inky-iridescence - Tumblr blog

inky-iridescence · 6 months

Note

*slams a twenty dollar bill on the table* prompt 55, pls it’s a matter of life and death!!

(this got so damn long that i put it on AO3 for easy reading, but you can also read on below!)

55. tracing the lines on the other’s hand

Mike doesn't finally accept his attraction to men because of something normal, like being guided down a beefcake rabbit hole on TikTok or mainlining all five seasons of Queer as Folk. He simply has no other choice after he becomes obsessed with his coworker's hands.

Mike likes to think he's had a manageable amount of gay thoughts in his short 18 years on earth. Sure, he's found other guys hot, even considered acting on it here and there, but he's mostly been able to keep everything under wraps — i.e. inside his own head, where his mother and father and the general population of central Indiana are none the wiser.

And then, the summer before he's off to college, a guy named Will starts working at the movie theater, and things get a lot more unmanageable.

Mike has barely been there two weeks when Will starts, but staffing at the Hollywood is a nightmare, thanks in large part to their deplorable manager, so naturally it falls on Mike to train him. He comes in at eleven already hating his life — the entire reason he took this job was so that he wouldn't have to get up in the morning during the summer, for fuck's sake, and today they start showing some new wartime biopic, so he's going to be up to his ears in old people who think they own him just because they paid $14 a ticket. He is zero percent looking forward to training the new guy on opening, something he's done exactly once.

That is, until he meets said trainee — Will, a barely legible Post-It on top of the opening checklist informs him — and he just happens to be the cutest guy Mike has ever seen.

It's not even like Will is some godlike specimen. His skin is olivey and a bit summer-tan, and he has floppy, honey-brown hair and a few moles smattered adorably across his face and arms, but he is very much just a boy. Average height, average build, symmetrical face. He's wearing jeans and a Zelda T-shirt and plain white Vans. But he gives Mike an awkward half-smile and a wave as he introduces himself at the box office, and Mike can actually feel himself get stupider.

They make small talk as Mike takes them through the opening checklist, showing Will how to get the popcorn started and double-check the bathrooms. Mike manages to choke out something about Breath of the Wild in reference to Will's shirt, and he gets to hear all about Will's plans to get into animation and character design. Will says he's going to RISD in the fall, and when Mike tells him that he's going to Brown, Will lights up like a Christmas tree. Mike is, for once, grateful that the lobby air conditioning is on the fritz again, so he has plausible deniability for the flush that takes over his face the entire time.

At exactly 11:48, Frances starts rapping on the front door over and over again, forcing Mike to remember that it is Friday, and Fridays are fucking annoying. He stops booting up the point of sale so that he can put his head in his hands and groan.

"Who is that?" Will asks just over his right shoulder, sounding equal parts alarmed and amused.

"That," Mike says to the little list of showtimes he has stuck to the counter, "is Frances. She's a regular." He uncovers one side of his face and tilts his head to squint one eye up at Will. "She shows up every Friday way before we open. And every Friday, she's shocked that we don't just let her in."

Will hums in understanding, his arms crossed. He makes eye contact with Frances through the glass front door and beams at her, offering a little wave. "Do you have a piece of paper I could use?" he asks Mike through his teeth.

Five minutes later, Will has written BOX OFFICE OPENS AT 12:15 in bold, even block letters on the back of another showtime printout. He strolls up to the front door and tapes it right at Frances' eye level, giving her a sympathetic look all the while. When she walks off to piss away the next 20 minutes elsewhere, Will turns on his heel to face Mike again, smile wide and eyebrows raised, and asks Mike to show him the point of sale system.

It is then that Mike understands just how untenable the situation is. This boy is perfect, and he is totally fucked.

The thing about Will's hands starts that first day, as Mike watches him write that sign. Mike's throat goes a little dry as he watches Will draw sure, strong lines, even with a shitty ballpoint pen from the bank across the street. Will has a mole on the side of his right wrist and a solid black star on the back of his left hand, and that second discovery is so unexpected that it makes Mike slightly dizzy.

That first shift, Mike assumes the star is a stamp from some club — and Will doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would go to a club on a Thursday (at least, not based on Mike's hour-long impression of him), and it's weird that the stamp is still so fresh, but Mike figures, whatever. It's a small, forgettable thing. But the second time they're on shift together, the star is still as black as the watch on Will's wrist, so Mike comments on it. Will tells him that it's actually a tattoo — something about The Clash and his older brother — and Mike can actually hear the blood rushing to his ears. A customer comes up to buy a ticket to The Black Phone in the middle of this exchange, and Mike somehow sells them three seats to the next screening of Elvis.

