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These days, Will’s heart fills with warmth so frequently, so regularly, that it almost scares him. Happiness used to be foreign to him in the way that the French language is foreign to him - he knows that it exists, he knows that there are people in the world who experience and understand it, but he knows it will never be for him. He will never be able to construct a conversation in French, and in that same line of reasoning, he used to think he would never know the golden honey sweetness of true safety and comfort.
But here he is, at nineteen years old, slowly waking up beneath the softness of his sheets, blinking his eyes as they adjust to the sight of his boyfriend across the room from him.
Mike is slumped against the wall, sitting on the floor and strumming gently at his acoustic guitar. He doesn’t play electric anymore, not since they moved into a dorm in which the blaring amp would destroy the eardrums of more than just the Wheeler family. He plays the deep, warm strings of the acoustic instead, the sounds thumping within the worn wooden body and ghosting over Will’s skin like an intangible flood of childhood summer air.
Will is starting to get used to waking up to Mike playing his guitar. Mike doesn’t sing, he refuses to, although Will sometimes catches him humming along to the music in the car and secretly wishes he’d do it a little bit louder, a little less bashfully.
But the smooth and oaky sounds of the guitar are enough to pull a smile onto Will’s sleepy face.
He sits up slowly, shivering from the cold. It’s snowing outside, and the thin walls do nothing for his comfort. Low temperatures tend to bring out the less pleasant memories from his childhood, reminding him of many bad events from many different angles. The freezing air biting at his soft, untouched skin at seven years old when his father would lock him outside. The shock of snow pressing into his face as the middle school bullies pinned him down. The icy curse that shot itself through his veins when he was possessed at the age of twelve.
Mike knows this about Will, and Will can tell that he knows. Because come winter, Mike becomes even more attentive, and he simultaneously tries not to make a fuss about it, either. He keeps extra blankets around the apartment without mentioning it, he surprises Will with hot chocolate when he gets home from his classes, and he begins every single morning with his guitar in his lap because Will told him once that waking up to music puts him in a pleasant mood for the rest of the day.
Will finds it all to be extremely endearing. That Mike probably thinks he’s getting away with this, with taking care of Will and not mentioning it. He probably thinks that Will doesn’t even notice the slight changes in Mike’s behavior, that he’s making the winter easier in a way that’s subconscious for Will.
It is all a very conscious experience for Will. But that almost makes it better. It almost makes Will look forward to the dreaded season.
Mike looks up at Will when he notices movement. He smiles gently and continues to pluck at the strings.
“Good morning,” he says softly, reverently. Will thinks he feels a blush dusting at his cheeks.
“Good morning,” Will says. “You sound good.”
Mike exhales softly through his nose - a shy chuckle. “Thanks,” he says. “You look good.”
Will rolls his eyes affectionately. “You sap,” he says.
“For you, I am,” Mike says. He ducks his head down and directs his attention back to the music, maybe to keep tempo or maybe to hide his own blush.
Will keeps his blanket wrapped around himself as he gets out of bed. He sidles up beside Mike against the wall and leans against his sweater-clad shoulder, being careful to maneuver around the neck of the instrument. He looks at Mike’s face and admires the bump on the bridge of his nose, the dots of freckles sprinkled across his cheeks, and the curls of black hair hanging over his lashes.
From here he can hear the metal strings of the guitar vibrating more clearly, the thrum of Mike’s improvised melody filling Will’s ears in a more intimate way.
Hearing the guitar from this close distance reminds him of the late-night conversations he has with Mike when they lay in the same bed, with Will’s head resting on his chest. Talking to Mike from that angle makes his voice sound a little bit different, more guttural and raspy and real. Will relishes in the fact that nobody else gets to hear Mike’s voice from that close.
In the same way, nobody gets to hear Mike’s guitar from this close, and if this closeness could be a common denominator, then the guitar is symbolic of the musician himself, speaking its language to Will from such a small proximity that he can almost taste the notes.
Will presses a chaste kiss to Mike’s shoulder.
“Do you want breakfast?” he asks quietly.
“I’ll make it,” Mike replies. “What do you feel like?”
Will smiles and shakes his head. “Mike, I wanna make it today,” he says. “Don’t you think you’ve done it too many times in a row?”
“What I’m hearing is that you’re sick of my cooking,” Mike says with a teasing smile.
“Ugh, yeah, perfectly cooked French toast with crispy bacon and fresh fruit? Yuck.” Will sticks his tongue out to drive his sarcasm home, and Mike laughs. He loses the groove of the song that he’s playing and strums out a concluding chord in defeat.
“You’re so funny that I messed up,” Mike says. He sets the guitar gently down and stands up, extending his hand. “Come on, we’ll make it together. I am not trusting you with that stove.”
Will laughs because that’s a ridiculous statement. He laughs because Will cooks their dinner nearly every day and Mike’s the one who set the record for the most times the smoke detector has gone off in the dorm building. Breakfast is Mike’s strong suit and possibly his only suit.
But Will also laughs because Mike’s patience and impossible slowness to anger make him feel elated; they make him feel so light and carefree that he can’t help the joy spilling out of him. He made Mike lose his footing on the guitar and Mike didn’t care. He teased him about his cooking and Mike just said they’d cook together instead.
Will grabs Mike’s hand as he’s led to the kitchen. Mike’s fingers are cold. Will brings his boyfriend’s hand to his mouth and kisses the pinks of his knuckles.
Will gets lost in the depths of his spiraling love sometimes. His heart clenches in his chest when he thinks too much about how truly tender it all is, Mike’s treatment of him and Will’s returned care and understanding. Mutual love, that’s all Will could’ve asked for. Requited affection, two-way attraction. This, though, the unconditional way that Mike holds Will’s most fragile pieces and makes good on his promises not to break them… Will never could have imagined a world in which that was a possibility.
As he watches Mike’s practiced movements in the kitchen, cracking the eggs with his spindly fingers and frying the toast with a careful eye on the crispy edges, Will’s heart fills with warmth once again.
He can’t believe that he used to see happiness as a foreign thing. Happiness had been right there all along, attached at his hip since he was five years old on the swingset. Happiness has become something that Will now realizes he’s allowed to have. He’s become one of those people who know and understand the feeling. And under the dim and shivering kitchen light, Will realizes that it doesn’t scare him anymore.
Because he finds belonging in his lover’s curly black hair, his pale smattering of freckles, and his bony, pink knuckles. He finds belonging in the food that they cook for each other and the music that fills their little home.
Sometimes their love is loud and filled with laughter, and sometimes it’s lustful and passionate, all tangled limbs and breathless pleasure. But on mornings like these, it’s soft with quiet care and gentle touches, with golden honey sweetness, with true safety and comfort and happiness.