Chapter Text
Will stared at the canvas longer than he probably should have, brush hanging uselessly at his side, the smell of paint and turpentine thick in the small space. His room was quiet except for the low hum of the heater and the faint sound of birds outside.
His professor’s voice echoed in his head, maddeningly calm and encouraging.
Paint a desire. Use color and the techniques we'll study this semester to bring it into the corporal world. I want you all to show me your want.
At the time, it had sounded abstract, but manageable. Now it felt like a trap.
The painting in front of him was unmistakable, no matter how much he tried to pretend otherwise. A stage bloomed across the canvas, dark except for the glow centered on one figure. Mike stood at the center, eyes closed, mouth open mid-song, fingers curled around the neck of a bass guitar. The lights around him were dim and hazy, bleeding into deep purples and reds, but Mike himself was lit up in warm golds and soft blues, color dancing off him like he was made of it. He looked almost unreal, ethereal, Will thought distantly, like something too good to be held in place.
Will’s chest tightened.
Mike was his best friend. Had always been his best friend. They’d been five years old on the first day of preschool, Will’s legs too short for the swing set, the tips of his sneakers scraping uselessly at the dirt. Mike had walked right up to him like it was the most natural thing in the world, squinting at him with that same earnest intensity he still had now.
“You’re pretty,” Mike had said, blunt and unfiltered. “Wanna be friends?”
Just like that, no hesitation or conditions, they became inseparable.
And Will had a problem. A big one. One he carried quietly, carefully, like something fragile and sharp all at once. He was desperately in love with Mike. Had been for longer than he could remember. And no one knew. Not Joyce. Not Jonathan. Not even Mike.
Especially not Mike.
His fingers twitched, and for a brief, panicked moment, he imagined grabbing the canvas and shoving it into the trash. Destroying it before anyone could see it. Before anyone could look at it and know. He imagined his professor tilting her head, classmates whispering, Mike somehow finding out and looking at him differently, carefully, awkwardly, like he was something that might break or something that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
If Mike ever knew, he’d lose him, their friendship would change, or worse, end. And that thought alone made Will’s chest ache.
Before the spiral could dig any deeper, his phone buzzed on the table beside him. He jumped, heart racing, then relaxed when he saw Mom.
Will! You’re going to be late if you don’t eat breakfast and leave soon!
Reality snapped back into place. The painting stayed where it was. Untrashed.
Will hurried to clean up, rinsing his brushes with shaking hands, stuffing his sketchbook, tablet, and notebooks into his backpack. He had ART 200 and ART HIST 210 today, and he was already cutting it close. He slung the bag over his shoulder and climbed down from the loft on the top floor to the second, where Joyce was already in the kitchen.
She was covered in paint, like usual. Smears of blue and yellow streaked her sweatshirt and dotted her hands, and her hair was pulled back haphazardly as she leaned over the stove, scrambling eggs. The kitchen smelled like coffee and paint, a combination Will had grown up with.
“Sit, sit,” she said when she saw him, sliding a plate toward him. “I might’ve gotten a tiny bit of paint in there. Oops. But I’m sure it’s mostly safe.”
Will smiled despite himself and sat down, eating quickly. As he did, he asked, casually, “Is Jonathan coming home for winter break?”
Joyce shrugged, smiling softly. “You know your brother. Free spirit in New York. He’ll make it if he can.”
Will nodded, finishing up. He kissed her cheek before heading toward the stairs. Halfway down, Joyce called after him, “Don’t forget to pick up my car from the shop!”
“I know!” Will laughed, calling back. “I’m going after class. I won’t forget!”
“Good,” she shouted. “Tell Michael I say hi!”
“I will!”
He hurried through the first floor, weaving carefully through his mom’s art studio, avoiding canvases propped everywhere and puddles of paint that looked suspiciously fresh. He made it outside without incident, caught the bus, and rode to campus with his forehead pressed lightly against the cool glass, thoughts drifting back to the painting he’d left behind.
After class, Will grimaced at his reflection in a window as he walked across campus. He’d done it again, shrunk himself during discussions, apologized when he spoke, voice soft and uncertain even when he knew the answer. Every time a professor asked what he thought, his brain seemed to shut down completely, replaced by a familiar, ugly echo.
Don’t be weird. Don’t be so damn soft.
Lonnie, a sorry excuse for a father. His voice internalized and unwanted, always lingering like a bruise.
Campus felt enormous full, yet strangely empty. This wasn’t like high school, where he met Mike every morning, grabbed breakfast, and spent the day surrounded by the same people he’d known for years. Here, everything felt temporary. Faces blurred together. Conversations slipped through his fingers before he could grab hold of them. Classmates had invited him to hang out after class, asked if he wanted to study together, grab coffee, but somehow, he always found a reason not to. He rejected them before they could reject him, barely even aware he was doing it.
He felt like a loser for it. Like he was wasting something precious he didn’t know how to use.
Will sighed, trying to shake the self-deprecating thoughts as he hopped onto to the bus that would take him to the shop. The thought overtook him, excitement bubbling under the loneliness. He was going to see Mike. They hadn’t really gotten to spend time together since Will dropped off his mom’s car earlier in the week. Mike was busy: school, his job at Clark’s Cars, the band, but despite all of it, he was still good about making time for Will. They texted every day. Mike Facetimed when he could, sometimes just to talk about nothing.
While waiting for his stop, Will scrolled through Mike’s texts from earlier. A picture of a cat Mike had seen on campus, blurry and badly framed. A screenshot of his coffee, ordered from the small café near his campus that he’d dragged Will to their first week with the promise that the pound cake was heavenly. A short video of Dustin and Lucas roughhousing in what looked like a student center lounge, Steve’s laughter loud in the background.
