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May 17th 1989
It had been an accident, though on reflection it had probably been a long time coming.
Will suspected Lucas meant well, but his interest in his sexuality was getting a little tiresome. It would have been more manageable if Lucas didn’t seem to run hot and cold about it: some days he was fascinated to the point of being almost leering about it, which was an objectively terrible look on him, though Will kinda understood it as typical of the way that some of his (single) basketball friends talked about their, uh, sexual desires, and, as such, was a misguided attempt to fit Will into that kind of conversational space. So he could be a guy among guys. A dude among dudes. And the extensive, intrusive, discussion about what got Will’s dick hard was apparently an attempt to connect. Will had never been more glad that he’d avoided locker rooms all his life if those were the (frankly fucking homoerotic) conversations that went on there. And sometimes he seemed so interested that Will wondered whether he ought to have a word with Max.
But at other times it was all ‘we don’t want to hear that’ and wrinkled noses and he would clam up before Will strayed near anything that might be considered gay. Because sometimes Will did want to talk about what made his dick hard, and even if he couldn’t say that it was usually Mike, he did, being eighteen years old, have many thoughts that led in that direction. The Patrick Swayze poster in his bedroom was not wholly decorative or because he really liked Dirty Dancing (for instance).
And Will had been confused about these shifting reactions to the same conversations until he suddenly saw the pattern: Lucas could initiate those kind of conversations; Will could not. As long as it was a safari into his friend’s exotic sexual imagination, all hypothetical and controlled, it was fine; the thought of Will being gay in the wild, though, looking and liking on his own initiative, was not.
Lucas wasn’t homophobic, wouldn’t have dreamt of himself in those terms, no doubt always thought of himself as being in Will’s side and, Will was sure, would take or throw a punch for him over the issue if it came down to it. But there was still something, still a ‘Will thinks things that I’m uncomfortable with, and can only deal with by downplaying its seriousness’ thought knocking around inside his friend’s skull that grated a little on him. Will loved his friend, but knew if he ever said that he did, Lucas would pull a dumb face and make a joke about it. Maybe pretend to shift away, or, equally, lean in, or gesture apologetically at Max.
None of those reactions would necessarily be bad, and they might even be funny: Will might genuinely laugh. But they would be automatic. Unvarying. Absolutely predictable. They would show, fundamentally, that Will’s sexuality was always at the surface of any thought Lucas currently had about him. And, right now, today, Will wasn’t really in the mood for that seesawing: he hadn’t had much sleep (Mike’s fault) and even at lunchtime was still rubbing at his eyes and yawning. Plus he had a headache. So if he lost concentration, then that was maybe to be expected.
They’d been talking about the school and Will had been glumly comparing its ramshackle state to his six months in Lenora, musing about how one of the arms had fallen off an art department mannequin six months ago and still hadn’t been replaced, though the hand had completely shattered. And somehow even that had managed to touch off Lucas’s favourite topic:
Lucas tilted his head and grinned slyly. Never a good sign. “Bet you can’t wait to go to one of those life drawing classes once you’re in Chicago and get to have a real male model instead of a plastic one.” He nudged Will with his foot. “Though you’ll have to be careful not to get distracted.”
Will frowned and sighed. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll bear that in mind, Lucas, thanks.”
Lucas watched him stab at some peas. “Will?” He frowned. “Will?”
Will looked up. “What?”
“Hey… are we OK?”
Will put down the fork. “I think so? What makes you say that?”
“I dunno, man.” Lucas shrugged. “Just feels like we haven’t hung out in a while. And you seemed mad at me the other day at the lockers, and I felt bad about that.” He played with a tiny sachet of ketchup. “And sometimes it seems like you getting mad at me and then pretending everything’s fine happens more than it should.”
“It’s fine, Lucas. Honestly.”
“You sure?” Lucas tapped the sachet a couple times on the table. He dropped his voice. “I just wondered if I was pushing the, you know, b-o-y-friend thing a little lately.”
Will snorted. “It really isn’t that.”
“So there is something, then?” asked Lucas.
“I said it doesn’t matter.”
“Will, c’mon. All I said was that there must be somebody else at school who’s, you know.”
“Gay?”
“Right.” Lucas nodded. “Because I was reading, and, apparently, like, maybe as many as ten percent of people could be, y’know.”
Oh. They were rehashing this conversation were they? In the middle of the fucking school dining hall?
“Well, forgive me if I want to maybe choose rather than go for the only available option.”
Lucas put his elbows on the table. “We could go up to Indianapolis. There must be a place there.”
There were, Will was aware from Robin, at least a dozen places – he assumed Lucas meant gay bars – there. He and Mike had been bugging her to smuggle them in to one. This was a new one from Lucas, though. “You’d do that for me?” he said, genuinely surprised.
