drinking more, including during their shoots. It was part of the gimmick but he got obnoxious fast, and there was a new, mean slant in the way he looked at Jay, also visible on camera. The work they had to do at other people’s weddings became near unbearable, but it was still their best source of actual money. Jay was good with people and for some reason especially with anxious brides. Maybe because his mother had been married four times. Ha ha ha. Mike told that joke to everyone they knew.

It occurred to Jay that Mike was trying to make himself easier to hate, goading Jay into some kind of not-passive response to what was happening. Jay was astonished by how childish Mike could be, though he always had to forgive him, because it was Jay’s unbelievable childishness that had sent him into this particular spiral. They had been through this before, after the fight, but they didn’t have to live in the same state when the worst of that was going on, let alone work out of the same studio.

Jay thought constantly about what he might do to fix things, always rejecting his ideas. He had reached out to Mike after the old fight with a not-great apology email that had only made Mike more feral with far away rage. Jay was afraid to make a wrong move now, which made him think about how Mike had made all the previous right moves, putting his heart on the line to do so all three times: when he came to Jay’s bedroom door, when he spanked Jay’s ass over that bench, and when he pulled Jay into his lap to heal him in the room that was now, excruciatingly, their daily workplace. Now it was either Jay’s turn or nothing. Three strikes, you’re it.

In the end it didn’t matter. Jay figured this out too late, because by then Mike had met Louie.

Jay was there when they met, and sometimes wondered if Mike performing the whole flirtation in his presence was part of what set it all off, though anybody would have been impressed by Louie at the time and Mike had always flirted with women in front of Jay. A band called Louie Bay and the Creeps hired them to shoot a music video, and they were both excited to do anything that wasn’t a wedding or the show that so far resembled a hobbyist effort more than an actual career launch. They both expected Louie to be a man.

She was in fact a small blond woman who Jay would sometimes sneeringly think of as a Stevie Nicks wannabe. The other two band members were two older guys who were both in love with her. She told people her real name was Louisa but it was actually Elizabeth. Jay admired her attempts to reinvent herself once he got to know her better and heard about where she’d come from, a mundanely shitty upbringing not unlike his own. Nobody had believed in her either, but now here she was fronting a rock band, trying to make a living as an artist. She was always dyeing her hair different colors, and when they met her it was bleached almost white with neon green tips.

Louie was five years younger than Mike and more bowled over by the promise of him than Jay had seen anyone get in a while, though she was smart about not letting it show too much. Jay just knew the signs, intimately. Being admired by a beautiful, talented woman was good for Mike’s constitution, though he didn’t drink any less. He was nicer to Jay in her presence, and less defeatist about the fact that their show hadn’t become a hit right out of the gate. Jay was almost happy about the whole thing, until Mike announced that Louie was moving into his apartment.

“That was fast,” Jay said, without looking at him. They were cleaning up after a shoot and Jay was wrapping a cord around a mic, trying not to let it fumble out of his hands after he’d heard this news.

“She got into a fight with Blaine,” Mike said.

“Which one is Blaine?”

“The guitarist.”

“Ah.”

Jay didn’t want to talk about Mike’s developing romance with Louie. She wasn’t like the other girls Mike had dated, but Jay couldn’t put his finger on why, except that Louie seemed like someone Mike might actually fall in love with: sort of wounded and alone but tough, unwilling to ask for help. Only now she had, because she’d been living with Blaine and needed a place to stay. She’d been sleeping over at Mike’s place most nights anyway, he said. Twisting the knife.

“Are you still friends with that guy who plays guitar?” he asked, surely only pretending not to remember his name.

Jay was, and the same guy, Josh, ended up joining Louie’s band, which was renamed Louie B and the J’s, because the bassist’s name was Jerome. The stupid BJ pun was Mike’s idea. Louie loved his crass sense of humor; hers was the same.

The real killing blow for Jay was finding out that Mike wasn’t just consulting on the name of the band. He was helping her write lyrics for her music, and their experiment of living together was going great. They were in harmony, all nested up together creatively on top of everything else. Mike’s apartment was effectively her studio-- their studio, since Mike was suddenly into song writing.

“I wrote a whole musical in college,” Mike said when Jay made some kind of bitchy comment about how he was turning into a song writer.

“I know,” Jay said. Mike had once sent him a VHS tape of that musical in the mail. “I’m just kidding. It’s cool.”

Louie was helping Mike rediscover whole buried parts of himself, apparently. Jay had to wonder if she was housekeeping for him, or nudging him into being neater, or if she shared his inability to give a shit about tidying up, too absorbed in her art to waste time on cleaning. Jay wasn’t invited over to their place so didn’t get to find out. They had movie nights with their friends at the studio, on an assemblage of old couches they’d shoved around the perimeter of the room next to their set, the room where Jay could no longer believe he’d had sex with Mike. It was back to seeming like a dream. Jay started drinking a lot during these events, stumbling home alone after trying to ignore the sight of Louie and Mike cuddled up on one of those couches together, laughing at all the same things Jay did.

Toward the end of the year he and Mike finally made an episode of the show that resonated with a wider audience, passed around on social media and inflating the views on every other episode, too. Jay had become so preoccupied with feeling like a failure in all regards that this reception to something he’d made felt like a miracle. They received a payload of ad revenue like never before, and suddenly he had enough for a down payment on a two year plan to fix his teeth. By Christmas he was wearing an Invisalign tray on the top ones.

New Year’s Eve was the first time he heard Louie’s band play outside of the studio where they filmed the old iteration’s music video. He was feeling not quite good about himself but better, hopeful, and didn’t want to ring in the new year babysitting his brother’s kids, which was the only other offer he got. Louie had invited Jay to come out to her shows before, and he had avoided it over a kind of irrationally intense fear that he wouldn’t like the music that she’d written with Mike’s help. She was kind to Jay for the most part, though she also made him feel overlooked and redundant in ways that were not her fault. She and Mike had become the center of the social group that surrounded the studio and her music. Jay didn’t want to be bitter about this. He’d rarely enjoyed being the center of anything, except if it meant being Mike’s favorite person and therefore sharing his throne.

Showing up to support Louie’s band on New Year’s Eve felt like a bit of a resolution to get over the fact that he’d lost his position as Mike’s other half. He’d had his chance-- Three chances! He’d turned his back every time out of fear, and because there was something cold in him that just couldn’t warm to what Mike was offering. Louie wasn’t to blame for this any more than Mike was.

Louie B and the J’s were the headliner that night, going on at eleven. Jay got there at nine and hung out with Josh and some others, steadily drinking too much in a way that had become habit. The place was packed by the time Mike and Louie showed up at ten, most people there for the drunken party atmosphere more than the music. The two bands that had gone on first were just okay and were not offered much attention by the crowd.

“You came!” Louie said, not hiding that she was surprised when she saw Jay. She was dressed to perform and looked like someone famous, in white fishnets and a mini skirt, cleavage popping out of her clinging tank top, glittery makeup perfect.

“You look really pretty,” Jay said, truthfully, because he was wasted. He could see Mike snort, but couldn’t hear it over the noise of the crowd. Louie beamed at him.

“I’m nervous,” she said, leaning close to Jay’s ear to confess this. “We’re playing stuff from our new EP tonight.”

“You’ll be great! Don’t sweat it. These losers won’t know what hit ‘em.”

Louie laughed in approval at Jay’s slobbering drunkenness, then turned to Mike to make sure he’d noticed that Jay was trashed. Mike made a face to acknowledge he had. For that time of night he seemed unusually sober, as if he’d waited to start drinking in solidarity with her pre-performance jitters. There was a smudge of Louie’s glitter makeup on Mike’s left cheek. Jay swayed on his feet, always amazed by which tiny thing would come out of nowhere and bite him with the poisonous jaws of jealousy.

Josh and Louie went backstage to get ready, leaving Jay alone with Mike.

“I need a drink,” Mike said when Jay looked up at him, wondering if he should mention the glitter. “You good?”

“No, I need another beer actually, yeah.”

Mike raised his eyebrows but didn’t try to talk Jay out of it.

There was no way to talk over the noise of the crowd without leaning over to speak directly into each other’s ears, which neither of them were willing to do, so they hung out toward the back of the venue and stared at the stage without speaking, sipping their beers and pretending to listen to the music. By the time Louie’s band came on Jay wasn’t sure how many beers he’d had. The proximity of Mike seemed to require constant sipping from his accumulating plastic cups, and Mike was slamming them down fast as if to make up for lost time.

“I’m gonna record this for her,” Mike said when Louie was introducing the band, mentioning that these songs were from the forthcoming EP. Mike dug a handheld camera from the pocket of his enormous coat and abandoned Jay, moving through the crowd to get closer to the stage.

Jay stood there feeling like an idiot, and like he should have expected that. There had been a time when Mike never would have left Jay to fend for himself while he was that drunk, but now they were in their thirties and Jay was no longer Mike’s responsibility in social situations. He didn’t know anyone else in the crowd, with Mike busy capturing his girlfriend’s moment and his other friends opening with a song Jay didn’t recognize, lights flashing over Louie when she tossed her hair back and grabbed the mic with both hands. Jay had listened to Louie’s old music, and it was fine. The stuff she’d written with Mike was presumably some of what she would perform that night, unless she’d scrapped it or designated it too personal to share.

The combination of club acoustics and crowd noise wasn’t great for thoughtfully processing anything about Louie’s set, particularly lyric-wise. The songs sounded to Jay mostly like her older stuff did, and none of the lyrics stood out until he was in line for the bar again and thinking about leaving early. Louie had announced that this was their last song of the night, and for Jay it blurred together with the rest of the evening until Louie belted out a particular lyric that sent a sober chill through him:

Fuck that guy
He’s just a piece of shit

It was the mournful, almost loving way she dragged the words ‘piece of shit’ up from the depths that got Jay listening carefully, the ambient noise suddenly easy to tune out. The song was far more somber than the others she’d played that night, and her performance of it was emotional in a way that seemed to have other people paying closer attention, too. Jay turned away from his quest to get another drink that he deeply didn’t need and watched her on stage while she sang the rest.

We don’t give in to the weakness was the refrain.

He told himself that could be about anything, and that ‘piece of shit’ wasn’t exactly a unique insult that only Jay had ever lobbed at someone he actually loved. He searched the crowd for Mike but didn’t see him standing near the stage with his camera. Jay needed him, abruptly and always and yet also wanted to avoid him while this feeling expanded within him. He was ready to conclude that he was delusional for thinking anything about what was happening that night could really, secretly be about him, and then she sang the next part.

Stay in Milwaukee
We'll finish our movie
I’ll make you an offer:
You be the final girl, I’ll be the monster

Jay stood there feeling like he’d hallucinated the entire past year of his life, wanting to run up on stage and say excuse me, repeat that?

She was back to the refrain:

No matter what I hope I don’t forget
We don’t give in to the weakness

The song ended in a melancholy crescendo of guitar and Louie’s voice peeling back to reveal something raw that Jay couldn’t name. It was the way she said weakness like it wasn’t that at all but had to be framed that way. He couldn’t think. The crowd was applauding as the song’s last note rang out. Louie beamed and thanked them, snapping from the character she’d seemed to embody when she sang that last song and back to herself. She was sweaty and turning to grin at her bandmates, looking like she knew she’d successfully done what she came to do, nothing more.

Our movie, Jay thought, stumbling into the shifting crowd as an MC came out to announce the countdown to midnight would begin in thirty seconds, so everybody better find someone to kiss or at least grab a drink in which to drown their kissless sorrows. Final girl, Jay thought, trying to hold the words in his mind so he wouldn’t lose them. Monster. Jay was reeling, too drunk to handle this and trying to remember if he and Mike had ever called each other by those particular endearments. Of course they hadn’t, when and why would they have? But he couldn’t stop feeling like Louie had been singing about his own hazy memory of having what he needed and resigning himself to letting it go. Except it wouldn’t be Jay’s memory, because he didn’t help her write her lyrics. Mike did.

The crowd quickly grew rowdy again as the band left the stage, people shouting to their dates and rushing to the bar, per the MC’s instructions. Jay felt ping-ponged between competing forces that were actual people who pushed him back and forth. It seemed like everyone in the club was taller than him, and someone was smoking, giving him the panicked impression that a fire had started and he wouldn’t be able to escape. He couldn’t find Mike, couldn’t even see straight, and rapidly feared he would throw up in the middle of this crush of people, imagined everyone screaming and scattering in horror at this repulsive little creature who had been allowed into their midst.

The countdown to the new year started and Jay pictured Mike backstage with Louie, congratulating her and kissing her, maybe getting down on one fucking knee, why not? They were made for each other, clearly.

But that song, that fucking song! Had he imagined it? Was he hearing things?

Someone shoved their way past him and nearly knocked him over, someone else’s beer spilled on his jacket, a girl shrieked what the fuck? He was going to be sick, but it no longer felt like a thing he could expel by puking. He couldn’t even breathe, actually.

“Jay! Jesus, come here.”

Mike was suddenly looming before him with angry eyes, taking him by the shoulder and then the arm, pulling him through the crowd.

Jay stopped trying to keep track of everything that was happening, too fast, because Mike was there so he didn’t have to be alone with it, whatever it was. The countdown reached ten, and people’s voices got louder with each descending number. By the time the cheers for midnight broke out he was magically backstage, and Louie was there to sort of catch him as he fell onto her for a hug.

“That was beautiful,” Jay said, hoping no one else would hear the way his voice almost broke. The others were talking, there was noise from the club, it was probably fine.

“Aw, hey!” She was hugging him back, sort of rocking him in her arms, or maybe Jay was doing the rocking. They were the same height, he realized. She pulled back to give him a concerned smile. “I’m glad you liked it,” she said.

Jay’s memories of the night blanked out there and resumed when he was in the backseat of Mike’s car, either hours or minutes later. Louie was driving and talking cheerily to Mike, who was in the front passenger seat. Jay doesn’t remember what they were talking about or even how he felt at that point, beyond confused and tired. He was slumped over against the door, trying to keep his eyes open, chiefly concerned with not wetting his pants. He didn’t even have to pee, just knew it was something really drunk people did.

There was more dialogue between the other two and then Mike was getting out of the car. It seemed impossible that Louie knew where Jay lived or could navigate there under Mike’s directions, but there it was, Jay’s apartment complex. Mike was helping him out of the car, walking him toward it.

“M’okay,” Jay said, probably fifteen times, but he didn’t fight out of Mike’s grip or try to walk fully under his own power.

More blur, and then they were in Jay’s bedroom. Mike helped Jay take off his coat, which stunk of beer. Mike wasn’t wearing his own coat, the big one he’d pulled the camera from. Where was it? In the car? Right, with Louie. She was waiting for Mike, downstairs.

“Mike,” Jay said anyway, reaching for him as Mike tried to make him lie down in bed. At some point Jay’s shoes had come off, but he was still wearing the rest of clothes.

“Seriously?” Mike said, catching Jay’s hand when Jay groped for something in Mike’s vicinity: his face? Jay didn’t even know, and he allowed Mike to settle his stupid hand down, lowering it to Jay’s chest. Mike made Jay turn onto his side and told him to stay like that.

“Mike,” Jay said again, trying to get the words out right: his question about the song, or something else he’d forgotten to say.

“Stop it,” Mike said. He didn’t even seem a little drunk, which was so mean. He’d had like five beers! “This is working, Jay,” he said. “We’re doing it, for real. Next year is gonna be different. You’re gonna be okay.”

He meant the show was working. That they were going to be famous for real. And that Jay would be financially solvent.

Jay laughed, thinking of it that way. He was fighting to keep his eyes open, needed to say something but couldn’t remember what it was.

If anything else of substance was said by either of them, Jay doesn’t remember it. He might have cried. Maybe he told Mike he loved him, or that he was sorry. He prays all the time that he didn’t ask Mike if he wrote that song about him, for him. He only remembers Mike saying happy new year, and he’s pretty sure he dreamed it but there’s also a wishful ghost of a not-quite-memory about Mike gently smoothing his hair down, then he was gone.

Jay woke up with glitter on his pillow. He must have bumped his face against Louie’s when he hugged her like a staggering fool, stealing the moment when Mike might have kissed her at midnight. Her EP wouldn’t be released for another three months, and it wasn’t like he was going to ask to see a lyric sheet. He rolled into the new year with the worst hangover of his life and tried to forget what he’d heard.

*

Chapter 5: DAY THREE

Chapter Text

While Mike sleeps through the night in Jay’s bed, Jay lies awake contemplating a move to the couch and obsessing over the past. At one point he actually gets up and listens to Louie’s song to make sure he’s remembering every word correctly. I woke up dreaming of his face again. I hate the way I miss his torment. He listens to it ten more times, sitting in the dark of the living room with his headphones on and thinking about that night when he read Mike’s old textbooks instead of remaining sleepless and steadfast in bed beside him. He returns to bed with the song echoing between his ears. Mike hasn’t moved.

Giving up on sleep always happens in stages: at first he holds some hope, because it’s not like he never sleeps, then he transitions to restless anger, followed by an anxious necromancy wherein he watches entire feature length movies of his own past in his mind, and finally there’s acceptance, when he scrolls on his phone or goes to the computer to work. On his back in bed again beside Mike, he holds his phone over his face and opens Facebook, a rare occurrence that he almost always regrets. Louie is still one of his “Friends,” but only by the Facebook definition. He hasn’t spoken to her since she and Mike broke up in 2015, but she’s still so vivid to him, his feelings about her so immediately available that it’s hard to believe it’s been almost ten years since he last laid eyes on her.

She doesn’t post often, and the last picture is of her with her daughter who is maybe five years old. They’re posing together for a selfie, and the innocence of the portrait and the little girl’s smile makes Jay feel like he shouldn’t be here, snooping. He glances over at Mike to make sure he’s still asleep before looking again. Louie is still beautiful, her hair back to her natural dirty blond and her eyes as big and sparkly as ever. She has green eyes, the same hard to detect shade as Jay’s that make them sometimes appear gray or blue in photos. There’s nothing on her page about music, which makes Jay sad. That all went by the wayside as she got sucked more and more into Mike’s bullshit over the years. It was Jay’s bullshit, too, and part of why he still thinks about her so often is his guilt.

Jay clicks on the ‘Married To’ to get a look at her husband, though of course he’s looked before. The guy is into dirt biking and mostly has pictures of himself with a helmet over his head, doing stunts. He posts a lot more often than Louie does. Awesome day of off-roading at Bushy Mountain! He’s tall and handsome with dark hair but otherwise does not resemble Mike. They live in North Carolina.

Jay’s lack of decent sleep for the past two nights might be to blame for what he does next, which is open the messenger app and consider what he could say to her at four o’clock in the morning, nine years after they last spoke. He’s shaking, sort of, and feels like he has a right to know some things. What could it hurt, now that Mike is doing whatever he’s doing, still in Jay’s life, immobile beside him? He can’t get that goddamn song out of his head or stop wondering if Mike is over there dreaming of his face even while sharing his bed, though it’s most important for him to find out if Mike was dreaming of him back then, missing his torment, and using his girlfriend like a puppet to express this, the kind of deeply sick shit that only Jay could be successfully courted by.

Hey Lou, sorry for sending this at such an odd hour. Remember how I didn’t sleep from like 2012-2015? It’s ongoing. Anyway, hope you’re doing well, looks like you are. I just had a question, if you’ll humor me, about something from the old days (a song). Message me in the morning if you want, otherwise just know that I wish you the best and still listen to your music sometimes.

He almost wants to delete this, because it sounds fucking flirtatious, but if she thinks he’s trying to hit on her he can live with that humiliation. Whatever happens, he knows he can trust her not to publish his private messages, which is more than he can say for some of his old friends. He exhales and sends it.

By the time the sun comes up he feels awful about lurching into Louie’s life again like a zombie and is searching for ways to delete unread Facebook messages. By the time he finds a method the message he sent is already marked as read, no reply, and Mike is groaning awake beside him.

“Oh my god,” Mike says, turning to blink at him. “You’re here.”

“It’s my bed,” Jay says.

Mike gets up and goes to take a leak without dignifying that with a reply. He’s getting better on the crutches, Jay observes, watching him return to the bed. Jay stays in place, though he’s not sure if he wants early morning sex. He knows he doesn’t want to bring Mike a pill right away, though he won’t delay things if Mike asks for one. He missed Mike during the night and feels like they’ve been apart for a long time, as if he had to travel thirteen years into the past and back again while Mike slept. He feels like talking.

“Do you have weird dreams when you take that stuff?” Jay asks, meaning the painkiller. He leans over to help Mike elevate his leg when he’s back in bed again, and helps him put more pillows behind his back so he can sit up against the headboard.

“I don’t know,” Mike says. “I feel like I had some fucked up dreams but I can’t really remember them. What’d you dream about, Jay.”

“Hmm. We were at Louie’s concert.” He doesn’t mention which one or explain it wasn’t really a dream, just a much obsessed-over memory that he spent the night reliving. “I guess because you mentioned her music yesterday.”

“Was that yesterday?” Mike tips his head back to look at the ceiling. “Feels like two months ago.”

“How are you doing? Is the pain still really bad?”

“Mmph, I don’t even know anymore.”

Jay bats his eyelashes, waiting for Mike to ask him to come over and kiss it better. There’s a part of him that boggles in disbelief at his own pridefulness or cowardice or whatever it is that prevents him from ever making any kind of advance toward Mike without an invitation, but that part of him can’t access the levers that would have to be pulled to make him do it. They’ve rusted into one setting forever, apparently.

“Breakfast?” Jay says when Mike doesn’t ask for sex. He’s staring down at his cast like he’s contemplating life without the use of his right leg for the next two months.

“That’s funny you dreamed about Lou,” Mike said. “I might have, too.”

“Yeah?” Boy does Jay not want to hear about it.

“I don’t know. What was she singing, in your dream?”

“Uhh, I can’t remember.”

Jay could ask Mike outright if he contributed lyrics to that song, if it was about him, and if he would maybe, like, sing it to Jay now? But it’s easier to just send fucked up messages to Louie via Facebook and not get any responses.

Only, as he’s trying to come up with a change of subject, he hears his phone buzz on the bedstand. It sets his heart slamming.

Mike gropes for his own phone, which is plugged into the charger on the other side of the bed. He grins at something there, and Jay is relieved for a moment, but then he hears his phone going off again, another message coming in.

“Your new sex toy will arrive today,” Mike says, waving the phone in Jay’s face and then pulling it away before he can see any information about what this thing is. “So get excited.”

“Great,” Jay says, meaning it. He actually feels ready to ask Mike about the song now, because he’s come up with a nice transition to the subject: speaking of Lou, do you miss writing songs? Which ones were yours back then, by the way?

But he can’t make himself speak, because he can hear more messages coming in, one after the other, the dings striking him like little bullets. Is she furious that he had the nerve to contact her? Blasting him with a litany of witchy curses?

“Your phone’s really blowing up over there,” Mike says.

“Yeah.”

“What’s the emergency? Aren’t you going to check?”

“Um.” Jay looks at the phone. “It’s probably just. My sister.”

“It might be Rich. I’m sure he’s worried you’ve killed me by now.”

Jay grunts, not wanting to admit that Rich was kind of worried about that, early on. He gets out of bed so Mike won’t be able to snatch the phone out of his hand while he reads the messages.

They’re from Louie. Jay turns his back on Mike entirely and walks toward the window, regret storming through him.

Hey!!
Oh my god, hi.
How are you??
That’s so funny, do you really still listen to that old stuff?
It’s so embarrassing…
I guess some of it was ok!
Anyway, what’s up?

“Everything okay?” Mike asks, expecting Jay to explain what he’s reading.

“Um,” Jay says. “I gotta-- Reply to these, it’s my sister.” Lying to him feels so dangerous, like making a bet he knows he’ll lose.

“Is she all right?”

“Yeah, she’s just freaking out about something. It’s not a big deal, just-- Hang on. You want me to bring you something to eat?”

“Nah.” Mike gropes for the crutches. “Eating in bed is depressing me. I’ll rifle through your fridge myself.”

Jay turns away again while Mike hoists himself out of bed. If it really was his sister he’d be typing already, but he has no idea what to say. He knows Louie can see that he’s read her messages, and deeply hates that feature. Back when he and Mike were first bonding over long AIM conversations, he never had to worry about Mike watching a tattle tale ellipses blink as he typed replies, deleted them, and reconsidered. That would have been terrible, ruining the little walls of privacy they still had up as they exchanged messages about movies and other forum users, then college and their parents, and finally their plans to meet up and collaborate.

It’s clearly insane, in the harsh light of day, that Jay thought he could ask Louie about the origins of that song. He’s not going to do it, but he’s already incriminated himself and has to come up with some other song-related question. The first one that comes to mind is awful, but he can’t hesitate any longer.

Hey! Thanks for replying!
I’m doing great.

He can’t stop lying, suddenly.

This will probably sound weird, but I was just wondering, in theory, for this movie idea I’m working on, would you ever be willing to let me use one of your old songs? I’d pay you for it, of course. Not sure how that works but just had the idea last night when I was listening to that old song of yours, ‘The Weakness.’ It came on shuffle and I was like, holy shit, it’s perfect. For this one scene I have in mind.

He’s in agony waiting for her reply. He can see her typing, then there’s a pause, more typing.

Wow, that’s wild

Another long pause, then typing. Jay’s heart sinks. What the fuck is he doing? Even contacting her feels like something that might send them all back in time, ripped out of their real lives and thrown into some nostalgia nightmare.

I’m guessing this is coming from Mike, really?

Jay stares down at her message, confused.

No, he sends. This is just me! Mike doesn’t even know I’m working on this script. It’s something I’m doing on my own.

Oh okay
Cause Mike wrote that song
Most of the lyrics anyway
If he wants to use it for something he can ask me himself lol
I can’t imagine how I’d charge him
His name isn’t in the EP credits anywhere but that was what he wanted at the time

Jay wants to open his bedroom window and just drop the phone out onto the street. He’d expected to feel vindicated and relieved if he ever got confirmation that Mike wrote the song. He’s not experiencing relief at the moment.

I didn’t realize that, he sends.

Really

He stares down at her one word reply, remembering how she could go from sweet and easy to ice cold as soon as she thought someone was insulting her. Mike once accused Jay of being similar.

Sorry, he sends. Should I just talk to Mike about it?

He almost laughs out loud at his own stupidity. He could have asked himself this question five hours earlier, come to the beyond obvious conclusion and avoided this mess he’s still making. There’s a long pause before Louie starts typing again, and Jay can hear Mike cursing in the kitchen, dropping something, calling for help.

“Coming!” Jay calls back, unable to move.

He stuffs the phone in his back pocket, though he’s afraid to screw this up worse if he needs to reply to something swiftly and doesn’t. Mike is trying to pour cereal with his left hand and it’s all over the counter, the bowl on the floor.

“Sorry,” Mike says, turning to look at Jay with such pathetic sincerity that Jay can’t believe he ever thought it would be better to confide in Mike’s ex-girlfriend about his song suspicions instead of just asking Mike directly. “Jesus, I didn’t do it on purpose,” Mike says when he sees the bereft look on Jay’s face. “I have to start trying to take care of myself at some point, it’s not like you’re going to let me live here all summer.”

“You could,” Jay says, without thinking. He squats down to grab the bowl, avoiding Mike’s eyes. “Just-- Sit down, I’ll get it for you, I just have to send one more message.”

“What’s your sister freaking out about?” Mike asks. He resets himself on the crutches and heads toward the table, several pieces of cereal crunching underfoot on the way.

“Just-- Boyfriend stuff, sorry, she’s hysterical but it’s not really anything, just let me--”

Jay walks out of the kitchen before pulling his phone back out. There are seven new messages from Louie. He’d felt them buzzing against his ass and has no idea what to expect when he unlocks the screen to read them.

I know you’re still with him
I don’t know in what sense
Other than the company I mean
Wow I really thought he’d have told you by now
What a motherfucker
Unless this is just some kind of ploy from him to get me to give up the rights to the song
He can have it!! I don’t need his money

“Hey, asshole,” Mike says, and Jay turns to him, feeling caught between two enclosing walls of the garbage chute he just slid into. “Your sisters are all married,” Mike says, glowering. “Did you, like, forget that? If you’re talking to a guy you can just tell me, it’s not like I’m your fucking husband over here.”

Jay had no idea Mike has been keeping tabs on his sisters’ marital statuses, certainly via Facebook. His youngest sister married her longtime boyfriend last year and Jay still thinks of him as her boyfriend, but if she was really panicking about the relationship post-marriage he wouldn’t have slipped up and used that word. He has two options: say his sister is cheating on her husband and therefore has a boyfriend in that sense, or just tell the fucking truth. Both are horrible.

“I’m actually talking to Louie,” he says.

Mike starts to laugh, then looks murderous when Jay doesn’t laugh along with him.

“Are you joking?” he asks.

“No. I sent her a message on Facebook after we talked about her yesterday, just wondering how she’s doing. I think I’ve-- Pissed her off, by accident.”

“Uhh, no shit? Why the fuck-- What the fuck are you up to?”

“Nothing! Fuck, sorry, give me a second, I need to apologize.”

“To her?”

Jay leaves the room, unable to deal with Mike until he resolves the other damage he’s done.

Sorry, he types, again. I think I’m a little lost. I’ll talk to Mike

The message doesn’t send, because she’s blocked him.

“She blocked me,” Jay says, sheepish, when he returns to the kitchen. He walks past the heat of Mike’s boiling rage to get him a new bowl for his cereal.

“The fuck did you say to her?” Mike asks. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Why would it be so weird for me to send a friendly message to Louie?”

“For, like, eight thousand obvious fucking reasons, and apparently it wasn’t so friendly. She blocked you? What-- Show me the whole conversation, right now.”

“No!”

“Why not? Jay, goddammit, what have you done?”

Jay can’t tell Mike he was asking about that song, not when Mike is so angry and Jay is still trying to make sense of the messages Louie sent. He goes to the fridge, glad Mike can’t get up and rip the phone out of his back pocket to investigate himself, because if he were physically able they’d already be tussling for it.

“Jay!” Mike says, shouting now. He looks distressed when Jay peeks at him before turning back to the cereal bowl, pouring milk. “Show me everything right this minute!”

“It’s embarrassing,” Jay says, keeping his back to Mike while he gets a spoon for the cereal. “Jesus, I’m so stupid. I shouldn’t have done it. You’re right. I’m sorry. Fuck I’m an idiot. I haven’t slept--” He cuts his excuse off there, knowing that pointing out he can’t sleep when Mike is in his bed will make things infinitely worse, but the bad part is already out.

“I lost my appetite,” Mike says, gritting this out when Jay sets the cereal bowl down for him. Jay half expects him to knock the bowl off the table and send it flying.

“Please eat,” Jay says.

“Fuck you, show me the messages from Louie.”

Jay groans. How can he avoid this? No lie he could make up would fix it. He digs his phone out, pulls up the messages and hands it to Mike. He still can’t think straight when Mike gives him a direct order, except to obey it.

He stands watching while Mike carefully uses the index finger on his right hand to scroll, holding the phone in his left. Mike is frowning, then boggling with his eyes wide, bringing his face down toward the phone as if he thinks he must not be seeing what’s on the screen clearly and needs to reread.

Jay melts with shame, burning up inside his boxers and t-shirt, barefoot and unguarded while Mike surveys his sins.

Mike is flushed, too, when he finally looks up at Jay. Maybe just with rage. His eyes are still blown open wide with shock.

“You started writing a script?” he says. “When?”

“I-- What?”

“You want to put that song in it? That song? Why, what’s the movie about? When did you start writing this, last night while I was asleep?”

Jay stands with his mouth open, once again presented with the opportunity to either lie treacherously or expose himself.

“It’s just an idea,” he says, though he doesn’t even have that yet, apart from the song. “I haven’t written anything down. I was just. Thinking. Last night.”

“Well, what’s the idea? What’s the scene with that song in it?”

“It’s-- Navel-gazing, semi-biographical, you know. My usual shit.”

“Don’t call it shit.” Mike puts the phone down on the table, which feels like being granted clemency. “Those movies were like my introduction to you. They were more honest than you were, back then.”

“Ha.” Were they? Maybe he should take that as an insult. He doubts Mike actually remembers his old stuff all that well. Maybe he’s just trying to say that he could tell from the movies alone that Jay was actually gay. Mike always likes to imply he was the first to know, as if nobody before him had ever thought so.

“I’ve missed that side of you,” Mike says. He looks down at Jay’s phone, the screen gone black. “She’ll hate me for the rest of her life,” he says, meaning Louie. “I don’t think it would go that well if you actually put that song in a movie, if you released it. Whatever she’s saying now. Her husband would sue us, or something.”

“Mike, it’s barely an idea. I’m not worried about that, really. It was a four o’clock in the morning thought. I shouldn’t have sent her any messages.”

“What’s the idea, though, basically?” Mike asks.

“Um.” Jay looks at the kitchen floor. His brains feel scrambled. “I don’t want to jinx it,” he says, feeling like he’s being unprecedentedly cruel to Mike by lying about this. But maybe it’s not entirely a lie. He could turn it into the truth easily enough. “Just let me get a few pages of an actual treatment written before I have to, like, present it to you.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Mike says, angry again. He scoffs and stirs the cereal in his bowl. “This is going to be a mess,” he says, meaning eating it with his left hand.

“It’s fine,” Jay says. He still needs to clean up the mess Mike already made, cereal all over the floor. “Unless, you want me to--?”

“No, Jay, I don’t particularly want you to spoon feed me right now.” Mike lifts his right arm and tries moving his wrist, wincing. “This won’t take as long to heal as the leg will,” he says, sounding glum.

Jay doesn’t know what else he can say. He gets a dustpan and broom and gets to work on cleaning up the cereal while Mike brings slow spoonfuls to his mouth at the table. When he’s gotten most of it down he pushes the bowl away like Jay is his waiter. Jay responds in kind, taking the bowl to the sink, feeling penitent and wanting more orders. He brings Mike a glass of water and gets the pill bottle from the counter.

“No,” Mike says, holding up his braced right hand. “Do you have regular Advil? I’m gonna try like three of those, for daytime. See how it goes.”

“Okay, yeah.” Jay feels rescued by this information. Mike wants to get better, to become less dead. Jay puts the prescription pill bottle into the drawer where he keeps tape, pens, and miscellaneous items like rubber bands.

“I do want to get back in bed for a minute, though,” Mike says, eying Jay menacingly when he brings the bottle of Advil in from the bathroom medicine cabinet. “Not to sleep, though. I have something in mind.”

“Great,” Jay says. He’s never more in Mike’s thrall than when he’s screwed something up and been forgiven, with unspoken caveats. “When’s the, uh. Package arriving?”

“Before eight PM, according to Amazon. But we won’t need it for this.”

Jay is glad Mike has something in mind. He needs directions right now, badly. He walks ahead of Mike into the bedroom and takes off his shirt before sitting on the end of the bed like a good soldier or someone submitting to a medical exam, awaiting instruction.

“Get that blue thing out of there,” Mike says, nodding to the bedside drawer where Jay’s vibrator lives. “Your little Smurf friend. And the lube.”

“Don’t call it a Smurf,” Jay says, hating that he’ll always think of it that way now, when Mike is gone again and he’s left with this toy, plus whatever else Mike has ordered.

“Help me get these off,” Mike says, pushing at the waistband of his sleep pants with his left hand. “This involves balls as well as cock.”