Will smiled at his phone, warmth spreading through his chest.
At the shop, the sound hit him before he even stepped inside, music echoing through the open space. The Strangers were mid-song, and Will paused just inside the doorway to watch.
Mike's band was new, but they were good, really good. Mike had met them in a music class. Dustin was on drums, an electrical engineering major who somehow made frenzied beats work. Steve, a business major, handled the backup vocals and his guitar with a smooth confidence. Lucas, a mechanical engineering major, played keyboard, focused and precise.
And Mike was there too, just like in the painting, only too real this time. He stood under the lights like something summoned rather than made. Their make-shift stage lights caught on the curve of his jaw, the tendons in his hands as they moved over the bass, and for a moment Will forgot how to breathe. He looked too much like he had in the painting, unreal, like someone you weren’t meant to touch for too long or at all. Too perfect to be handled, much less painted, by clumsy, unworthy hands like Will’s.
The bass thrummed through the floor and into Will’s bones. Mike’s fingers moved with an ease that bordered on devotion, like the instrument was an extension of him, like it had always known his hands. And when he sang, low at first, then rising, something in Will gave way. It wasn’t just the sound. It was the intention behind it. The way Mike meant every note.
Will felt the familiar, humiliating urge to drop to his knees. To worship. To believe in something simply because Mike was standing there, alive and luminous and choosing to make this divine sound, to fill the room with it.
When Mike was like this, it was impossible to understand how he hadn’t chosen music outright. How someone who looked so right onstage, who belonged to sound so completely, had decided to study English instead. Mike looked like he had been built for the stage, crafted for spotlight and breath and applause.
But Will could still hear it. The memory slid in uninvited, threaded through the music.
The roof of his mom’s art studio. The sun sinking low, the city stretched beneath them in all its loud, beautiful sprawl. It had been right before the end of senior year, the air thick with endings neither of them knew how to name yet. Will had asked him then, quietly, carefully, why Mike was staying in San Francisco when he could go anywhere. Why he was choosing words when he loved sound so much.
Mike hadn’t answered right away. He’d leaned back on his hands, eyes on the sky, the wind tugging at his hair.
“I do love sound,” he’d said eventually. “But it’s the words we put to it that make it really mean something.”
Will remembered the way his chest had tightened at that. The way Mike had turned to him then, earnest and unguarded, like he always was when he talked about the things that mattered.
“I don’t just want to make noise,” Mike had said. “I want to say something. I want it all to mean something. I want to make it all mean something.”
Will watched him from the edge of the room, thinking, not for the first time, about how effortlessly cool Mike was.
It wasn’t just the music. It was the ease of him. The way he belonged wherever he stood. Mike came from money, from a family that had never really wanted for anything, unlike Will. Karen, always polished and sharp, reporting the news with a voice people trusted. Ted in finance, steady and secure. Nancy already making a name for herself as an investigative journalist, chasing stories like she’d been born to it. Mike could have done anything. He didn’t need the job at the shop.
He worked there anyway.
He worked there because Dustin and Lucas had gotten the gig first. Because Clark, the owner, was Dustin’s neighbor and had needed another set of hands. Because Mike liked spending time with his friends, liked getting his hands dirty, liked the smell of oil and metal and the way engines made sense when you listened closely enough. He liked that when things were slow, they could drag their instruments out and practice, the music echoing off concrete walls like it belonged there.
The set ended to applause, and before Will could even finish clapping, Mike was already moving, dropping his bass without a second thought and jogging over, face bright and open. He wrapped Will in a hug without hesitation, tight and warm and familiar, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“So?” Mike asked, pulling back just enough to look at him. “What’d you think?”
“It was really good,” Will said, and meant it. His voice came out steadier than he felt. “You guys get better every time I hear you play.”
Mike’s grin widened, soft and stunned, like the praise landed somewhere important. Like it mattered more because it had come from Will.
Dustin cut in, tossing a set of familiar keys through the air. Will caught them on instinct.
“Here you go, man.”
“Thank you,” Will said automatically.
“Don’t thank us,” Lucas added with a grin, before Steve chuckled and finished the thought, “Mike did all the work himself. Wouldn’t let us touch the car.”
Mike just shrugged, already popping a handful of M&M’s into his mouth. “Fixed it like always. No worries.”
Heat crept up Will’s neck, his face flushing despite himself. Mike was always like this, quietly generous, thoughtlessly kind. Treating Will like he mattered, like he was worth time and effort and care, offering it so freely that it felt impossible to refuse. A fixed car. A tight hug. A grin that lingered just a second too long. None of it was special to Mike. All of it was everything to Will.
At first, it had just been attention. Mike choosing to sit next to him, choosing his opinion, choosing to look for him in a room. Will had told himself that was normal, that friends did that. But somewhere along the way, the attention had started to settle under his skin, warm and dangerous. He found himself waiting for it, craving it, measuring moments by how close Mike stood or how often he said Will’s name. Each small kindness sank in deeper than the last, until Will realized, too late, that it wasn’t just gratitude or admiration anymore.
It was wanting. Wanting Mike’s focus, his laughter, his easy affection. Wanting it in a way that made Will feel exposed and foolish and terrifyingly alive. Wanting it in a way that had quietly grown roots and wrapped itself around his ribs, tightening every time Mike smiled at him like that.
If Mike ever knew, Will thought, his chest constricting painfully, he’d lose him.
And that, more than anything, was something Will couldn’t bear.