“Sure.” Lucas looked very awkward. “What are friends for? I’m sure Mike would drive you up, too, if you asked him.”
Well, yeah. “And you’d do this even though you can’t say the word ‘gay’?
“What does that matter? I’m being supportive, aren’t I?”
Wait. Drive you up? Will clicked his tongue. “Well. Gee. Have a sticker.”
Lucas’s eyes flared. “I don’t get you sometimes, Will! I say things, I keep trying to be involved in you being, you know, and every time you throw it back in my face. Like I’m crossing some invisible line but you never tell me where it is!”
Will leaned forward, fingers clenching against the table. “You really wanna know?” he said, his voice low but harsh, each word heavy. “I’m fed up of every single conversation we have pivoting back to my sexuality. I get it, Lucas, you find it fascinating, or disgusting, or some combination of the two, but my life does not revolve around the fact that I like guys. My personality is the same as it was, I have, you know, hobbies and interests, and I am, like, a fully rounded person, not a walking dick.” He slammed back against his seat and crossed his arms. “And if you do have to talk about it, have the balls to say the fucking word.”
Lucas blinked. He looked confused, slightly lost. “Oh. I didn’t mean to imply you – I – I – I just thought you wanted to talk about it? You bring it up all the time –”
“No, I don’t!”
Will could feel the eyes of several nearby tables on him. He winced and brought his voice down to its normal volume. “And you have to understand, Lucas, that when I do, I’m not trying to flash a sign or have a Conversation. When you talk about Max or Dustin talks about Jennifer or Becca or Ella, or whoever, you’re not talking about being straight, are you? You’re just talking. And that’s all I’m doing.”
“But it’s important.”
“It’s really not. It’s not a big thing. You don’t need to think about it like that. You don’t need to think about it at all. You don’t need to always be making these gestures that you’re supportive or a good guy or that you are Cool With It. It’s not sending the message you think it is.”
Lucas was silent for a minute, his eyes down. “Sorry.”
“No need to be sorry. Just, you know, cool it a bit?”
Lucas nodded, and chewed at his cheek. “It’s just – it’s just it’s new to me. And I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what it feels like to be, you know -”
“Lucas...”
His friend held up his hands. “I’m not say ... that ... because we’re in public.”
“You started this conversation!” hissed Will. He uncrossed his arms. “And I’m saying that you don’t have to say anything different than what you would have done before. I’m the same, Lucas.”
Lucas nodded again, thoughtful. “OK.”
“OK.”
“So, you don’t want me to drive you to Indianapolis to look for –”
“Lucas!”
“Alright, alright, I’ll drop it!” Lucas slumped down in his seat. “It’s just because I really like having a girlfriend.”
Will snorted. “Yes, Lucas, everyone is aware of that.”
“And I think you’d like one, too.” Lucas bit his lip. “Well, you know what I mean.”
Will resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He actually agreed. He really did enjoy having a you-know-what-I-mean. But. Lucas wasn’t to know that. Not yet. Not until Mike was happy with it. “Can we move on from this conversation, please.”
Lucas nodded. He looked about him, clearly thinking hard about something else to talk about. “Uhh... is that your art class project?” he said, pointing to the book Will had left out on the table when he had been digging through his bag for his wallet.
Will nodded. “Yeah.” He smiled. “You can have a look if you like. Tell me what you think.” He pushed the closed sketchbook towards Lucas, picking up his jello pot with his other hand.
Lucas took it up eagerly, opening it to a random page. Will watched as his friend’s expression changed. Lucas flipped through a few more pages, mouth open, before quickly slapping the book shut and almost throwing it back across the table with a strangled gasp.
Will frowned. “What’s the matter?’” He gave an anxious little smile. “Surely not that bad?”
Lucas wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, his eyes flicking between Will and the book. “Uh... Not sure that’s your art project, dude.”
Will picked up the book, confused. He opened it, and –
Oh. Shit.
This was the wrong book. Just page after page of Mike. Good drawings of Mike, sure. But Mike almost always naked. Mike often, very clearly, post-coital. Shit. Shit. Shit!
Will was as fucked as Mike looked. Crimson, he glanced back up at a mortified Lucas.
“Filing that under things I never needed to know about Mike and will try desperately to unsee.”
Will opened his mouth. He glanced down. Mike’s face, mouth open, lips curled back over his teeth, stared back at him. He closed his mouth and the book.
“Let’s pretend that this never happened, huh?” said Lucas.
“Great plan...”
“But, uh, you and Mike, you are, um... Those are ‘from life’, yeah?”
Will nodded jerkily.