Jay looks at the vibrator in his hand, confused. He flushes deeply when he fears that Mike wants Jay to use the thing on him somehow. That’s the opposite of what Jay needs right now.

He helps Mike get the pants off and prop the cast up on its pillows. Mike is left spread open on the bed for Jay’s viewing pleasure, still wearing his t-shirt and sitting back against the headboard. He’s not hard.

“Here’s the deal,” Mike says, squeezing a handful of the bedsheets into his left hand. “You’re gonna stick that thing in you and leave it in there buzzing on the highest setting while you suck on me. Balls first, then you can suck my dick.”

“Okay,” Jay says, though he’s not fond of the idea of letting Mike watch him insert this thing into himself. He looks down at it and thinks, mournfully: Smurf. “Could you, um. Put it in for me?”

“No way. You’re gonna give me a little show. I want to see the whole process.”

The process usually takes place under a blanket when Jay is alone, as if he’s hiding it even from himself. He’ll be on his back, unless he’s really gone for how much he wishes he could be fucked, then he’ll get up on his hands and knees and reach behind, but it’s harder to get the angle right that way. He takes his boxers off and climbs naked and blushing onto the bed, perching on the corner that’s farthest from Mike, though Mike takes up most of the space. He can’t reach Jay from where he’s sitting, anyway.

“Um,” Jay says, looking down at the vibrator when he’s slicked it with lube. He’s soft for this so far, but Mike’s cock is beginning to rise for the sight of Jay nervously trying to find his way into the right position. “I’ll just. Sit on it, I guess.”

“Do you put it in and then turn it on?” Mike asks, his breath coming a little faster already. “Or vice versa?”

“I turn it on after.”

“Okay, do that, then.”

Jay grunts and tries not to imagine how he looks while coming up into an awkward squat over the vibrator. It would be worse to lie on his back and point his ass at Mike while shoving the thing in, legs in the air. I’m forty-three years old, he thinks. This is something a teenager would do to impress his illicit older boyfriend. He actually likes that thought, and meets Mike’s hungry stare, imagining what manner of mincemeat Mike would have made of him if they’d met in high school. Jay almost laughs, holding it low in his chest as he wedges the head of the vibrator into his ass with a huff, wiggling himself down onto it. If Mike had met and claimed him in high school he would probably still be living in Mike’s basement, a pale little sex golem curled up and clinging to a support beam, terrified by the thought of ever being set free.

Or they would have hated each other. Jay moans and lets himself slide down further, his cock plumping up quick for the way Mike is looking at him and clawing at the bedsheets with his left hand, as if he’s determined not to jack his dick yet.

“Yeah, Jay,” Mike says, fully hard by the time Jay has seated himself on the thing, panting. “Fuck, I wish you were wearing those nipple clamps right now. Do you ever do both at the same time?”

“I don’t even know where they are,” Jay says, his avoidance of the question probably making the answer obvious.

“Is it all the way in?” Mike asks, craning his neck to try to get a better view.

“Yes.” Jay’s finger is on the vibrate button, and he’s not sure if he hopes the thing is fully charged or not. He drops forward onto his knees, his legs shaking.

“I can’t see it now,” Mike complains. “Turn around.”

Jay groans but complies, showing Mike his back and then lifting his ass so Mike can see how the toy holds him open. Mike makes a Homer Simpson-like sound of gluttonous approval and shifts on the bed as much as he can, moving the mattress. Jay holds in another laugh, biting his lip as he reaches back to turn the thing on.

“Oh fuck yeah,” Mike says when Jay jolts at the new sensation inside him. He hasn’t used this thing in a while. “How’s that feel?” Mike asks. “Inside?”

“Good,” Jay says, ready to start sucking balls rather than just being on display like this.

“As good as me? Or better, because it’s, uh. Doing that, buzzing you?”

“Of course not.” Jay gives Mike a look from over his shoulder, unwilling to elaborate. “Are you done staring?”

“I guess.” Mike tucks his left arm behind his head and grins. Jay can picture high school Mike so clearly, making puny underclassman Jay do this for kicks. “I like the idea of being in both ends of you,” Mike says. “If only I could clone myself.”

“God,” Jay says, imagining two Mikes in the room with him, both with their dicks out. He wouldn’t survive it. “I’m coming over there now.”

“Sure.”

Mike watches without blinking as Jay moves awkwardly on his knees, his ass raised a little while the vibrations make him a little dizzy with the need for something real. And here Mike is, stretched out before him like a feast. He moves carefully over the cast and settles into the space that he’d helped make between Mike’s legs when he propped the cast out on its pillows a little farther from Mike’s left leg than usual, leaving room.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Mike mutters when Jay leans down to access his balls and moans, because the new angle shifts the toy deeper and better inside him. He clenches around it and closes his eyes, feeling ball stubble against his tongue when he licks one and then the other. He missed his chance to do this while they were freshly shaved and smooth, but this is good, maybe better. The texture against his tongue makes his mouth wetter.

Jay has never dropped into the deepest brain-free levels he can sink to during sex when he’s with Mike. There’s always too much going on. Something about having the toy buzzing away inside him while Mike watches gets him close to that place even before Mike grabs a handful of his hair and pulls him up toward his dick, feeding it into Jay’s mouth. Jay huffs and whines for more, lapping around the head before Mike pushes him down. Mike moans softly at the sight as he guides Jay’s head up and down, his fist still tight in Jay’s hair.

Jay can take it so deep, into his throat, and when he’s full there he wants the thing in his ass deeper, too. He would reach back with one hand to try to achieve that, but he feels like his hands aren’t really his to use right now. They’re braced on Mike’s thighs, the left one precariously close to the top of the cast, but he can’t do any damage with Mike controlling him like this, using him. After the chaos of the morning it feels really fucking good to let go.

If there’s some part of him that remembers he’s never fully let go with Mike before, he’s forgotten it by the time he’s swallowing Mike’s come, gulping it down like it’s his lifeblood.

He distantly remembers thinking of himself as a vampire. But, no: that was years ago.

“Jesus,” Mike says when he’s eased Jay off of his spent dick. Jay knows he must be a little foggy-eyed and scary, like this. He doesn’t know how apologize for it right now. Mike looks nervous. Then he licks his lips and shifts his gaze to Jay’s dick, which is so hard it’s pointed up against his stomach, painfully full. “Get yourself off with that thing,” Mike says, harshly, and Jay clenches up tight around the toy in his ass, remembering it’s there. “Fuck yourself with it.”

He didn’t say Jay could touch his dick, too, but something about the way he’s looking into Jay’s eyes grants this permission. Jay grips his dick with his left hand, just loosely. He won’t need much friction if he angles the toy just right inside him. He’s owned it long enough to know exactly how to do this, even when he can’t otherwise think, and he groans without restraint when he makes the adjustment that blasts him in the agitated spot where he needs it, making his head fall back and his hips jut forward into his pumping hand.

“Fuck,” Mike says, whispering this as if into some ether that’s actually inside Jay. It moves across him like goosebumps, and even with his eyes closed he can see Mike there, witnessing this.

Jay isn’t sure what kind of sound he makes when he comes, but his mouth is definitely open, his throat working. There’s a touch of soreness from having just had Mike’s cock there, swallowing around him until he was swallowing something he could keep, and he’s almost crying for how good that usedness feels in concert with this orgrasm, all of it crashing together like confirmation that he’s finally done something fucking right.

He falls forward onto Mike’s chest, still making whimpering noises of release, and can’t understand why he’s feeling so overstimulated until Mike shushes him and reaches down to help ease the vibrator from his ass. Mike turns it off and tosses it to the floor, and the sound of it striking the dresser after bouncing away makes Jay’s shoulders jump as Mike’s arm returns to wrap around him.

“Are you okay?” Mike asks when Jay can process what he’s saying.

“Yes.” Jay doesn’t want to explain. It’s been so long since he felt like this that he would barely know how to put words to it even in his right mind. He scoots up to get more of himself onto Mike, bringing his face to Mike’s throat. No one has ever held him when he’s lost like this, after. Mike uses both arms, settling the right one carefully across Jay’s trembling back.

It’s been a weird day, Jay would say, if he could speak. Instead he huffs his wet breath against Mike’s skin until he’s sinking fully below the ocean of this feeling, asleep.

He wakes up in stages. First it’s like floating pleasantly back into his body. He’s warm and Mike is beside him, rolled against him. The cast is there when Jay moves his leg, propped up on pillows that are now inserted between Mike’s legs.

“You’re on your side,” Jay says, mumbling this against Mike’s shoulder.

“Yeah, finally,” Mike says. “Sick of being sprawled out on my back like an overturned turtle.”

Jay makes a sympathetic noise and sleeps again, thinly. Mike is stroking his back, kissing his forehead, leaching affection like a bandit while Jay is like this. Jay doesn’t mind.

When he wakes again it seems to be much too late in the day, and Mike is sweating. He’s making noises under his breath as he adjusts Jay against his side, grunting and trying to turn onto his back again without jarring the broken leg.

“Here,” Jay says, helping him before he’s fully awake. It surprises him that he’s naked, and then he remembers what they did before he slept-- Actually slept, for hours, with Mike in his bed and poured all around him.

Mike looks smug for a moment when Jay blinks hazily down at him, then his expression crumples like he’s in pain, because of course he is.

“Sorry,” Mike says. “I need Advil again. Actually-- Maybe half of one of the real pills.”

“Why’d you let me sleep so long?” Jay asks, already sliding out of bed to get it. His limbs feel noodly.

“Why do you think?”

Jay doesn’t turn back, just goes naked out into the kitchen and rummages through the drawer with the pills. He cuts one in half before returning with a glass of water, but brings both halves.

“Are you sure you don’t need the whole thing?” he asks, watching Mike gulp one half down with the water.

“Maybe,” Mike says. “Let’s give it a sec. You take the other half.”

“What?” Jay looks down at it in his palm. “No, they’re-- For you. And I haven’t eaten all day.”

Mike shrugs, lifting one shoulder.

“I want you to at some point, though,” he says. “Not a whole pill, that’ll just knock you out. But half of one, hmm. Could be interesting. We’ll see how it goes for me.”

“You hate drugs,” Jay says, feeling lost.

“Only weed. I think I’d love coke, actually. Too much! That’s why I never tried it. Come here, or-- We should eat something. It’s like four o’clock.”

“Oh my god. Really?”

Jay walks around to the other side of the bed, his hands shaking a little as he picks up his phone to consult the time. Mike is right, it’s nearly four in the afternoon. He slept the whole day away while Mike, what? Watched over him? He feels fuzzy and still calm, but handling his phone unsettles this somewhat, because it makes him remember the messages from Louie, though that doesn’t entirely seem like it happened in real life, at present. There’s nothing new from her or anyone else, no business to attend to. He puts the other half of the pill down on the bedside table where Mike can reach it if he needs it and goes into the bathroom to wash his hands, wanting a shower but needing food more urgently. He feels hollowed out, and it’s surprisingly nice, though meeting his own eyes in the bathroom mirror startles him. His pupils are still fat and his hair is completely disordered, pulled out of alignment by Mike’s use of it as a handle, earlier.

Only when he’s dressed and making butter noodles at the stove does he remember that he owes Mike a plot treatment for a movie that no plot, not even a theme. Unless the theme is oh my god what is happening to me, which is hard to attach to a narrative.

“How are you feeling?” he asks when he pokes his head back into the bedroom to check on Mike. The noodles are divided into two bowls in the kitchen and he isn’t sure if he should just bring them both to bed or what.

“Better,” Mike says. He pushes himself upright and reaches for the crutches. “That smells good, whatever you’re making.”

“It’s ready. Butter noodles.”

“Butter noodles!” Mike beams, looking mildly high. It gives him a youthful glow, something resembling hopefulness. “Oh my god! Like the old days!”

“That’s right. C’mon.”

They’re both ravenous at the kitchen table, and Jay pretends not to notice how sloppily Mike eats, using his left hand to shovel noodles in with the fork and allowing some of them to fall all over the table. Mike doesn’t seem to notice or care about the mess he’s making. He’s grinning when Jay finally pauses in his own slightly more graceful noodle-shoveling and looks up to check on him.

“Did I just fuck your brains out or what the hell was that?” Mike asks.

“What was what,” Jay says, deadpan, and he can’t hold back a laugh in when Mike snickers, lowering his head toward the table to give Jay his charming psycho smile.

“You were, like-- Possessed! I loved it.”

Jay sighs, pretending not to accept this as praise.

“A little sex demon in chains,” Mike says. He drops his fork into his bowl and reaches across the table, beckoning for Jay to take his hand. Jay looks down at his noodles and eats another forkful before relenting, pressing his left hand over to touch his fingertips to Mike’s. He pulls it back before Mike can yank him onto the table to try to fuck him again, remembering after he has that Mike can’t yank anybody anywhere right now.

“I had a bout of insomnia,” Jay says, as if that’s what this is all about. “And now I feel much better, so. Thank you.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome. At your service. Someone knocked on the door before, while you were asleep. I think it’s your package, my gift. It says it’s been delivered.”

Jay groans at the prospect of more adventurous sex. Later, maybe, though. He’s curious.

“I’ll get it in a minute,” he says.

“I’m happy that you’re writing a script,” Mike blurts, definitely on drugs. He’s not dozy but he’s pain-free and pried open, grinning at Jay dopily when he looks up again. “Seriously, Jay. That’s so great.”

“Yeah,” Jay says. He really does want to do it, just needs to find a way in. There’s so much to choose from, suddenly, if he’s going to scavenge from his life.

“Will you go get my laptop so I can work on something, too?” Mike asks. “From my house? I feel inspired.”

“Of course. I’ll go after dinner.” Jay laughs at the idea that this is dinner, at five o’clock. He’s tired again.

“Can I really stay here all summer?” Mike asks.

Jay looks up with surprise, not at the question but at what he wants to say in reply. Maybe he can blame the lingering spell of subspace.

“Sure,” he says. “We can-- We can call it, like, our summer screenwriting camp. Me and you both trying to finish a script by Labor Day or some shit. Driving each other insane in the process. Whatever it takes.”

Mike would normally be wounded by the part about driving each other insane, but as it is he just sits back with a nod, smiling at Jay like everything’s resolved.

“Don’t open it yet!” Mike says when Jay brings the Amazon box in from where it’s been left propped against his front door.

“Can I shake it?” Jay asks, holding the box up to his ear. It’s smallish and not very heavy. “Or would that break something?”

“Don’t shake it,” Mike says, pointing to the floor to indicate Jay should put it down entirely. “We can open it together when you get back.”

“Oh boy.”

Jay lingers in the doorway, on his way out to get Mike’s laptop and some other items Mike has requested for his now-extended stay. Mike is on the couch, his leg propped up on pillows on the coffee table. Jay left a movie on for him, per his request: Tombstone.

“I’ll be right back,” Jay says, as if Mike doesn’t know that.

He feels strange, sober but maybe like he shouldn’t be driving, some element of his complete self still missing from the mainframe. It’s a good enough feeling that he’s lighter on his feet as he makes his way downstairs and climbs into his car. Mike’s house is only a short drive away.

Everything outdoors feels sharper and brighter than it should, in a slightly alarming way. Jay parks in Mike’s driveway and pulls a hose around from the back of the house when he sees that bloodstain is still on the pavement, faintly. For a moment it puzzles him, because Mike doesn’t have any visible bandages over wounds, then he feels like an idiot. Of course it’s his broken leg that bled, or his right arm that scraped the pavement, and whatever awful bruising that lingers is concealed within the cast or the arm brace. Jay blasts the concrete with the hose until the stain is gone and puts the ladder away in the garage before going into the house. He leaves the Christmas lights hanging, hating them.

His heart is pounding, and he tries to remember the last time he tried to do anything of substance directly after having a sexual experience that left him so surrendered. Typically he’d hole up alone for a while afterward, doing nothing but watching familiar movies and recovering, but he likes this better, actually: going out into the world to do more for Mike, cleaning up his mess and bringing him what he needs.

Mike’s house reminds him of all the things he doesn’t miss about Mike when they’re apart. It’s too much, too cluttered with dated furniture, sentimental trinkets, and decor that doesn’t match. There’s too much food in the kitchen, though Mike rarely cooks meals at home. He’s packed his fridge and freezer with snacks. Jay is only looking because Mike asked him to bring over some cheese curds that will go bad if they’re not eaten soon. They’re in a grimy plastic bag from the deli Mike likes, secured with a rubber band. Jay hasn’t eaten a raw cheese curd since his pre-diet days. He glances over his shoulder, as if the ghost of Tilly might be watching him from a corner. This is the same house where Louie lived with Mike, too, briefly before their breakup, followed by a disturbingly rapid parade of other girlfriends who haunt the place. Jay removes the rubber band from the cheese curds and unrolls the bag. The curd squeaks between his teeth as it should, salty and pleasingly firm, and he eats a second one before closing up the bag again, still hungry despite the bowl of noodles. That’s common for him after having an experience like the one that caused him to sleep the day away. He’s always ravenous afterward, and usually allows himself to indulge.

He packs up the laptop and its charger and another bag full of clean clothes from Mike’s wrinkled pile of clean laundry, plus his toothbrush and toothpaste. He hadn’t realized until Mike gave him this list of requested items that Mike has been using his toothbrush since arriving, in secret. There were no other toiletries listed among Mike’s requests. He’s fine with using Jay’s, and Jay feels oddly agreeable, though some of them are expensive. It’s not like Mike is going to start moisturizing or using taming cream in his hair during this summer camp experiment. The priciest stuff is safe.

Jay finds himself searching the house for any remnant of Louie. Might that framed poster have been hers, or that rug? The whole house is a collection of things that Mike owns because the women he lived with required them, aside from the couch and TV, the bed. Mike never would have bought the fake Chinese evergreen plant that sits collecting dust in his living room corner. That’s some woman’s touch. Jay wonders if Mike even remembers who added what, at this point.

Louie is still on his mind as he drives home, and he allows himself to feel belatedly rejected for getting blocked. He can’t blame her, can’t deny he was being strange and knew he was bringing up something potentially upsetting when he messaged her about the song. Mike refused to talk about their breakup for years and lately acts like the whole thing never happened, so it’s news to Jay that he thinks Louie will hate him for the rest of his life. He supposes he could have guessed that, but she vanished from their lives so swiftly that it seemed like a prison break, and he’s always assumed she was relieved to go by that point. He supposes that’s oversimplifying. It’s not like he’s ever had a relationship that intense or enduring, unless Mike counts, and that’s a different kind of heartbreak. It’s never involved having to tell friends and relatives it’s over or packing possessions into boxes while the other person is away from the house. Though for all Jay knows, Mike helped her pack.

He considers asking Mike about it now: so, the whole Louie thing, how did that end? It’s a question that wouldn’t go over well, and Jay would feel stupid for asking, because he was there, watching it unravel for years, but that was only the public-facing portion of their time together. It’s actually Louie he’d like to ask about it, not Mike. He wants to know how much she understood about what had gone on between him and Mike before she came along, if any of it. I really thought he’d have told you by now. Jay isn’t sure what she meant by that, but he has a few guesses. Early in 2015 they all went to karaoke together at a place that offered private room rentals for groups. It was the first time Jay had seen Louie sing in years, and she did a weird cover of “Fool for Love” that made Jay feel accused when she sang “I know that there’s another man but he ain’t gonna delay my plans,” then more so with every word that followed. She wasn’t looking at Jay when she sang it, or even at Mike, but it had seemed like suddenly she was singing her own song, bitterly. Five months later Mike came into work looking like shit and told Jay and Rich that she’d moved out. That was his last word on the matter for a long time. Nobody felt like they had the right to ask for more information.

Not wanting to think any more about Louie or the fact that he still feels jealous of her for things she got from Mike that are no longer available, Jay makes himself worry instead about this script he’s supposed to be writing. He wonders if Mike has an idea in mind for his own already, if he’ll dive right into it as soon as he has his laptop. Jay doubts it. He’ll have to come up with something soon himself, to support his lie about contacting Louie.

His most enduring idea that he wishes he could bring to life is the Tunnel of Love, but it’s not really a movie in his mind. It’s more of a ride. People would board a boat in a literal dark tunnel, like those rides at Disney with animatronics posed in whimsical tableaus along the way. Jay’s ride would start off whimsical, too, but always with a hint of menace, little warnings of what’s to come that would pluck at the rider’s subconscious and set them on edge. The scenes at the beginning would represent the excitement of youth and new experiences. There would be no humanoid animatronic figures, and sometimes he considers involving actors, but mostly likes the idea of riders hearing voices as if from other rooms as they move along past recently abandoned scenes of mirth that slowly deteriorate into something darker. Sometimes the scenes come to him very vividly, often when it’s late at night and he’s trying to soothe himself to sleep with fantasies. This is his fantasy that he has the money to build an enormous structure, bigger than any Disney dark ride, and fill it with scenes that people can move through like a movie. The riders would feel like they’re really in danger, like this is all approaching something bad, and are they sure that they’ve ever known anyone who went on this ride before and lived? It would be extremely expensive, an exclusive experience. Popular but mysterious.

The only scene that’s in his visions of the Tunnel of Love every time is the second to last one, in which the boats pass through a quiet graveyard in late afternoon under a hazy, jaundiced light. There’s a soft wind blowing and the distant sounds of what might be animals scratching through the unkept grass. The boat moves slowly, the anticipation and the answering emptiness building. Then, just as they’re about to pass through a black curtain into the ride’s final chamber, a crunching, too-close sound from behind the gravestone nearest to the passing boat starts and abruptly stops. The next scene would be differently terrifying, but he hasn’t figured out how yet. He just knows that something unspeakable about the second to last one would haunt people forever, hopefully.

He can’t make the Tunnel of Love into a movie, but he wants to make something that feels that way, mundane yet horrifying. His mind returns to the fantasy he had in bed about having been taken under Mike’s predatory wing in high school. But he doesn’t want to write about high schoolers. He thinks of how they might have met in various ways, at other times in their lives, not online in their early twenties when they were both powder kegs of insecure angst. Maybe if Mike hadn’t been a reason to stay in the midwest, Jay would have made it out to L.A. Maybe Mike would have, too, for the same reason. They’ve kept each other here, certainly, but probably wouldn’t have succeeded out there. But they could have tried, if they hadn’t been chained to each other so young.

Jay imagines going out west together, but it doesn’t seem real enough to hang a story on. If they’d gone separately and met out there they might have bonded over growing up in Illinois. Mike would have given Jay even more hell than he already does for coming from a farm town instead of the Chicago suburbs, as if these places might as well be on different planets. In L.A., far from home, maybe he’d have been charmed by it in a way that would make him return Jay’s calls. Maybe they would have met at a gay bar while both still semi-closeted, fucked, and gone on from there. Jay imagines meeting Mike on Grindr in his mid-thirties and how that would have gone. He can’t help himself: he writes a happy ending for all of these first meeting circumstances in his mind, then throws away the draft.

He stays in the car with his music playing for a while after parking at his place, thinking. He can’t think in Mike’s presence, half the time. Mike is the one who gets creative when Jay is his audience, spewing ideas at him until he laughs. Jay imagines what would have happened if he’d been the naive one who went out to L.A. and Mike had stayed here with Rich, doing their thing. Or not doing their thing. He has an actual idea by the time he’s loading his arms with Mike’s stuff, and he’s not sure if it’s any good, but at least it’s the start of something he can work with.

Mike is asleep on the couch, Tombstone still playing. Jay puts his things in the bedroom and cleans up the remains of their early dinner. They’ll both be hungry again later. He needs to get groceries, and this the first thought that makes him panic about the reality of what he thoughtlessly accepted while in a happy post-fuck daze. He told Mike he could stay here all summer. Mike took it seriously. They’re living together, suddenly.

Jay leaves Mike asleep on the couch and goes into his office to write his first notes for the screenplay draft. He puts his headphones on, though this means he won’t hear it if Mike calls out for something. That’s okay. Mike can wait. If he’ll really be here for a while they need to establish some boundaries.

He uses names that are too close to their real ones in his treatment, for now. He’ll change them later. He always has to use similar sounding names at the beginning or he can’t get the rhythms or voices right, if it’s something based on his life.

Main character is James, an independent filmmaker who is forced to move back to the midwest because he’s broke. He’s been living in L.A. and trying to produce films since he was twenty-five, with little success. He’s bitter and pretending that he’ll be back to L.A. before long, that he has some new project in the works. In the meantime he lives with his older brother, his sister-in-law and their teenage children. They expect him to get a job and contribute to the household expenses. In L.A. he waited tables, did thankless P.A. work, and made videos of people’s weddings or bar mitzvahs to get by. He avoids getting a job at the beginning, but his brother becomes more insistent, so he goes to the town’s surviving video and DVD rental store, where his friends from high school still work, and grudgingly asks if they’re hiring.

They’re not, but this reestablishes his contact with them and they go out together that evening to get drunk. His friends are Matt and Rick. Matt owns the video store, and he’s proud that he’s kept it afloat for so long. Rick is his only employee, and he’s able to survive off his small salary because he’s married and his wife makes real money as a realtor. She is also someone they went to high school with, Krystal. Matt teases James relentlessly; they were competitive with each other in high school, trying to out-direct each other in school plays and their backyard movies. Matt says he assumes James returned home to try to seduce a recently divorced high school friend of theirs who still lives in town, a girl they once competed for. Matt actually slept with her and holds this over James’ head. Matt makes fun of James’ failed ambitions until he takes it too far and they get into a fist fight. It’s pathetic on both sides and they end up reconnecting more honestly afterward, lying on the pavement behind the video store and sharing a cigarette with bloodied lips.

Jay pauses there, not sure if he wants the twist to be romantic, Matt and James confessing that their competitive energy was mutual sexual frustration over being attracted to each other at a time when they couldn’t have imagined doing anything about it. He doesn’t want to write a romantic drama, or a movie about a gay guy who is single in his 40s. Does he? No, no. The twist has to be something else. He’ll keep thinking about it.

Mike is awake on the couch when he emerges, watching some reality TV program that looks horrid. Jay stands watching it with him for a moment, resisting the urge to ask him how he can stomach the people involved and the things they say to each other.

“You were writing in there,” Mike says, not looking at him. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You still need your rest,” Jay says. “I got your laptop, though, and the other stuff.” He eyes the Amazon box that’s still by the door, not sure if he wants to open it yet.

“Wake me up next time,” Mike says. He seems ornery, probably needs another half pill.

“I cleaned the blood off your driveway and put the ladder away,” Jay says, not sure why he’s bringing this up.

“There was blood?” Mike cranes his neck to meet Jay’s eyes, shrugs. “I guess that makes sense. It’s all a blur. Did you bring the cheese curds?”

“Yes, they’re in the fridge.”

Mike just holds out his hand and makes a grabby motion. Jay goes to the kitchen to get them. He wants more of them, too.

“So how’s the writing going?” Mike asks when they’re eating curds together on the couch, right out of the bag, while the reality show plays on at a lower volume.

“I’m kinda stuck on what the big turn toward the end should be,” Jay says. “Still just working on the overall plot.”

“What are you stuck about? Maybe I can help.”

“I, uh. Well, like I said, it’s semi-autobiographical.”

“Right.”

“Not as much as you’re probably thinking. It’s about a guy who went out to L.A. in his mid-twenties to try to break into the scene out there as filmmaker. So he’s forty now and he has to come home because he put every cent he had into some dream project that ultimately didn’t make a name for him or any money. And he meets up with his old high school friends. There’s this one guy who was like his main teenage rival but also kind of his best friend in a fucked up way, and I don’t know-- I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?”

“If I want this to be a gay movie or whatever. Like, is the guy gay and is he gonna hook up with his old friend. And what happens to him if not that.”

“Is the idiot who went out to L.A. and has nothing to show for it based on me?” Mike asks.

He looks annoyed when Jay laughs.

“No!” Jay says. “That’s me, dummy. Alternate dimension me, anyway. You’re the guy who never left the midwest and runs a video rental store. Maybe he’s meaner than you. And the main character is more arrogant than me.”

“So, what. You can’t think of anything they might do together other than fuck?”

“Well, I dunno. It’s that or kill each other. But I don’t want it to be that dark, I don’t think.”

“Why would they kill each other?” Mike asks, looking offended. “In this universe?”

“They-- Wouldn’t, I guess. They do get into a fist fight at one point, but it’s a comedic scene and they don’t really hurt each other much. They give each other a hard time constantly but they’re fond of each other. Or secretly in love. I haven’t decided. They did go after the same girl when they were teenagers, and your guy is the one who got her, so. You’re welcome.”

“Whatever,” Mike says. He’s still glaring at Jay, though more jokingly now. “She probably sucked in bed.”

“Well, now she’s divorced and they’re sort of competing over her again. That’s part of the comedy. I guess it could be, like, the main character gets her this time. Eugh, though. I don’t want to write some basic romance shit.”

He reaches into the bag of cheese curds while Mike contemplates this information, but it’s empty, they’ve finished them.

“What’s yours going to be about?” Jay asks.

“I dunno. Probably a grandma who lives in the walls.”

Jay grunts, wishing Mike would take this seriously, though he’s never loved Mike’s scripts. He just wants to try at something together but separately, from a safe distance, for fun.

“I guess I should open that box,” Jay says when it becomes weirder to keep avoiding it.

Mike sighs.

“It’s probably dumb,” he says. “You might not like it.”

“Well, let’s see. I had no idea Amazon sells sex toys.”

“Of course they do! Where do you get yours?”

“From small businesses.”

“Oh, what a humanitarian you are!” Mike says, sneering. Then he grins. “Go on, fucking open it already.”

As Jay picks up the Amazon box he realizes something fairly awful: he wants Mike to write a script about the alternate universe them, too. Mike’s version would probably be so different from the way Jay sees them, revealing potentially painful things, but Jay still wants it. He wishes he could outright ask Mike for this, but he might laugh and say hell no, which is why Jay has avoided asking him outright for so many things over the years.

He puts the box on the kitchen table and waits for Mike to come over on his crutches to watch the big reveal. Jay slices it open with his pocket knife, trying to come up with a last minute guess about what kind of sex toy Mike would want to use on him. A cock cage? Does Mike even know those exist?

“Wait!” Mike says right before Jay pulls the box flaps back. “What do you think it is?” He chews his bottom lip after asking, looking entertained.

“Ummm,” Jay says. “Anal beads?”

“No! One more guess. If you get it right, uhh. I’ll do anything you ask me to.”

Jay snorts, thinking that’s unlikely.

“In bed,” Mike adds. “In case that wasn’t obvious.”

Bed is the last place where Jay wants to give Mike orders. He makes a thinking face, feels his ears getting red as he mentally cards through his sex toy knowledge for something Mike would be familiar with.

“Do I get a hint?” Jay asks.

“It’s colorful.”

“Whoa.” Now Jay is vaguely afraid, eying the box flaps. “Clown makeup?”

“That’s-- Actually not too far off.”

“Oh my god, what?”

Jay pulls open the box to reveal his gift. It’s a set of edible body paints in “four delicious flavors.” The kit has a picture of a naked woman on the front, her boobs obscured by the edge of the box, ‘I LOVE U’ painted above them. There’s a smaller picture of a man and woman together, both of them paint-splattered, the woman straddling the man’s lap while he licks her.

Mike seems nervous when Jay looks up at him, holding the paint kit.

“Is this a joke?” Jay asks. “Do you really want to use this on each other?”

“Yes! And then, I dare you-- I dare you, Jay-- To take a bath with me to wash it all off.”

Jay can’t keep the disgusted look off his face at the thought of him and Mike squirming and naked together in the tiny tub, Mike’s broken leg propped on the toilet, smeared body paint streaming from their skin into a brownish concoction in the water around them.

Mike cackles, but he’s blushing, so maybe he really does want that.

“The reviews aren’t that great,” he says, settling himself into a chair at the table and reaching for the kit. He turns it over and shakes it gently. “These delicious tasting edible body paints are fun to play with,” he says, reading this from the back of the box with deadpan energy. “And they let you say what’s really on your mind. Hmm.”

“I’m envisioning a huge mess,” Jay says. “But-- Thank you?”

“You can paint those words on me later, Jay,” Mike says, still staring down at the box. “They pretty much sum up your feelings about me, I think.”

Jay has to stop and consider what he even just said. A huge mess, but thank you. He wrinkles his nose when Mike smirks up at him.

They’re both too stuffed with cheese curds to have any kind of sex for a while. Jay puts the body paint kit in the bedroom, glancing warily at his bed and imagining how using the kit on each other would work, and if it would hurt Mike’s feelings if he refused to be painted on with Mike’s unsteady left hand. It doesn’t sound the least bit sexy, but maybe it would be funny. Laughing together about something like that doesn’t seem like the worst thing they could do.

Mike takes the other half of the pill that’s been waiting for him on the bedstand, and he’s in an obnoxiously good mood within ten minutes, riffing on what his script might be about while Jay looks through his movie collection for something they could watch.

“Do you think I could play a Bagans-type character?” Mike asks. “Like a douche-hole ghost hunter who’s pretending to hear shit for some audience? Then maybe it’s real or whatever. Ughhh, but I don’t want to make another fucking horror movie.”

“Why not?” Jay asks. The one they made together was their best movie-making experience by far, even if it didn’t launch their careers the way they’d hoped it might.

“I guess if it was funny,” Mike says. He’s on the couch, his legs spread open lewdly and his head tipped back, rolling left and right while he thinks. “Maybe, hmm. Rich could be funny as a ghost companion. I’ve thought about that before.”

“What’s a ghost companion?”

“Like, the nice ghost that’s trying to help the humans survive the horrors. But he’s sarcastic and bitter. So he’s not that nice. But he doesn’t want them dead.”

“Ah.”

“Your idea is better,” Mike says, because he’s high. He’d never admit this in any context while sober, or drunk on booze. “I think they should be in love.”

He throws a pillow from the couch at Jay’s back when he doesn’t respond.

“It’s my story,” Jay says, not turning when the pillow bounces off his back. “I need to think about it more. How about True Stories?” he asks, lifting up his Criterion Collection copy and thinking it might be a fun movie for Mike to watch while cheerfully stoned off the painkiller.

“How about True Lies!” Mike says, his eyes lighting like he finds this idea brilliant.

“I don’t own that. We’d have to rent it.”

It’s actually available for streaming on several of Jay’s subscription services, so he puts it on. He settles on the couch beside Mike with a beer, mildly annoyed that they’re watching this stupid movie. Mike seems content enough, and like he’ll probably be asleep soon. Jay checks his phone, opening Facebook just to make sure Louie hasn’t sent him anything or posted vaguely about how a gremlin from her past popped out of nowhere at four in the morning to harass her. There’s nothing new on her page or in Jay’s inbox. He’s careful to keep his phone angled away from Mike’s view.

“How’s your movie going to use that old BJ’s song if it’s not a love story?” Mike asks, apparently thinking about Louie, too.

“It’s about regrets,” Jay says. “Isn’t it?”

His heart is beating fast as he waits for Mike’s answer. Mike seems like he might be talking in his sleep, though his eyes are still open. He’s looking at the TV.

“I haven’t listened to it in a long time,” Mike says. “Never mind, shut up. I love this part.”

Some cartoonish violence is unfolding onscreen. Jay can’t pay attention, just swallows heavily and pretends to be absorbed in something on his phone. He doesn’t want to talk about the song while Mike is this out of it, but can’t imagine either of them bringing it up when they’re both fully sober, especially now that Mike knows Jay is aware that he wrote it.