Box office shifts become increasingly difficult after this revelation. Mike's work performance dips significantly whenever he's sequestered in that small corner of the lobby with Will, watching his fingers dance across the point of sale touch screen and the veins in his hand shift underneath his tattoo. The slow hours between movies are even worse, as Will breaks out his sketchbook or crowds into Mike's space to show him something funny on his phone. When Mike sees Will wear rings to work for the first time (a silver moon signet ring on his left middle finger and a plain silver band on his right pointer finger, but who's counting), he accidentally stays 45 minutes past the end of his shift.

Working concessions is arguably worse. The giant jugs of vegetable oil they go through every day have never been more fascinating than when Will hoists them up to measure out a cup; he sometimes passes Will the soda orders just to watch him press the buttons. On one particularly memorable occasion, Will licks some excess butter off his fingers and Mike nearly passes out.

They share a shift on the last day of June, when their manager tells everyone that they can swap their rainbow-themed name tags back for normal ones before they clock out.

"What if we want to keep the rainbow ones?" Will asks, and when their dumbass manager asks Will why he would want to do that, Will politely tells him, "Because I'm gay every day of the year."

This, of course, makes things exponentially worse for Mike, who has a hard enough time being around Will knowing that a) they're going to live in the same city for the next four years and b) he has a crush on him so big that it can probably be seen from space. He does his best to power through their next shift together, but it’s almost impossible. Will is wearing his rings, and after they start the second matinee he gets out his sketchbook and a few pencils, lining things up on their little workspace just so. He twists the silver ring off of his right hand so that he can get a proper grip on his green colored pencil. Mike ends up excusing himself to the bathroom no less than three times just to sit on the toilet with his head in his hands.

By mid-July, Mike has had two get your shit together talks with the manager. Things have officially gotten to the point where he must acknowledge that if he wants to keep this job, his only source of independent income and possibly his only revenue stream, period, after his parents find out he's majoring in English, he has to avoid Will. It's not that hard, considering he's already memorized Will's schedule (in a totally non-creepy way) — he just has to ask for the opposite hours. Six weeks of mostly opening shifts and no Will is sure to completely obliterate his will to live, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Three days in, he realizes he's made an awful mistake. Because even though working with Will turns him into the Hollywood Theatre's Least Valuable Player, the guy is also easily his closest work friend. They never run out of things to talk about; it's almost eerie how in sync they are, interests-wise. Mike spends more time than he'd ever admit looking at Will's Instagram (mostly his artwork and pictures of other people — an appalling lack of selfies) during slow hours. When Nope comes out, all Mike wants to know is what Will would do in a comparable situation, and what he thought of the alien design. He considers texting him about it, bumping their occasional back-and-forth up to an ongoing conversation, but he chickens out.

He nearly has an aneurysm, then, when he gets a text from Will on a Friday afternoon about a week into his self-imposed exile:

Where have you been? Frances misses you

Mike snorts as he taps out a reply. He's been awake for approximately ten minutes, and he's already a fan of this day.

she absolutely does not.

Answer the question

had to change hrs to help watch my lil sister :/

He thinks of Holly, blissfully ignorant and enjoying Girl Scout camp until mid-August, and tries to tamp down his guilt as he sends the message. He'd honed that lie for days in case of this exact situation. His stomach churns as the three dots dance on Will's side of the screen, and then he reads:

Mike doesn't think two letters have ever had more of an effect on him than that A and W are having right now. It's not like he hasn't been overanalyzing every conversation he's had with Will for the last month and a half to see if maybe, possibly, there's a remote chance that Will might like him, too. But every time he does that, he twists himself up into knots, because it's Will, and maybe Mike only knows him in the context of slinging popcorn and rejecting people's Moviepasses in the Year of Our Lord 2022, but he's seen enough to ascertain that Will is, for the most part, a grade-A sweetheart. He has a well-honed bitchy side — which is always a delightful surprise when it makes an appearance — but otherwise Will is just a good person. Mike's not delusional enough to think that Will is into him just because he's nice to him.

But this — this Aw gives him the most pathetic flutter of hope, because people only say Aw about things that they think are cute. And yeah, Mike had just been talking about his little sister, but he's starving and more than happy to take the crumbs.

Whoosh sounds announce the arrival of two more texts.

Well we should hang out outside of work anyway

My sister is having a birthday thing at our place tonight, if you wanna come

Mike almost drops his phone on his face.

what time?

Like 7

He rolls over onto his stomach in an attempt to make his hands shake a little bit less as he types:

yea i can do that

Yay :) I'll send you my address

Mike gazes at that Yay :) for what is undoubtedly a pathetic amount of time, and then he begins a staring contest with his closet, hoping he can somehow materialize a non-stupid outfit in the next six hours. He's tempted to schedule a Lyft in advance, like it'll make the clock move faster.

