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First there is cheap wine after a spaghetti dinner that Mike claimed was nothing special, though Michael ate his full portion and even wanted more. Their previous encounters were quick, desperate, something violent and messy, a way to release built-up tension and anger and hate, crossing the borderline of unhealthy. This is something new, Mike cooking and Michael making snide remarks and jokes with no real sharpness or cruelty behind them. Abby left for a sleepover at a friend’s house — Mike could not lie and say he didn’t almost tear up hearing about this sleepover, after all the struggles she had gone through socially — so, to him, it was never a better time to invite Michael over formally, find a way to break through whatever the fuck they had going on between them. It is going okay, Mike thinks to himself. Michael can be unpredictable, set off by little things, and Mike knows he is no better. But for them, for all the baggage they carry with them into this, it is going well, and they are almost passing for normal.
After they finish dinner, plates stacked in the sink, they end up in Mike’s room, barely crossing the entryway before Michael has crashed his lips against Mike’s, a hunger tugging low in his gut. Mike smirks into the kiss and Michael parts his lips, allowing Mike to explore the taller man’s mouth with his tongue, eliciting quiet whines. They fall back on his bed, a tangle of limbs and heat. Even with the desperation, there is something different to it, something… softer. More reverent, they have more time.
Michael has never known this gentleness before. A soft kiss to his temple, to his neck, just above his collarbone, a soft yellow glow filling his chest, flitting around Mike’s soft brown eyes. If he looks close enough, if the light falls on them just right, they explode in a kaleidoscope of brown and green and gold. He melts into Mike’s touch, the familiar crawling of his skin held at bay by the… fuck, by the trust he feels, the want. The subconscious part of him, the part that knows this can only end in disaster, that has kept him living this long, rears its head, a dash of jagged purple dispersing the yellow fizziness threatening to escape his chest. It almost succeeds, he almost pulls away, but…
He nestles closer squirming lightly in Mike’s lap, burying his head in his shoulder, biting on the shorter man’s neck. Mike inhales, smiles softly, fingers carding through Michael’s dark hair. “Can I kiss you again?” he asks, slightly breathless, pulling back enough to see Michael’s face but not enough to let go of him.
Michael looks up, words glued to the back of his throat, not quite reaching his mouth. He nods instead, leans down to initiate the kiss, Mike closing the gap. Mike’s lips are soft, slightly chapped, a faint saltiness and the vinegary remnants of the cheap red wine they passed back and forth a half hour before. Michael nibbles Mike’s bottom lip, barely enough to draw a tangy pinprick of blood. Mike whines faintly as Michael runs his tongue across the blood, deepening the kiss.
Eventually they pull away to breathe, foreheads pressed together, lips messy and swollen, quietly panting. Michael’s hair is messy, fallen out of his usually carefully styled middle part, and Mike’s short waves are more tousled than normal, sticking out in some angles from where Michael tugged at them. He had been complaining to Michael about his hair earlier, said he wanted it shorter again, but Michael thinks now that it suits him at this length.
“So pretty,” he whispers, not trusting himself to speak any louder. He’s scared it might shatter the moment. He doesn’t want the jagged purple to come back. Mike’s breath hitches at that, and Michael can barely make out the red flush spreading across his face in the lamplight’s muted glow, the way his pupils dilate, turning his eyes a deep brown. Michael wants to drown in those eyes, maybe he is drowning already, lost in their depths. Lost yet not untethered. His gaze flicks away every few seconds – his skin has always crawled, little green spiky swirls dancing across its surface if he’s made too much eye contact too long – yet he keeps getting pulled back, some magnetic force drawing him in.
“You’re sweet when you want to be,” Mike teases, and Michael almost snaps back till he registers the intentional softness to the grin on Mike’s face, the way he rubs his thumb over the palm of Michael’s hand.
“Don’t get used to it,” he mumbles instead, though the words have no weight to them. He burrows against Mike again, though really, all he wants to do is crawl into the man’s chest, nestle inside his ribs and fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat. He wants, a want that is all consuming. He was never good at identifying his feelings, never taught how, never felt such a pull towards another person in this way. He rubs his free hand against the soft fabric of Mike’s flannel, tracing a circle over and over, over and over, until the feeling subsides.
Mike only laughs gently the snide comment from Michael, tucking the taller man closer to his side. “Alright, Michael.” He glances at the alarm clock on his nightstand. “It’s a quarter to ten, do you want to stay here or go home?” Michael hesitates, weighing his decisions. Usually, he leaves, slipping out of the window or out the front door before dawn can shed light on the unanswered questions behind whatever the hell they had going on. But it’s cold outside, another part of him thinks. He doesn’t want to change what they are doing so suddenly, wants… needs more time here. He’s exhausted and just needs to sleep. As he tries to communicate this, any of this, the words falter, stuck again in the back of his throat and he briefly tenses. What will Mike say about that?
Noticing Michael’s hesitation, Mike’s brow furrows for a split second before he gently frees his hands, turning them palm side up. “Touch my right hand for staying, left for leaving.” Michael cocks his head to the side. Eerily similar to the Mangle, is all Mike can think, though he banishes that thought as soon as it comes by. “I… learned it from one of Abby’s aides at school,” he explains. Michael nods, a slight look flitting across his face. He taps the right hand. Mike tries to fight back the wide grin threatening to spread across his face, not wanting to scare Michael away so soon.
Michael is fucking terrified, though he does not want to let on. This is something he has promised to work on, and he wants to make Mike proud, wants to prove that he can change, that he can be better. Later, as they lie in bed together – together – he finds himself twisting the fabric of a dark hoodie Mike lent him around and around his finger, cutting off its circulation. The jagged purple shapes come back, swirling around his stomach and his chest. He has not shared a bed since… he shuts that thought down, does not want to think about it here, now.
He burrows closer, needs to feel that it’s really Mike next to him, needs to dispel the bad colors and hazy memories crowding his mind. With a shaky hand, he reaches out, wraps an arm around the sleeping man beside him. Mike smiles softly in his sleep, unconsciously melting into Michael’s touch, a contrast to how tense he usually carries himself while awake. Eventually, Michael is able to dampen his racing thoughts, lulled by the rhythmic rise and fall of Mike’s chest and soft beating of his heart, jagged green and purple shapes whisked away by a quieter peachy colored cloud, and he sleeps, deeper and safer than he has slept a very long time, maybe than he has in his whole life.