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Will has wrapped a ratty Looney Tunes blanket over his narrow shoulders. Bunched up around their necks: sheets too thin on the mattress which is equally ratty. Mike in a profound way hates Will’s house. “Where’d you get this? Salvation Army?” Mike asks and pulls a thread of Daffy loose.
Will is too dumb to detect the insult and starts giving an answer about his mother or something. It’s late, probably 2 in the morning. Mike will want cereal in a few hours and Will only ever has the off brand crap and are-you-trying-to-starve-me this and that will take place before Mike will go home to eat something legitimate and middle class.
“Stupid,” Will echoes himself on whatever he was saying and rolls onto his back. Mike agrees. Lying close together because Will is poor and all his shit is cramped and small. His bed principally is tiny like him and they fight for stake of the pillow and Mike hates waking up with Will’s hair in his mouth.
On his side. Jeans remain but hoodie discarded. Mike watches Will wriggle around and further screw up the sheets which are pulling and bunching and soaking in that guy’s sweat all the time. Their shoulders touch and Will settles like that. So great.
“…But I don’t like being awake either because then it talks to me when I’m awake like, in real life it talks to me.” Will tightens his sad blanket cloak. Like that threadbare shit will shield him from the monster.
This monster catches the following allegations: possessing Will. Deep down Mike is inclined to believe he’s telling the truth. Still he loves calling him crazy because Will reacts differently to Mike’s denial every time. Once he calmly offered to vomit in front of him to “prove it.” Another time he proclaimed schizophrenia on himself. A third time he burst into flames. Mike imagined that.
“It’s the same dream every time,” Will continues, borderline nuzzling into his arm now.
“Stop talking,” Mike thinks aloud.
“‘Kay.” Full on nuzzling. Usually Will smells like lead but right now he smells like really watery baby shampoo. Kindergarten. Nap time. People used to cuddle on the linoleum floor and give him secondhand embarrassment even at tender age five.
What’s gay is that Mike is the one facing Will whose glazed over stare is instead at the ceiling. Beady and weird which is how Mike knows the monster is real: bro scares him lately. Dude carries himself like there’s something living in him, very real and interesting to Mike on a level nothing else is if he’s frank.
Will closes his eyes. Mike pinches some of his bangs: “I’m sorry your barber fucks you like this.”
Will shrugs sadly like ‘it’s OK.’
They’re different. Mike will grab throw hit squeeze toss a leg up over Will’s stomach and stuff. The way Will cuddles, is this: flatten himself like a bug against the person. As he is doing now. Sleeve and arm slowly compressing into Mike; giving him diseases through osmosis.
“Let’s stop going to school,” Mike says, spreading out his hands over his eyes and looking at Will’s posters through the gaps. He plays a game of trying to frame his vision with his fingers so that he can only see Audrey II who is tacked up next to Jaws. “Like forever?” Will asks. Eyes still shut. “What about, like, taxes.”
“My cousins in Canada don’t go to school. They eat deer and crap. And they give me weed sometimes that’s why I go up there and I learn this stuff about the world. Y’know. I’m benefitting both of us.”
Will sniffles. “Weed?”
Mike nods once and incredibly seriously.
“Are they ok?”
“Yeah fine. Awesome house. They have a computer I think. Everything is gray when it snows there and the government doesn’t tax them because in Canada it’s illegal for anything to be hard,” Mike goes on making the room disappear as he does. He creates the world Will lives in and they both like it that way. Will is sighing, high-pitched. Behind his eyelids is probably a vivid picture of a country where nothing is hard. There they live together forever, in Will’s head.
Will’s head, which is round as all hell. It twitches and snaps to Mike’s chest: cheek to rib in one attack. Majorly pushing it and he’s sure Will knows he’s pushing it. He’s been positive for a while now that Will has it going on for him. Those creepy pinprick pupils bloat whenever they touch hands. Mike is happy to oblige that: of all his predilections his weirdest is for Will who likes being snatched and pet like a claw machine fidget prize. Internally Mike praises himself for putting up with him. I’m valiant for this. And above all it can’t be helped that Will needs him so bad. And Will’s body is girly anyway it fits inside his. That part is important.
“It wants me to kill you,” Will yawns and pushes his knees into the other’s. Mike appreciates his own jeans in a way. “Mind-thing. Mindflayer. Kill you.”
“Ohh,” Mike humors it and feels that this was premeditated to suffocate him in his sleep. He asks Will if this is the case.
“Mmhmm,” Will replies from under Mike’s chin. Mike knits their legs. And when he’s bored of it, he’ll stick his hands in and rip the monster out.