He realizes, suddenly, that he doesn't actually know much about Will's sister, aside from her name and the fact that Will loves her very much. A picture of the two of them is his lock screen wallpaper — something that Mike knows for completely normal reasons.

do i have to bring a gift?

Oh, absolutely.

That's how Mike ends up on the sidewalk in front of the Hopper-Byers residence at 7:05 p.m. clutching a pale pink gift bag filled with white tissue paper. He's looking balefully at the front door of the cozy ranch style house, debating whether he should take a walk around the block to be less pitifully early, when a brunette girl throws it open.

She has a friendly, kind face, and Mike immediately recognizes her as Will's sister, El — the girl from his lock screen.

"Are you Mike?" she calls down the walkway, a bit more loudly than Mike would prefer. His posture sinks a little, his shoulders inching closer to his ears.

"Uh," he calls back eloquently. "Yeah."

El turns around and yells, with all the gusto of a sports announcer, "WILL! MIKE'S HERE!" And although Mike would very much prefer to die, he finds himself obeying as she beckons him up the walkway.

"He's probably still in his room, because you're kind of early," El tells him bluntly as she shows him into the house. Top 40 pop emanates from seemingly all directions, and a redhead — probably one of El's friends — glances up at him, unimpressed, from a couch in the sitting room. El stops in the kitchen, next to a center island crowded with alcohol, and asks, "Is that for me?"

Mike blinks at her, then remembers the gift bag in his hand. "Oh," he says awkwardly, extending it towards her. "Yeah. Happy birthday."

She smiles at him and barely hesitates before unearthing the gift right then and there. It's some foofy candle his mom helped him pick out, positively apoplectic that her son was buying a gift for a girl. Mike tries very hard not to disintegrate as El reads the label. She twists the lid off and takes a sniff.

"Nice," she declares, offering Mike a completely disarming smile. "Thanks." She drops the gift on a nearby counter and grabs Mike by the wrist, tugging him down an adjacent hallway. "I'll show you where Will's room is."

Before Mike has the ability to like, regain his faculty of speech — much less protest, because the mere thought of being inside Will's bedroom is already making his palms sweaty — El has him parked in front of a door covered in band posters and drawings and stickers. Further compounding Mike's horror, she knocks and yells through the door, announcing his arrival at more or less the same volume she'd used from the front of the house.

And then Will is there, standing in the doorway. Mike is somehow completely unprepared for this, despite the fact that he is in Will's house and has been freshly frog-marched to Will's room by Will's sister. It doesn't help that Will looks very good, his hair still damp from a recent shower. Mike takes in his black bowling shirt (obviously thrifted or inherited, since it's embroidered with the name "Chet") and cuffed tan corduroy pants, his bare feet. He's never wanted to kiss someone so badly in his pathetic little life.

"Hey," he says, and his voice cracks a little, because god himself must hate him. He tries to recover quickly, clearing his throat for a second attempt: "Hey."

"Hey," Will says back, smiling like he's actually happy to see him. And because Will is smiling, Mike has no choice but to smile, too, and then they're just kind of standing there, smiling at each other.

"Well," El interjects, again somewhat more loudly than Mike would prefer, "text me if you need me."

Mike’s probably making it up, but he thinks it takes a second for Will to turn and focus on her. He points a finger at his sister. He's wearing his rings again, Mike can't help but notice. "You text me if you need me," he instructs. "And pace yourself. Remember that we share a bathroom."

"Okay, Mom," El responds, rolling her eyes. And with that, she saunters back down the hall.

"Uh," Mike shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "How big is this party supposed to be, anyway?"

"Like our whole school, probably," Will answers breezily. And then Mike forgets to ask a follow-up question (even though he definitely has several, since Will and El go to public school and this house is not built to host a thousand people), because Will steps out of his doorway and says, "Come in."

Mike does as he's instructed, trying not to have any kind of visible reaction when Will closes the door behind them. His chest clenches as he takes everything in — this room is so totally, perfectly Will, down to the small shrine to The Cure on top of his dresser and a copy of The Lord of the Rings, illustrated by Tolkein himself, in a place of honor on the squat bookshelf. Mike had the exact same edition on his Christmas list last year.

Will goes to put on a record, because of course he has a turntable. Soft synth and strings distract from the raucous pop booming elsewhere in the house.

"I don't know if you like Sufjan, but." Will shrugs, settling onto his bed criss-cross applesauce. "I think The Ascension is underrated."