He helps Mike into bed when the movie is over and stretches out at his side. When Mike seems to be asleep, Jay looks up the reviews for the edible body paint kit on Amazon. Mike undersold how awful they are. Apparently the paint is unpleasantly sticky, more like candy than paint, and doesn’t show up well.

He has an idea about how to fix this and will have to attend to it in the morning. In the meantime he doesn’t even try to sleep, since he was out for most of the day and feels wide awake now. He reaches over to stroke Mike’s stubbly cheek, making sure he’s not going to wake up, and slips out of bed when Mike has no reaction.

Alone in his office with his headphones on and another beer open on his desk, he pulls up his plot treatment document. His heel taps anxiously against the floor even after he chugs from the beer, as if someone is watching whatever he’s going to write live. What would it hurt to write an indulgent draft? He can always throw it away if it embarrasses him to look at it in the morning.

After the fist fight, Matt surprises James by rolling over to kiss him on the lips. James lies passively beneath him in shock and asks if he’s trying to start another fight. Matt just laughs and gets up, leaving James lying there in an alleyway with a half-smoked cigarette. James tries to navigate what he’s feeling about this in the days that follow. He gets into a fight with his brother, who throws him out for refusing to take a job as a janitor at the brother’s company just to help them with the bills. James thinks it’s beneath him and many old issues between the brothers about James’ haughty filmmaking ambitions come out during the fight. James ends up at Matt’s doorstep in the middle of the night, emotional and feeling like he’s out of options. Matt takes him in and they get drunk together and Matt says

Jay watches the cursor blinking, trying to decide if he’s really going to type the actual words Mike said to him in 2018 when they had drunken sex at work late at night, after everyone else had gone home.

He does it, and tells himself no one has to see this, not even Mike, if Jay decides to delete this line of dialogue from the treatment. It’s funny, anyway. Jay still laughs, sometimes, thinking about it.

They have sex, he types, and then doesn’t know where to go from there.

*

Chapter 6: 2018

Chapter Text

2018

Having their annual Halloween party at work was Jay’s idea, because he was tired of nobody staying to help him clean up when he held it at his place. Their circle of friends had grown, post-Louie, and his apartment was really too small for the kind of all-out bash they had in mind. After a rough couple of years for him and Mike personally, things were finally feeling easy again, fun and substantial. They were more financially successful than ever before, a long way from the wedding work they’d still had to pick up at the start of this endeavor, and Jay had given up being super strict about his diet and workout routines, which he knew made Mike happy.

He was back to wanting to make Mike happy that year, which was a relief to both of them. Jay had physically transformed during the years when Mike was with Louie, and Mike had seemed amused by Jay’s new confidence at first, then angry about it, especially after Louie left him. Jay was similarly amused by this anger and then annoyed. Mike would be just teasing him about his new vanity one minute and then coming for his soul with some awful remark the next. Sometimes Jay thought a part of Mike still sincerely hated him for what he’d said when he was twenty-two. Fuck that guy, he’s just a piece of shit. He rarely let himself listen to the song anymore, and the three times he’d been fucked by Mike felt light years away, like things done by two characters in a movie they wrote and filmed but never released. Those memories rarely had anything to do with their interactions on a daily basis, so far as Jay could tell, though Mike still tried to give him that old look at times, attempting to put him in place with a penetrating stare. It no longer worked every time, but Jay always felt it drilling into his defenses pretty hard, in various ways.

They spent days decorating their workplace for the Halloween party from top to bottom, and Mike’s devotion to the effort felt like something he was doing for Jay, at least a little bit, which made Jay realize how long it had been since anything Mike did had felt that way. Even bringing Jay a beer on his way back from the fridge at work had become a rarity. Early on in Mike’s relationship with Louie he’d been sweet to Jay, as if to apologize for his romantic contentment, throwing him birthday parties and writing dialogue about Jay’s newfound attractiveness for their show. This had tapered off after the initial flush of Mike’s domestic bliss morphed into something more complicated, and it completely ceased during the years when Mike was alternately single or sleeping with someone he didn’t love. Jay kept clear of all of it, never asking any personal questions, and Mike didn’t ask how Jay was doing with his new teeth and hair and body unless he was drunk enough not to realize the leering energy these questions had.

Jay dodged the questions because he was embarrassed by how little he’d done with his new opportunity to no longer be alone. He’d mostly decided by then that his way of not being like other people was that he needed his own space too much to give much more than his ass to anyone, and even that was rare, just as his offerings of it to Mike had been. He wanted to make sense of what had happened between him and Mike with the same logic: the sex in that case was spectacular, whereas his attempts with others hadn’t been worth the awkward politeness that followed, but it was still the same pattern. He held all the needing that in until he exploded onto someone with unbridled horniness and then withdrew. He didn’t feel he needed to apologize for this. It hadn’t ruined any lives.

“Are you bringing Laura to the party?” Jay asked when he was sitting on the floor of their main studio space with Mike, painting a faux-stone wall for a dungeon backdrop that would suit their downstairs theme. Upstairs was themed to a spooky attic, with creepy dolls and cobwebs, and they would use it as a kind of VIP area where certain people were allowed to decompress from the noise downstairs and watch scary movies in their viewing room.

“Laura’s not really a party kind of gal,” Mike said when Jay looked up at him to see why he hadn’t yet responded.

“Why not?”

“Well, I mean, mostly because she called me an asshole the last time I saw her. But what I meant is that it was only a sex thing.”

“Oh.” Jay made a face, and tried to hide it when Mike looked up at him as if he was expecting to see that exact expression. “Well, that sucks. I liked her.”

“You only liked her because her name is Laura, you Twin Peaks freak.”

Jay smiled, admitting as much. She’d been blond, too, Mike’s first blond since Louie. He normally went for leggy brunettes with interesting teeth. Sometimes they also had squinty eyes. Jay supposed that combination with blond hair would be too much, though he also knew he was flattering himself with his comparisons.

“Maybe I should just start fucking men,” Mike said, dropping this casually while looking down at their work, his paintbrush stroking over the backdrop. “How’s that going for you? You recommend it?”

Jay sputtered a fake laugh and kept his gaze fixed down on what he was doing.

“I’m serious,” Mike said, and Jay could feel that stare against the top of his head, didn’t even need to look up to understand that Mike was thinking about Jay fucking one man in particular: him. “Are you, uh. Bringing anyone?”

“No.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Not really.”

They both went quiet, and Jay’s ears burned. It was the first time they’d had anything resembling a sober conversation about Jay’s lack of romantic pursuits. He wasn’t going to explain to Mike that he’d actually been getting fucked by women most recently, in carefully arranged scenarios involving sex toys, and that even that had gone by the wayside in the past year.

Just imagining Mike’s reaction to the mental image of Jay being pegged by a woman made Jay grin. Mike was glaring at him when he looked up, but also kind of smiling, like he was enjoying Jay’s company again, in the old way. Jay snickered and shook his head, not entirely sure what sort of unspoken conversation they were having. He loved having so much of Mike’s attention now that it wasn’t laced with buried rage about something or other, but he was also afraid to make a wrong move and spoil it. Part of him was afraid a Louie-like figure would come along and take Mike’s mournful longing away from him again, but thus far the contenders seemed to disappear almost as soon as they were introduced.

“So you’re not bringing anyone either?” Jay asked, to make sure.

“Nope.”

“Interesting.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Mike still had a little smirk on his face when Jay peeked up at him again, as if he actually liked that question, coming from Jay.

On the morning of the party, Jay carved a pumpkin with a hissing bat face just for himself at his apartment and roasted the seeds. He ate a whole bowl of them for breakfast in front of Castle Freak and had a stomachache when they were gone, but by noon he was fine, and he headed to work to put the final touches on the decor.

“Is that your costume?” Jay asked when Mike showed up wearing a Packers jersey.

“No, no,” Mike said. “My costume is a surprise. Is that yours?”

He gestured to Jay’s Boo Berry t-shirt and jeans.

“You know it’s not,” Jay said. “Mine’s upstairs. Do we have enough beer? I could run out and get more.”

“I’m making witches’ brew,” Mike said, hoisting one of the plastic shopping bags he was carrying. They were plain black, which meant the discount liquor store. “So, no need.”

“Oh god,” Jay said, though he felt like getting trashed, too. He’d brought a bottle of tequila for his private stash upstairs, currently hidden in their office alongside his costume pieces. His costume was a surprise, too, and he wasn’t sure what Mike would think of it. His sense that only Mike’s opinion truly mattered had returned, and he had mixed feelings about it but couldn’t deny it, that afternoon when everything was coming together in a way that he had secretly wished it would for seven years.

Co-hosting things was their brand of domesticity, the way they’d made a life together without having to expose themselves to the various traps they may have fallen into if they’d done it some other way. Jay had been trying not to navel-gaze about it too much, or to decide whose fault it was, his old favorite hobby. He wanted to forgive both himself and Mike that night, maybe that whole year. They set up the lighting for the party atmosphere carefully, like they were preparing to shoot an important scene for a movie, and up in the office, just before they changed into their costumes, Jay showed Mike the bottle of tequila.

The way Mike’s eyes lit up had nothing to do with the alcohol. There was plenty of that set up at their skeleton-manned bar downstairs, including the disgusting-looking witches’ brew Mike had mixed up in a big plastic cauldron. Mike was elated by the sight of a bottle of tequila in Jay’s hands because it meant Jay might be about to get crazy with him, and the way he met Jay’s eyes with a big grin and that light in his eyes made Jay think of the times they’d slept together, only this wasn’t exactly like that. Jay wanted whatever happened next to be reckless and fun, not like the nights that had fizzled into awkward exits too quickly.

They both had a shot of tequila, then another. Jay was buzzy with anticipation when he took his still-concealed costume pieces into the upstairs bathroom to change. Mike headed downstairs to change there. It felt like they were about to put on a play, Jay thought, as he carefully unpacked the massive horns and ears he’d made himself. It had taken him months worth of planning and trial and error to get them just right. It was the sort of project that made him feel most like himself, especially when he was doing it in secret, making something to surprise everyone with later.

Jay’s costume was Black Phillip from The VVitch, mostly consisting of his homemade goat horns that curled back behind his head and a set of floppy black goat ears he’d made out of real leather scavenged from a thrift store mini skirt. Both were attached to a headband that he’d experimented with concealing, without really finding a solution that would still keep them in place aside from letting his swooped back fringe grow out long enough to provide a buffer from the front view. The horns were plaster-based and lightweight but long enough to be unwieldy. The visible headband was okay, he finally decided, because it wasn’t like he was doing a full goat mask or wearing a fur suit. It was a jokey costume for the most part, showcasing his prop work. His outfit was a black t-shirt and black jeans, and a black jacket with a few themed pins that he’d had custom made with some demonic-looking symbols he’d designed. The all-black look having a slimming effect was a bonus. He was okay with nearing his forties in not-perfect shape, but sometimes got self-conscious about it in party settings where he hadn’t seen some of the attendees in a while.

He made his way downstairs carefully, happy with how the horns held their place on his head and touching one of the ears with the hand that wasn’t gripping the railing. Mike would laugh, of course, but it would be with a kind of disbelieving admiration, Jay hoped. Mike had already emerged from the bathroom and was dumping ice into a coffin-shaped cooler full of beer, wearing something that Jay didn’t understand as a costume. It was a Hawaiian-print shirt over alarmingly small white shorts, tall black socks and white loafers.

“What are you supposed to be?” Jay asked, forgetting that he had goat horns on his head until Mike turned.

“Adam Sandler,” Mike said, beaming. “Oh, jesus, are you that goat?”

“Black Phillip,” Jay said, reaching up to touch a horn. He squinted at Mike’s costume again, not liking that he wasn’t getting the joke. He noticed that the bright pink flowers on Mike’s shirt had skulls at the center, but didn’t understand what this had to do with Adam Sandler. The snug fit of the shorts alone was puzzling, and though it took Jay a second to process, he was deeply annoyed by how attractive this ridiculous ensemble was on Mike.

“C’mon,” Mike said, holding his arms out. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen the classic film Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation!”

“What the fuck?” Jay laughed and moved closer. “He-- What? His character wears this?”

“Yes! Dracula! Drac, they call him. Actually, I’ve never seen those movies. I just wanted something easy and googled Adam Sandler costumes. Are those the actual goat horns from the movie?”

“Uhh, in the sense that I made a replica? Yes. I did not purchase a movie-used prop for this. Are those your old Spock ears?”

“No, they’re new ones.” Mike touched the pointy tip of one. “Nice ears yourself.”

For a moment Jay was sure Mike would reach out and touch one of the floppy ears hanging down over Jay’s real ones, but he didn’t.

“Are you gonna do makeup?” Mike asked. “Want me to do it?”

“No, I don’t feel like messing with all that. What would I even do?”

“Dark circles under your eyes? You should have ordered red contacts. Or yellow? What color are the goat’s eyes?”

“Sort of black, I think. But I didn’t want to wear some cheap, itchy contacts all night, it’s not that serious.”

“These are pretty intense, though,” Mike said, moving around to examine the horns. “How long did it take you to make them?”

Jay was practically levitating. There was nothing he loved more than praise for his weird little projects, especially if it was Mike giving it.

“A few months,” he said. “I had some trial and error at the beginning, figuring out how best to do it.”

“So this is how you spend your nights,” Mike said. He touched one of the horns, gently.

“What about you?” Jay asked when Mike walked around to face him again. “Do you want makeup? White face paint, since you’re Dracula?”

“Nah, he’s pretty peachy-faced in the movie. It’s summer vacation, after all. And I’m really Adam Sandler, don’t forget. That’s the joke.”

“I get it. Those shorts are really something.”

“I knew you’d like them.”

Jay was certain then that they had been flirting for months, for real, and Mike had something in mind. How he planned these things out, Jay had no idea, but he always seemed to know when the moment was exactly right. Jay could feel it coming this time, close.

It had been long enough since the last post-fuck fallout that Jay was all for it, ready for whatever Mike would do to him. Maybe it was because he’d had another shot of tequila after changing into his costume, or maybe it was the devilish goat horns that felt as if they were truly part of him, because he’d made them. He wanted to be less in control of himself than he was on a normal day, as a festive Halloween reprieve, and for Mike to be his partner in crime.

Rich was the first person to show up, wearing no costume, though he’d brought his fiancee Paige with him and she was in full Princess Zelda regalia. Rich’s contribution to their couples costume was a t-shirt with the Triforce on it. He wasn’t big on parties but always faithfully attended when invited, partly to keep a sober eye on things when Mike and Jay flitted around being the freewheeling co-hosts.

“What the hell are you two supposed to be?” Rich asked, as if they’d done a couples costume, too.

“Adam Sandler and Black Phillip,” Jay said.

“I must have missed that one,” Rich said. He was eying them as if he already knew they were up to something, that he’d have a bigger than usual mess to clean up after this party. “Was it on Netflix?”

“You don’t remember Black Phillip the goat?” Jay asked, lifting one of his goat ears as if that might jog Rich’s memory. “Did you even watch The VVitch?”

Rich shook his head.

“You know I hate horror movies about religion.”

“It’s not really about-- Never mind. You should watch it!”

The rest of their closest friends trickled in after Rich, then everybody else. Josh, formerly Louie’s bandmate, was in charge of the music. Jay was the only one who cared about changing out the movies that were playing upstairs. He lost track of doing so pretty early on, trying to remember to eat from the elaborate spread they’d laid out as he grabbed beer after beer from the coffin cooler. For the first hour or so, Mike was occupied with other people, but once he’d had enough beers he drifted back to Jay and remained glued to his side, giving him glassy-eyed stares of adoration while attempting to cover for this by nonstop busting his balls.

“Is this real leather, Jay?” Mike asked when he was drunk enough to fondle one of the goat ears while several people they’d been ostensibly talking to watched: Paige and Jack, a friend from their old Milwaukee film festival days.

“It’s real,” Jay started to explain, too slowly, distracted by Mike’s fingers and their proximity to his actual ear.

“You monster!” Mike said. “Real leather. And you call yourself a, uh. An animal lover.”

“I don’t call myself that, and it’s secondhand leather, motherfucker, from a thrift store mini skirt.”

He knew instantly that he shouldn’t have said the ‘mini’ part, or maybe even the ‘skirt,’ but he was grinning at Mike even as he waited for the responding ridicule.

Mike’s eyebrows shot up. His grin was cartoonish, seeming to reach his elfin Dracula ears.

“You-- Wait a minute, so--” He was still formulating his approach to this information, too drunk to be quick-witted. “So there’s a leather mini skirt with two holes cut in it in your apartment, Jay?”

“Well, yeah. I wasn’t just gonna throw it out. We might need leather again, for--”

“Jay, tell us the truth. You wear that skirt in private and pull your dick and balls out through the holes, don’t you?”

Paige made a noise that was mostly surprise and Jack recoiled slightly. Only Jay laughed, though it wasn’t really funny. He just knew this was how Mike flirted.

“No,” Jay said, when Mike seemed to be expecting some kind of answer. Rich and Jack’s wife Casey returned with drinks from the bar, Rich passing his to Paige, who gulped from it like she’d been needing one. “I don’t-- Do that, what the fuck. That’s not even a thing.”

“I can just picture it,” Mike said, and then he flushed and drank from his beer like he knew he shouldn’t have said that part out loud, too late.

“Picture what?” Casey asked, cheerfully.

“Don’t ask,” Jack said.

“Jay has a black leather mini skirt,” Mike said. “He made his goat ears out of it.”

“I bought it for the goat ears,” Jay said, as if this made the conversation more comprehensible. Casey smiled gamely.

“What other black leather objects do you own, Jay?” Mike asked.

Rich tugged Paige away then, rescuing her from this exchange. Their spots in the circle were immediately filled by two women who’d both been trying to flirt with Mike all night. They weren’t the only ones. The gossip that Mike was newly single had spread quickly through the party, thanks to Jay, who had drunkenly told Paige early on.

“Did you guys know Jay used to be a go-go dancer in Vegas?” Mike said when Jay ignored his black leather question. Mike was speaking to the two women who were smiling up at him hopefully, and they both gave him a confused, polite laugh after glancing at Jay, who wasn’t going to help them here. He just chuckled and drank from his beer, waiting to see where Mike was going with this. It was the kind of joke that normally might have infuriated him, but being the focus of Mike’s attention even while everyone else swarmed around him, wanting it, felt good enough that he didn’t care what Mike said about him next.

“Seriously?” one of the women said. She was about thirty and very cute, someone who worked at one of the bars Mike had started going to again after Louie left. “You were a dancer?”

Jay just lifted his eyebrows and looked at Mike as if he was the authority on this, prompting him to continue with this story. Mike loved to make stuff up on the fly while he had an audience like this, especially while drinking.

“Okay, this is news to me,” Jack said. He could be gullible, but might have been joking, too.

“No, it’s true,” Mike said. “Jay danced in Vegas for a while, at one of the clubs. He wore only go-go boots and a black leather, um. What do you call those things? Speedos?”

“A thong?” the bartender woman said.

“No, no, it wasn’t a thong,” Mike said, forcefully, as if this was a true story and the details were important. “It was a regular underwear thing. Tight! Jay, did you make good tips?”

“I don’t know,” Jay said. “Since this never happened.”

Distantly he wondered if these women would talk to other people at Mike’s favorite bar and the story would get around town and then around the internet, though nothing like that had happened in a while. There had been a period when their show was gaining wider popularity when this type of rumor would have been repeated, but they’d quashed most of the naive shit they’d been doing to encourage speculation since then.

“This was one summer when he took a break from working here,” Mike said, pointing to the floor of the studio to be clear. “Jay, uh, he got mad at me and said fuck you, Mike, I’m gonna move to Vegas and do whatever I want. And that thing, that he wanted? Was go-go dancing. And he was a sen-sation. They had him on billboards. Or whatever those things on the strip are called. Marquees?”

“No one knows what you’re talking about,” Jay said. He was the only one who was laughing, almost doubling over at Mike’s insanity while the two women mostly looked confused, Jack and his wife hovering as if they were vaguely concerned.

“It’s true!” Mike said. His eyes got even brighter when he saw that Jay could barely speak for laughing at this. “Then it all came crashing down when, uh, Neil Breen came in one night and recognized him and tried to fight him. He grabbed the bars of Jay’s go-go dancer cage-- Jay danced in one of those cages, you know-- And, and he was like, I’ll kill you for not taking my films seriously! I know who you are, bitch! And Jay-- Jay kicked him in the face and got fired.”

Mike barely got the last two words out because he was laughing hard, too. Jack and his wife made a polite exit and the two women who were waiting for Mike to be normal or at least normally drunk were wilting fast. When Josh started playing Marvin Gaye, “I Want You,” Jay abruptly began to fear he was over-obviously acting like a slut, and he excused himself to go upstairs and check on his rotation of curated Halloween party movies.

He wasn’t surprised that Mike followed him, and he didn’t turn back to look at him. Jay stopped in their office to take his jacket off and draped it over the back of his desk chair.

“Are you hot?” Mike asked, staring at him from the doorway, where he was leaning against the frame like he might fall over.

“No,” Jay said, though he was. “You look really drunk.”

“So do you, fuckwad. C’mere.”

“I’m not coming over there.”

Mike moved so that he was more deliberately blocking the doorway and narrowed his eyes at Jay, then broke into chortling laughter. Jay laughed, too, and opened the desk drawer that held the bottle of tequila.

“Oh my god,” Mike said, swooning into the room at the sight of it. “Yes! Jay. You angel. You demon. My-- What’s that song?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jay said, pouring two shots into the glasses they’d left up there earlier.

“Maybe it’s more like-- A joke. A meme. A tweet? My devil and my angel, something like that.”

“Drink this,” Jay said, hearing how drunk he sounded and how it matched Mike’s falling apartness perfectly. Good, Jay thought, clicking his shot glass against Mike’s. Though the party was planned to go well past midnight, he was ready to kick everybody out. He also had no idea what time it was.

Things after that were mostly a blur, but in a festive way that he would be able to recall bits and pieces of later. He knows he went back downstairs at one point, but that most of the rest of the night was upstairs, in the movie room, laughing with Mike at his side at moments and gone at others. He remembers wondering where Mike was and maybe asking everyone else in the room that question like fifteen or twenty times. Then Rich was coming up to tell them that everyone had cleared out.

“Did you check the rooms?” Mike asked, shouting this from the kitchen, where he was eating handfuls of cereal from a box while Rich and Paige brought up trays of leftover food one at a time and stuffed them into the fridge or covered them in cling wrap.

“Yes, I checked every room!” Rich shouted back. “No one is hiding in any dark corners!”

“Good, Rich! Thank you!”

Jay remembers Rich saying he would turn the alarm on when they left, and Jay thanking him, already half-asleep on the couch while Salem’s Lot played on the TV. He couldn’t remember putting it on. Maybe Mike had.

“Are you guys, just, like, staying here?” Rich asked, mumbling this in a way that made Jay think he probably knew what that meant.

“Uh-huh,” Jay said, though it didn’t seem like it could be true. They’d never spent the whole night at work, however late they left after wrapping a shoot that had gone long.

“Okay,” Rich said, slowly. “Make sure Mike doesn’t drink any more.”

“He won’t,” Jay said.

“You probably shouldn’t either, by the way.”

“Rich! Stop freaking out. We’re fine. Everything’s fine here. G’night!”

Jay could hear himself slurring, but it was true. He was falling asleep, and Mike was eating. There would be no more tequila shots. They had finished the bottle, with some help from Josh when he stopped DJ’ing and came upstairs to join them. Possibly others had participated, but Jay had lost track.

He started to truly fall asleep on the biggest couch in the movie room, then woke with a frightened jerk of his shoulders when he remembered his horns and ears. He combed his hands through his messed up hair to confirm he was no longer wearing them, and in his half-awake, still very drunk state, this seemed like an emergency.

“Mike!” he shouted, and in the few seconds of silence that followed a piercing fear that Mike had gone home with Rich and left him alone struck through him.

“Yeah?” Mike shouted back. He sounded like he was still sort of chewing.

“Where’s my horns? My ears? Did I take ‘em off?”

“Yeah, hours ago. They’re in the office.”

Mike appeared in the movie room’s doorway, holding the box of cereal but no longer eating from it.

“Want some of this?” he asked, and he waved the open box in Jay’s direction, flinging cereal everywhere.

“You asshole,” Jay said, delighted. He flopped down onto the couch again and stretched out on his back, grinning at Mike and letting his legs spill open like an invitation.

“Are you sure?” Mike asked. He sprayed more cereal over the room and then just threw the box toward the curtained windows.

“Oh my god,” Jay said. He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, disappointed that Mike hadn’t climbed between his legs immediately. “We’ll get rats.”

“It’s been so long since rats,” Mike said, meaning their first studio, which was also the place where they’d last had sex with each other. It hadn’t been rat-infested at that time, so far as they knew. That happened later, and they moved their operation to a bigger place, then to this one, which had a finality to it because Mike had bought it outright instead of renting it.

Having actual money seemed as impossible to Jay as ever having had sex with Mike did, though both things were somehow true of his life. He didn’t spend much of what he made, except on equipment, both for his personal collection and for work. Also physical media, and going out drinking at places Mike didn’t like. He didn’t even own any nice shoes.

“What are you doing?” he mumbled, realizing he was thinking about shoes because Mike was currently down at the other end of the couch, removing Jay’s black sneakers.

“You’re getting dirt on the couch,” Mike said.

“You’re undressing me,” Jay said, too drunk to care that he was coming close to just asking out loud if Mike had stayed here to fuck him or what.

“I’m really wasted,” Mike said.

Jay heard his answer in this: too drunk to get hard, sorry.

“Me too,” Jay said. “Where are my horns?”

“In the office, I told you. Want me to go get ‘em?”

“Nah, no.”

“What, you don’t want to wear them while you give me a satanic lap dance? And your little ears, too?”

Mike was lowering himself onto the couch with Jay as he said this, stretching himself out so he was facing Jay and bracketing him back against the cushions. Jay squirmed back against them, chewing his bottom lip to keep from beaming too brightly, then pressed himself to Mike’s chest when Mike stroked his hair.

“Are you going to hurl or anything?” Mike asked, sweetly. His breath smelled like sugar-coated cereal.

“No,” Jay said, his voice watery and small like he wasn’t sure. “As long as I keep my eyes shut.”

“I’m still wearing the shorts,” Mike said, leaning over to murmur this huskily into Jay’s ear in a way that them both laugh.

Jay moaned when laughing hurt, a little. He had maybe never had that much to drink before, or at least not since his most self-destructive moments in his twenties, and he still wasn’t sure what the consequences would be. The room was a little spinny when he tried to focus on Mike’s face.

“Let’s sleep it off,” Mike said, settling his hand over the side of Jay’s throat, possessive-like.

“I can’t sleep,” Jay said, though he was halfway gone. “It feels like the party is still down there.”

“Wow, you’re worse off than me. There’s nobody down there, Jay. Rich said so.”

“You didn’t check?”

“Do you want me to?”

“No, don’t go.” Jay wondered if the whiny thing his voice was doing was cute or annoying. He was a little charmed by himself in the moment, and a little disgusted. He slid his hand up onto Mike’s hip and then down along the seam of the white shorts, amazed all over again at their dimensions.

“Tell me you love them,” Mike said. His eyes were dark and serious when Jay blinked at him.

“I love them,” Jay said. He reached down to squeeze one of Mike’s meaty thighs, his face ending up between Mike’s pecs in the process. The Hawaiian shirt had an aroma of beer-laced candy. Jay wanted every part of Mike in his mouth, but especially Mike’s dick. He groped for it and they both groaned.

“Can I tell you something?” Mike asked.

“Yes,” Jay said, waiting for: I’m in love with you, I’ll give up anything to be with you, I’m dying every day without you.

“I want to eat your ass more than I want to live,” Mike said, using his old-man-pervert voice to make this sound both more and less sincere, in the way he did when he was embarrassed by how earnestly he felt about his biggest ideas.

“Oh no,” Jay said, lifting his face to Mike’s and laughing.

It wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear, exactly, and yet it was perfect. The not knowing that he could possibly expect it was what made it just what he needed, and he would love that line for the rest of his life, would smile every time he thought of it. It was the line he put into the mouth of his Matt character in his plot treatment when he finally returned to semi-biographical scripts. Too good not to use.

“It’s all I think about,” Mike said, reaching down to take a greedy handful of Jay’s ass. “You’ll just be talking, laughing, chugging from a beer bottle, and I’m staring at you, like, that’s right, Jay, but mentally my tongue is on your ass… Pleasuring it.”

Jay dissolved into sputtering laughter for how Mike pronounced the word pleasuring. Mike was fucked up and trying to be funny but he was serious, too. Jay loved the combination and ground his ass back into Mike’s grip, wondering if either of them could possibly get hard. Jay felt aroused yet deflated, and like they had boarded a raft together and were drifting away from the tedium of the real world at last, back to their private island where they did things like this. It would sink into the ocean again when they were done, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to get there, only he was also falling asleep.

“When you wake up, will you let me?” Mike asked, his lips moving wetly on Jay’s ear.

“Uh-huh,” Jay said, though he was already gone enough to have forgotten what they were talking about. It didn’t matter. When he woke up they would be on that island together, and when they were there Mike could have whatever he wanted.

They both passed out for a while but woke again before their hangovers hit. Jay was still drunk but differently. He felt ravenously hungry, and Mike’s mouth was right there, opening for him. The shape of Mike pressed against him in the dark felt like something unstoppable that he wanted to welcome into his body like a possession. Jay was proud of himself for owning this powerful force of supernature. With Mike’s tongue in his mouth, three o’clock in the morning on the day after Halloween, he felt so certain that Mike belonged to him, unconditionally, and that he had since they met.

“I’ve got the biggest boner for you, man,” Mike said, pushing up onto his elbow so he could stare down into Jay’s smashed, adoring eyes. “Every fucking thing you do. The way you squat down to wrap the vacuum cord around the holder thing. Even shit like that.”

“I’m gonna take off my pants,” Jay said, already doing it.

“That’s right,” Mike said, reaching down to feel Jay’s bare ass cheek as it was exposed to their couch, because his boxers were coming down, too, as he shoved free from the jeans. “Gonna eat this ass till the sun comes up,” Mike said, breathing these words against Jay’s face. “You want that?”

“Yes,” Jay said. He’d never had someone’s mouth on his ass. He only ever wanted it to be Mike’s. No one else deserved the honor.

He was vaguely aware of how drunk he still was when he got up onto his knees and held on to the back of the couch with both hands while curling his ass out, presenting himself. Mike sat on the coffee table and leaned forward to part Jay’s ass cheeks, then dove in between them, tongue-first.

Jay groaned for the feeling of being devoured, reaching back with one hand to spread himself open even wider. Mike moaned approvingly for this, directly against Jay’s hole, making him whine and buck. Mike’s hands tightened on his hips like a warning and Jay thought he might come just from that, the overdue feeling of being reclaimed for this purpose.

He didn’t actually come until Mike was fingering him open, Jay still kneeling on the couch and holding the back with both hands again while Mike’s lubed-up fingers twisted inside him, slicked by a bottle of actual lube that Mike apparently kept under the couch. Jay didn’t want to think about how Mike had probably watched porn there alone during the Louie years, or how long the bottle of lube had been hiding under this couch, dusty and untouched. He’d felt dusty and untouched for too long himself, but Mike made him feel miraculous, leaning forward to mutter filthy things into Jay’s ear while fingering his prostate like he knew how to do that now. Just before pushing his finger inside he’d said let’s see if you’re still nice and tight for me, and Jay had been trembling on the verge of orgasm since then.

“Oh yeah,” Mike said, sort of growling this out against Jay’s cheek, looming behind him like a tidal wave. “So tight, Jay, just how I like it. That’s gonna feel so good on my cock.”

Jay came for that, and also for the way Mike was drilling his prostate with two fat fingertips while he said it. He was only a little embarrassed about this as he sprayed the last of his load all over their couch, as if the come stains would only exist in another dimension when they returned to the regular one.

“You need it,” Mike said, sliding his fingers out. “Get down on all fours.”

Jay almost thought he meant on the floor, then he remembered the couch existed, he was on their couch, at work, all his limbs shaking while he got into position and pointed his ass back as Mike mounted up behind him.

Insane, he thought, staring at the paper skeleton that was grinning at him from the back of the room’s half-shut door. His next thought was that this was like the kind of movie he’d always wished they could make together: totally unhinged, subversive, yet oddly sweet. He groaned and spread his knees as wide as he could as Mike’s dick slid into him. It felt so good, coming in hard and hot at this angle, and Jay almost felt like he could weep for the fact that they’d never tried it like this before, with Mike crawling up closer and closer behind him as he sank in deeper. In the heat of the moment, this always felt like something they did all the time, like the constant thread running through all their interactions and therefore never ending.

Mike let loose on Jay’s ass like he’d been holding back for too long and couldn’t not give it everything he had. Jay heard himself shouting for how good it felt to be spanked by Mike’s swinging balls. He didn’t care how loud he got. Nobody was ever in that part of town so late at night except them and their guests, and all the guests were gone, dismissed, irrelevant. He could scream as loud as he liked and nobody would hear. This got him hard again, and he let himself think of Mike as some kind of monstrous Halloween figure who had captured him and brought him there for his use. Mike was just pounding heedlessly into him from behind, his hands tight on Jay’s hips as they tried to buck back for more, but it felt like they were doing something mystical and delicate, like a portal was being open or a spell was being cast, some kind of ancient ritual finally revived by their reckless bodies.

Jay came again when Mike reached around to jack his dick, adding more mess to the couch to be cleaned up later. Mike didn’t last through the clenching spasms of Jay’s ass as he wrang a second orgasm from him. He shoved Jay forward when he came, knocking him down onto his stomach and smooshing his face into the cushions as he unloaded into him with a monster snarl that made Jay’s spent dick twitch with an answering love pulse.

Mike’s weight on his back was way too much as soon as the adrenaline faded, but Jay didn’t move. One of his legs had spilled off the couch and his bare foot was on the floor, toes curling and uncurling while Mike nosed at the back of his neck like a sated beast, still huffing huge breaths out while he recovered. Jay could still feel Mike’s dick throbbing inside him, like he was trying to get one last drop out and into Jay, and one more, one more.

“Why’s it always like this with you?” Mike asked, mumbling the question against Jay’s skin.

Jay was lifted above the rooftop, but only until he realized he’d willfully misheard that as only like this with you. Always wasn’t quite as exclusive as his greedy heart required.

“Like what?” he asked instead, his face still pressed to the couch cushion.

“Like a fuckin’ tsunami of jizz comes out of my dick, that’s what. Oh god. I’m gonna-- Ah, shit. Give me your shirt.”

“Use yours!”

“No! This is my-- This shirt cost like sixty dollars, okay, it’s my costume, c’mon. Yours is just a black t-shirt.”

Jay moaned, mostly not wanting to be naked there, in what was technically their place of business. But he’d already done worse, so he took the shirt off while Mike’s dick was still inside him and reached back to hand it to him.

“Thank you,” Mike said. He slid out with a groan, using the shirt to capture as much of what was gushing out of Jay as he could.

Jay was left naked and groping for reality like an unearthed mole while Mike stood up to finish cleaning his dick with Jay’s shirt.

“Oh shit,” Mike said, looking at the couch. He turned to survey the cereal-strewn room. “Whoops. Though, really. This is a masterpiece of decadence.”

“Give me your shirt,” Jay snapped, feeling the pinpricks of his hangover pressing in against his temples.