“And are you, uh, actually doi-”
“If the next words out of your mouth are ‘doing’ and ‘it’, then I’m getting El to open a portal to the Upside Down and kicking you back through it.” Will shot Lucas a glare as he opened his mouth. “And that goes for any other euphemism.”
Lucas nodded, a smile creeping around his lips even as he mimed zipping them shut. “Although, isn’t this all undermining your claim of not being obsessed with sex?”
Will flushed even more deeply. “Shut the fuck up.”
Lucas laughed, then stuffed his knuckles in his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.
Despite his previous misgivings about his friend’s squeamishness about sex, Will was prepared to let him have this one. He doubted he’d have been that OK with a picture of Lucas and Max, uh, doing it. He sat there, jello forgotten, wondering if there was a way to turn back time. Become invisible. Wiped Lucas’s memory.
Lucas opened his eyes and cleared his throat. “Are we planning to see the new Indiana Jones movie the day that it opens?”
“What?”
“Next week.”
“Oh! Oh, yeah, I think so. Dustin said something about needing to swap shifts.”
Will tentatively went back to his pudding, and tried to think up a question. He’d heard River Phoenix was going to be in it. That might be a good way of testing if Lucas really was going to change how he responded to him mentioning actors –
“So, uh, with Mike,” said Lucas, staring at the cover of if the sketchbook, “is that, you know, a perspective thing? Whatever the opposite of foreshortening is?”
Will frowned, baffled for a moment, and then fully scowled. “Oh, fuck off.”
“No, seriously, is his di-”
“What part of ‘let’s pretend this never happened’ – that, by the way, you proposed – are you struggling with, Lucas?” Will’s voice got progressively higher.
“Hey, guys. What’s up?” Mike stood at the end of the table. “Will? You OK?”
Lucas glanced sideways at Mike, then rather more deliberately at his groin, then stood up quickly, chair almost tipping over behind him. “Gotta get to the library, I’m afraid. Need to do some last minute studying before my bio test. See you guys soon!”
Mike looked bewildered as Lucas back hurriedly away, still not-very-furtively looking him up and down.
Mike raised an eyebrow at Will and sat down in Lucas’s seat. “Was it me or it did it just look like Lucas was checking out my crotch?”
Will shoved the stupid sketchbook into his bag. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Will was almost asleep with Mike stroking his hair, sprawled out on Will’s bed, one of Jonathan’s trippier mix tapes oozing from the cassette player. Jolts of the day’s embarrassment kept bringing him back, though.
“Did you think Lucas was being weird at lunch?” asked Mike. “I know that you always think he’s got this thing about you being gay, but –”
“Lucas knows about the book.”
Mike shifted position on the bed. “What book?”
Will bit his lip. “The, uh, special sketchbook.”
“Will!” Mike went incredibly red, his eyes wide and panicked.
“It’s OK. He hardly saw any of them. Got really flustered and gave it back.”
“How did he even see it?”
“I thought it was my art class book. I got them mixed up.” Will shuffled closer into Mike’s side. Mike’s heart was going crazy. He felt a sudden rush of guilt. “So, uh, he knows.”
“Would be hard not to.” Will could tell Mike was consciously keeping his breathing under control. “Unless you exposed yourself as a creep.”
“I’m sorry.” Will put his chin on Mike’s chest. “I’m really sorry. I know you don’t want to tell anyone yet.”
“Yeah.” Mike ran his hand through Will’s hair a few more times. “This doesn’t feel as bad as I thought. Lucas knows and... And nothing has changed.”
“Mmm.”
“I’d have expected him to have had more questions. Want all the details.”
“I think he saw about as many details as he could handle in the sketchbook.”
“Ah. Yeah.” Mike actually chuckled. “Poor guy. That explains why he was being so weird.”
“Yeah.”
“And he really was checking out my crotch.”
“Um. I guess?”
“Not sure whether to be flattered or offended.”
“Probably depends which pages he saw – ow!”
Mike pulled his fingers back from where he’d tweaked Will’s hip. Then he groaned and dipped his head into his chest. “Just as well he did see, I suppose, so that you didn’t show them to your whole art class.”
“I know, I know!” Will buried his face in his hands.
“Mrs Taylor has lived across the street from me all my life. There’s so many pictures of my –”
“Yes!” squeaked Will.
"She used to babysit for me."
"Then she's probably already seen -mmmph!"
“I still don’t get why you have them both in the same colour. Seems doomed to exactly this kind of mix-up.” Mike flopped back into the pillow, taking his hand off Will's mouth.
“I accept that I am an idiot.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm?”
“Just thinking about how you’re going to make this up to me.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yup. And whatever it is, it’ll definitely be something to add to the book.”