Mike nods, like he has any idea what Will is talking about. "No, this is— this is great."

He hovers in the middle of Will's room awkwardly, completely unsure where to sit down but positive that Will's bed cannot be an option, and then Will pats the space next to him with his right hand — Mike can see the little mole on his wrist — and Mike's brain goes completely blank. He almost trips toeing his shoes off and self-consciously settles about a foot away from Will with his back against the wall. His hair brushes a low-hanging poster for John Carpenter's The Thing. He brings his knees up to his chest, trying not to obsess over his mismatched socks. One of them is light pink. He thinks it might actually be Nancy's.

Will asks if he wants to watch something and Mike says yeah. He's pretty sure Will could ask if he wanted to murder someone, à la The Secret History, and he would say yeah. They settle on rewatching Rogue One, because neither of them have seen it since they were, like, twelve, and Andor is coming out in September. As Will opens a new window on his PC and logs into Disney+ (his little icon for the family account is Dipper from Gravity Falls, and El is Mabel, and Mike really is just going to go insane), Mike tries not to be too obvious about staring at his hands.

Mike eventually settles in despite feeling vaguely like he's going to throw up. Will is just so easy to be around. They bat Star Wars theories back and forth like they've been doing it their entire lives. Will offhandedly mentions that he's always had a thing for Riz Ahmed, and Mike not-at-all-enviously says that he thinks Riz Ahmed kind of looks like a bug. Will simply responds that he likes bugs, a statement that Mike is left to puzzle over for the remainder of the film. Does he look like a bug?

By the time they start The Mandalorian from the beginning — after Will is done ragging on Mike for tearing up a little at the end of Rogue One, as if a) Will hadn't also teared up and b) everyone doesn't fucking die — their shoulders are touching, and Mike has stretched his legs out, sacrificing one thigh to help support Will's laptop. A box of pizza Will stole from the party sits empty on the floor. The sound of music and voices elsewhere in the house has increased significantly, and Will shoots El a text, checking in.

"You know, when you invited me over for a party, I sort of assumed we would be, like, participating in it," Mike muses as Mando walks into a room full of Storm Troopers.

Will laughs. "Oh, sorry, did you want to go play pong with half the homecoming court?" He nudges Mike's leg with his own. "I've got you all wrong."

"Obviously not," Mike says, laughing too, albeit a bit breathlessly. Will has thought about him. "This is great, I just—" He stalls, looking for the right words. "I didn't know your sister was so popular."

Will rolls his eyes. "I try to forget it, myself," he sighs. "I protected her from bullies, like, our entire freshman year, and then she and her friend Max started doing these dumb TikToks where they pretended to have superpowers and they totally blew up." He shrugs. "Now they're popular, which they both think is fucking hilarious. They're mostly doing it ironically."

Somewhere in the hallway, they both pretend not to hear the disappointed groans of a crowd of teenagers who have undoubtedly just spilled and/or broken something.

"I have literally never been popular in my life," Mike admits.

Will smiles. "Hear, hear."

"Your sister seems cool, though," Mike babbles stupidly, like Will didn't just agree with him. "Like, I get it. She seems nice, and she's pretty."

He stares at the laptop, eyes wide, seriously considering whether it would be possible to drown himself in Will and El's shared bathroom. Because surely he's not sitting here, the closest he's ever had to a chance with this stupidly perfect guy, having just made it seem like he's into said guy's sister. Werner Herzog is lecturing Mando on the natural order of things. Mike can't help but notice that Will is not saying anything.

"I don't—" Mike tries again, pressing his sweaty right hand into the denim of his jeans. "I just meant, like, you guys look a lot alike."

It takes every ounce of willpower he has not to just bury his face in his hands. He keeps watching the pilot of The Mandalorian intently, like he hasn't already seen it at least five times, as he feels a blush creeping up the back of his neck.

"Uh," Will says after what is, in Mike's mortified opinion, way too long. His tone is unreadable. "Thanks."

It takes several more minutes for the vibe to return to something resembling normal, but it does. Will says something about the desert lizards at the start of the second episode of The Mandalorian, which reminds Mike to finally ask him about Nope, and then they're off to the races. Mike barely even notices as episode two bleeds into episode three, which bleeds into episode four. He's too busy laughing at Will's surprisingly strong opinions on UFO-shaped aliens and watching him change out the records on his turntable. He may or may not lose track of their conversation once or twice, watching Will slide his records into and out of their sleeves and position the turntable's needle just so.

So Mike's guard is definitely down when, as Mando takes off on a speeder bike, Will turns to him.