Mike unbuttoned his Hawaiian shirt and handed it over. Jay felt stupid putting it on, because it was enormous and because wrapping himself in the thick smell of partytime horndog Mike made him feel like he should have known better than to give in to something so tempting. At the same time, it was a comfort, and he didn’t protest when Mike loomed into his space to kiss his forehead.

“You look cute in that,” Mike said. “Particularly with no pants.”

“How are you not hungover?” Jay asked.

“Oh, I am. It’s coming. And it’s gonna be rough. But I think it’s like four in the morning. I’ve got an hour or so before I’m doomed.”

Jay looked at the couch, then up into Mike’s face again. There seemed to be no way to move forward from this moment, as usual. Mike already looked sad. It wasn’t like they could climb back onto the couch and sleep wrapped around each other for four more hours. There was too much mess to clean up, and a limited amount of time to do so before their hangovers totally debilitated them. Jay was already imagining a whole day spent in bed, recovering.

“I want to kiss you,” Mike said. “But, you know. I gobbled your ass with this same mouth.”

“Gross,” Jay said.

“You loved it.”

“Don’t say gobbled. Oh my god!”

“What?” Mike jumped backward a little, as if the tone of Jay’s voice meant he was about to go on the attack.

“I can’t-- I can’t believe you just fucked me with those Spock ears still on. Jesus Christ. I didn’t even notice until now.”

Mike seemed to visibly deflate, and he took the ears off one at a time.

“Sorry,” he said. He held them out to Jay like an offering.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with those?” Jay asked, hating that he knew he was being mean but that it felt right. How else was he going to react to Mike handing him two pieces of plastic that looked like ripped-off flesh?

“I don’t know,” Mike said. “I’m still drunk.”

“I know. Me too, just. Get some paper towels, we can’t leave this room like this. I’ll get the vacuum.”

Jay wasn’t actually drunk anymore. He wished he was, as the roar of the vacuum made his head begin to truly pound. The amount of cereal that had come out of that box, similar to the amount of come that was leaking out of his ass as he worked, seemed impossible. Mike went downstairs to put on a shirt from the wardrobe and returned to work on cleaning the couch, wincing like he thought it was a fool’s errand, like they would have to scout the whole city for a couch that looked exactly like this one and replace it when no one was looking. But in the end it was just come, and with Jay’s help the stains disappeared.

They stood there slightly short of breath and suffering when the room was clean. Jay had never more acutely felt like Halloween season was over: the fun parts evaporating around him and the thankless, inescapable holidays from hell that followed looming. He glanced over at Mike nervously, afraid he was about to do something that would ruin the peace that had developed between them in the past few years, after the bad times, when he never knew if Mike was going to roll over for him or tear his throat out with his next remark. He wanted to put the vacuum away, but remembered Mike saying he found the way Jay did so arousing, or endearing, or something that didn’t make sense anymore.

“I can’t drive yet,” Mike said.

“Me either.”

“So why don’t we try to sleep some more, um. Or we could walk home.”

Jay considered this. It was a forty minute walk to his place, only twenty to Mike’s. He was sweating and miserable already, and walking would either help clear his head or make this feeling worse.

“This is home,” Jay said, delirious. “That’s the weird thing.”

“Yeah, but there’s no bed here. I need one of those pretty soon. So what are we doing, Jay?”

What are we doing, Jay? He would think back to this so often as what may have been his opportunity to finally decide for both of them, for good.

But what he said was that they could share an Uber. He forgave himself for this, because, as usual, the circumstances were impossible. He was ill and rapidly feeling worse, hadn’t really slept, and hadn’t been fucked in the ass in like a year, so Mike’s unbridled pounding of it was beginning to register as something he’d have to deal with over the next several days, soreness-wise. He didn’t know how to tell Mike that he wanted to be with him and then alone, and then with him again, but not with the alone parts lasting for years. There was no way to explain this when they were alone together or in front of their Uber driver, a cheerful old man who asked if they’d had a fun Halloween. Jay was still wearing Mike’s Hawaiian shirt, and he felt like he smelled like somebody who’d been fucked by its real owner.

“Yeah,” Mike finally said when Jay pretended to be preoccupied with important business on his phone. “It was great.”

They arrived at Mike’s house first, because it was closer. Jay looked over at him, expecting to have to refuse an invitation to come inside.

“That was some party,” Mike said, deadpan like he was about to make a joke. Then he just got out of the car.

Jay watched Mike walking to his front door as the Uber backed out of the driveway. He wanted to get out and run to him, but what would he say? Sorry I didn’t accept your dead Spock ears? Anyway, he hated that house, because Mike had bought it for Louie, as a last ditch attempt to make things work and pretend they were a normal adult couple. A paranoid part of him sometimes feared she was still in there.

At home, Jay took a long shower and decided it would be cruel not to text Mike before he crawled into bed and tried to sleep the day away. He’d already taken Advil, but it wasn’t doing anything, and neither was the water he gulped from as he contemplated what to say. His head felt run over, and his sore ass made every movement sting with a reminder of how gone he let himself get when Mike gave him the right kind of grin while ignoring everyone else in the world.

He had to say something about being hungover, because nothing else made sense, and he didn’t want anything incriminating on the record, on Mike’s phone or anywhere in the written world.

Are you feeling okay?

Mike didn’t respond, so Jay decided he was probably asleep already. He likely didn’t bother with a shower or even brushing his teeth, the taste of Jay’s ass still on his lips when he faceplanted in his unmade bed. Jay stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom and allowed himself to wonder if he wished he was there, in Mike’s room, in his bed.

No? Yes? Answer unclear, ask again later.

He closed his eyes and considered how many more chances he would get to ask himself this same question in a way that mattered. Before he could despair too deeply, his phone buzzed on the nightstand. Even crawling across the bed to grab it was painful, everything in the universe seeming to close around him to put a searing spotlight on his bad decisions.

I feel like I’m dying was Mike’s reply.

I’m sorry, Jay sent.

For what?

Bringing tequila.

Mike didn’t respond, and Jay ended up falling asleep at last, holding the phone. His head was still hurting bad when he woke hours later, and Mike had sent another text.

Nah, it was worth it

Jay grinned and thought maybe this meant something would change, that Mike would recalibrate quickly and reach for him again soon. It didn’t happen when they met up at work a few days later, or a week after that, or the following year. When they finally fell together again, the world seemed to be somewhat literally ending. Jay didn’t hold on to any bitterness that morning or in the long months between their next visit to their private island. He knew he was the one dictating the parameters of this courtship. He probably came from a planet where it was customary. Mike was the one who deserved pity, for loving such a creature.

The part that made it okay was that Jay knew by then that Mike loved him. When he slept again, he dreamed that Mike was holding his hand and leading through the halls of some Star Trek ship, toward safety. Everyone else on board wanted to kill Jay, a contaminating alien, but Mike had developed a fondness for him, against all odds, and he was breaking with everything he believed in to push Jay into an escape pod before the others could find him.

“Aren’t you coming with me?” Jay asked, grabbing at the front of Mike’s uniform shirt through the open hatch of the escape pod.

“It’s too small,” Mike said, looking like he’d weep. “I’m too big.”

“Just break your arms and legs,” Jay said, scooting back to make room inside the device. “They’ll heal later.”

Mike still had that mournful look on his face as he shut the hatch and sent Jay flying.

*

Chapter 7: DAY FOUR

Chapter Text

Jay spends most of the night writing, listening to music and pacing around his office, occasionally dropping to the floor to do some push-ups or sit-ups. The more he thinks of this script as a project that’s just for him, a summer camp activity akin to making crafts that will later be put on a shelf to collect dust, the less it feels like a weighty assignment he gave himself by acting like a fool and lying about it. It’s fun to be working on something that won’t make him any money or require a public explanation. He’s gone all in on the uncomfortable fuck buddies subplot with James and Matt, and has resisted using more actual-Mike dialogue after being unable to resist putting ‘I want to eat your ass more than I want to live’ line in his treatment. Mike will probably be impressed that Jay remembers him saying that, if he even remembers it himself.

Mike is half-awake when Jay goes back to the bedroom to check on him, and he only wants three Advil, which means he probably wants sex, too. Jay hopes he does, and has a spring in his step on the way to get the Advil, remembering the night of the Halloween party, his first experience getting his ass eaten, the way Mike dove in like he really did want it more than life itself. Writing notes toward various weird and humorous sex scenes in his script has left him wanting the real thing, and he sits on the bed beside Mike when he returns, flush-faced with energy while Mike lies there looking tired and miserable.

“Want me to shave you again?” Jay asks. Mike could interpret this as shaving his face or balls or both, Jay is up for whatever.

“No,” Mike says. “I want a real meal.”

“Meaning what?”

“Pancakes. Bacon, eggs. Maybe some fresh fruit on the side, for health. I’m supposed to be healing, here, Jay, and you’re feeding me bird food and stale old pizza.”

“Well, I do need to go to the store,” Jay says, eyeing the body paint kit on the floor. He wants to replace it with something they can actually use, and will have to visit the costume shop downtown to get what he needs. “Anything else I should put on the list?”

“Are you kidding me?” Mike brightens and sits up a little at the opportunity to make demands. “Beer, of course. Now that I’m not taking the prescription stuff I can have beer again. And bread, and good cheese for grilled cheese sandwiches, and canned tomato soup. The cheap kind that’s full of sugar, not any health food shit.”

“I can make you homemade tomato soup that would taste way better.”

“Bullshit. Can you? Okay, maybe. But I want real cheese, Jay! Wisconsin cheddar. No skimping on low fat stuff.”

“I don’t eat low fat cheese, Mike. I don’t eat low fat anything anymore, really.”

Mike frowns like he doesn’t believe that.

“What’s with you?” he asks. “You’re all chipper.”

“Why shouldn’t I be chipper? I stayed up all night writing, since I slept all day. It’s going pretty good, you know. For what it is.”

“For what it is? What is it?”

“An exercise-- Just, like we talked about. Summer camp writing practice. Did you decide what to write about?”

“Yeah, actually. When I woke up and you weren’t here I spent some time lying alone in the dark and thinking about my script.”

Jay raises his eyebrows, waiting. If Mike wants to be pissy about not having Jay’s company in bed all night long, he can go ahead and have his tantrum and get over it. Jay won’t apologize for the productive way he spent the night.

“It’s about this washed-up private detective,” Mike says, sitting up taller against the headboard. “He’s in his mid-forties, an alcoholic, in a shitty marriage to a girl he impregnated in high school, and their kid is an asshole who still lives at home. He’s got nothing going for him and business is slow. As you can imagine, this fellow would be played by me.”

“I see,” Jay says. He can picture it, admittedly. It’s a good role for Mike to showcase his ability to act angry and miserable.

“So one day this old man, played by Rich, of course, comes to him with a new private detective assignment. He’s convinced that his neighbor is an alien, and he wants my guy to use his investigative skills to prove it. Guess who plays the alien.”

Jay stares at Mike, feeling invaded. He’s pretty sure he never told Mike about that dream he had years ago, about being an alien on a Star Trek ship. Mike is the one who once called him an alien out loud, so maybe it’s not that weird.

“You!” Mike says when Jay doesn’t respond. “You’re the alien guy. You live alone, you’re doing weird shit, and Rich is on to you. My guy thinks the old man is crazy, but he’s happy to take his money, and he has to act like he’s investigating this supposed alien guy so he follows him around. Well, guess what. He develops a lustful obsession with him, then he finds out this fucker really is an alien from another planet, and he has to protect him from the army of old people who Rich’s character rallies to kidnap the alien-- What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m not,” Jay says. He swallows drily. “That’s good, that’s-- That all sounds good.”

He doesn’t mention that it’s oddly reminiscent of a dream he once had, or that he’s kind of jealous because Mike’s idea has an actual narrative, whereas Jay’s is still kind of rambling. He isn’t sure how it ends yet.

“So what happens?” he asks. “Your guy helps the alien escape back to his planet?”

“Nah, they kill all the old people in a comical bloodbath and move to Vegas together to start a magic act, using the alien’s space powers to con people.”

Jay waits for Mike to say that’s a joke, but he’s just smiling like he’s proud of himself for this plot twist.

“Okay,” Jay says, patting Mike’s thigh. He still wants to fuck before he runs errands. “Anything else you want?”

“What, from the grocery store?”

“Yeah, I guess-- Yeah.”

“Cherry soda, peanut butter pretzels, beef jerky-- The good kind! Uhh, and cashews. Whole cashews, not those shitty broken up pieces.”

Jay sighs and gets out his phone to add all that to the list he’d begun typing.

“I’m going to gain fifteen pounds,” he says, imagining a whole summer of this: Mike in his bed, junk food packing the cabinets, staying up all night to write a script full of gay sex. Actually it sounds wonderful, but there’s a worrisome edge to it. Too much indulgence has never served him as well as it’s served Mike and his whims.

“Don’t worry,” Mike says, reaching out to grab the front of Jay’s t-shirt and yank him closer. “I’ll fuck the calories out of you.”

He pulls Jay in for a morning breath kiss and Jay lets it happen, laughing against Mike’s mouth and parting his lips for Mike’s hot tongue. He wants to ask if he can just sit on Mike’s face for like ten minutes before he leaves for the store, please? Mike pushes him back before he can.

“Get a move on,” Mike says. He looks like he knows exactly how horny Jay feels and like he’s enjoying delaying his satisfaction. “I’m starving.”

“Wait,” Jay says when he’s almost out of the room, turning back. “You didn’t say-- Does the alien guy fall in love with the detective? Or is it just like a one-sided thing?”

“Oh, they fall in love,” Mike says, somehow managing to pronounce this threateningly. “They have weird interspecies sex right on screen. It’s supposed to be funny. I might also make it hot, but that’ll really be more direction than script.”

“You’re planning to actually shoot this, huh?” Jay tries not to feel like the mania in Mike’s eyes is something that will prove lasting, ultimately resulting in Jay playing a love-starved alien who Mike’s character saves in a movie that would likely ruin them financially and otherwise.

“I feel inspired,” Mike says, revealing nothing. He makes a shooing gesture with his hand. “Fetch me my supplies, nurse, you’re slacking off.”

Jay makes a face and considers saying that Mike can’t treat him like this if he expects to get what he wants. He doesn’t bother, because they both know he actually can. It’s like a game, Jay thinks, walking out of his apartment with his reusable grocery bags and Mike’s list of demands loaded on his phone. Mike has to shield himself from how afraid he is of Jay turning on him by being a dick, as if he could bail at any moment and find someone else to buy his groceries. Jay has to similarly hide how much he just likes doing what Mike tells him to by making faces and pouting about it, pitying himself.

He goes to the costume shop first. It’s been a downtown fixture since Jay moved here in his twenties, and he worried all throughout the pandemic that it wouldn’t survive, but the owner has family money and the shop has always been more of a hobbyist venture than something that makes much profit. Jay has been in this place a million times but hasn’t yet encountered the young woman currently working behind the counter, who ignores him in favor of her phone as he passes by, which is fine by him. He knows where he’s going and what he wants.

The body paint section is well-stocked, and he’s purchased from it before. He grabs handfuls of colors from the Creature Pax brand: Black Lagoon, Cranial White, Infection Yellow. State of Decay with Red Undertones. If they’re going to get fucked up enough on whatever’s going on to paint each other in Jay’s bed, they’re going to be painting each other as monsters. Though Jay supposes Mike will be doing him as more of an alien. He adds a bottle of Sludge Green to his collection and moves on to other materials, wishing this place had shopping baskets.

He gets a selection of professional cremes in brighter colors and a Paradise Propallate that costs a hundred and thirty dollars, because they need a new one at work anyway. He can write all of this off on his taxes, which is mildly amazing but doesn’t quell his sense of humiliation as he piles everything onto the counter for the cashier to ring up. It’s not as if she knows he’s using this for recreational sex and not some actual professional work. In his case it’s kind of both.

“Jay?” someone says when she’s nearly done scanning everything, and he turns with his usual horror at being recognized, but it’s just his friend Danny who does children’s puppet workshops now, rather than the weird experimental shit he was doing with puppets when he met Jay a decade ago. The only horrifying part of this encounter is that Danny has a child with him, a little girl perhaps six or seven years old who is presumably his daughter.

“Whoa, hi!” Jay says, wanting to sweep all of the body paint and makeup off the counter and pretend it’s not his, though Danny knows what he does for work and there’s no reason he’d think Jay is here buying sex accessories. Still, his face is blazing and he wants to run.

“Of course I’d see you here,” Danny says, smiling. He gestures to the girl. “It’s her birthday next week and she wants a princess dress for the party.”

The girl half-ducks behind Danny and mutters something inaudible into his leg.

“Go ahead and check out what they have,” Danny says, nodding to the racks of colorful children’s costumes, which are right up front. “How’ve you been?” he asks when she’s trotted off. He glances at the total on the register, over four hundred dollars, and all the supplies that the cashier is bagging at an infuriatingly leisurely pace. “Busy with the show?”

“Yep,” Jay says. He digs out his card and tries to give it to the cashier, though she hasn’t asked for it. “Summer’s kind of slower, um. Mike broke his leg, so. Not sure how we’re gonna film around that yet.”

“Jesus, how’d he do that?”

“Fell off a ladder.” Jay doesn’t know why he’s divulging anything. It’s not like him, he just feels panicked, like he’s been caught by a documentary camera crew and they expect an explanation.

“Damn, poor guy. Is he still with, um. That singer?”

“Oh, no, that’s-- She lives in North Carolina now. That was a long time ago.”

“Right. I haven’t seen you guys in ages. What else is new?”

He seems to be looking for a way to ask Jay if he ever got married or had children, and what about Mike, and if not then why, exactly? Or maybe Jay is only frantically projecting. He’s still holding out his card, waiting for the cashier to take it. She’s still bagging items one at a time. She might know who he is, which is another reason he shouldn’t be talking about anything beyond the weather.

“Nothing much,” Jay says. “Do you still do your workshop thing?”

He’s afraid that sounded condescending, but Danny doesn’t seem offended. He talks about the puppet workshop and Jay pretends to listen, nodding and waiting for this to be over while the cashier finally charges his card and hands the bags over.

“Looks like you’re working on something pretty involved,” Danny says, nodding to the bags when Jay has them. “Do I get spoilers?”

“Do you actually watch our show?” Jay asks, stunned.

Danny makes an apologetic face.

“Sometimes?” he says, unconvincingly. “It’s hard, when you have kids, to find time to watch anything for yourself. Mostly it’s Bluey.”

Jay nods, familiar with that from spending time around his brothers’ kids. Even the parents tend to want to talk about it with him, for some reason, as if he may take interest in watching.

“Well, happy birthday,” Jay says in the direction of the little girl, who has her back to him while combing through the costumes and either doesn’t hear this or care. “Have a good one,” he says to Danny before finally escaping with his bulging bags of supplies.

“Tell Mike to get well soon!” Danny calls after him, as if he knows Jay is the one taking care of Mike in all intimate ways possible, though of course he can’t know that, doesn’t know anything, and just means ‘when you see him at work,’ surely.

Jay is rattled at the Pick N Save and keeps rechecking his list to make sure he got everything. In addition to Mike’s requests he gets some actual food, including everything he needs to make tomato soup from scratch. It was one of his staples back when he was in better shape. He imagines going for a run after getting home with all this stuff, but it just seems like a dumb fantasy. He’ll be swept back into Mike’s orbit at once, and wonders if he should even mention seeing Danny. Certainly he won’t say that Danny was under the impression that Mike still lived with Louie. Mike might not even remember who Danny is. He was always more Jay’s friend than Mike’s, like most of the people they used to know.

Jay’s phone rings before he can start the car, and he grabs it assuming it will be Mike asking for some last minute addition to his shopping list. It’s not Mike calling, it’s Rich.

“How’s it going?” Rich asks. “Everybody still breathing?”

“Yes,” Jay says. “How’s your trip?”

“Changing the topic so soon? Uh-oh.”

“Shut up, Rich. He’s fine. Not even taking the serious painkillers anymore, just Advil.” Saying this, Jay realizes he should have bought more.

“I guess that’s good,” Rich says. “How are you holding up, seriously? Is he being a pain in the ass?”

“It’s Mike and he can’t walk, what do you think? But it’s not that bad. We, um. It’s been good to hang out again, actually. It’s been a while.”

“Oh jesus.”

“What?” Jay knows he shouldn’t have said that. He’s got no idea why his tongue is suddenly so loose. Maybe working through the entire night wasn’t the wisest move.

“Nothing, nothing,” Rich says. “Just let me know if you need anything. We’ll be home tomorrow.”

“We’re managing fine, thanks. Enjoy the rest of your vacation.”

“Hmm,” Rich says, as if he’s suspicious of this businesslike tone. “Okay. Tell Mike I said hello and hang in there.”

“Why don’t you call him to check on him?” Jay asks, wondering if this has happened already and Rich is comparing their stories to get a sense of what’s actually going on, like a detective.

“Mike never answers his phone. I did text him, and he told me he’s writing a new role for me in a movie. Eugh.”

“When was this? This morning?”

“Yes. I don’t mean to be negative! That’s great. But the last one. Well, you know.”

Jay grunts. Their last attempt to make a movie was an exercise in misery and part of why Louie finally dumped Mike. But the myopic years leading up to their decision to make it were more to blame than the project itself.

“It’s just something to do,” Jay says, meaning their script-writing efforts. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried. Best of luck. Bye.”

Best of luck? Jay stares down at the phone in his hand after Rich has hung up. He feels vaguely pranked and isn’t sure why, like Mike and Rich know something about what’s going on here that he doesn’t.

Back at the apartment, Mike is typing away on his laptop in bed. He’s slightly sweat-sheened, working as if his fingers can hardly keep up with his story-addled mind. It takes Jay a moment to recognize why this seems doubly strange.

“Your wrist brace,” he says, locating it on the bedstand, where Mike has unceremoniously deposited it.

“It’s feeling better,” Mike says, but he’s flushed across his cheeks like he’s in some kind of developing pain, eyes flashing. “Are you making pancakes yet?”

“I just walked through the fucking door.”

He left all the body paint stuff in the kitchen with the grocery bags that still need to be unpacked, and now he’s considering just hiding it from Mike, whose behavior does not merit the giving of expensive gifts right now.

“Please, Jay?” Mike says, clasping his hands together to beg. This makes him wince, but he tries to hide it. “I’m dying of hunger, it’s no joke.”

“I’m about to do it! Put that brace back on, goddammit. You’re not supposed to remove it before your one week checkup.”

“But, Jay. This idea. It’s really coming together. I’m serious. I kind of fucking love this. It’s, like, writing itself.”

“You can dictate to me,” Jay says, though he hates the thought of this. “I’ll type for you.”

“Ehh,” Mike says, wincing again. “That might slow me down too much.”

“I type faster than you and you know it.”

“Yeah, but if we do it that way I’ll have to consider everything I’m writing through the filter of your harsh judgment instead of just, you know. Spewing my thoughts freely.”

“You-- Never mind. Just-- I’m gonna make breakfast now. Do whatever you want.”

He isn’t sure why he’s in such a bad mood as he returns to the kitchen, except that maybe he’s overdue for a real meal, too. He’s also a little jealous. Mike’s idea is more interesting than his, and Mike seems to know this, thus his gleeful typing, which continues audibly after Jay has left the room. The idea also feels like something Mike semi-stole from Jay, though it isn’t. He’s just an alien in both of their imaginations. Jay makes a racket with the pancake preparation, slamming mixing bowls onto the counter and an iron skillet onto the stove. Mike just keeps typing in there, unperturbed.

“It’s ready!” Jay shouts when he’s sitting down at the table to a plate he’s made for himself: bacon, pancakes, scrambled eggs. He’s ravenous, but he made a plate for Mike first, and it sits waiting for him while Mike ambles out on the crutches, slower than usual and looking extra disheveled as he settles himself into the seat across from Jay’s.

“Wow,” Mike says, looking at the stack of pancakes, pile of bacon, perfectly cooked eggs. “You really went all out.”

“You--” Jay stops himself before can say ‘told me to’ like that’s his excuse. He shovels more eggs into his mouth instead.

Mike grabs the fork Jay set out with his right hand and shouts in pain, dropping it. The fork clatters against his plate and then onto the floor.

“Goddammit,” Jay says. “I’m getting the brace.”

He pushes away from the table, furious that he’s doing this instead of eating and that Mike is probably going to dictate his whole script to Jay before Jay even properly starts his own. Tale as old as time.

Mike lets Jay help him slide his right arm back into the brace, though he also sighs powerfully, like Jay is punishing him rather than trying to keep him from injuring himself further.

“These are really good,” Mike says with a mouthful of pancakes when Jay is back in his seat, eating in grim silence and waiting for the carbs and fat to heal his shitty attitude.

“I saw Danny Bolton at the store,” Jay says, not mentioning that it was the costume shop and not the grocery store. He’s stashed the bags of those purchases in the pantry, wanting to bring them out at the right moment.

“Who the hell is Danny Bolton?” Mike asks. “Ohhh,” he says before Jay can reply. “That puppet freak. Did you have a crush on him or something? Back in the day?”

“Why the hell would you think that?” Jay asks, though he kind of did, more for Danny’s commitment to puppetcraft than anything else.

“Never mind, jesus.” Mike sits back a little in his chair, as if to distance himself from Jay’s gloominess. “What happened? Was he a dick to you or something?”

“No, he was a completely normal person. He was there with his kid.”

“That lunatic had a child?”

“He’s not a lunatic, what are you even talking about?”

“His puppet theater shit, he made the guy in Being John Malkovich seem normal.”

Jay can’t help but grin at the reference. Maybe the food is helping.

“I liked his stuff,” Jay said.

“Of course you did.”

“Anyway, he does workshops for kids now, showing them how to make puppets. Which is, you know. Admirable.”

Mike rolls his eyes.

“He makes a living off that?” he asks, mumbling. “I doubt it. His wife must have a real job.”

“Really, Mike? You’re going to judge people who don’t have ‘real jobs,’ in your position?”

“There’s a difference,” Mike says, and he gives Jay that old warning look that still makes him want to go down to his knees, a little. “Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?”

“I’m not! You know what I mean. I actually bought you a really good present, so. Be nice to me.”

“What? Where?” Mike peers around the kitchen.

“It’s a surprise for later,” Jay says. “I suppose you’ll want to go back to your screenplay after you eat?”

“Eh.” Mike glances down at the brace. “I might need a break. If you want to fuck around or something.”

“I actually think I need to sleep,” Jay says, though he hates admitting this. He’s wilting at the table, and still irritable despite the food. “I didn’t get a wink last night.”

“A wink.” Mike grins at the term. Jay doesn’t want to dwell on the fact that he’s beginning to sound like his elderly mother, but at least he has the lack of sleep to blame at present. “Okay,” Mike says, as if agreeing to a plan Jay has made for the two of them. “I didn’t sleep that great last night myself. Maybe I’ll join you.”

Jay withholds a groan. He wants to shout at Mike, how many times do I have to tell you I can’t sleep with you there? Yesterday’s post-sex shutdown doesn’t count, but he doesn’t want to explain why to Mike, or what subspace is, because he’ll laugh about it and feel proud of himself for sending Jay there at the same time.

“Danny doesn’t watch our show,” Jay says, instead of any of that.

“Who cares?” Mike says, with such earnest disgust that Jay laughs hard and feels better.

Predictably, once they’re settled into bed, Mike on his back and Jay curled up beside him, Mike is out within a few minutes, breathing deeply and content to be full of pancakes and bacon. Jay’s stomach is churning from too much heavy food, and he’s too hot even when he’s not touching any part of Mike, who seems to radiate heat across the whole bed like an electric blanket. He thinks of getting up to write, but feels too drained to create anything. Plus, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Mike wants to treat his script like an actual project, already assigning each of them to a role and compromising his dominant wrist to type up the story that’s telling itself. Jay was never going to make a movie where he played a somewhat self-based character who lets Mike’s character eat his ass, anyway. He can still hardly believe that ever happens in real life, in private. It’s nobody’s business.

The alien and detective thing could be played more like a joke, if they actually go anywhere with it. And they could always ditch the romance. Mike might chicken out in that department when it comes to even presenting the idea to Rich. He’s not exactly fearless about that part of himself, though he does seem to care less and less as he gets older. He doesn’t have a family like Jay’s that will nose into his life and make assumptions even if he just stays single. He does have his public persona to consider, but he already seems to be scaffolding some kind of sidelong confession at times. Jay isn’t sure why he would bother and expose himself to that scrutiny. They could make a movie about a depressed detective falling in love with an alien who wears a man’s body as a disguise and not present it as an announcement of Mike’s bisexuality.

He’s not exactly thinking straight but also painfully still awake when he hears his phone buzzing on the bedstand. It’s a relief to have a reason to sit up and give up on sleep, and he answers even though he doesn’t recognize the number, slipping out of the room so he won’t wake Mike.

“Jay?”

The voice is like an arrow through his chest, and he stops in mid-stride.

“Luh-- Hi!” He almost said her name out loud, something that he feels would have instantly awakened and irreversibly enraged Mike. He turns on his heel and closes the bedroom door behind him, swiftly and silently.

“Hi,” Louie says. She sounds uncertain about continuing, as if he called her. “Sorry. I got your number from Josh. I hope that’s okay.”

“Of course-- Of course, yeah! I’m glad you called, um. I know I was being weird, but I swear--” He hurries into his office and shuts the door before he says the rest, just in case. “I swear it was just me being weird and nothing to do with Mike. He didn’t ask me to contact you or anything like that.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t sound like she believes him, exactly, but she doesn’t sound mad. “Sorry I blocked you. That was dumb.”

“It’s fine! I get it.”

“Do you? Hmm.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out, directly into his ear. He wishes they could have this talk in person. It’s hard to imagine her anywhere but in Milwaukee or at any age but thirty, though he’s seen the pictures.

“How are you?” Jay asks, as if she might have called just to catch up. His heart is slamming, and he feels like he’s betraying Mike by being on this phone call, on a murderous level, but also like he wants to keep her on the phone for as long as he can and listen to anything she has to say, greedily.

“I’m okay,” she says. “I guess it was more jarring to hear from you than I thought it would be, at first. My feelings about it went downhill pretty quick.”

“Oh-- Sure. I know. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know much Mike has told you about how things ended between us. Maybe you know everything.”

“No, I don’t know anything, uh. He was-- He seemed so upset. He didn’t want to talk about it, so we didn’t press him.”

“Huh. Okay. He never said another word to me either, actually. After I left.”

“Really.”

“I haven’t spoken to him since the night before I moved out. My sister came over while he was off with you guys and helped me pack up all my stuff. I left a note. Did he tell you that part?”

“About a note? No, I mean it, we didn’t hear a word. He said you moved out. That’s it.”

“Anyway.” She exhales again. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Is he still single?”

“Um.” Jay takes a moment to factor himself into this equation. “Yes.”

“You were asking about that song,” she says. “The Weakness.”

“Right, yeah, I just, I was remembering it and thinking it might be right for this thing I’m working on--”

“What’s the thing you’re working on about?” she asks. “You and Mike?”

“What?” Jay sputters laughter as if that’s absurd, though she’s essentially right. “No! No, it’s not about us at all, it’s fiction, just a script I’m writing for fun, not even something I’d try to produce, probably--”

“I meant are you and Mike working on it. Together.”

“Oh! Oh, no. It’s just me. My thing.”

“Huh.” Again, she doesn’t sound like she really believes him. “I don’t know how much I should say. I’m not even sure I should have called. I’ve just felt so weird since yesterday. Like, I don’t know. Like I wanted to talk to you, but I never knew how to talk to you.”

Jay tries to process that, nodding stupidly though she can’t see him. He knows what she means, anyway. He was never sure how to talk to her either. As a fellow sufferer of the innermost joys and burdens of connecting himself to Mike, he’d wanted to confide in her at times, but she was also the last person he could be fully honest with.

“I don’t know what to say either,” Jay blurts, which is itself too revealing. He remembers that he still hasn’t slept. He should not be on this phone call right now, but it’s already happening and he’s not going to turn away from whatever she’s willing to tell him.

“That song,” Louie says. “It was the first year we were together. Back when he’d help me write. He used to treat me like I was going to be the famous one, like he thought I was so talented. The song was something I’d started working on years ago and kept digging back up, about this guy I dated in high school. My first love, I guess. He got someone else pregnant our senior year and, um. Were already broken up when that happened, but I would still see him as a friend, and it was difficult. Because we still loved each other, for a while.”

Jay thinks of what Mike said about the script he’s working on, the part about his character having gotten someone pregnant in high school. It’s probably unrelated.

“When Mike was into the song, at first I thought it was some kind of jealousy thing,” she says. “Because he’s like that, even about past stuff. Possessive and weird.”

“I know,” Jay says, unwisely. He’s too hard up for this opportunity to discuss what he knows about Mike in a way that only someone who fucked him for years will be able relate to, and only Louie qualifies. He licks his lips and forces himself to keep quiet through the long pause that follows.

“Right,” Louie finally says. “So, anyway. He helped me finish the song. It seemed so important to him, getting it right, that I thought he must have had a first love, too, somebody he still kinda missed like I missed that guy when I went home and saw him around town, looking miserable. I figured Mike just wasn’t telling me the details because he didn’t want me to get jealous. I’m the same way as him. I would have have been jealous, especially back then. He knew that about me, so. For a long time I just thought, well, there was someone before me and he’s not going to torture me with fun facts about her.”

Jay stands perfectly still in the middle of his office, feeling as if he’s been pinned to a specimen tray. She does seem to be in the room with him suddenly, seeing everything.

“But I couldn’t leave it alone,” she says. “Because even though we were together all the time I always felt like he was sort of ignoring me. He didn’t care about helping me with songs anymore. He didn’t seem bothered when I quit the band. He was just happy I had more time to work on his stuff. I took it-- And I still think this was true, maybe-- I took it like he didn’t want to be away from me. He wanted to share everything. Okay, I was into that, too. But there was something hollow about it, and I still wanted to know who he’d been in love with before me, who he was thinking about when he wrote those lyrics. I would get drunk and try to ask him about other women he’d been with. He acted like he didn’t want to talk about it because he was embarrassed about how ‘sleazy’ he was when he was younger.”

She lets that word hang heavily, and Jay wonders if Mike told her it was part of Jay’s litany of insults in his big Mike takedown that worked way too well.

“I don’t know what else to say,” Louie says, her voice getting harsh in the way it used to when she felt insulted. “Maybe you want to say something. I can’t think why else you’re really asking me about all this.”

“It really is--” Jay starts to say, but he can’t finish the lie. She’s not stupid. She knows he’s not just randomly picking that song because it fits some project he’s working on, thirteen years later, and she wouldn’t have called him if she expected him to just keep lying to her like an asshole. “Ah, god,” he says, stumbling over to his desk chair so he can sit. “Sorry.”

“Is he-- What is he doing, exactly?” Louie asks. She still sounds angry, but not at Jay. “With you? These days?”

“Working, and. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Okay. Well, the song is about you. Which I think you’re aware of. It took me a long time to realize that. It’s not why I left, by the way. He could be protective and sweet but he didn’t respect me. I’m not sure he respects anyone.”

“Yeah,” Jay says, mumbling. He does feel respected, sometimes: when Mike laughs at his jokes or panics about a career opportunity and gropes for his hand to get him through it. Less so when he’s demanding pancakes.

“I don’t think he even respects himself,” Louie says. “Unless he’s grown up a lot.”

“He-- I don’t know.” Jay isn’t going to talk shit about Mike with her. He once thought he would love confirmation about the song and about Louie putting one and two together over the years. Now he just feels like garbage, though he didn’t do anything, really.

“Here’s what I’ll tell you,” she says, sounding angry again. “If you walk out on him, he won’t run after you. I hope you know that.”

Jay opens his mouth and shuts it again. She doesn’t know about their fight, then. Jay did walk out. Mike did run after him, eventually, after running away.

But maybe she’s right. That was a long time ago. It’s not a trick Jay would expect to work twice.

“Thanks for telling me about the song,” Jay says, not wanting her advice on what he should expect from Mike. “I hope you don’t think, um. I mean, you know he was always, like. Faithful. To you.”

“Oh, fuck off!” she says, and she laughs in a way that brings him back to bad movie nights of the past, her unrestrained cackle when something was particularly stupid in a film. “You think I don’t know that? God, you’re such a little boy. Still!”

He waits for her to hang up, but she doesn’t. He isn’t sure if he should, doesn’t feel particularly insulted.

“You don’t need to fill me in or apologize for anything, Jay,” she says. “Just-- I’m not gonna say I feel sorry for you, but don’t underestimate how he can take over your whole life until you don’t even recognize yourself anymore.”

“Um,” Jay says, instead of, no shit, and too late.

“I guess you like it,” she says, sharply, and then she does hang up.

Jay puts the phone down beside his computer keyboard, carefully and soundlessly, not sure how to proceed with his day or life after hearing all that. He jumps out of his desk chair when the phone buzzes again, but it’s not a call this time, just a text from Louie.

I still like the idea of being your friend but I don’t think it’s possible. Take care.

He knows he has to respond but can’t make his brain work like a human’s would. Finally he just sends three words.

Thanks, you too.

He leaves his office and checks to make sure the bedroom door is still shut, then opens it very quietly and peeks in at Mike, who hasn’t moved. He’s still asleep, his unhurt arm flopped around the empty spot where Jay was before. Jay feels raw, looking at him with Louie’s words still echoing in his mind. For the most part it’s nothing he didn’t already know, aside from the thing about her leaving Mike a note and Mike not running after her. Jay wonders what the note said. He thinks of what he said to Mike that sent him running. You sleazy piece of shit. Mike had called himself sleazy, to her. Jay wishes he’d asked her who put the ‘fuck that guy, he’s just a piece of shit’ lyric in the song, but he knows, and knows he’d have to ask Mike what it means, which one of them it’s referring to, or if that line was supposed to be sung in Jay’s voice. While performing it live and on the recording, Louie sang it differently from the rest of the lyrics, in a kind of hoarse outcry.

Jay gets back in bed with Mike, though he knows he won’t be able to sleep after that conversation. He needs another kind of comfort, and he exhales shakily with relief when Mike blinks awake, turns his face against Jay’s and tightens his arm around his back, all of it like a reflex.

“What’s the matter?” Mike mutters, shifting his right arm over to rest his sprained wrist on Jay’s side.

“Nothing.” Will Jay ever tell him? Probably, but not now. “Do you need anything?”

“Hmm.” Mike smirks and slides his left hand down into the back of Jay’s boxer shorts. It feels newly illicit, like they’ve gone back in time to just after the Louie breakup, everything still fresh and bleeding. “Where’s my present, by the way?” Mike asks, squeezing. “Ready to give it to me now?”

“Yes. Wait here.”

Jay kisses Mike’s jaw before rolling out of the bed. It’s the kind of easy gesture of intimacy he’s never been capable of before, with Mike or anyone. He feels desperate now, and a little pathetic as he goes out into the kitchen to fetch the elaborate spread of supplies he bought for painting on each other.

“Whoa,” Mike says when Jay returns with all the bags. “What’s in there?”

Jay doesn’t respond, just walks around to the side of the bed that Mike isn’t lying on and dumps the bags one at a time, colorful paints and palettes spilling out and rolling toward Mike’s cast.

“Body paint?” Mike says, grabbing for the nearest Creature Pax color, which is Necrosis Purple.

“I read the reviews of the kit you bought,” Jay says. “Apparently that stuff is just like sugar water that makes you sticky, the colors barely show up. I figure, since we can write this stuff off on our tax return, you know, for work--” He pauses there and scans everything on the bed before turning the bags inside out, one at a time. “Fuck!” he says, throwing the last one down. “She didn’t give me a receipt.”

“Jay.” Mike is grinning in a particularly shiny-eyed way, and for a moment Jay wonders if he slipped another real painkiller into his rotation, but the bottle is still out in the kitchen. “You really want to paint me that bad, huh? With high quality materials?”

“I don’t-- It’s your idea! I don’t know what the hell I’d paint on you, honestly. But, uh. If you want to do it. To me, or whatever. We should do it right.”

“C’mere,” Mike says, reaching for him with a rare sweetness in his eyes that makes Jay feel doubly guilty about the call from Louie. He can’t bring it up now, doesn’t want to ruin this.

“I’m kind of out of it,” Jay says, walking back around to the other side of the bed. “So I dunno if we should dive in to body paint right away.”

“Didn’t you sleep at all?”

“Mhm, no. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Get over here,” Mike says, and Jay crumples down onto the mattress to curl up against his side. “I have an idea,” Mike says, his mouth moving in Jay’s hair.

“Gonna fuck me to sleep like you’re gonna fuck the calories out of me?” Jay asks, mumbling this as a sincere question. Mike thinks his big dick can fix everything. Jay envies that about him so much.

“Noo,” Mike says. “Or, not entirely. I know what would help you sleep, and it might help you enjoy this painting thing without getting all anal about making it perfect. No pun intended.”

“What?”

“Take half of one of those pills. It’ll make you feel great, then you’ll fall asleep.”

Jay moans, distrusting how good that sounds right now, the perfect solution for how tired and strung out he feels. He’s ready to be away from his own mind for a while, but he has no experience with real drugs and hardly ever even smokes weed, which just makes him eat like a maniac and then fall asleep.

“Maybe I should start smoking weed,” he says. “Or taking the sleep aid kind that doesn’t get you high.”

“Whatever, maybe, but in the meantime, try this. I’ll stay sober and watch out for you.”

Jay moans and sits up, not yet clear on what his plan is. Mike is asking him to do something, and he’s in an exhausted, guilt-stricken state that makes his already nearly insuppressible urge to follow Mike’s orders basically impossible to ignore.

“I should eat something,” he says, and then he remembers the huge breakfast they had, not long ago. The progress of the day’s hours feels distorted by Louie’s interference. He’s still full, anyway, so when he goes out to the kitchen he cuts a pill in half and swallows it with nothing more than a glass of water.

Then it’s done, and wherever this is going to take him is already on the horizon. He begins gathering supplies for Mike’s painting scheme, though this seems more insane than taking Mike’s medication. Little is making sense by the time he’s spreading towels across his bed and topping them with an old bedsheet he doesn’t care about. Mike is standing propped on his crutches, watching this, all of the painting supplies distributed between the two bed stands.

“How are you feeling?” Mike asks, perhaps concerned about how silently Jay is working to prepare his bed for this lunacy.

“No effect so far,” Jay says, assuming he’s asking about the pill. “Just tired, still.”

“Should I shave?” Mike asks. “Are you going to be painting my face?”

“How about you do me first,” Jay says, crawling into the center of the bed. He kneels there and waits for Mike to join him. “I can’t be creative in the state I’m in. But I want to see what you have in mind, you know. For me.”

“Well, an alien, of course!” Mike says, heading back toward the bed on the crutches. “Since you got such pro level stuff, I can practice how I’m gonna do your makeup for the movie.”

“Aren’t I-- Isn’t my guy just human-looking? As a disguise?”

“Yeah, for most of the movie. But during the interdimensional sex scene his true form can be glimpsed by his human lover. I can’t decide if it’ll be touching or comical. Maybe both!”

Jay can’t think of anything he’d like less than to be wearing goofy alien makeup while performing whatever an interdimensional sex scene entails with Mike as his scene partner, but he supposes they can cross that bridge when they come to it. He helps Mike get back into position, elevating the leg dutifully while Mike settles into place, sitting up against the headboard before reaching for one of the new brushes that Jay purchased along with everything else.

“I can’t believe she didn’t give me the receipt,” Jay says, thinking again of that listless cashier. He can’t shake the feeling that she knew who he was and what he was doing there and that she’s telling someone about it right now, with the receipt as evidence.

“Relax,” Mike commands, smacking the mattress with his left hand. “Come and straddle me so I can reach you. What-- What are you doing? Take your clothes off first!”

Jay groans but pulls off his t-shirt. He feels like the pill should be working by now, both impatient for something to shift within him and dreading what he’ll do when it does. He used to be so afraid to get drunk around Mike, as if he’d be whipping his clothes off and asking for a cock in his mouth as soon as he’d had a few beers, on his knees professing love. When he finally started drinking with Mike he was just more prone to laughing hard at the worst of his jokes, and happier than ever when Mike leaned into his space to mutter something mean about one of their friends.

“You’re not gonna be nude?” Mike asks when Jay straddles his thighs while still wearing his boxers.

“I’m sure I will be eventually,” Jay says. “Want me to take your shirt off so you don’t drip paint on it?”

“I can do it.” Mike sets the brush down and pops the velcro strap on his wrist brace, sliding it off. Jay watches this passively. When Mike flexes the fingers on his right hand, Jay wants to lean forward and lick them. Maybe the pill has started affecting him, or maybe he’s just still blazingly horny beneath his fatigue.

Mike manages to get his shirt off, only making a few uncomfortable faces as he tweaks his still-hurt wrist to do so. Jay would normally shout at him to put the fucking brace back on, but at the moment it doesn’t seem that important. Mike usually knows what he’s doing, even when he’s wrecking himself. Maybe especially then.

“Let’s see,” Mike says, examining the available colors of Creature Pax. “I’ll start with this neon green as the base, I think. Is that too obvious, for an alien?”

“It’s that or the bright blue,” Jay says, because anything darker would end up looking offensive, and the lighter colors are for zombies. “And blue is too Avatar-ish.”

“Right.” Mike smirks up into Jay’s face, looking like he’s remembering a joke he wants to tell.

“What?” Jay asks, flexing on top of him. Mike feels perfectly spongy. These are the big thighs Jay was born to sit on.

“Your eyes,” Mike says.

“What about ‘em?”

“Nothing. Here I go!”

Jay’s eyes flutter shut when Mike paints his cheek. He blinks them open and grins, though he’s not sure what’s funny. He’s just amused by how strange they are, that they’re spending their day doing this. Mike is a little hard under the seat of Jay’s squirming ass, already.

“This is like some kind of bizarre mating ritual,” Jay says.

“Story of my life,” Mike says, still painting.

“Our life,” Jay says, and that’s when he’s sure that he’s high, which makes him laugh with delight.

Mike laughs, too, and sits back to admire his work.

“How do I look?” Jay asks.

“Green,” Mike says. He shakes his right wrist and moans. “Fuck. I gotta use my left hand, sorry. It’ll be a mess.”

“Like I care,” Jay says, then he’s afraid that sounded mean. “You’ll do fine.”

“What about this?” Mike asks, touching Jay’s beard with his left hand. “Can I paint it?”

“Please don’t.”

This makes Mike chortle with laughter, and Jay snickers, closing his eyes again. He opens them when he feels the paintbrush on the side of his throat.

“Oh no,” Jay says. “You’re doing my whole body?”

“I’m just giving you gills,” Mike says, sweetly.

It sounds sweet to Jay, anyway. He shuts his eyes and swallows, forcing himself not to speak. Gills, as if Mike has known all along about Jay’s underwater breathing thing. He gave Jay gills years ago, the first time they kissed.

“My gills aren’t green?” Jay asks when he sees Mike is using a shade of purple from the palette, applying it with his finger.

“There will be some green, too,” Mike says. “Hold your horses.”

Something about that dumb phrase makes Jay need to touch him, so he slides his hands onto Mike’s shoulders and exhales. Squeezing his thighs around Mike’s feels good, so he does that until he’s getting hard in his boxers.

“This is escalating to sex too quickly,” Mike says, grinning like he actually loves that Jay is already getting desperate, because of course he does.

“We could do it as our characters,” Jay says, to spur him into action. “From your script.”

Mike’s eyes light up for the suggestion. Jay feels something corresponding unlock in his chest, and he realizes this must always happen when he does something that visibly pleases Mike. There is a physical thing within him that opens like a flower for a bee. He’s not to blame for being made this way, and in the moment he isn’t even feeling sorry for himself about it. He swoops down to kiss Mike on the mouth, only smearing the green paint onto him a little.

“Remember,” Mike says when Jay pulls back. “You’re a virgin in this scenario.”

“Okay,” Jay says, nodding. He’s into that, sure. Going back in time with Mike, who was there to take his actual virginity. He wishes they could do this in that bed over the hardware store, so profoundly that for a second he almost cries about it, but then it passes.

“You’ve never even seen a human dick before,” Mike says, bumping his up against Jay’s ass.

“How long have I lived on Earth?”

“Uhh, just like nine months, I guess.”

“And I haven’t looked at porn?”

“Heavens, no. You’re totally asexual until you meet me. I mean, my guy.”

Jay snorts, thinking that it was kind of like that, actually. He’d thought about sex constantly since middle school, but people’s actual bodies rarely moved him to action, until Mike. He loops his arms around Mike’s neck and bounces on his dick a little. He’ll need to help Mike peel his boxers off, and getting them over the cast will be a whole ordeal. Maybe he’ll just rip them off, alien-style.

“What’s my guy’s name?” Jay asks.

“His real name, or the name he’s going by while disguised as a human?”

“Both. And how’d he get a human disguise?”

“Well, they have advanced technology where he comes from, Jay. He can do many fantastical things. His fake human name is Boyd.”

“Boyd? That’s terrible.”

“I know, the terribleness is intentional. He wants people to leave him alone, get it? And his alien name is of course unpronounceable for humans, but he whispers it into my guy’s ear at one point, using his actual tongue, which looks like a large and more flexible Twizzler.”

“Boyd,” Jay says, trying the name out with his human tongue. “Okay, so what’s your guy’s name?”

“Harrison Dorfzan.”

Jay dissolves into helpless laughter and Mike seems pleased with this, reaching down to squeeze Jay’s ass with both hands.

“That’s perfect,” Jay says, and he kisses Mike for it.

“You’re blitzed,” Mike says.

“I guess. How can you tell?”

“You keep kissing me. Take your underwear off, sir.”

Mike reaches for the paint instead of the lube when they’re both naked. Jay is plotting to scramble downward and suck his cock soon, but in the meantime he lets Mike paint his shoulders and his arms, decorating them with colorful alien markings that have some kind of meaning in Boyd’s true culture.

“What’s he doing on Earth anyway?” Jay asks.

“He got stuck here after a job went wrong. He’s a thief.”

“What was he trying to steal?”

“Minerals and shit, you know, valuable Earth ores that only exist plentifully on this planet. And not only is this old man who lives in his apartment complex stalking him and eventually trying to kill him, there are aliens he owes resources to who want him dead, too, for not delivering the goods. So he’s stuck here, or they’ll kill him out in space.”

“Poor Boyd,” Jay says, meaning it. He’s picturing himself, friendless and hunted, awaiting Mike’s appearance in his life. He lived it, more or less, and it was terrible.

“He’s the most exciting thing that ever happened to Detective Harrison Dorfzan,” Mike says. “But he’s super closed off and stoic at first, kind of Vulcan-ish in demeanor. Which will play to your strengths as an actor.”

“I feel too old to be an actor,” Jay says.

“That’s ridiculous. Ian McKellan is like a thousand years old and he’s still great.”

“But he’s not, you know. Playing someone desirable.”

“You’re desirable,” Mike says, jabbing Jay’s ass crack with his boner to demonstrate.

“Then how come we’re not fucking yet?”

“‘Cause I like it when you’re drooling for it.” Mike looks up from painting Jay’s left arm after saying so, boner-jabbing him differently, this time with his eyes.

“I’m gonna suck it,” Jay says, reaching back to grope for Mike’s dick. “How is Boyd at blow jobs?”

“He’s spectacular.”

“How? He’s never even seen a dick.”

“Jay. This character has your mouth. He’s a natural.”

“Was I born to suck your big cock, Mike?” Jay asks, crawling backward to get access to it. “Is that what you think?”

“You’re blowing my mind right now,” Mike says, eyes wide. “No pun intended.”

“Why?” Jay laughs and licks the pre-come from the slit of Mike’s cockhead, fucking hungry for it.

“Just the things that are coming out of your mouth,” Mike says. “Such as asking me if I think you were born to suck my big cock. Jesus! Ah-- Yeah, fuck, yes-- Suck it like you were, yeah. Like that.”

Jay does so, closing his eyes and savoring the feeling of having so much of Mike in his mouth, the corners of his lips already aching a little from the stretch. It feels better than ever with this new lightness in his bones. He wishes they’d put music on or something. It’s cinematic, a missing scene that will only be implied in their eventual movie: the alien’s first blow job, during which he learns that sucking this human off might be his life’s true calling.

“I’m gonna come,” Mike says in a complaining whine, tugging at Jay’s hair. “C’mon-- C’mon, c’mere, I want, mph, want you in my lap.”

By this he means he wants Jay to be riding his cock when he comes, and Jay is all for it. Mike already has the lube, and Jay is almost high enough to feel like they don’t need it, but he smears some on Mike’s dick before sliding down onto it with a guttural groan, the kind of thing he normally would have suppressed even while sex-dazed. Mike strokes his bared throat as if to thank it for making that sound.

“God, that feels so good,” Jay says, kind of whining this out while rolling his hips to feel it even more. “Jesus christ. Mike.”

“Harrison,” Mike corrects. He smirks when Jay gives him a fuzzy stare. “Remember, you’re Boyd. Taking dick for the first time.”

“I can’t think like an alien right now,” Jay says, because having Mike inside him is the only time he feels like a normal person.

“Sure you can,” Mike says, and he sits up to gather Jay into his arms, holding him still when he wants to bounce. “Is this the first time you’ve been with another species, baby?”

“Baby?”

“Harrison is corny.”

Jay whines and tries to move, but Mike holds him tighter to keep him locked in place. That feels good, too, enough to make Jay gasp and clench up around him, his head thrown back.

“What does Boyd call him?” Jay asks, tipping forward to press his nose against Mike’s. “Surely not baby or, ah. Anything like that.”

“Harry,” Mike says.

Jay snorts and rubs his fingers over Mike’s hairy chest. He must have touched his neck at some point, because there’s some purple makeup smeared on his fingertips.

“Did I mess up my gills?” he asks.

“They’re fine,” Mike says. He strokes the side of Jay’s throat carefully, as if brushing his fingers over delicate tissue. “You’re breathing, ain’t ya?”

Jay nods, transfixed by the calming warmth in Mike’s eyes. It’s like they’re mind-melded, truly having some kind of interdimensional experience together. Mike is everywhere inside him and it’s not scary at all, just comforting.

“God I wish I could put you on your back and just pound you,” Mike says.

“Me too,” Jay says, letting his voice crack under the weight of how much he means it. “So bad.”

“I know, baby, I know,” Mike says, grinding up into Jay and starting to look less calm, more about-to-come. He strokes Jay’s sweaty back and nips at his jaw, sort of growling with approval as he eases his grip enough to let Jay rock down onto him. “Yeah, fuck yeah. Get what you need from that dick. You like that?”

“Fuck yes.” Jay feels like he could cry just for how stupid that question was, though he liked hearing it and feels like he’s about to blow against Mike’s gut. “Mike, I mean-- Harry?”

“Yes, Boyd?”

“I, ah-- I don’t understand what’s happening to me,” Jay says, trying to make his voice Spock-like even as he pants and fucks himself on Mike’s dick, vigorously now. “I feel funny-- Here.”

He grabs his dick, pretending to be an alien who has never had a human orgasm before.

“Oh my god,” Mike says, like he might be in awe of Jay’s improv abilities. He grabs Jay’s thighs and starts pumping him up and down so Jay can just go slack in his grip and take it, the best feeling in the world. “You-- You’re gonna come,” Mike says, huffing the words out. “It’s okay. It’ll feel good. Just, ahhh, god-- Let it, ha, happen--”

Jay moans and jerks his dick, imagining that Boyd hasn’t even tried this yet, while alone. Nine months of being stuck in a human body without an orgasm, and now it’s so close, almost there, his balls pulling up and Mike’s dick grinding against his prostate while he jacks himself with animal instinct, the kind of clawing need for release that even an alien can relate to.

“That’s it,” Mike says, his voice pinched in a way that means he’s close, too. “There you go. Good boy.”

Jay comes for that, crumpling forward against Mike’s chest while he makes ungodly alien noises of relief and spills himself between their bodies. He laughs against Mike’s throat when he realizes what Mike actually said that set him off when he misheard it: Good, Boyd.

Mike says Jay’s name when he comes, forgetting to not be himself as he unloads in Jay’s ass. Jay holds him and feels him shuddering through it, every throb of Mike’s cock inside him making him feel like he’s still coming, too, his body seeming to evaporate into nothing but pleasure. Interdimensional, truly.

“Oh fuck,” Mike says, and he sounds pained, like he’s back on the verge of coming and trying to hold it in. He’s wincing when Jay sits up to look at him. “My wrist,” Mike says, opening one eye to peak at Jay. “I might, uh. Need the other half of that pill.”

“Okay, yeah, sorry--”

“It’s not your fault,” Mike says as Jay climbs off of him carefully. “I, ah. I forgot it was sprained. Jesus, that was, mph. Worth it.”

He looks queasy after saying so, staring down at his right wrist. Jay helps him slip the brace back on before going out ot the kitchen for the other half of the pill, which is still sitting on the countertop. He has come running down his thigh when he returns, in a big way, but he ignores it and watches Mike swallow the pill down with some water in a glass he had on the side table.

“Thanks,” Mike says. He uses his left hand to shift himself over, making room for Jay. “Come here, oh my god. Your eyes are like, black.”

“I-- What?” Jay thinks of subspace, but this doesn’t feel like that, exactly. Maybe he really did transform into an alien, his guard finally down enough to show Mike his true form.

“From the drugs, Jay. Your pupils are all blown. Come lie down.”

Jay takes his place at Mike’s side and lets Mike pull him close, though they’re both sweaty and more paint is smearing. Jay supposes it doesn’t matter. He closes his eyes and listens to Mike’s breath as it steadies and slows.

“This is what it would have been like,” Mike says when Jay has grown too comfortable and sleepy to defend himself against what he’s afraid Mike might mean. “Me and you. If we’d done it for real. Slumber party and a fuck fest every night.”

“Is it nighttime?”

“Don’t be a dick. You know I’m right.”

“I-- Don’t know. Not sure we could have maintained this level of, uh. Excitement, for twenty years.”

“No, we could have,” Mike says, sounding so wistful that Jay lifts his head to look at him. Mike is staring up at the ceiling. “I know we could have.”

“Well then why the fuck didn’t we?” Jay asks, too high to care what kind of answer he’ll get.

Mike shakes his head. His pill hasn’t kicked in yet, so he’s not ready to talk about it. Jay kisses his jaw to communicate that he understands and forgives him. Usually Jay is the one who is not ready.

“Remember when you told me I’m incapable of love?” Mike asks.

“Did I say that?” He knows he did. He’d fucking rehearsed it, and then couldn’t believe it was out of his brain and into the world, heard by Mike.

“It took me like two months to even think about how fucking strange that was. Coming from you. It’s like something a girl you just broke up with would say.”

Jay has no response to that.

“Then I thought, I bet that little fucker only said that because he wishes I was in love with him. And that’s when I realized I was.”

Jay rests his cheek down on Mike’s shoulder again. They’ve never talked about the fact that they love each other.

“I did wish that,” Jay says, and he immediately can’t believe he’s admitted it, which feels too much like the time he said those other things. “I wanted to be your favorite person. It made me feel like I hated you, wanting it that bad.”

“You were my favorite,” Mike says. “You still are.”

“I know.” Does he? Yes, of course, but it also seems too complicated to be completely true. “I think I knew it then, too. But I didn’t want to understand what wanting that from you meant about me, so. I tried to get rid of it. Of you.”

“I put all my money and every single scrap of energy I had into trying to let go of you, Jay.”

“Mhm.”

“For years.”

“I know.”

“And I still couldn’t.”

He’s talking about when he moved away, after their fight, when Jay said Mike was incapable of love in addition to calling him a sleazy piece of shit. They were two ways of saying the same thing: why don’t you love me more than anyone else. Funny to hear now that he did, all along. Maybe there have been other years when Mike tried as hard as he could to let it all go, but Jay was always around then, indispensable for the reasons they invented, so there was little danger of him succeeding.

Jay has the option to get angry now, because he can feel Mike gently and lovingly yet unfairly placing the blame on him for their not being together in a slumber party fuck fest situation for these past few decades, but getting mad at him for it seems like too much work. He’s tired, and he has alien paint markings all over his arms. Fighting right now would be absurd. He rolls onto his back and joins Mike in contemplating the ceiling.

“Sometimes I hate the way I am,” Jay says when Mike seems to still be waiting for a love confession over there. He’s not going to get one, because drugging Jay and then fucking him stupid in order to induce one is too low.

“What’s that even mean?” Mike asks.

“Just. You know. How I’ve lived my life. But it’s hard for me, okay? All this. I want to make something that everyone sees, but I want to stay hidden. Behind the thing I made. Like, to reach out and touch everybody, but also stay out of grabbing range.”

“Well. Nobody likes getting grabbed.”

“Are you kidding? That’s all some people want out of life.”

“Who, like-- Me?”

“No! Not you. I want everyone to know what I think but I don’t want anyone to know who I am. And you're the same way. Maybe a little less so, though. Or you’re less of a coward.”

“You’re too hard on yourself,” Mike says. “Or maybe not hard enough.”

Jay snorts, because now Mike is high, too, clearly. He grins up at the ceiling when Mike reaches over to hold his hand.

“Is your wrist okay?” Jay asks.

“Who knows.”

Jay squeezes Mike’s hand, wishing he could heal him. If only he had some actually useful alien powers. His eyelids are getting heavy, and the paint is making his skin feel lightly toasted, crunchy. His mind is in a similar state, as if it’s been painted on. He looks over at Mike and thinks: I want to take my last breath like this, with him. He almost laughs out loud at himself for even being capable of such a corny sentiment, but it’s true.

“What are you thinking over there?” Mike asks, narrowing his eyes at Jay. “Something terrible, I bet.”

“That you’ll never get rid of me,” Jay says.

“Look at you,” Mike says. “Gloating.”

He’s smiling like he doesn’t mind. Jay falls asleep still holding his hand and tries not to think about the last time he felt this way, like they had finally found each other at the center of the maze they built for each other so they could stay together but also always apart. Mike can hold him so close and then drop him so far. No matter how many times they do this, Jay can’t forget to pack his own parachute.

*

Chapter 8: 2020

Chapter Text

2020

They had a brief and decisive conversation by phone at the start of the pandemic about how they would handle work. By that point in their lives they were rarely seeing outsiders anyway. Neither of them went out very often, having grown both more frugal and more wary of being recognized in public as they got older and the show’s audience grew. Outside of the movie nights they still co-hosted for their small circle of friends, Jay had the occasional visit with his family and Mike always had a girlfriend, usually for an average of six months.

“What about Victoria?” Jay asked when Mike suggested they just continue going in to work as usual, only the two of them, with Rich on standby if things improved. “She doesn’t mind you being, uh. Exposed, to me?”

“She went home to Seattle,” Mike said. “To be with her family during all this.”

“Oh. I’m-- Sorry? To hear that?”

“Eh. We were on the brink anyway. She had the nerve to say I should lose some weight.”

“Terrible.”

“Right? So I’ll see you tomorrow. You’ll be my bubble.”

Jay should have known then that they’d end up spending the whole era of ongoing crisis having sex with each other, but he was still surprised a month or so later when Mike started giving him blow me eyes in the middle of a low energy shoot that was taking forever to get right.

“What?” Jay said, to make sure he was interpreting the look on Mike’s face correctly. Jay already felt hotter under his shirt, and his heart rate had picked up.

“I haven’t gotten laid in like two months,” Mike said.

Jay noted that this implied the last month with Victoria had been sexless, though she’d been living in Mike’s house. He moved them all in as soon as he could, and Jay could never figure out why, because Mike was not interested in the type of woman who would take care of him. It felt like a personal affront to Jay in some kind of way, a rude answer to Jay’s inability to live with someone.

“So that’s my problem now?” Jay said. “Because I’m the only one in your bubble?”

“Noo, but if I got my dick out right here, what would you do about it?”

Jay rolled his eyes, already thinking about how he could maintain his dignity while sinking to his knees in the middle of their studio set. He hadn’t gotten laid in quite a while himself.

“The cameras are rolling,” Jay said, muttering this out of the corner of his mouth.

“Okay, so what would you do with my dick if they weren’t? If it were to emerge?”

“Emerge?” Jay said, laughing. “Have you already gone insane?”

“I haven’t been sane since the turn of the century, what of it? Are you going to shut off the cameras, or do we want to sit here and make some groundbreaking erotic art?”

The joke was threatening enough to kill Jay’s developing arousal, but only until he dashed over to turn the cameras off and turned to see Mike already unzipping.

“What the hell is this?” Mike asked when Jay dropped to his knees between Mike’s spread apart legs. Mike had his hand on his dick and had been in the process of pulling it out for Jay.

“A blow job?” Jay said, ready to kill him if this was some kind of prank. His face was blazing.

“You’re just going right for the goods?” Mike said, looking half amused, half hurt as he presented his half hard cock to Jay, sort of waving it front of his parted lips. “No kiss?”

Jay snarled at Mike and then leaned forward to kiss the tip of his dick primly.

“You’re the one who said you were just gonna take it out,” Jay said, when this seemed to have rendered Mike speechless. “I was viewing this as a practical arrangement. Considering our current circumstances.”

“You jerk.” Mike flicked Jay’s nose, which kind of hurt. “Fine, fine. I’ll do whatever you want me to, after.”

Jay snorted like that was unlikely, though suddenly he couldn’t think of anything he wanted that Mike wouldn’t freely give him. Which made their whole deal seem kind of needlessly fucked up. He put that concern aside and opened his mouth as Mike fed his dick inside with a low moan, his other hand pushing into Jay’s hair, which they’d carefully styled for the scene they were doing. It was wrecked within seconds, but Jay didn’t care. He was in heaven, already, had been thinking about this for weeks, wanting it for years, and he had grown so tired of always wondering if Mike was over there wanting it, too. Now he knew: yes, and the certainty felt as good as the big cock in his mouth did.

“Oh god,” Mike said, watching Jay suck him. “You know, you, ah-- You’ve never done this, for me, before.”

“I know,” Jay said when he pulled off. He wasn’t going to tell Mike it was even better than he’d dreamed of, or that he’d been dreaming about it for a long time.

“But you’re good at it. So you have done it.”

“Yes. Want me to continue, or do you want to interrogate me about other cocks I’ve sucked?”

Mike moaned and rubbed the hand that wasn’t fisted in Jay’s hair over his face.

“Continue,” Mike said, bringing his cockhead to Jay’s bottom lip. “You gonna swallow it?”

“I’d rather, um.” Jay blinked, trying to remember if he’d ever asked outright for Mike to fuck him. Plainly stating that he wanted Mike to pound his ass after this felt too crass, even for them.

“Oh, I know,” Mike said with mock sympathy, tracing his finger over the seam of Jay’s lips. “I know where you really want me to stick it.”

“This is good, though,” Jay said. He gave the shaft a lewd lick while maintaining eye contact with Mike, who looked stunned, amazed, a little love drunk. “I’ll keep at it for as long as you can hold off, then we can go upstairs.”

“Hardcore fucking only takes place upstairs,” Mike said, nudging his dick back into Jay’s mouth. “Got it.”

Jay had known he liked sucking dick and that he’d always wanted to suck Mike’s specifically, so much that it felt like something he’d wanted even before he’d met Mike, as if some secret place in his soul knew there was a dick out there that would be worth any level of humiliation to get his mouth around, but he had not been able to anticipate how much finally getting this would transform him into a weak-willed person who was ready to go to his knees for a single weighty glance. Maybe it was also the pandemic. He was lonely, and had depended on going out and being around people more than he’d ever realized, to fill the sometimes swallowing silence his life could otherwise surround him with. Media wasn’t the same, it didn’t make the right level of noise, but Mike’s cock seemed to fill every vacant place inside him with artisanal perfection. His mind calmed, his dick throbbed in his jeans, and his mouth just kept getting wetter for how good doing this felt. He was ready to just roll over for whatever Mike wanted while they waited this out together, not knowing then that they had many, many months of seeing almost no one but each other ahead.

“Jesus christ,” Mike said when he eased Jay off of him before Jay was ready to stop, still gripping Jay’s hair. Mike seemed a little broken up, like he might cry, or come all over Jay’s upturned face without warning. “We gotta go up now if you want to get fucked,” Mike said, with a hint of panic, nodding to the stairs. “You-- That-- Fuck, Jay.”

“Kay,” Jay said, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket, which was one of their costumes. He’d sort of forgotten where he was and blinked around at the cluttered space before turning for the stairs, too horny to care that this was a delicate time in history to be breaking all of their flimsily established boundaries. Mike followed him up the stairs, holding up his opened jeans as he walked.

“No way,” Mike said when Jay got on all fours on the upstairs couch, pant-less.

“Where else would we do it?” Jay asked, because the office seemed worse.

“I mean--” Mike shuffled in place, holding his dick. He’d also taken off his pants, shoes and socks, and like Jay he had kept his shirt on. It was April and still cold. “Flip over,” Mike said, doing a motion with his finger like Jay might not understand what he meant. “On your back. I fucked you from behind the last two times.”

Jay stared at him, looking back over his shoulder and feeling like Mike had broken some kind of rule by admitting they’d fucked before. He said it so casually, ‘last two times,’ like the most recent time hadn’t been one and a half years ago and the previous one seven years before that. At least he seemed to not have lost track of a single detail about any of the times they fucked, same as Jay.

Without really thinking about it, Jay turned over onto his back and opened his legs to invite Mike to get between them. Mike made an approving, growl-like noise and then was on top of him, and only then did Jay consider that Mike was going to kiss him. He closed his eyes and parted his lips for it, trying not to let the feeling of disappearing beneath Mike’s massive body bury him in relief, but it was too late. He was huffing angry little breaths into Mike’s mouth, belatedly accepting that it had been a brutal fifteen year wait since the last time he’d had Mike on top of him like that.

“Guess what?” Mike said, pulling back to grin at Jay. “Look what’s still here.” He shifted over with a grunt to reach below the couch, as if Jay had never nostalgically peeked to see if the lube they’d used on Halloween still lived there. Mike presented it with a smile. “Good thing I’m such an optimist,” he said.

“You don’t still jerk off with it when you’re here by yourself?” Jay asked, unable to remember the last time Mike hadn’t lived with a woman for more than a week or two.

“Well, yes,” Mike said. “Don’t look at me like that. I own the place.”

Jay swallowed heavily and felt himself nodding. In the state he was in, being reminded that his whole life had been spent serving at the pleasure of this particular tyrant was pretty hot. Mike smiled slowly, like he could see this level of surrender surfacing in Jay’s eyes.

“I’m gonna finger you for a long time,” Mike said, sitting back to open the lube. “Otherwise I’ll come as soon as I’m in you.”

“Okay,” Jay said, though he felt impatient for the real thing already. He wanted Mike to last, too, and wasn’t opposed to being teased until he was begging.

They ended up fucking rather cozily, kissing a lot and drawing it out, and the unhurried ease of it set the tone for their whole pandemic fling. Neither of them begged or really said much at all, too absorbed with the fact they could kiss as much as they wanted to, which somehow seemed like a decision that had not been entirely left up to them before. There also seemed to be no time limit, which had not felt true in any of the previous times they’d been together, especially the first one.

“You needed that so bad,” Mike said after Jay came. Mike had come first, inside him, and instead of pulling out he’d jacked Jay off while still in him.

“Yeah,” Jay said, staring up at the drop ceiling tiles. His mouth felt raw in the best way, overused, and his ass was in a similar state. He made himself refocus on Mike’s looming face. “Fuck,” he said, thinking about what was about to happen to the couch. “We need to get a sheet to put down.”

He swallowed heavily when he realized he was getting ahead of himself by assuming this was going to keep happening. His assumption wasn’t even based on the realities of the pandemic so much as the way Mike was stroking his beard and not climbing off of him, like he needed to savor every second.

“I have an old bedsheet we can use,” Mike said. “I’ll bring it tomorrow.”

Jay blinked up at him with gratitude he probably didn’t manage to conceal: so they would do this again the next day, on top of a sheet, to protect the couch. Mike gave Jay’s puffy lips a last little kiss, then finally shifted back and disconnected from Jay’s fucked-out body, groaning with the effort.

Could it always have been this easy, Jay wondered, lying there waiting for Mike to come back with a dish towel from the kitchen, Jay’s boxers wedged under his leaking ass as a buffer in the meantime. No, he thought, imagining all the attendant realities that would have gone along with ‘just’ being together. They would not have done the show. They would have broken up like ten times, doing terrible damage to each other every time. Jay might never have even gotten his teeth fixed, let alone have gotten in shape. He decided he liked it this way, even if he knew it still wasn’t permanent. They had some time, finally, to vacation in an alternate universe where being together was simplified.

“I’m done for the day,” Mike said, meaning with work, after they’d cleaned up. He heaved a big sigh and gave Jay a nervous glance. “I don’t suppose you’d come home with me and eat tater tots on my couch while we watch Deep Space Nine?”

“That’s Star Trek, right?”

“Yes, Jay, it’s Star Trek. I’m doing a rewatch during these challenging times.”

“I can’t eat tater tots for dinner, Mike.”

“I know.”

“And if you’re in the middle of the series, I won’t know what’s going on.”

“We’d have to restart at the beginning,” Mike said, still glum. He reached over to rub Jay’s thigh. They were seated on the couch together, both staring in the direction of the turned-off TV as if awaiting further instruction from an outside party. “Okay, fine,” Mike said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Don’t forget to bring the bedsheet,” Jay said, to throw him a bone, and also because he felt like he would sink into the floor and die if Mike showed up at work the next day and acted like this had never happened.

Mike smiled like he understood everything, still sadly, still rubbing Jay’s thigh.

At home that night, Jay caught himself feeling happy. He was having a beer on his couch, no longer haunted by the fact that he’d surrounded himself with curated Jay-ness there in his apartment, so deliberately that it had started to feel like an ironic prison as soon as the pandemic required him to stop taking little jaunts into the non-Jay world. He was freshly showered but could still smell Mike on his undershirt, which he’d put back on for pretend practical reasons, post-shower.

The next day at work, they adhered to what would become their routine: they were all business for the first two hours or so, such that Jay was sweating with fear that things were resetting even though Mike had made a big production of showing him the bedsheet he’d brought and leaving it folded up on the couch upstairs. Then, without much warning, Mike spread his legs widely in Jay’s direction and started playing with the zipper on his jeans, lifting his eyebrows when Jay looked up from Mike’s crotch to his face.

“Jesus, let me--” Jay said, racing to turn off the cameras.

Mike had his dick out by the time Jay turned back to face him, and his expression was so nervously hopeful that he looked innocent. Jay considering suggesting that he should be the one who got his dick sucked today, but then he thought, why not just be honest with himself? If not now, in this absurd and fortuitous predicament, whenever would he be? He didn’t care about getting his dick sucked any more than he cared about having someone turn their vulnerable ass up expectantly in his direction. He dropped into position on his knees and did what he wanted to do, bobbing his head with shameless greed while Mike moaned softly and stroked his hair.

When Mike was close enough to risk coming, he eased Jay off and they went upstairs to spread out the bedsheet. This was married-couple sex, Jay thought, because Mike wanted him on his back again, and there was again lots of fingering first, to keep the rhythm relaxed. Jay was glad they were doing it again but also already concerned they were going to do it this way every time.

He needn't have worried, because boredom with all their other routines made them creative with this. Jay did eventually get his dick sucked, but Mike more often went down on his ass, sometimes until Jay was almost crying for how overstimulated it made him. Mike was also intensely fond of sucking the smooth, fat bump of skin just below Jay’s balls, because apparently Jay had ‘the cutest and most delicious taint’ Mike had ever encountered, which was mortifying but also funny. The almost vampiric way Mike sucked him there felt really shockingly good, so Jay let him have at it.

They had fucks reminiscent of the tool bench one in other places around the building, with Jay bent over something and Mike pounding in behind him. Mike ordered a three pack of big bottles of lube on Amazon and stashed one in each area. Sometimes they just ended up on the floor, though they always said they wouldn’t do that again when they got up sore and groaning about what it had done to their backs. Jay held out for two months before he let Mike come home with him and fuck him in his bed. Mike spent the night after, and Jay couldn’t sleep, but it didn’t really matter. The only plans he had the next day were to go in to work with Mike, and there was no reason not to nap the day away afterward. When he got up to watch a movie, Mike wasn’t allowed to get mad about it, because this was Jay’s place. Mike couldn’t tell him to get the hell out the moment his feelings were bruised by Jay’s restless need to detach.

One day in June when it was too hot to fuck they just sat watching a movie together on the upstairs couch, the bedsheet folded and within reach in case plans changed. Jay had taken on the responsibility of washing it, because Mike allegedly didn’t think this was necessary except perhaps ‘once a month.’ Mike was playing with the remote in a fidgety way that usually meant he was about to complain.

“I have other needs, you know,” he said, rolling his head against the back of the couch to look at Jay.

“What?” Jay kept his eyes on the TV, thinking: oh god, here we go.

“Allow me to demonstrate,” Mike said, and he moved over toward the end of the couch where Jay was sitting. He leaned down with a grunt and put his head on Jay’s thigh, then let his weight settle onto the cushions, stretching out horizontally so he could do this while still watching the movie. “This is something humans do to show affection,” Mike said, angrily, when Jay just sat there without comment. “You may be unfamiliar.”

“It’s so hot,” Jay said, but he touched the top of Mike’s head uncertainly, then rested his hand on Mike’s shoulder.

“Am I crushing your leg?” Mike asked.

“I mean. You’re not not crushing it.”

“We could switch positions,” Mike suggested. “But I guess you would hate that.”

“This is fine,” Jay said.

“You sound like that cartoon dog who’s in the room that’s on fire. I’m gonna teach you how to be affectionate, Jay, I’ve decided. Everyone’s learning new skills during this pandemic. Baking bread, playing piano, yodeling--”

“I think you mean yoga?”

“And you’re gonna learn how to be a partner to a human being with emotional needs. I’ve let you off the hook for way too long.”

“You’re nuts,” Jay said, liking the way Mike’s weight bore down on him more and more. He was getting a little hard for it, so he pet Mike’s hair a few times to keep him in a good mood. “I have emotional needs, too, by the way,” he muttered when he couldn’t stop himself.

“Oh, good,” Mike said, rolling onto his back so he was looking up at Jay. “Tell me all about ‘em.”

Jay made a face. Mike glared at him.

“You’ll just tell me mine are the needs of an alien,” Jay says. “Which is so fucked up.”

“Well you haven’t told me a single fucking one of them so how am I supposed to make any kind of judgment?”

“I need, uhh. To sleep in my own bed, by myself, even after a really good fuck. Especially then.”

“Blah blah,” Mike said, turning back toward the TV. “I know all this.”

“And I need--” He was disturbed to be unable to come up with anything else. “Sex. Obviously. Which involves emotions.”

Mike made a horse-like sound of dismissal, as if Jay was misunderstanding everything.

“Don’t you ever need, like, a hug?” Mike asked, throwing up his hands and nearly shouting when Jay had let him stew for a while. “Huh? How about that?”

“I guess. I mean, do I feel like shit sometimes? And does it feel good to know someone cares about me, when I’m feeling like maybe nobody actually does? Yes! If that’s a hug for some people, fine. For me it’s more like-- Somebody asking the right question. Or knowing not to ask it, and just, like, sitting with me and watching a movie and letting me not talk about whatever’s bothering me.”

Mike shifted his arm over to hug Jay’s legs. He took a big breath and heaved it out, his fingers clenching around the meat of Jay’s thigh.

“I knew all that, too,” he said.

“Great,” Jay said, wanting to buck him off for that remark. “Congratulations, it must be great to always know everything.”

“Don’t get all mad,” Mike said, hugging Jay harder. “Just tell me one I don’t already know.”

“What do you think, I have some secret emotional emptiness because of something you’re not doing for me?” Jay’s mouth went dry after he said so, but he still couldn’t name what that secret thing was, or how Mike wasn’t doing it. He just knew it was there.

“I thought you might tell me you like it when I touch your hair or something,” Mike mumbled after a while. “That’s all.”

“Oh. Well, I do. When I’m blowing you, um. Or when you’re behind me, you know. Thrusting.”

“Thrusting, oh my god.” Mike snickered, and Jay was relieved that he didn’t seem to want to get truly upset about whatever hole he was trying to dig. “Like I don’t know you’re into everything I do to you when you’re in slut mode.”

“Hey now,” Jay said, flicking Mike’s ear.

“You don’t like it when I call you a slut?” Mike asked earnestly, turning his face up to Jay’s.

“I mean.” Jay swallowed, imagining never hearing it again. “No, I-- Like it. I do.”

“You like it when I remember to clean up after myself,” Mike said. “But that’s not affection, Jay. That’s respect.”

“Okay, you know what, I have one,” Jay said, ready to shut him up. Mike lifted his eyebrows, waiting. “I like it when you-- Jesus, I can’t believe I’m saying this.”

“Say it!”

“I am! I like it when you reach over and poke my arm or my shoulder when you’re making a point. When other people are around. Once you even did it to my cheek. I would have thought I’d be mortified, but, uh. I wasn’t. It was nice.”

He realized he was saying, essentially: I like it when you don’t seem ashamed to want to touch me, and he kept his eyes on whatever was happening on the TV screen, hoping Mike wouldn’t understand it that way.

“This is not an invitation to touch me more in public,” Jay said when Mike sat up rather urgently to give him a satisfied look, eyes shining. “Just. The amount you do it now is good. That’s all.”

“Assuming we’ll ever be in public again,” Mike said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

He poked Jay’s cheek, slowly and with ceremony. Jay grunted and crossed his arms over his chest, flushing a little just from remembering how he’d been a few glasses of wine into the evening when Mike did that face poke thing in front of their friends. If Jay had been sober he might have been annoyed, but he was tipsy enough to just feel smug and chosen, even with Mike’s then-girlfriend lurking nearby.

As the months passed and they continued to mostly only see each other, Jay realized he’d missed feeling this close to Mike as much as he’d missed the sex. They again knew everything about each other’s day and texted each other a lot after going their separate ways. Mike would send Jay random desirous messages just an hour after they’d left the scene of their most recent sexual escapade at work.

thinking of your loins

just occurred to me what your come tastes like: bitter melon

did you ever masturbate to The Thing? I mean to the idea of being trapped there with Kurt
same question re: Captain Ron
Answer me Jay!!

Jay usually did, swiftly, having nothing else to do. There was no need to play games and he loved getting the texts. He missed Mike when they were apart, though he knew it was good to have breathing room, too. There was always the danger of overexposure.

Jay’s texts to Mike were often in the form of funny product reviews he found online. He would send them to Mike without context and Mike would have to guess which product they referred to.

Caused outrageous farts! was one of the best ones he found, and Mike guessed fifteen different things before Jay finally told him this was a review of some organic herbal tea. Jay laughed harder every time one of Mike’s guesses for that one came through, and he could feel it in his gut that Mike was laughing, too. It was a relief to stay connected even while they were playing by Jay’s rules, which were that Mike only got to come home with him after work a handful of times per month, lest things get too sloppy. Jay liked his alone time when it was reliably scheduled, and when he knew he could look forward to having Mike all to himself the next day, again.

They stayed overnight at work to get drunk together on Halloween, to slyly commentorate the last time they’d done it and also to mourn the fact that they couldn’t throw a party. Kids weren’t even trick-or-treating out there, which made Jay want to cry. They both overdid it early on with the drinks while still in the movie watching, junk food eating portion of the evening, and ended up stretched out on the couch together just lying face to face while talking, feeling too blitzed to get hard.

“Tell me your filthiest fantasy,” Mike said, still trying to make their night somewhat sexual. He had one hand pushed up under Jay’s shirt so he could idly toy with his nipples. “For real, Jay,” Mike said sternly as soon as Jay opened his mouth. “Don’t just make up some bullshit. I want to hear the real thing, and I will be able to tell.”

Jay moaned, sensing this was true and feeling drunk enough to want to confess it, anyway.

“You’ll be shocked,” Jay said, grinning because he knew he was right.

Mike scoffed and pinched the nipple he’d been stroking.

“Try me,” he said.

“Okay, well. In this fantasy-- Oh my god. Jesus. I’ve beat off to this so much.”

“Yes!” Mike’s eyes widened with delight. “Your heart’s beating faster,” he said, flattening his palm over it. “So I know this is true.”

“Yeah. Um, anyway. We both have girlfriends, in this fantasy.”

Mike looked at him like he was nuts, already.

“Just wait for it. Maybe they’re more like-- Dates. They don’t really have detailed faces or hair or anything but they’re both really pretty and cool, and we’re both into them, wanting to impress them. It’s like a double date where we’re hanging out at your apartment. For some reason you have an apartment in this scenario, I guess ‘cause it’s been in my mind for so long. I guess I’m picturing your shitty old apartment, actually.”

“Go on,” Mike said, looking vaguely concerned about where this was headed.

“Soo, yeah. We start fighting, me and you. About something stupid, and the girls are annoyed, mostly at me, because I’m being a pedantic dick about something you said, trying to seem like I’m smarter than you or like I know more about culture or whatever. So you look at the girls and say, like, ‘sorry, just give me a minute.’ And you bring me into the other room, shut the door behind us, pull my pants down and just fuck the living hell out of me while they’re sitting out there listening to you pounding me and me moaning. I can’t keep quiet, you don’t care who hears what, and they’re just out there talking to each other and waiting for you to be done putting me in my place.”

Mike’s eyes had been gradually widening throughout the last twenty words or so, and Jay was chewing on his bottom lip when he’d finished, blushing furiously despite all the booze that was making his brain feel like this was still pretty okay to say, out loud, to Mike.

“Holy shit,” Mike said, and he sat up to tug at Jay’s shirt.

“What are you doing?” Jay asked, helping him take it off. “Did that make you hard?”

“Uh-huh,” Mike said. “Jay. Oh my god. Now I’m gonna beat off to that for the rest of my life, too.”

“Great,” Jay said, laughing and choosing not to tell him about the other variation, that he had also imagined this happening way back around the time of their actual fight, and in that fantasy instead of letting Jay say all those awful things to him while standing there in a state of shock, Mike took Jay into the next room and loudly and correctively gave him the fucking he’d been needing while their friends who were left behind in the room where the fight actually took place overheard everything. In both scenarios everyone would act like it was all fine afterward, when Jay and Mike rejoined them flushed and disheveled, and the mundane social situation would continue as planned, with Jay’s emotional radar recalibrated and Mike’s come leaking out of Jay’s ass.

Jay got hard, too, for the way Mike handled him after hearing that fantasy. They had reckless sex on the couch, forgetting to get the bedsheet, and Jay imagined the party they’d had years ago was still going on downstairs, everyone fully aware of what the hosts were doing upstairs in their lair.

“What’s yours, by the way?” he asked when he was holding Mike afterward. They’d turned out all the lights except for the Halloween decorations they’d put up, strings of pumpkin lights and a neon pink ghost. The glow was perfect for Jay’s mood, and he felt like he’d truly celebrated Halloween after all, to the fullest.

“Mine?” Mike mumbled. He was half asleep with his head on Jay’s chest.

“Your filthiest fantasy.”

“Oh. Um. Well now it’s the one you just said.”

“Mike!”

“Okay, okay. I think about tying you up and keeping you hard but not letting you come for days. There, sorry.”

“Sorry?” Jay laughed, and Mike lifted his head and stare at him with confusion. “I’d do that tomorrow,” Jay said, still laughing. “Not for days, but. Hours, maybe, sure.”

“You little maniac,” Mike said. He cupped Jay’s face, gently. “Don’t let me unleash my full powers onto you. It’s too dark.”

“Oh god.” Jay wiped at the corners of his eyes. “Orgasm delay is really not that hardcore. I promise you I’d survive.”

Later he wouldn’t be sure what was what Mike meant, exactly. Mike had always been holding something back, and Jay had assumed it was a self-preservation instinct, a defensive maneuver intended to keep Jay from destroying him too completely again. He didn’t like the thought of Mike protecting him from some parts of himself for his own safety, though he knew he should probably appreciate the effort.

In the morning, Jay was surprised that he wasn’t hungover, though his back was killing him from his attempt to sleep on the love seat after he’d extricated himself from being smooshed under Mike, who of course slept through the whole night with no issue. Jay was not surprised that Mike remembered him saying he’d be willing to be tied up and was already making plans.

“We should do it at your place,” Mike said. He was always trying to get an invitation to extend their time together by going to Jay’s apartment, which Jay sort of loved, though he denied most of them. “So you’ll feel, you know, comfortable.”

Jay made a face at the idea of Mike trying to make him feel comfortable while clumsily domming him, but he agreed that no elaborate tied-up sex should take place at work, not least of all because Rich had started coming in again occasionally.

“Have you done this before?” Mike asked as soon as they were through the front door at Jay’s place on the appointed evening, which was not the day after Halloween but several days later.

“No,” Jay said, lying, because he didn’t want to get into it with Mike about the women he’d hosted for this purpose in the past. Things were going too weirdly well, and Jay never knew exactly what he’d done to wreck them in the past, but too much honesty was definitely a factor in his previous screw-ups with Mike. He had accepted by then that he’d grown addicted to having so much great sex with Mike and that quitting cold turkey might kill him.

“Are you nervous?” Mike asked when they were in Jay’s bedroom and Mike was holding the belts he’d brought from home for this purpose. Several of them were from robes, soft flannel, and the others were old leather ones that looked like they might have been around since his high school days, unlikely to still contain his waist.

“Not really,” Jay said, though he was feeling a little self conscious, because he was naked on the bed and sort of starfishing while Mike stared at him. Mike was still fully dressed.

“What’s your safe word?” Mike asked, cracking one of the leather belts against his palm like a warning that Jay better have one.

“How about ‘stop?’” Jay said, unable to resist smirking at how clueless Mike was. Jay suspected he was going to enjoy sandbagging him as an experienced sub even more than the actual subbing.

“Stop,” Mike said, nodding. “Okay, so you won’t be, like, pretending to hate this?”

“No, I’m not into that. Are you?”

“Probably not.” Mike looked down at the belt. “I already feel kind of mean.”

“Why? You haven’t even touched me.”

Mike shrugged. He was sweating a little, though it was cold outside, currently sleeting. Jay gave him an encouraging smile when he looked up again. He was pretty sure Mike was going to be terrible at this, but that was okay. Jay was already enjoying it more than the risky behavior he’d engaged in with strangers. He liked seeing Mike squirm.

“I was thinking we’d have some kind of story,” Mike said. “Just, you know, to get started.”

Jay withheld a groan and kept his expression neutral.

“Maybe we’re frat guys and I’m hazing you,” Mike blurted. He went red after.

“As long as my guy can still tell yours to stop,” Jay said. “But maybe that ruins it for you.”

“No-- No, it doesn’t. ‘Cause your guy is trying to be tough, right? If he says stop, uhh. Then he doesn’t get to pledge to the frat. And he really wants to.”

Jay hummed in agreement, though he would never be a good enough actor to convincingly use that as motivation. He would have let someone tie him up and whip him with a belt if it meant he didn’t have to join a frat.

“Before we get started,” Mike said, “Can I just say-- You look really hot.”

Jay glanced down at the tent in Mike’s jeans and grinned.

“So do you,” he said. He was sort of complimenting his own efforts, because he’d been trimming Mike’s hair at work for months.

Mike rolled his eyes and approached with the belts. Jay lifted his hands over his head and crossed his wrists. He wondered if he should press the subject and say he was serious, that Mike did look really hot while towering over him and tying his wrists together, sweaty with arousal already. Mike seemed irritated by the remark, so Jay let it lie, for the purposes of getting him into character.

“By the way,” Mike said, his face looming over Jay’s after he’d tied Jay’s wrists together more tightly than Jay had expected, which was already making him hard. “Your name is Nate.”

“Oh my god,” Jay said, grinning. “We have names?”

“No talking unless I say you can, pledge,” Mike said, slapping Jay’s cheek. They’d discussed what was allowed, and slapping of both face and dick were on Jay’s ‘yes, please’ list, just not hard enough to leave bruises. Other places could be bruised. “My name is Ronnie,” Mike said, doing a kind of fratty voice that almost made Jay lose it laughing. “And you’re my little bitch for the foreseeable future.”

Jay almost replied, then remembered he wasn’t supposed to speak unless instructed. He nodded once and tried to make the kind of pathetic, scared expression of a closeted frat pledge named Nate who’d agreed to be stripped naked and tied up by an insane upperclassman.

“What the hell is this?” Mike asked, sneering at Jay’s erection before giving it a little slap. “You’re hard? Are you a pervert or what?”

“I dunno,” Jay mumbled. He dug his heels into the mattress when Mike slapped his dick again, and tossed his head on the pillow, moaning. He’d been wanting to ask for this for months, but it was hard to know how to ask Mike for anything.

“I think you are,” Mike said, smirking. He was wearing a polo shirt over his jeans, and now Jay understood why: he’d dressed for his character. “Well, I hope you don’t think I’m gonna let you jizz all over my bed. Might just make sure you stay hard the whole time, though.”

Jay groaned with approval when Mike tied his legs back one at a time, folding them and then wrapping a belt around his thigh and shin so they stayed bent. When they were secured he used the robe belts to bind the belts around Jay’s legs to the one around his wrists, holding him open. Jay was beet red and dribbling pre-come by the time he was fully trussed up, and having a hard time meeting Mike’s angry eyes, as if Mike really was some frat guy on a power trip who couldn’t be trusted. Mike was somehow doing everything right, and Jay was sinking gloriously into position for it, all the smugness slapped out of him already. Mike had an instinct for this. Jay should have known.

“Here’s the deal,” Mike said, standing back and crossing his arms over his chest. He seemed particularly massive, also younger. Jay had never considered Mike a good actor, but if he could forget he was performing he could really cast another kind of spell. “You ask to be untied, you’re out of the frat. Blacklisted from all the other ones, too, because I can do that. You’ll spend your whole time at college friendless. Even the sissy losers won’t let you hang out with them, ‘cause they’ll be able to smell that you’re a reject. You’ll have the stink of it on you everywhere you go.”

Jay flinched in his bonds. His dick throbbed. He’d never had a fantasy about being dominated by a nasty jock, but suddenly he fully understood the appeal. He’d told Mike he liked degrading dirty talk, but had only expected to get called a slut while being taunted for how horny he got for Mike’s voice. This was advanced level stuff, seeping down into some needful thing at the core of him.

“And if you come,” Mike said, reaching down to let his fingers just hover over the wet head of Jay’s dick, not touching him. “You’re in for a world of trouble. But don’t worry. I know how to keep you just on the edge, so hard it hurts.”

Jay made a gulping noise and nodded slowly, now afraid to break eye contact. Mike’s eyes were dark, pupils fat. He was palming himself through his jeans in a leisurely way that was like bragging that he could touch his cock while Jay couldn’t.

“You understand all that, pledge?” Mike asked. “Answer me out loud.”

“Yes,” Jay said, and then, when Mike shifted his jaw like that wasn’t good enough, “Yes, sir.”

Mike sniffed like Jay was so outmatched that it was almost cute and gave Jay’s cock a sharp flick, hard enough to make him shout and flex in his bonds. Jay was breathing faster afterward, staring up at Mike with awestruck arousal.

“Let’s see how much you can take without getting soft,” Mike said. “A lot, I bet.”

Mike went after Jay’s nipples first. He’d seemed fixated on them for months, and Jay’s face burned for the humiliating thought that Mike certainly thought of them as Jay’s tits, because he’d gained some weight and his pecs had not just softened but sort of plumped. Jay stayed hard for every pinch and pluck, and he thought he might actually come when Mike leaned down to use his teeth. It was the thought of some unhinged, also closeted frat guy sucking savagely on another one’s nipples that was so hot to him, but he didn’t actually come, just tried and failed to drag his dick against the teasing friction of Mike’s body.

“Are you crying?” Mike asked, his tone mocking when he lifted his face to see tears at the corners of Jay’s eyes. He brushed them away gently, breaking character. “Answer me.”

“It’s just, just from pinching them shut too tight,” Jay said, which was true. He wasn’t crying.

“Well I want them open from now on,” Mike said, sitting back on his knees to free his cock from his jeans. “I’m gonna smack you in the face with this,” he said, stroking his erection while Jay stared. “And you’re gonna keep your leaky eyes open. Got it?”

“Okay, yes-- Got it.”

“And you’re gonna keep ‘em open when I shove it in your mouth, too.”

Jay moaned, trying to decide if his character had ever sucked a dick before. Probably, while drunk, but he would still be intimidated by the size of Mike’s, which looked more enormous than it ever had when he walked over on his knees to drop it heavily onto Jay’s face. Jay’s tongue poked out without his permission, and he forgot to keep his eyes open, which earned him another slap across the nose from Mike’s dick.

At no point did Jay or his frat boy character ever want to stop, even when his dick ached with overfull urgency in a way that felt like an alarm going off. He loved the feeling of ignoring the alarm and staying close like that, and he and just got dumber and more pliant the longer it went on, opening wide for Mike’s cock when Mike straddled him and grabbed the headboard for traction. He fucked Jay’s face, rattling the bedframe like he wanted to break it, and called Nate a come dump, threatening to bring all the other frat brothers in for a go when he was done. Jay sobbed around Mike’s cock for how good it was and arched up to latch back onto it needfully every time Mike pulled back to give him the chance to say it was too much. Mike came in Jay’s mouth and all over his face, then moved down between his trembling, tied up legs to start working on his ass.

“Please,” Jay said at one point when Mike was eating him out, jabbing into him with his tongue and moaning against the rim to make Jay go crazy. Jay wasn’t sure how long Mike had been alternating between that and fingering Jay until he was right on the edge of orgasm, pulling out like an evil genius every time he saw Jay straining to get there. It felt like he’d kept Jay dangling on that edge for an hour, or days.

“Please what?” Mike asked when Jay didn’t say anything else, just lay shivering in his bonds and trying to hump the air.

“I need--” Jay said, though he wasn’t ready for this to end. He wasn’t in subspace. This was more like intense clarity, and he’d never felt so present in every corner of his body, or so relieved to not have to be alone with it.

“I’m hard again,” Mike said, coming up onto his knees to show Jay. His cock looked especially lewd poking up from under the hem of that polo shirt. “You gonna give up now, just before I put this where you need it?”

“No,” Jay said, shaking his head. “Not giving up, yeah, please, do that, yeah.”

Mike gave him a sharky grin, and Jay could see him so clearly as this character, twenty-one years old and running his frat with an iron dick, only recruiting guys who would let him do anything to them in bed. Mike could just look at people and tell. He never went after women who weren’t buying what he was selling from the first glance he gave them. There were too many available who were.

“Good,” Mike said. “‘Cause I know that’s where you want it, sweet cheeks.” He brushed his fingertips over Jay’s spit soaked hole, teasing him into back-bowing madness. “You’ve been squeezing up around my tongue and my fingers like you can’t get enough.”

“I can’t,” Jay said, tossing his head around, aware of how stupid he looked but also unconcerned. “I want more.”

Mike gave him a slap on the dick for speaking out of turn. Jay grit his teeth and tried not to come when his dick pulsed, so sticky and sensitive that any touch was dangerous. He wanted to hold out until Mike was inside him, on top of him.

Getting fucked while tied up on his back like that was new, and the varying forms of penetration that he’d had while in bondage before were nothing in comparison. It was intense enough to be scary in just the right measure, especially because Mike held Jay’s face in one big hand while he sank into him, making him maintain eye contact.

“You better not come,” Mike said when he’d settled his weight onto Jay, giving Jay’s aching dick some friction he might have thrust up against.

“I have to,” Jay said, and then he was sort of crying, or anyway his voice wasn’t working right. “I’m sorry,” he said, because he didn’t want to be the one who ended this game, but it was happening, just the feeling Mike’s big gut settling onto his throbbing dick was doing it.

“Oh my god,” Mike said, shunting his dick in hard. “Look at you, fuck.”

Jay winced and whined, and his eyes were pinched shut when Mike finally grabbed his spilling dick to jerk it roughly. The pressure and the timing were too perfect to stand. Jay shouted and bucked and seemed to sort of re-start his orgasm, shaking apart against the pressure of the belts while his ass milked Mike’s cock.

“Jay,” Mike said, in praise, and then he was slamming into him with a series of impatient grunts. He came while Jay was recovering and trying to move, halfway forgetting why he couldn’t. Mike was still spilling into him in spurts and moaning under his breath when he started untying the robe belts, allowing Jay’s legs to lower. He unfastened the belts that had been keeping Jay’s legs bent and threw them aside like they’d offended him, then finally unbound his hands. Jay’s limbs flopped to the mattress listlessly, one at a time, all of them aching. He felt like a can of paint that had been spilled across the floor, and it was better than subspace, this kind of cognizant release that seemed to keep slopping out of its container, spreading the color of him across the room.

Mike lowered himself onto Jay carefully to kiss him as he pulled out. Jay wanted to hug his arms and legs around Mike, but he couldn’t recapture the coordination to do so yet. He moved his lips and tongue sluggishly against Mike’s and shrank back into the feeling of being covered so completely by him, his favorite place to hide.

“Did I make it into the frat?” Jay asked in a small, croaky voice when Mike pulled back to look at him.

“Yeah,” Mike said. His voice was thick, too, with exhaustion and something else. “You’re my designated house boy now, congratulations.”

“Is that how it works?”

Jay was beaming. He was pretty sure he’d never felt so good before. It was like being fully present through the subspace experience, all of the surrender with none of the confusion.

“Uh-huh.” Mike tipped over onto his side and wedged himself up against Jay’s shivery body. He opened his hand at the center of Jay’s chest and stroked him there with his thumb, studying Jay’s face. “All that was okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jay said. He rolled toward Mike with some effort, already sore all over. “How long did we even-- Go for?”

“I don’t know. It was insane. I came three times.”

Jay nodded as if he had, too, because his single orgasm had felt three times as powerful as should have been humanly possible.

Mike held Jay for a long time without saying anything, just sighing into his hair as if he was troubled by something. Jay was so floaty and at peace with what they’d done that he didn’t even care if Mike was trying to identify some kind of problem with it. Everything was clearly fine, sleet pelting the covered bedroom window and nowhere to go for the foreseeable future.

“Is your back sore?” Mike finally asked, kneading at Jay’s shoulder. “From, uh. Holding that position?”

“Probably,” Jay said. He was drifting in a restful surrender that would not become sleep, beginning to feel hungry but not ready to move yet. “But it’s fine. I’m pretty sturdy.”

Mike moaned as if he doubted it and hugged him closer.

“I can’t do stuff like that with women,” Mike said. “I get too embarrassed.”

Jay didn’t mention that women were the only people he’d ever done anything like that with, or that it was kind of insulting to be considered someone Mike could freely embarrass himself with, though also a little touching.

“Plus it would feel kind of evil,” Mike said. “But that was-- Tremendous. Tremendous work, Jay.”

“It wasn’t work,” Jay said. “Unless you’re offering to pay me for it.”

Mike snorted and squeezed him, sort of rocking him in his arms.

“We can do that next time,” Mike said. “I’ll be the john, you be the hooker.”

“Can we reverse it?” Jay asked, muttering this with heat on his cheeks because it was a fantasy he’d had for a long time, though he always hired a woman in his guilt-ridden wank scenarios.

“Oh, certainly. Your hair’s getting so long.” Mike was running his fingers through it and probably getting come in it, certainly lube. They were both a sweaty mess.

“I kinda like it,” Jay said. “It just gets in my face.”

“Would you let me tie little bows in it?” Mike asked. “Could we go full crazy like that?”

“I dunno,” Jay said. He didn’t love the idea, but it also didn’t bother him. He lifted his face to see if Mike was just trying to be funny or if he really wanted that. Mike’s expression lead him to believe it was the latter. “You’d have to get me pretty drunk,” Jay said. “And no pictures, obviously.”

“What would you dress me in to suit your fetishes?” Mike asked. “Anything spring to mind?”

“I like the naked except for a polo shirt look, actually. Not many people could pull it off, but you’ve got, um. The dick for it.”

Jay pushed his hand up under the shirt to curl his fist possessively against Mike’s back. They were doing this for longer and longer after fucking, he’d noticed, just reveling in it lazily and having a conversation about whatever while their spent dicks were squished between them.

“That’s it?” Mike asked. “You don’t want me to fuck you wearing that old gorilla costume?”

“Ugh, no. That thing stinks.”

“Yeah, but it’s a big, hairy monster. Thought you might be into that.”

Jay was afraid it would hurt Mike’s feelings if he said: clearly I am! He didn’t see Mike as monstrous for the most part, except as an endearment. He thought about Louie’s song, that line about the monster and the final girl, and went a little stiff in Mike’s arms, remembering everything that had wound itself around them over the years, tripping them up and tying them in knots. That all felt so far away, but he knew this wouldn’t always be the case.

The rest of that year was easy. They didn’t see their families for Christmas, though Jay endured an awkward group Zoom call while drinking egg nog. He got a haircut beforehand, not wanting to hear it from his brothers about the long hair, and Mike pouted about this, though he also wouldn’t heed Jay’s grooming suggestions and kept shaving his beard off. They spent New Year’s Eve together at Jay’s apartment, watching movies and fucking.

“Here’s to that shitshow of a year being over,” Mike said when they toasted at midnight, still drinking egg nog.

Jay knew then that he was in trouble, because he was hurt by that. He knew Mike meant the apocalyptic state of the world in general and not how they had personally spent their time, but he went into 2021 feeling worried about what would happen next, and how he would survive it if Mike got bored with the way they’d been living and wandered back into the wider world without him.

The betrayal that eventually came was not romantic. It was professional, which to Jay was far more devastating, because he had no experience of even fearing he could lose Mike to another collaborator. Mike had a new friend in Hollywood who admired the show. People in that world who wanted to get in touch with them always reached out to their shared business email, and it was always Mike who responded and became their point of contact. He saw himself as the face of the company, though he was a disaster in person when it came to people he wanted to impress, the sense that he wasn’t the one who needed to be impressed so rare for him that he behaved like an imbecile when he had to do anything more than coast on his natural charm. People still seemed to like the stumbling awkwardness of the Mike they were presented with live and in person, or at least forgive it.

Jay told himself he didn’t mind seeing their company branching out, that it made sense to diversify and network like normal creators, but he said no to Mike’s requests to follow him home after work more and more, a cautious sense of forthcoming rejection making him want to hold any part of himself that he could manage to protect out of Mike’s reach. A sacred aspect of their lives felt too casually invaded by Mike’s eagerness to invite anyone of influence in without reservation, especially after all those months when Jay had felt like he and Mike were the only two people left on the planet. Jay wasn’t invited when Mike flew out to L.A. to take a meeting with someone who wanted him to do a cameo on their show. They were only willing to pay for Mike’s airfare, but they flew him first class.

Mike called Jay from L.A. to tell him about the meeting he’d had, the studio where they’d given him a tour, and the fancy dinner he’d had with his famous friend and the friend’s also famous girlfriend.

Jay was half-listening, remembering what it had felt like to be twenty-two and to be half aware that he only wanted to kill Mike because he was so jealous of the way people admired Mike’s big, careless balls, but still wanting to kill him.

“Where’s all this heading?” Jay asked, cutting Mike off when he started talking about shows he wanted to produce in the future, different from the types of things they’d done before.

“To more money,” Mike said. “Hopefully.”

“We’re doing fine.”

“Yeah, but we’re only in our forties. Do we want to be doing the same schtick when we’re fifty-five? Sixty? Are you saving for retirement, Jay?”

“You know I am.”

“Right, but what are you going to be creating when you’re that age? Nothing? Or this same stuff we’re doing now, just on and on into eternity? You think there will be a big audience for it for the rest of our lives?”

“You don’t?”

“Well, I can’t fucking know, can I, which is why I’m hedging my bets.”

Our bets, Jay didn’t say, fuming.

“I’ll let you get back to your coke-fueled orgy,” Jay said, trying to sound jokey and not defeated.

“I wish,” Mike said. “I’m alone in a Marriott.”

“You don’t have to be,” Jay said, without thinking about the damage he was dealing to himself, just like the old days. He wanted to shred Mike’s arrogance too desperately to care if he tore himself to pieces along with it.

“Huh?” Mike said.

“I mean, if some hot friend of theirs comes on to you, some actress or whatever, you’re not married, you don’t have to, like, abstain.”

There was a heavy beat of silence, and Jay’s memory flashed to the reeling look on Mike’s face just before he disappeared into the desert to spend a few years licking his Jay-inflicted wounds.

“Don’t be stupid,” Mike said. “Nobody’s coming on to me, first of all. I feel eighty years old around these people.”

“Right, but, I’m just saying.”

“I know what you’re saying, Jay.”

They both went quiet again, and Jay could hear Mike breathing heavily, probably with rage at being reminded that they weren’t married. He just wanted Jay to behave as if they were in secret, which was so fucking tiresome, suddenly.

“Well, have fun,” Jay said. It was something he’d said in that passive aggressive email apology to Mike after he moved away. Have fun! He’d known how Mike would read it: Have fun being a sleazy piece of shit! Not my problem anymore!

“This isn’t about fun,” Mike said. “I’m trying to fucking do something with these opportunities, for real.”

Jay said he had to go and hung up. He would have said far worse things if he’d stayed on the phone, like that he hadn’t realized Mike didn’t consider their previous projects ‘real’ enough to count or to count on for the future. Jay had naively thought they were set for life, sailing along contently on an unalterable course. Meanwhile Mike was looking for an out, dreaming of something more, and all Jay could take away from him in revenge was the workplace sex that had gotten more and more hurried and infrequent as the outside world relaxed its protections and people other than the two of them were in and out of the studio again.

When Mike got back things were different between them. Jay hated it and knew it was his fault but wasn’t going to roll over and show his belly while Mike chuckled to himself at texts from his celebrity chums. Jay kept cutting his hair short, and Mike stopped getting his dick out when it was just the two of them in the office or down on the set. In the summer they started going out with friends again, and to bars. Tilly was a bartender with a big laugh who had never heard of their show. Jay sat back and watched Mike seduce her, telling himself he pitied them both. He wished like hell he’d never drunkenly told Mike his fantasy about being fucked by him while two women sat in another room overhearing it. This seemed like the most intimate thing Mike knew about him, and Jay wanted to take it back. There was so much he’d unthinkingly given away while the world was on pause outside of their antics.

Mike was mean to Jay again, though disinterestedly, like an old habit. Jay let his hair grow out long, even longer than before, just to torture him. He knew Mike still wanted to fuck him, but Mike wanted a public-facing fuckee, too, especially if he was going to get more famous through his new connections, all of whom specialized in entertainment made for actual frat boys. Tilly was living in his house by the end of the year.

Jay had forgotten how to even try to date. The only options seemed to be people he’d known and trusted for at least five years, and they were all married women and straight men. He didn’t pine for Mike so much as grind his teeth in bed at night thinking about Mike’s least admirable qualities in hateful detail. He felt twenty-two again, self-alienating in response to the shock of abandonment, though work went on as usual. Mike’s trips to L.A. didn’t continue, but he kept in touch with the people who’d brought him there, making vague plans and collaborative overtures that for the most part went nowhere. Jay was smug about everything that didn’t pan out, and he knew Mike could tell.

He didn’t like being bitter and overly focused on what Mike was or wasn’t doing for him, but there seemed to nothing else available that consistently required his attention. He’d built his life around Mike’s, while Mike treated him like a vacation retreat that didn’t require any upkeep. Someone else took care of it when Mike was away, making sure it didn’t crumble into the sea while left unloved. Their oldest friends might have understood some of this, but Jay didn’t want to admit to anyone he was engaging in self-pity. He’d really burned himself by making Mike the only person who fully knew what the hell was going on with him.

He made stabs at getting back in shape and also allowed himself to go out with his non-work friends and eat whatever he wanted. Reclaiming something resembling a work-life balance seemed important after letting his sex life take place at work for a full year, and it wasn’t hard to put emotional space between himself and their company, just a little sad. Rich sensed the tension between him and Mike and picked up the slack like he always had when they were concealing some tedious drama, doing a sub-series of shows with Mike that Jay didn’t have to do any work on. Mike seemed serious about remaining settled down with Tilly, who was seven years younger than him. Jay was always waiting for an announcement that she was pregnant, imagining the look he would have to put on his face at hearing the news. Even his youngest siblings had started having kids.

He wasn’t unhappy, not even particularly lonely once the sting of not getting laid on a regular basis faded, but he felt himself drifting untethered, without the feeling of knowing where he’d eventually land that he’d taken for granted before it was suddenly gone. Now he couldn’t even attach words to what that place had once felt like in his imagination: creative satisfaction, if not success? A developing but comfortable obscurity with Mike at his side? Running away to his own desert, eventually? He knew Mike wasn’t wrong to think things wouldn’t just continue as they had been indefinitely, but he couldn’t replace the status quo with anything else in his mind. Treating work like home had been the constant in his life for too long. The pandemic had proved that anything could be disrupted. Jay had technically emerged from it right back where he started, but it didn’t feel that way.

Before he could feel like he’d even taken a full breath of the back-again world it was 2023 and nothing about his life had really changed. This was both comforting and not. Then it was 2024, half the year seemed to pass in a sluggish blink, and Rich was calling about Mike’s broken leg. Jay went to Mike’s rescue feeling doomed, as if Mike was the monster who had nearly slain himself and now would finish Jay off in his place, but at least this scenario had seemed to offer the start of something new. Of course it only took him back to the same path he’d been on since their eyes locked twenty-four years prior, when Mike drove to Milwaukee to pick up Jay and bring him to Chicago so they could film something together.

“I don’t understand,” Jay’s roommate had said when Jay tried to explain who was coming to get him and where they were going. “This is some weirdo you met online?”

“Yeah,” Jay said. “So you better get a good look at him when he pulls up, in case you have to describe him to the cops later.”

He already trusted Mike with his life or never would have gotten in the car with him, but he couldn’t explain that to his roommate or to himself. He just felt it, and had to make a joke about being murdered instead of saying yes, this is a weirdo from the internet whose broody eyes are a little scary in the disturbing videos he’s mailed to me, but he’s my weirdo, clearly, and here he comes to get me, off we go. It made sense at the time.

*

Chapter 9: DAY FIVE

Chapter Text

Jay wakes up with what feels like a hangover of the spirit more than the body, which is disorienting enough before he touches his face and rubs his shaky fingertips over what seems to be skin that is cracking and peeling away. Remembering that it’s neon green paint is a cold comfort, because its presence on his face seems like proof that he’s lost his mind if not his skin. The patterns that Mike painted on his arms, which seemed sweet and even a little profound while Jay was high on a powerful painkiller, are now a mess of smeared together colors that look like nothing. Mike is of course sleeping peacefully, a little smudged with paint but not waking up as a trashed human canvas. Jay sits staring at him enviously. Mike took the other half of that pill, but Jay was asleep before Mike could say anything incriminating, and Mike has never given a shit about humiliating himself anyway. That’s his superpower, also the reason his Christmas decorations were still up in June, leading him here. Leading both of them here.

Jay can’t entirely remember what he said last night, but it was something about needing to be seen yet not known, the kind of navel-gazing nonsense that would sound asinine even if the person who was saying it wasn’t wearing neon alien makeup while frothing about his feelings. He gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom as if marching toward his own funeral, dreading the way he’ll look in the mirror. It’s actually worse than he was imagining, as if Mike used all that expensive, non-reimbursable makeup to paint a perfect visual representative of what Jay has most feared himself to be: a fool who’s always suffering at the whims of a madman.

He scrubs his face until his skin is raw and still feels like he can see the shadow of neon green coating him like a confession. He makes the shower as hot as he can stand it and stays under the blasting water for a long time, wanting Mike to be gone when he gets out, evaporated back into his own fucked up life like a quasi-recognizable visitor from a dream. He knows this must be some kind of post-opioid melancholia, but he’s completely inexperienced with this level of chemical regret and furious at Mike for talking him into taking that pill, because this is only the start of the comedown and it already fucking blows.

When he does get out, he tells himself not to be a jerk. Aside from the somewhat coercive drugging, there’s no real reason to take how he’s feeling out on Mike, even if he spent what should have been a restful night having nightmares about Mike hurting himself in various ways: falling off the ladder, driving off a cliff, ruining his life by uploading footage of himself saying shocking things while hammered. That was the worst one, somehow. Mike kept laughing while the heartbroken comments of their viewers piled up and Jay flailed around in fruitless attempts to put out the resulting fires, tears streaming down his face as he tried to make Mike feel guilty by asking him what would Rich do now, huh? How would Rich live, when they’d made him rely on them so much, just like a monster and a demon would do to the only good person they knew? Mike didn’t care, just kept laughing like he’d never cared about anything.

He’s still asleep when Jay emerges to dress, his skin pink from all the scrubbing he had to do to get that stuff off of him. Jay checks his phone, not sure why he’s afraid he might see some kind of further communication from Louie. There’s nothing. His stomach hurts, but he has the sense that he should eat something, so he goes out into the kitchen for his yogurt, remembering all the indulgent grocery shopping he did for Mike the day before only when he opens his fridge and sees bacon, cheese, beer, and fresh basil, because he promised to make Mike tomato soup from scratch. Staring into his fridge and feeling like a reanimated corpse, he can’t believe he made that promise while still sober.

“Jay!” Mike calls when Jay is at the kitchen table forcing small spoonfuls of yogurt into his mouth, his stomach doing an unfamiliar lurching that makes him wonder if he’ll have to go to the emergency room, be arrested for taking drugs that were not prescribed to him, and then become a pariah and have to quit the show. “Jay? Jay! Where are you?”

“I’m out here,” Jay says, somehow feeling like he already responded. “What?”

“Can you make me some bacon?”

Jay slams the pan on the stove, then tells himself to calm down. He braces his hands on the counter and closes his eyes, counts to ten. He has no successful self-soothing habits, aside from drinking and jumping on Mike’s dick, so counting to ten only makes him seethe at a slightly higher temperature while he cooks Mike’s breakfast, wondering how the hell he got himself into this. But he didn’t: Mike did. Mike fell off the ladder, and fell in love with Jay when they were too young to do anything about it, then took it upon himself to twist their lives into a haunted museum of gory artifacts because he couldn’t figure out what to do about it in any subsequent decades either but definitely wasn’t going to move on, even while he moved other people into his house.

“It’s ready!” Jay shouts when the bacon is seeping its grease onto paper towels.

“Can you bring it in here?” Mike asks. “My wrist is fuckin’ killing me. I can’t grab the crutches right now, I don’t think.”

It’s your own fault, Jay thinks, with guilt, because he was right there with Mike, recklessly fucking their way into new injuries. He pours a glass of orange juice and brings it in with the plate of bacon, delivering it into Mike’s waiting hands.

“How about a napkin?” Mike says while chomping the first slice. Jay wants to slap him but grabs a handful of tissues from the box on the bedside table instead, drops them on Mike’s chest and turns to start cleaning up the paints and palettes that were dropped carelessly onto the floor the night before.

“Fuck!” he says when he sees the dark purple one is leaking, staining his carpet. “Goddammit. This was the worst fucking idea.”

“Sorry,” Mike says, while chewing. “It was fun, though. I’ll buy you new carpets, Jay.”

“I liked this one,” Jay says, then stomps away to get cleaning supplies, though it looks hopeless.

He does what he can to clean up while Mike sits in bed eating bacon and watching. When Mike is finished, Jay takes the plate without a word and brings it and the empty orange juice glass into the kitchen.

“I feel like writing more,” Mike says when Jay returns to the bedroom, not sure how to go on with his day while he feels this low. “I’m inspired. But I can’t type.” He makes an experimental gesture with his braced wrist and winces. “Maybe you can type for me, like you said.”

“Fine,” Jay says, though he already has a sense that it’s a bad idea. “Do you need Advil?”

“I think I’m okay. Still coasting from last night’s dose. Or maybe I’m getting better. How’d you like it, by the way?”

“The painkiller? I don’t know. Right now I feel like shit.”

“Really?” Mike frowns. “It’s never done that to me. But you slept, right?”

“Yes,” Jay says, resentfully. “Or I blacked out, I guess. I don’t know how restful it really was.”

“Looked restful to me.”

Jay grunts at the idea of Mike watching him sleep, probably feeling triumphant after Jay submitted to taking his medicine in more ways than one.

He sits beside Mike and pulls Mike’s laptop onto his thighs, resigned to an afternoon spent transcribing Mike’s ideas. It’s somewhat galling to be asked to do this, but he thinks his sense of outrage is probably unfair. Mike can’t type, and Jay wants to help him. He can’t actually feel his own work wilting away to nothing in his office, but he keeps thinking of it that way, as if he’s been separated from it and it’s being left to die. He tells himself his idea was going nowhere, anyway. He might as well just type up Mike’s, though it’s not like they can actually produce this project either.

“I’m gonna work on the sex scene,” Mike announces when Jay pulls up his draft. “‘Cause I was thinking about it last night,” he says when Jay gives him a look. “What? You loved it.”

“I was high,” Jay says.

“You weren’t that high.”

“I’m smaller than you. The same dose would affect me more.”

Mike grins and shifts his left thigh over to touch Jay’s, because of course any mention of Jay’s size in comparison to his own makes him want to fuck.

“Interior, nighttime,” Mike says, and Jay types that. “Harrison’s office, which is an attic room over a freestanding garage next to his house. Harrison enters and ushers Boyd inside urgently. They’re short of breath and agitated from the run-in they just had with some members of the elderly posse who are hunting Boyd. Note for an action to be written later: in the previous scene, two old men tried to run them over with their car, and Boyd got clipped by the front bumper and knocked to the ground before Harrison could shoot their tires out. Okay, back to this scene. Harrison locks the door behind them and then hurries over to the window to peek through the blinds at the dark backyard.”

Jay sighs through his nose. This may be absurd, but it’s so much more focused than his idea, and Mike looks so pleased with himself, like he knows he’s got something good here. He may or may not, but Jay has always envied Mike’s confidence in this arena, among others.

“When he’s satisfied that they haven’t been followed, Harrison crosses the room to Boyd, who is standing awkwardly and uncertain, looking down at his upturned palms. Harrison’s dialogue: Are you hurt? Boyd’s dialogue: I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to give me the dialogue tags,” Jays says irritably. “I can get that from context.”

“Fine.” Mike gives Jay an answering look of annoyance, though he’s still got his thigh pressed to Jay’s like thinks he might work Jay into a fuckable mood by describing this sex scene. “Harrison takes Boyd’s hands to examine them. His palms got scraped on the pavement when he braced himself after getting clipped by the car. Close up on the hands. Harrison mutters a curse and goes to get his first aid kit.”

Jay thinks of the hardware store basement, the burn ointment in the first aid kit. He hopes that lube logistics won’t be written into this script, and thinking this makes him remember that Mike wants him to actually play this hapless alien who is being tended to by Mike’s character. Jay had been picturing the Boyd character as resembling him, but hadn’t seriously considered what he’ll do if Mike demands that he play this part, if Mike’s attachment to this idea persists.

He would have to say no, he can’t do this. It’s beyond him to even realistically imagine it, would be too humiliating and too revealing. He’s never said no to Mike in such a significant way before.

He holds that thought in while Mike describes how the tender bandaging of Boyd’s hands leads Harrison to try kissing him. Boyd asks Harrison why he did that. Harrison explains that it’s a way for humans to express comfort and affection.

“I thought this was supposed to be comedic,” Jay says.

“It will be,” Mike says. “The idea is that there’s this very cliche buildup, soft music and gauzy shots of them undressing each other, and then Boyd says he’d like to show Harrison how aliens from his planet bond on the astral plane, and shit gets wild.”

“Wild like how?”

“Like, with funny special effects-- I don’t know! I’m still working it out. You know I’m not good at designing monsters. Maybe you could come up with how Boyd looks in his original form. I’m thinking slimy tentacles, and they’re just like comically writhing all over my guy while he moans in ecstasy. It’ll be funny! What’s this look you’re giving me?”

“I’m not giving you a look,” Jay says, though he’s sure he is, and that it’s murderous. “I just hope you’re having fun with this and also keeping in mind that we’re never going to make it.”

“Make it?”

“Make this into a movie! Just don’t count on me to have alien tentacle sex with you on camera, is all.”

“It wouldn’t be you having sex with me, Jay,” Mike says, his eyes hardening in a way that puts Jay on edge, because of course Mike is ignoring reality and imagining them bringing his alien tentacle sex fantasy and all that goes along with it to life on film. “They’re characters, and we’d be acting. I’m not making a documentary about times we’ve fucked.”

Jay feels his face going red. He moves his leg away from Mike’s in a pretense of sitting up straighter against the headboard.

“Part of why it would work is that it’s me and you,” Mike says.

“Is that a line of dialogue?” Jay asks snottily, knowing it isn’t.

“Because we have the right chemistry for these roles,” Mike continues, ignoring that. “You, with your-- If you’re closed off and awkward, that’s perfect. That’s the character.”

“You want to kiss me on camera for a movie?” Jay points at the script draft in disbelief, staring at Mike. “Yeah? You think that’s a good idea?”

“People will think it’s funny.”

“I don’t think it’s funny.”

“Yeah, clearly, but that’s just because you’re some kind of flaming hot Cheeto of a bad mood.”

“Did you take another pill?” Jay asks, boggling at him.

“No! I told you, I don’t need one yet. Maybe I’m done with them altogether. And I thought that was pretty clever, actually.”

He means his flaming hot Cheeto joke, which Jay realizes is a reference to how red-faced he’s gotten, the burn spreading down to his throat and back to his ears.

“I changed my mind,” Jay says, sliding the laptop toward Mike as he scoots away. “I don’t want to work on this right now.”

“Jay!” Mike is full on whining, staring at him as if deeply betrayed. “It’s all so clear in my head! Can’t you just type it? Even if you think it’s shit.”

“I don’t think it’s shit. I could see this being good if someone with money and actual acting talent made it. But that ain’t us.”

“So what? I don’t need you to believe in all my ideas.” Mike tries to force a stony expression, revealing that he actually does need that, badly. “Sneer all you want, we can fight about what we’re gonna do with this later, but I need you to help me get it down as a draft while it’s all fresh in my mind. Please?”

Jay wants to throw the laptop against the wall, but that’s not him, that’s not how he behaves when faced with Mike’s demands, so he gets back into the bed, sitting far from him now, and poises his fingers over the keys.

“Don’t do it hatefully,” Mike says. “You’re ruining my flow.”

“I’m ready,” Jay says, jaw tight. “Go.”

Mike continues describing the scene, tentacle sex and all. Jay imagines portraying this on film, even just by puppeteering a crudely made tentacle create as it flops it all over Mike’s naked chest, and he has to admit that this has the potential to actually be hilarious, which only makes him angrier. I don’t want to do this is thrumming through him like a drumbeat, reminding him of the last time he blew up at Mike after trying so hard to hold it in that it wore him down to nothing but a raw nerve that Mike kept agitating. They’d been working on a project of Jay’s and Mike kept taking over, then claiming he wasn’t, then doing it again, and the worst part wasn’t even seeing all the actors responding to Mike as if he was the director, the visionary, the person in charge. The worst part was that Mike’s suggestions were good, and Jay knew it. He let himself fade into the background only to burst back into the spotlight by flinging freestyle cruelty at everyone, though mainly at Mike.

“When Boyd is back in human form and they’re basking in the afterglow, a brick comes flying through the office’s window,” Mike says. “They think the elderly fuckers have found them, but it’s actually Harrison’s wife!”

“Oh god,” Jay says, moaning as he types this.

“We can stop there for now,” Mike says. “I need to think about the wife confrontation scene some more.”

“Does Boyd eat her?”

“Not a bad idea, but I don’t really see him eating humans. That would make him too unlikeable.”

Louie used to play small roles in their stuff as whatever woman character they required, and Jay can’t help but picture her in this role, catching Jay’s character with Mike’s. His face is still blazing, and his hands are shaking a little. He’ll have to tell Mike about his other conversation with Louie eventually.

“How about some lunch?” Mike says. “Grilled cheese with tomato soup sound good to you?”

“Yeah, great,” Jay says, climbing off the bed. “Guess you’ll be cooking it?”

“I’d help, but my wrist--”

“I’m joking, obviously. Do you need any medicine?”

Mike shakes his head. He’s high on the creative impulse alone. Jay stalks off miserably to make him lunch, feeling drained. He tells himself it’s just the pill taking its toll. He artificially flooded himself with a sense of invincible lightness, and now the cold return of reality has come to remind him that he’s actually vulnerable as fuck in this situation, paper thin and insecure, every move he makes a heavy effort.

Normally it would calm him to focus on cooking something, following the steps and cleaning up as he works, but in the state he’s in every task feels like an insult. This is what you’re good for, he thinks, watching bread toasting in a buttered pan, the finished soup simmering on the neighboring burner. He’s got to snap out of it and is tempted to have a beer with his lunch, but he fears that will make things worse.

“Can you make it to the table?” he asks Mike when everything is done.

“Eh,” Mike says. He observes his wrist as if the situation may have changed. “Probably not. But we’ve already got this sheet spread out, in case I spill anything.”

Jay takes in the awful state of his bed, the paint-stained sheet they both slept mostly on top of twisted somewhat with the layer of towels beneath it and his actual bed linens. His eyes shift to the nasty purple stain on his carpet. By the end of the summer, Mike will have trashed the place.

“I mean, if it’s really that important to you,” Mike says sharply when Jay stands there looking queasy. “I guess I can fuck up my wrist even more by limping to your kitchen table.”

“Don’t bother,” Jay says, remembering the time Mike said that to him about getting back into his bed. “I’ll get everything, just stay put.”

Mike takes the spoon when Jay brings it to him, so at least he won’t expect Jay to hand feed him. He mostly uses the grilled cheese sandwich to scoop up the soup anyway, getting drips and crumbs everywhere in the process. Jay eats his lunch alone in the kitchen, limiting himself to the soup. He avoids Mike’s questioning stare when he returns to the bedroom to clear the dishes, and spends a long time cleaning up the kitchen, wondering if Mike will have a fit if he goes somewhere for a while just to air his shriveled-feeling brain and overheated body out.

“Rich should be back from his trip today,” Jay says when he returns to the bedroom. He’s not really suggesting their summer writing camp arrangement is therefore over, that Mike can spend some time having Rich bring him platefuls of bacon and handmade soups. He knows it won’t happen. Rich has a wife. He’s not a spare part rattling around like the two of them.

“Yeah, about that,” Mike says, scratching at the back of his neck like he always does when he feels guilty. “I should tell you, uhh. Rich wasn’t really out of town this past week.”

Jay twitches in place, then has the impulse to look behind him and make sure Rich isn’t there with a camera, recording this per Mike’s instructions.

“What?” he says.

“I told him to lie to you, so don’t get mad at him. I just knew you’d try to push me off on him if you didn’t think that was impossible, so. Um. Sorry.”

“Why-- What?” Jay pinches his eyes shut and shakes his head. When he opens them again, Mike is still giving him a sheepish look, still seems to be serious. “Why would you do that?”

“I just told you. If you didn’t think he was out of town you wouldn’t have helped me. What, you think I want Rich helping me take a bath? I knew you’d be stubborn about it unless you thought you were the only option.”

Now Mike seems sort of pissed off, insanely. Jay’s previous irritations are gathering into an apocalyptic ragestorm inside him, but his confusion is keeping it on the horizon for now.

“What are you doing?” Mike asks when Jay leaves the room.

“I’m calling Rich.”

“Don’t do that, jesus! Don’t be mad at him! I told him this was my almost-dying wish and that he’d be betraying me unforgivably if he didn’t go along with it! Jay! Okay? Jay?”

Jay ignores him and fumes while the phone rings against his ear. He’s insulted on like fifteen different levels, and can’t believe Rich was low enough to go along with this for Mike’s sake.

“Yo,” Rich says when he answers. Something about his tone seems to suggest he knows the jig is up.

“What the fuck?” Jay says. “You were never out of town? Fucking seriously?”

“Oh, shit, he told you. Look, ahhh, god. He guilted me into it. He’d broken his leg! And he needed, you know. Comfort. I love the guy, he’s basically my brother, but this seemed more like a job for you since, uhh, you know. You and Mike have a different type of love situation going on.”

“Did he break his leg on purpose, too?” Jay asks, loud enough that he knows Mike will hear this in the other room. “Just to drive me out of my fucking mind once and for all?”

“Has it been that bad?” Rich asks. Jay can hear him wincing.

“It was a job for me, huh?” Jay says. He hasn’t been this ready to violently explode in twenty-two years, and doesn’t even care that he knows where it’s going to go, again. “A job, right, okay. Well, it’s good to know what you both really think of me, finally.”

“Think of you-- What?”

Jay hangs up on Rich, because this isn’t a fight he wants to have with him. He goes back to the bedroom. Mike looks like he’s ready for a fight, too, sitting forward from the headboard and meeting Jay’s stony glare with one of his own. Great.

“This is fucked up,” Jay says, pointing his finger at Mike with his phone still clutched in his fist. “The way you treat me is fucking wrong.”

So he’s said it: what he really wanted to say back then, instead of just hiding behind calling Mike a sleazy piece of shit.

“How do I treat you, Jay.”

Mike looks like he’s ready to deal his own damage this time. Jay is glad. He wants Mike to fight back, and he can’t exactly run away now.

“Like I work for you,” Jay says. “And you can put me on shift or not according to whatever you need. I’m sick of it. I’m a fucking person, and supposedly your business partner. You think I’m just sitting by the phone waiting for you to give me the honor of cleaning up your latest mess? Like my life would be empty without you? I’d be a totally different person if we’d never met, that’s for sure. I’d probably be happy, imagine that.”

“You’re the happiest motherfucker I know!” Mike says, shouting. He moves his left leg so that it’s hanging over the edge of the mattress, like he’s going to grab the crutches and try to gain some traction by towering over Jay while they have this fight, but he doesn’t go that far. “All you do is anything you fucking want!”

“Look who the fuck is talking! You even think you can tell me if I’m happy or not! You think you get to decide? Well, great, Mike, I guess that’s solved, then! Never mind!”

“What the hell have you got to be unhappy about? Don’t you have everything set up just the way you want it? The fuck do you want out of life that you don’t have?”

Jay hears ‘that I haven’t given you,’ because he knows Mike is thinking it.

“I can’t even get my head clear enough to figure that out,” Jay says.

“And that’s my fault, huh?”

“You made me feel insane!” Jay shouts, and he knows every ancient grievance is about to come spilling out of him in a sludge-like mess, but he doesn’t even want to stop it now. “From the fucking start! Like I was crazy for thinking you could respect me enough to not just pretend like we’d never fucked until you wanted to do it again!”

Mike’s eyes get huge. He grabs one of the crutches with his left hand and squeezes the grip so hard that Jay thinks it might snap off.

“I pretended that?” Mike says. His voice is sort of hollow with disbelief, as if Jay just gut-punched him. “Me? I’m the one who did that? What the fucking fuck. You are crazy, Jay, you really are, if you think it was me running away from what we did.”

“How did I run? When? You’re the one who does whatever the fuck he wants.”

“As opposed to what?” Mike waits, lifting his eyebrows like he really wants Jay to respond, then laughs at him. “As opposed to doing whatever you want me to? That’s what I’m supposed to do, Jay, to show you the proper respect? Just fully enslave myself to you? Got it, whoops, sorry, couldn’t really commit to that when you won’t even pretend you don’t want to put me in the garbage as soon as I’ve gotten you off.”

“Oh, you’re serious?” Jay says, forcing a laugh at Mike’s depraved levels of self pity. “You’re not joking right now? I just made you tomato soup, you fucking asshole. From scratch!”

“You do treat me like I’m your job,” Mike says, nodding. He looks for a minute like he wants to die, then shrugs and turns to look at the bed he wrecked. “It’s great feeling like you only do anything with me out of obligation, really wonderful. And then you get to just slink away from the scene of the crime like it was all my idea, and I’m a dumbass for even wanting it.”

“I don’t even know what you mean by ‘it,’” Jay says. “Fucking me? Like I haven’t made it clear that I want you like that, too? Like I’m the one who dumped you for the first bartender who smiled at me after we were, like, doing it differently, finally?”

“You fucking told me to fuck other people!” Mike says, shouting again. He throws the crutch across the room. It hits the wall by the bathroom door, leaving a mark.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jay asks, pointing to the scuff on the wall. “It’s like you get off on trashing my life!”

“No, you don’t get to change the subject! Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about either. On the phone, when I called from L.A. You wanted me to feel like shit.”

You were leaving me, Jay thinks, his heart slamming and his vision tunneling to Mike’s face. He’s not crying or anything, but he looks so devastated. He’s trying to heave all the blame onto Jay, just like Jay always knew he would. Jay knows he should leave before he can open his mouth again. It just feels like there’s nowhere to go. Mike has taken over everything, even his apartment.

“I was calling you up to make me feel better,” Mike says. “After a shitty day when everybody I met made me feel like a fat nobody, I called you and you just wanted me to feel worse.”

“Oh, please. You didn’t tell me any of that, that you’d had a bad time. How was I supposed to know? You were bragging to me about the expensive dinner and how you’d gone to their studio. You wanted me to be jealous.”

Mike doesn’t deny that, just glowers at Jay.

“I’m sorry if I misunderstood some subtle cues or whatever,” Jay says, sincerely. “But I don’t exist to prop up your ego.”

“I know that’s what you think a relationship is,” Mike says, nodding mockingly. “Yep, yeah, I figured that out, which is why I stopped trying to have one with you.”

“When were you trying?” Jay asks. It’s a real question.

Mike looks like he doesn’t recognize the person who is standing before him, just like the last time Jay tried to be honest about his feelings and fumbled it. Jay shakes his head and turns away, can’t stand that expression on Mike’s face. Then he turns back and crosses the room to pick up the crutch that Mike threw, not looking at Mike at all as he props it against the bedstand again.

“I’m going for a walk,” Jay says. “I can’t fucking breathe in here right now, I need some air.”

“Oh, but you never run away,” Mike says sarcastically. “Yeah, go ahead and act like this is beneath you like you always do.”

Jay stops in his tracks but doesn’t turn back toward the bed. He wants to throw things, too, and scream at Mike until his throat is hoarse. This running away bullshit is all in Mike’s imagination, and what Jay is really angry about isn’t who went where after which fuck but the sense he’d always gotten, solidly from Mike, that they would never talk about what had happened between them because they were mutually ashamed that anything had, every time.

Mike says nothing when Jay heads for the front door of the apartment, and Jay thinks of what Louie told him, that Mike won’t come running after him. Well, no shit, he would say if she could see them now, with Mike’s cast keeping him in place. He doesn’t want to be chased after, anyway.

It’s hot outside, and slightly muggy from yesterday’s rain. The weather seems to stoke Jay’s boiling anger as he paces away from his apartment building and into the neighborhood behind it, along the uneven sidewalks of streets lined with two story houses built in the 1960s and now in varying levels of refurbishment. Of course Mike immediately started trying to get Jay to feel sorry for him, as if Jay was the one who tried to murder Mike, again, with his bitterness. And of course it’s sort of working, making Jay feel bad for wanting even a minute to himself, without Mike’s needs and expectations bearing down on him.

Jay makes himself reexamine every time they came together and what happened immediately afterward, though he feels like that’s all he’s been doing for the past week and like it’s driving nails into his soul. The first time, when Mike left town the next morning, maybe Jay was a little visibly overwhelmed in a way that seemed to Mike like regret, but he had to work his shift more than Mike had to drive back to the exile he’d imposed on himself. If Jay is to partly blame for not bringing up what had happened in their online chats over the days that followed, Mike is just as guilty. For the most part he forgives them both for that one, because they were so young, still in the fragile reconnecting phase of their friendship, and he can’t imagine what words they would have come up with to make it seem okay to talk about, let alone typing them out in a way that would be fixed in actual text and time like a historical record. Neither of them had been ready to commit to such a thing, or to each other, though as soon as Mike moved back Jay was signing a contract to bind his fate to Mike’s without even reading the terms very carefully.

After their tool bench fuck in the hardware store basement, Mike was the one in a position to do something about what happened next, if he’d wanted them to be anything other than friends afterward. Jay was the one who’d bent over for a spanking, for fuck’s sake, and he let Mike sleep in his bed afterward. The movie they were working on at the time was supposed to be not quite their big break but at least the start of a low budget catalog they could add to over the years, and they were both serious enough about it to maybe feel like they were sacrificing the pleasures of sleeping together for the good of their production, because they weren’t dumb enough not to know it was going to cause all kinds of drama if they kept it up. So Jay forgives them both for that one, too, though himself a little more than Mike.

The one he’s never been able to forgive either of them for is that time in 2011 when he was feeling like shit and Mike healed him, momentarily, not just with his dick but with all those things he said about needing Jay. He’d wheedled for a love confession, but he hadn’t explicitly offered one up himself first, and Jay was nowhere near confident enough in anything at that time in his life to make himself even more vulnerable to the person who seemed to sit comfortably at the center of everything he cared about. If Mike thought Jay was going to him to beg to stay after telling him to get out in the middle of the night, surrounded by Mike’s old textbooks, he didn’t know Jay at all. But he did, and still said that, so Jay left.

Then came Louie, who seemed to be more of what Mike actually wanted in all ways, but four years passed and they never even got engaged like everyone had expected them to, then she was gone. It took Mike three more years to end up on the couch at work with Jay, and Jay still doesn’t know why it took the whole world screeching to a halt for them to pick it up again two years after that. Mike seems to be under the impression that Jay doesn’t actually care about him, or anyway is laboring to cling to that self-pitying delusion for some reason, despite everything Jay does for him, up to and including that homemade soup. Jay did say that thing to him on the phone, that he was free to fuck any hot actresses who might be hanging around, which was terrible, but Mike could have replied by saying I only want to be with you from now on, which was what Jay had wanted to hear so badly that he decided to just ruin everything himself when he was tired of waiting.

He did it to preserve his dignity when Mike seemed to want to move beyond him, but whatever dignity he managed to retain has little value now, when he’s still letting Mike paint on him. He stops walking after a couple of miles, to catch his breath and consult his phone. Mike hasn’t sent any messages. Jay brings up his recent texts and considers his options, staring down at the last message from Louie. Okay, they can’t be friends. She’s right. But he does have one more question for her, if she doesn’t hate him too much to answer. It’s not like he can make things worse between them at this point; she’s out of his life. The worst case scenario is that she’ll block his phone number, too.

Sorry to bother you again but one last thing, if you don’t mind telling me: what made you realize Mike was writing about me in that song?

He stares down at the message after sending to see if she’s read it, then tells himself not to expect anything in response and stuffs the phone back in his pocket. He’s not even sure why he needs to know. It’s like he wants the song to be his proof that Mike has missed him every day, even when they were together. He doesn’t know what would make him happy in this one sector of his life that doesn’t work right. Moving into Mike’s house would be miserable, and having Mike in his apartment for five days has proved that it’s not going to go smoothly there either. He wants a contract, maybe. A new, secret contract that plainly lays out what they both expect to receive from each other from the rest of their lives. He realizes this is something an alien who doesn’t understand human relations would want.

He’s halfway back to the apartment when his phone buzzes in his pocket, and his heart is in his throat when he pulls it out. There’s a new message from Louie.

It’s a long message, and his eyes skim nervously over the content before he refocuses and reads it properly.

Whenever we were in a group, all of us together, if something funny or crazy happened he’d look to you for your reaction first. Before me, before whoever was nearest to him. I’m sure he didn’t know he was doing it. Your reaction to anything was always what was going to put everything in context for him. He’d either be hurt that you didn’t agree with him or delighted that you did. None of us could ever compete with that. So I thought he must have loved you and that he’d had to let you go. Only he never really let you go.

Jay’s hand shakes as he types his reply, the only truly respectful one that he can think of.

Thank you.

She reacts with a thumbs up emoji and he laughs, feeling lighter and less angry already. Maybe it’s good that he and Mike shouted at each other a little, airing out some things that had been too long pent up. Jay shouldn’t have said that about being happy if they’d never met. He knows he wouldn’t be, that Mike has been the source of most of the happiness in his life, if also a significant share of the pain, but it hurt him badly to know that Mike plotted with Rich to get Jay to act as Mike’s nursemaid, for reasons he should explain more clearly, without getting angry about all the old stuff, too.

He walks back faster than he walked away, feeling increasingly nervous that he’s been gone for too long and Mike might be in a bad state when he returns, either unwilling to accept Jay’s apologies for what he said or broken by it in a way that won’t mend as easily as it did when they were in their twenties, which wasn’t easy at all, with Mike putting so many miles between them for those years when he tried to get free from Jay. He came back, but Jay isn’t sure how many more coming back to each others they have in them. He’s almost jogging by the time his apartment is in sight, ready to take his share of the blame when they finish what they started. Okay, he can be an asshole, too, and closed off, also too willing to deal damage in foolhardy attempts to protect himself. Mike is too demanding, arrogant in a way that fluctuates between attractive and infuriating, and too easily wounded. They can work with all of that in whatever way. Mike is Jay’s context for whatever happens, too. He’s sure he does the same thing Louie mentioned, always looking to see what Mike thinks first. He’s just never had anyone else on the hook long enough to notice and take offense.

The apartment smells like fried bread and butter, and Jay feels newly guilty for acting like he wasn’t having fun indulging in various things here with Mike. He should have had a grilled cheese sandwich with his soup, too. Maybe then his mood wouldn’t have tanked further.

He goes into the bedroom feeling sheepish and almost clear-headed again, but that feeling immediately deserts him when he sees the bed is empty. He turns toward the bathroom but the door is open and Mike isn’t there. Just to be certain, he checks behind the shower curtain. Nothing. When he returns to the bedroom he notices the crutches are gone as well.

“Mike?”

He walks into his office already knowing it’s empty, then checks the kitchen, as if Mike might be hiding under the table, trying to scare him. But he’s not there, he’s gone.

He checks his phone, and the screen opens on the text messages between him and Louie, which now seem even more surreal. A crazed impulse to ask Louie where Mike is makes him certain: he’s still somewhat high from that painkiller, his mind isn’t entirely functional. Which means he can’t drive, though he’s not sure where he’d drive to, or if he should first try calling Mike before wandering around outside to see if he’s just sitting on a bench somewhere nearby.

He calls Mike while hurrying down the stairs to the ground level, gripping the railing with the hand that isn’t holding the phone, because he doesn’t feel steady in any respect. Mike doesn’t answer, so at the bottom of the stairs Jay sends a text.

Where are you???

He stands waiting for a reply, breathing hard. There’s nothing, so he walks out into the muggy sunlight again and circles the building, wondering how widely he needs to search the area. There’s nobody out, the streets and sidewalks empty of people, only a few cars passing. Jay feels robbed, like he should call the police, as if Mike has been kidnapped. He can’t make sense of this, in Mike’s present condition. He calls Mike again, and again there’s no answer.

I’m sorry, he texts, but what is going on? Are you okay?

No reply. He does another circle around the building, his heart slamming in his chest and his vision seeming to swim a little. The humid weight of the hot afternoon isn’t helping, and he’s sweating worse than he was when he walked a fast two miles away from here in anger. When his phone finally vibrates in his hand he drops it in a fumbling panic, as if it’s a gun he just mistakenly fired.

It’s a text from Mike.

I took Uber home. Enough’s enough.

Jay stares at this from within a new flush of unbearable heat, feeling buried alive by those last two words. He lifts his thumbs to reply but then thinks: fuck that. He doesn’t even want to call his own Uber, insulted that Mike stooped to that and made it part of his attempt to have the last word, everything instantly evaporated because Jay hurt his feelings. Just like last time. Jay sets off running in the direction of Mike’s house like a lunatic.

He hasn’t gone for a real run since April, the first fair day of the season. The fact that he’d been gearing himself up to finally get back to it on the morning when Rich called about Mike’s leg does not escape him as darkly ironic. Now here he is, huffing along the road that will take him to Mike’s neighborhood, running in his goddamn Converse like he did way back at the start, when he was too clueless to know he needed real running shoes. Back when he was in peak physical shape, he could have done the route to Mike’s house in forty minutes without stopping. As it is, he’s past winded after around ten, walking fast until he can start off on another sprint.

He continues on in this brisk yet stumbling manner until the breathless pain he’s in feels kind of cleansing if not good, as if he’s performing some ritual that will make the things he’s done wrong disappear. He fears he’ll be somewhat high for the rest of his life, though he knows that’s not the way it works. He’ll remind Mike when he gets there: I’m smaller than you. I can’t take as much damage. Though he knows that’s not how that works either.

By the time he gets to Mike’s house his t-shirt is soaked through and his jeans are stuck to him. He can’t imagine what he must look like: awful, like a phantom of the Jay who crawled into Mike’s lap in 2011 to be comforted. He knows Mike won’t want to comfort him now, and he’s not sure he wants to comfort Mike either, but he’s hefting himself up the stairs to Mike’s front door knowing that it’s better to be together than to be apart right now, wishing he’d run to Arizona back then to stop the bleeding.

He tries the doorknob, and after finding it locked knocks hard and for a long time. He’s so out of his mind with a hunted feeling that the last of some amount of sand that he once took for granted as endless is slipping through the hourglass of everything they have together that he thinks Mike is trying to ignore him and leave him out here in this state, forgetting that of course it’s going to take him forever to get to the door until he hears the thump of the crutches across the wooden floorboards in the foyer.

“Why don’t I have a key to your house?” Jay blurts when Mike opens the door to give him a stony look that also holds some measure of restrained surprise.

“Because you don’t live here,” Mike says. He looks like he’s ready to either resume their fight or slam the door in Jay’s face. “What’s going on? You’re all sweaty. Is someone chasing you?”

“I ran here from my place. And I don’t know what’s going on. You called a fucking Uber? How could you just leave like that? Because of one fight? I’m not allowed to get mad at you? I’m disposable if I’m not doing what you want every minute?”

These were things he wanted to say to Mike twenty-two years ago, when Mike moved away like a thief in the night, taking Jay’s will to live with him.

“You seemed to want me gone,” Mike says. He may be speaking for back then, too. “So I left.”

“Well, I didn’t. I don’t. That’s not what I want at all.”

“Then just what the hell do you want from me?” Mike asks, more loudly. “You have ten seconds to answer truthfully before I slam this door in your face.”

He starts counting. Jay can’t make himself speak until Mike has counted down to two.

“I want to come inside,” he says.

“Why? What good would that do?”

“So I can talk to you!”

“We talked. You want more of that? Want to tell me again that everything you don’t like about your life is my fault?”

“I didn’t fucking say that! I’ve never thought that!”

“See, this is just more fighting. What’s the point? Look at me, my life is goddamn shambles already. I don’t fucking need this right now.”

“Yes, you do,” Jay says, shaking in his Converse. “You need me. Say it. You said it once, and then you just acted like it was nothing, the next day, because I couldn’t sleep.”

Mike’s eyes soften for just long enough to make Jay’s chest feel like it’s caving in. His eyes burn and his legs threaten to give out. How could you leave me like that is all he can think, about so many different occasions.

“I know you like feeling needed,” Mike says. “But it may be killing me.”

“What? Who-- Me? How?”

“You-- Jesus, come inside. Jay, it’s okay. Don’t cry.”

“I’m not,” he says, through tears. If he had his car he may have turned around and gone home rather than letting Mike see him break down like this, but as it is he just moves past Mike into the cool darkness of his house.

He goes semi-blindly into the living room, wiping at his eyes and hating that he can smell himself. This happened once after Mike left, back then, when Jay was driving to work. After a week or so of pretending even to himself that he was fine, not scarred by the sense that he’d done real damage to his favorite person, he lost it sobbing and had to call in sick. He parked the car somewhere nearby and hid in the woods with his wrenching grief, remaining there until it was getting dark and he could sneak home without anyone seeing his puffy eyes. Just staying unseen was all he could focus on, the one thing that seemed sure to save him. Obeying that instinct claimed whole years of his life, maybe decades.

So that’s what he’s crying about, not about Mike, though of course Mike is the biggest part of all that. Jay crumbles over onto himself on Mike’s couch, his face in his hands and his forehead pressed to his knees. Mike carefully lowers himself down to sit beside him. He touches Jay’s back, then leans over him like a shield, wrapping around him and holding him. Jay just keeps losing it like a kid, unable to believe he’s doing this but also not really sorry about it. Wretched as he feels, something about this seems good, or at least overdue.

“This is one way to get me to forgive you for everything,” Mike says. He kisses Jay behind the ear after saying so. “Maybe the only way.”

“You lied to me,” Jay says, unmoving, still crying.

“Yeah, well. You tried to lie to me about texting with my ex. Which is also fucked up. At least I was lying out of, like, love.”

Jay’s impulse is to say that there is no such thing as lying out of love, but he knows that there is.

“That’s why I did it, too,” he says. He can speak now, at least, without every word breaking, but he’s still bent forward with his face buried in his hands, needing Mike to not let go.

“How’s that work?” Mike mumbles.

“The song. I wanted her to tell me-- What she told me. And, um. She called me, the next day.”

“Oh, jesus christ.”

Mike sits up then, sighing. Jay does, too, slumping against Mike’s side so they’re still touching.

“It’s okay,” Jay says, not even sure what he means. “I guess she hates me a little, but I’m glad I talked to her.”

“I don’t even want to know,” Mike mutters.

Jay tilts his head like, really? Mike shrugs.

“I guess I can imagine it well enough,” he says. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t just ask outright for you to take care of me and feed me soup. Rich told me I should. It seemed too impossible.”

“Why?”

“Jay. Give me a fucking break. You don’t even want me in your bed.”

“I do, though. I just can’t sleep. It’s not your fault. I need to buy one of those fucking isolation chambers, like, sensory deprivation. Though they’d probably just make me freak out. ‘Cause I’m not actually an alien.”

“Are you okay?” Mike asks, and Jay laughs, because he clearly isn’t. He closes his eyes when Mike puts a hand against his forehead like he’s checking for a fever. “You’re burning up.”

“That’s just from running, and I’m probably sunburned. I told you, I’m still fucked up from that pill. That’s why I didn’t drive.”

“That’s crazy. Lie down, take off your shirt. I’m gonna get you some water.”

“No,” Jay says when Mike reaches for the crutches. “I’ll get it. You’re hurt, you shouldn’t be-- I can’t believe you got an Uber.”

“You left first!”

“Well, I was coming back!”

Jay looks into Mike’s eyes and can’t move to get his water or take off his sweaty clothes. He still feels wobbly, like his bones are reverberating with the humiliation of having cried in front of Mike, but it’s a good kind of humility, like being spanked or getting on his knees when Mike opens his zipper. This is the third in his trifecta of pleasurably shameful things, maybe, but he doesn’t plan to make a habit of it. He sniffles when Mike reaches over to thumb what will hopefully be the last of the wetness from the corners of his eyes.

“Well,” Mike says, and he heaves a massive sigh. “I’m doomed.”

“No, you’re not. I wish I hadn’t been awful to you. Any of the times. I wasn’t trying to be, you know-- That night. When you found me reading that textbook and threw me out.”

“I didn’t want to throw you out. I thought you wanted to be set free. Like I was holding you captive.”

Jay shakes his head, though maybe he did want that, a little. It’s hard to explain.

“Why not after Halloween, then?” Jay asks, knowing Mike will understand what he means. “When I was less of a disaster?”

“I thought you wanted your space.”

“Bullshit. You knew I was never going to ask for what I really wanted.”

“Yeah, and it pissed me the fuck off!” Mike says, then he looks up with alarm at the front door, which is opening.

“Mike?” Rich says, already walking inside. “Oh-- Oh!” He squints at them and lifts his eyebrows when he sees the state Jay is in, which makes Jay want to dive behind the couch. “Oh, shit, sorry.”

“Rich, what the fuck,” Mike says, mildly. “We’re in the middle of something here.”

“I-- Can see that, uhh. We just wanted to check on you.”

Then Rich’s wife is coming through the door with a big smile, bearing a giant casserole pan covered in foil. Her face freezes and then falls when she sees Jay, and her eyes dart to Rich for guidance.

“They’re busy right now,” Rich says, pointing at the scene on the couch. “Maybe just stick that in the fridge.”

“Holy cow,” she says, bringing her wide-eyed gaze back to Mike and Jay. “Is everybody all right?”

Jay gets up, pretty much wanting death.

“I’m going upstairs,” he says, hurrying away. “I need-- New clothes.”

That probably wasn’t the thing to say to save face, but whatever.

He gets himself into Mike’s bedroom and shuts the door behind him, feeling somewhat faint but better once he’s alone and out of sight. Go figure. Pulling off his sweat-soaked clothes on the way, he goes into the en suite bathroom and turns on the shower, making the water coolish. He’s still sort of throbbing all over with a devilish heat that won’t leave him. Maybe he does have a fever, though it’s more likely a combination of sunburn and sudden onset midlife crisis.

When he’s washed himself and cooled off a little he emerges to dress in Mike’s clothes, going through his drawers until he finds a pair of old basketball shorts that sort of fit him when he tugs the drawstring tight. He puts on an old Operation Ivy t-shirt that used to be his but now smells like Mike. It was buried deep in a bottom drawer, stolen around 2011 if he remembers correctly. He’s not sure how Mike got his hands on it, because Jay wasn’t wearing this during any of the times they fucked. He may have lifted it from the laundry hamper in Jay’s old apartment during one of his Halloween parties, too drunk to think twice before he had it smuggled under his jacket and out the door.

“You found that shirt,” Mike says when Jay walks back downstairs, after checking the driveway to make sure Rich’s car is gone. Mike is sitting on the couch where Jay left him, drinking a beer.

“I would have given you one if you’d asked,” Jay says, meaning a dirty t-shirt that smelled like him. “You didn’t have to steal it.”

“Hmm. Didn’t seem that way at the time.”

“Can I have some of that?”

Mike nods. Jay sits beside him, close, and takes a long gulp from the offered beer.

“I do need you,” Mike says when Jay meets his eyes.

“I know,” Jay says. “I’m here. I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

Mike takes the beer back and drinks from it like they’re sealing the deal on their new contract, still unwritten. When he leans over for a kiss, Jay moans for how good Mike’s mouth tastes. There is no better combination of flavors on this planet than Mike’s tongue and Spotted Cow, and the relief of having him back after finding him gone is consuming, resetting Jay’s body temperature to comfortable levels.

“Rich thinks you’re mad at him,” Mike says.

“I’m not. I’ll call him tomorrow. What’s that thing they brought over?”

“Tater tot hotdish.”

“Oh my god. Perfect.”

“Yep.”

Mike looks at Jay like he’s waiting for something else, and clamps his hand on Jay’s thigh with a kind of anxious possessiveness. Jay puts his hand over Mike’s and flushes.

“You need another shave,” he says, reaching up to touch Mike’s cheek.

“I thought you wanted me to let it grow.”

“You don’t have to do what I want.”

Jay swallows and looks down at Mike’s chest. He wants to curl up there and cling almost as much as he wants to eat two heaping portions of tater tot hotdish and wash them down with several beers.

“Yesterday, when I was high,” he says, lifting his eyes to Mike’s again. “I had this thought that I wanted to die like that, in a bed with you, holding your hand.”

“Jeez,” Mike says. He smirks, then smiles for real, the light of it coming into his eyes. “Too bad you can’t share a bed with me.”

“I did, though. During the pandemic--”

“Half the time I’d find you on the couch in the morning, passed out with a movie playing.”

“Well. I could work on it. If it’s important to you. I need to, um. I need to be able to count on this continuing. Even more than I need to sleep. Okay?”

Mike nods, looking hypnotized.

“I’ve been all in since that day in your apartment,” he says. “When I leaned over and you didn’t lean away.”

On the couch, he means, in the apartment over the hardware store, when they watched the footage they’d shot, before Mike came to Jay’s door and then into his bed.

“That was the best day of my life,” Jay says, his voice only wobbling a little.

Mike nods in agreement and puts his forehead against Jay’s, his hand going to the back of Jay’s neck to keep him there.

“I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that day,” Mike says. “Whenever I needed to cheer myself up, I’d remember that was real. Not just some dream. The way you cooked that little dinner for us with stuff you had in your pantry or whatever.” Mike sniffs and for a second it seems like his eyes might well up, but it passes. Jay is pretty sure Mike never cries, but he has a way of looking sadder and more broken up than anyone Jay has ever known, without shedding a tear or losing his voice. “I loved that. That’s why I still like it when you cook something and we eat it together. I’m not getting off on bossing you around, I don’t think you work for me. It just makes me remember that day. I was all on edge about whether or not you really liked me or if I was just bullying you into tolerating me, but then you cooked dinner for me. I dunno. Felt like proof that you really wanted me there.”

Jay kisses him and pushes a wounded little noise into his mouth, not quite hiding it there. Mike takes hold of Jay’s jaw and tilts his head back, making himself taller even while they’re sitting down, so that Jay has to strain upward to meet his kisses.

“I missed you so much,” Jay says, meaning back then, those long years when Mike was so far away. “It was killing me. Life was such a boring endless nothing as soon as you were gone. You couldn’t tell?”

“I can only read your mind when I’m literally inside you,” Mike says. “Like, dick-wise.”

“I knew what you meant,” Jay says, then he dissolves into embarrassed laughter and hugs Mike to him, pushing his face against Mike’s throat. It’s a good kind of embarrassment, the kind that only Mike can bring on.

“It’s fucked up that I can’t carry you upstairs to the bed,” Mike says. He’s stroking Jay’s back like he’s thinking about sex, but Jay knows he’s thinking about that hotdish, too. Jay’s stomach is growling after all his walking and running around.

“When your leg is better, that’s the first thing we’ll do,” Jay says. “You can fuck me while holding me up against a wall or something really impressive like that.”

“Against a wall, hell, I just want to be able to get on my knees and take you from behind again.”

Mike gives Jay a soft kiss over the bridge of his nose when he lifts his face. Jay beams at him, dreamy-eyed. Hearing that Mike can’t wait to mount up on him with the full force of both legs again is the sort of love confession Jay most appreciates, and Mike knows that now.

“There will be plenty of time for all that,” Jay promises. “Are you hungry?”

“Sure, I could eat.”

Jay goes to the kitchen to heat up two plates of the hotdish and to get them both another beer. He sticks to eating just one helping, and only drinks the one beer, half asleep and slumped against Mike’s side on the couch when they’re finished. They’re watching Blade Runner, which was Jay’s suggestion. He finds the glacial pacing comforting. Mike’s hand is clenched high up on the inside of Jay’s right thigh, squeezing periodically. Jay needs to digest a bit before they have makeup sex, and he doesn’t feel like they have a time limit anymore. It was Jay’s turn to run after Mike, and now that they’ve both gone running after each other once, the fact that they will stay together from now on seems settled.

“You know what we should make?” Mike asks.

“Hmm?” Jay is thinking ice cream sundaes, root beer floats.

“That movie you wrote back in 2005. The script that you let me read that I loved.”

“Oh.” Jay turns his face against Mike’s sleeve and tries to wake up a little. “Umm, well. Maybe you only loved it so much because we were having that moment.”

“No, it was really good.”

“I wrote it when I was twenty-five, Mike.”

“So what? You could edit it now. I bet you’d still like it. I know I would.”

Jay snorts doubtfully and shifts down onto his side, resting his head on Mike’s thigh. He reaches over to touch the top of the cast carefully.

“This must have been awful,” he says, meaning feeling the bone snap, writhing on the ground alone and in pain. “And then I wasn’t even nice to you.”

“You were nice enough, eventually. I guess we were both still holding a grudge.”

Jay nods and closes his eyes. He arches his back when Mike rubs his fingers through his hair.

“I want to fool around,” Jay says, because it seems important to reconnect that way tonight. “Just give me a second. I think I did ten miles today, between walking around there and coming here. And it was so hot.”

“You know I won’t mind if you fall asleep, Jay.”

He does, out quick and fast from deep exhaustion. Something akin to his spirit still feels winded and threadbare, though his body and mind have been fed and calmed. He dreams that Mike is walking ahead of him on a desert road, carrying a duffel bag and not looking back. Jay follows him closely and thinks of how his sunburn will get worse.

“If we could just steal a car,” Mike says, half turning to address Jay. “We’d make it there on time.”

“I don’t see any cars,” Jay says, as non-judgmentally as he can.

Mike makes a grumpy sound of acknowledgement and keeps walking. Eventually there’s a threatening thunderstorm and they find shelter in a cave not far from the road, where Mike sits down near the entrance and spreads his legs to indicate that Jay should crawl between them.

“What will we eat?” Jay asks when he’s huddled there, clinging to Mike. There’s a sense of relief that Mike wants to be tender with him here, after a long time of not even looking at each other on that road.

“Here,” Mike says, and he produces a crumbled Oreo from his pocket. Jay eats it out right of his palm, slurping the sugary sustenance into his mouth gratefully.

It turns into a muddled sex dream and Jay wakes up hard. Mike is still awake, looking at something on his phone. He puts it down when Jay sits up groggily and paws at him.

“I want to put you on your back,” Mike says. “So bad.”

“I know,” Jay says. He kisses Mike’s throat and climbs into his lap, straddling him. “You will, soon. Should I go get lube?”

“There’s a bottle under the couch.”

“Oh my god,” Jay says, laughing.

“What? I jerk off down here sometimes. Don’t laugh. Gimme that shirt back.”

Mike peels it off and grins up at Jay, his hands going to Jay’s waist. He grips him as much as possible with the braced right hand, and Jay remembers that his wrist was sore earlier. He lifts Mike’s right arm carefully and kisses his curled fingers where they poke through the end of the brace.

“You got yourself all the way downstairs for an Uber on your screwed up wrist,” he says.

“It’s not that bad. At least your building has an elevator.”

“I had a dream that we were in the desert, just now. I think we were in our twenties again, too. I was thinking, before-- What if I’d followed you to Arizona? What if I had just shown up at your door? Like I did today?”

Meaning: in tears, losing his mind, having a panic attack because he couldn’t stand to feel abandoned for another second.

“Mhm,” Mike says, rubbing his hands up and down over Jay’s sides like he needs warming up. It is cold in Mike’s house, the air conditioning running nonstop. “Well, what do you think? I would have grabbed you and pulled you inside and put you in my bed.”

“And then? Jay says, wanting to give his past self the gift of hearing the rest.

“Nailed you to the mattress. Probably with too much vigorous intention, honestly.”

“Vigorous intention?”

“I was still mad and hurt and stuff. Your poor virgin ass wasn’t ready for all that, Jay. I needed a few years to cool off before I could get in there responsibly.”

“Jesus,” Jay says, laughing hard and spilling down onto him. “You could do it now,” he says, muttering this into Mike’s ear. “That way. Vigorously.”

“Not as vigorously as I want to, with these injuries. Just help me get these pants off and you’ll see how you’re gonna get it.”

They’re both too worn thin by the events of the day to do anything especially vigorous. Jay bounces in Mike’s lap and moans and kisses him the whole time, his arms looped around Mike’s neck. Mike jerks his hips up at moments but mostly just gazes up at Jay and lets him have what he needs, content to give it to him.

“I would have loved it,” Jay says when he’s about to come, rolling his hips down greedily to get Mike hitting the right spot, over and over.

“Hmm?” Mike says. He’s reclining king-like while he watches Jay wear himself out on his dick.

“You-- If-- Ahh-- Being dragged into your lair and overwhelmed,” Jay says. “Vigorously.”

“Aww, well. Mph. I liked how we actually did that, later. In your lair.”

“I still think about that bed,” Jay says, nodding and uncensored because he’s so close to coming. “That room, oh, fuck, Mike--”

“It was perfect,” Mike says, sitting forward a little. “I go back there all the time. In my fuckin’ dreams. You on your back under me for the first time. Fuck, that felt so good.”

“Yeah,” Jay says, and then he’s coming all over Mike’s stomach, shuddering from the base of his spine and crumpling against him. Mike groans for the spasms of Jay’s ass around his dick and rubs his back in crazed circles with his left hand. He bites Jay’s shoulder when he comes, and Jay yelps for how much he likes it, holding Mike’s head in place there and still bouncing a little.

“Shit, I left a mark,” Mike says, examining Jay’s shoulder when they’ve pulled apart just enough for Mike to get his eyes on it and then his fingers, gently. “Sorry,” he says, peering up into Jay’s face like he isn’t, really.

“It’s fine,” Jay says, breathless from doing most of the work. “Felt good.” It still does, stinging just a little. He kisses Mike for it.

“Be careful,” Mike says when he pulls back. “If you stay here too long I’ll cover you in love bites.”

Jay grins and thinks of that song: We’ll finish our movie, I’ll be the monster. He can’t imagine loving someone who didn’t chew him up a little.

The couch they’re on has a pull-out bed, and Jay arranges it for Mike with some clean but musty-smelling sheets and the pillow from Mike’s bed, so he has a place to sleep that doesn’t involve stairs. Neither of them is confident that he could get up to the second floor without disaster. When the bed is all made up and ready for him, they look at each other from each side of it, Mike standing propped on his crutches and Jay wearing nothing but another, bigger t-shirt from the same closet upstairs where he found the sheets. This one is huge, hanging almost down to Jay’s knees.

“You don’t need to sleep down here with me,” Mike says before Jay can say that he wants to. “Take my bed.”

“I’d be okay here,” Jay says, eying the pull-out mattress, which looks somewhat flimsy and like it will dip dramatically even under just Mike’s weight.

“You’ll sleep better upstairs,” Mike says. “Don’t worry about it. I like the idea of you up there, all cozied up in my domain. Go on, you look like you’re about to pass out.”

Jay nods and walks around to the other side of the bed to kiss Mike goodnight. He puts his hands on Mike’s chest and stands on his tiptoes to reach his mouth.

“I wish I’d gone,” Jay says. “Back then, to where you were. My virgin ass would have deserved whatever it got.”

Mike makes a pitying face and shakes his head before kissing Jay again.

“I’d rather take care of you than wreck you,” Mike says. “Believe it or not. Even back then.”

Jay nods and hugs Mike’s chest, though he knows Mike must be tired and ready to get off the crutches. He was not ready to be taken care of by Mike at twenty-two. He wasn’t even ready earlier today, really. Now he sort of wishes he could get into the same bed with him, even if he wouldn’t be able to sleep in it.

He goes upstairs anyway, and as soon as he’s wrapped up in the very Mike-scented sheets he’s out, sleeping more deeply than he has in a long time. Subspace dip-outs and drug-assisted sleep don’t count, at least not as much as this real sleep does, in Mike’s bed. Even with Mike downstairs, Jay feels like they’re together, like he’s been safely tucked away where Mike knows where to find him, a feeling he didn’t know he needed this badly.

Because hasn’t Mike always known where to find him? Mike is the one who has disappeared here and there, to the desert and into the lives of other people, women who were happy to share his bed. Jay was more prone to hiding in plain sight, only carefully curated parts of him visible. Most people he knows will never see all of him. Maybe no one ever has, except Mike, who will protect the parts that Jay doesn’t want anyone else glimpsing. Mike wants them to stay unseen for different reasons, available for his eyes only. He’s greedy that way. Jay loves him for it.

*

Jay spends the next week cleaning Mike’s house. Mike keeps telling him he doesn’t have to, with some measure of offense, as if Jay is mostly demonstrating that Mike has been living in filth, but Jay wants to do it. He’s making the place his own, at least in part, throwing away garbage bags full of Mike’s old partners’ stuff after Mike gives him a nod to say it can go. It’s like an exorcism, the ghosts of past girlfriends being freed from the place’s confines at last. Jay doesn’t plan to get rid of his apartment or even sleep here most nights, but he’s going to be here a lot and he wants to feel comfortable, hence all the scrubbing and decluttering.

Rich comes over to help with some of the more significant repairs, like rotting window frames and kitchen cabinets that are so dingy that they need to be taken off the wall, repainted and rehung. This alone takes most of a week, but Jay is happy doing the work. He feels focused and useful, and fitter than he has in a while just from all the lifting and squatting. They’ve had Mike back on camera with the cast on and a new storyline in their show to explain it, but other than writing those scripts he’s taking it easy, watching the trashy reality shows he loves while Jay and Rich air out the house for him. He’s still working on the alien and detective love story script, too, though less feverishly. Despite their rough treatment of it those first five days, his sprained wrist has healed enough to allow for an hour or so of typing per day.

They were told during his one-week check up appointment that the cast will likely be able to come off by mid-August, and that Mike can expect to be back at full strength around September. Jay is already thinking about his birthday, how his present this year will be having a fully mobile Mike in bed all day, both of Mike’s legs putting everything they’ve got into his frantic thrusting after months of forced restraint. It’s gonna be great.

Since they’ve been working on the house so much Jay has been sleeping there most nights, upstairs in Mike’s bed, in sheets that now get washed weekly. At the start of July, after a few nights of being startled awake by obnoxious fireworks set off by the neighbors, he wakes up from a bad nightmare and makes his way shakily downstairs, still half in it when he slips into bed with Mike and wriggles under his arm beneath the blankets.

“What’s wrong?” Mike asks, mumbling this against the top of Jay’s head when he rolls over to pull him in against his chest.

“Nothing,” Jay says. His heartbeat is still frantic, and he feels like he does in his worst dreams, like someone out of sight is just around the corner, waiting to catch him. He presses even more of his shivery self to Mike’s body, embarrassed by how good it feels to have him available for this.

Mike doesn’t ask what’s wrong again. He seems to understand and holds Jay even when he’s asleep again, breathing into his hair with powerful exhales. Jay can’t sleep but doesn’t need to. He’s in the process of feeling comfortably awake, farther and farther away from what shook him.

The month is more than half over before they figure out, by accident, a way for Jay to fall asleep in Mike’s arms and stay there. Mike announces that he’s starting his rewatch of Voyager, and that Jay doesn’t need knowledge of the previous seasons of Star Trek to understand what’s going on and watch along with him.

Jay settles in for episode one of the series, having little interest but sensing that this means a lot to Mike. They’re stretched out on Mike’s downstairs bed together after dinner and sex, and Jay is yawning before the credits start, but curious enough to pay attention with his chin resting on Mike’s shoulder. He makes it halfway through the episode before falling asleep like that, curled up at Mike’s side and drooling onto his sleeve. When he wakes up it’s nearly five in the morning and Mike has rolled both of them onto their sides, the TV off and the room dark.

Huh, Jay thinks, and he closes his eyes again. He’s in and out of sleep until dawn, but it’s not so bad, still restful, and the next night they do the same thing, starting episode two after Mike has filled Jay in on what he slept through in the previous one, Jay half-listening and nodding along while washing the dishes.

Again, Jay makes it about halfway through the hour long episode before he’s soundly asleep. Mike doesn’t complain. He’s happy to tell Jay what he missed in the morning, when Jay wakes up still beside him.

“So Janeway listens to Chakotay and promotes Torres,” Mike explains while Jay reclines on his back, still sleepy. Mike is leaning over him, propped on his elbow and rubbing his hand through Jay’s chest hair while describing the resolution of this Star Trek dilemma. “And she apologies for punching Lieutenant Carey and he says he’s gonna be helpful to her now, but he’s barely ever on the show after season one so it doesn’t really matter.”

“Which one was Lieutenant Carey?” Jay asks, trying to conjure up his last concrete memory of what he watched before drifting off.

“The guy who Janeway was gonna promote over Torres!”

“Oh, right. Yeah. I remember that part.”

Mike snorts and leans down to kiss Jay’s throat, like it matters more that he’s here than if he retained any Star Trek data. He’s only a little offended to hear that Jay’s favorite character so far is Kes.

“Of course you like the innocent blond waif,” Mike says. “Don’t get too attached to her.”

“No spoilers!”

Jay doesn’t really care about spoilers, or Kes. Or maybe he does, a little. Something about watching only approximately half of each episode is weirdly perfect, not just as a sleep aid but as a window into Mike’s world. Jay will still spend time at his own place, eventually, after Mike is back on two feet. That’s the plan, anyway. Mike is welcome to come with him. Their shared home remains some combination of their studio and whatever space they’re currently in together, where a vortex is inevitably created that doesn’t let anyone else entirely inside. It’s an interdimensional plane like the one in Mike’s script, where Jay can unfurl his tentacles and Mike can bear his fangs. Sometimes they’re just human there together, and everything mundane feels better than it once did, less scary, more like the settled routines they’ve both secretly wanted, though sometimes also cinematic, so well-framed and strangely moving.

*