"You know the Pride name tags they gave us at the theater?" Will asks, like they'd just been in the middle of a conversation about work and not the upcoming Five Nights at Freddy's feature film. They're both sitting cross-legged now, the laptop between them. Their shoulders still brush regularly, as if controlled by magnets with opposite charges.

He might be trying to play it off like the topic just popped into his head, but Will suddenly looks very serious. His hazel eyes don't quite meet Mike's. He fidgets a little, twisting the plain silver ring on his right hand, which is definitely not distracting at all.

"Um," Mike answers, brow furrowed. "Yeah?"

Will meets his eyes for a second, then looks back at the screen between them. "You stopped wearing yours at the beginning of the month."

Mike stares at Will's profile, like the slope of his nose and the line of his throat will reveal just what the hell he's talking about. They don't, but Mike does feel, somehow, a bit more insane. "Yeah," he repeats, at a loss.

Will lets out a long breath through his nose. "I mean, like—" He looks up at the ceiling, as if searching for the right words. "Could you have kept wearing it, even though it wasn't June anymore? Or..."

When he glances back at Mike, he actually looks nervous. Mike doesn't think he's ever seen Will look nervous, except for that one time he'd forgotten to put oil in the popcorn maker. He feels like there's something happening here that he's just not getting, for whatever reason, like Will is speaking in code. He has half a mind to escape to the bathroom and send Lucas an SOS text, and then suddenly, it hits him. The main memory he has associated with those name tags. The thing Will said to their manager.

"Yeah," Mike says softly. "I could've worn it, um..." He pauses to remember the exact phrasing and realizes, for a brief, terrifying moment, that this is the second time he's ever come out to anyone. He looks at Will, heart in his throat, and says, "I could've worn it every day of the year."

"Oh," Will says, his voice quiet to match Mike's.

On the laptop, Mando says something about a bounty hunter. The bright light from the desert scene flickers over Will's face as he keeps looking at Mike, and maybe pure, unbridled hope is making him hallucinate, but Mike thinks he sees Will's gaze drop from his eyes to his mouth for a moment. He definitely sees Will's throat flex as he swallows. They're facing each other, and Mike has that feeling, like the air is electric, like right now Will might actually want to kiss him as badly as he wants to kiss Will.

Will touches Mike's knee lightly with two fingers, pointer and middle, like he's testing something out. Mike thinks, hysterically, of Nancy making him watch the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice, of that scene that all the TikTok girls go insane over where Darcy helps Elizabeth into the carriage. He thinks he gets it now.

They both look down at Will's fingers, then back up at each other, and when they look at each other again it's so charged that Mike feels lightheaded. Will spreads his whole hand over Mike's knee, and Mike swears they're both starting to lean in when Will's phone dings with a text.

"Oh, fuck," Will mutters. "It's Max." He scrambles off the bed and darts for his closet, unearthing a pair of Adidas sliders. "Some asshole is trying to get into my stepdad's cigar collection," he explains as he goes. "I'll be back in like, two seconds, okay? Don't move."

Mike shakes his head. "Not moving," he confirms, the sting of being interrupted somewhat soothed by seeing Will like this, frazzled and red-eared and wearing shoes that absolutely don't go with his outfit. He's pretty sure he’s never heard Will say fuck until just now.

Will nods. "Okay," he says, and for a moment he just keeps standing there, looking at Mike, until his phone dings again and he forces himself out the door.

Mike pauses The Mandalorian, which could be on Season 2 now for all he knows, and screams into one of Will's pillows. It smells like Will, like pencil shavings and oat milk shampoo, which only makes his heart do another series of cartwheels.

He pulls his phone from his pocket and taps out a text to Lucas:

i think im gonna kiss a boy tonight

Lucas immediately FaceTimes him. Mike rejects the call.

im literally IN HIS ROOM rn calm down omg

???? where is he????

this is cute movie theater guy right

will

i haven't approved of anyone else

Mike laughs. Lucas is sending texts faster than he can respond to them.

i didn't know you approved of will

ofc i approve of will

you won't shut up about will

i have no choice

and also he sounds nice

Mike can feel the corny smile taking over his face as he types back:

he is

ugh gay ❤ but where is he

helping his sister im pretty sure something was about to happen and then she texted him he put his hand on my knee ????!!!!!

Lucas sends the eye emoji, the lips emoji, and another eye emoji, and captions it, me rn.

Before Mike has time to reply same, Will is opening the door again.

"Hey," he says a little breathlessly, smiling as he kicks his shoes off, and a fresh wave of nerves crashes over Mike. Why did he waste his time texting Lucas when he could have been, like, finding a mint? He can't remember if he brushed his teeth this morning, and the odds are not in his favor.

"All good?" he asks, doing his best to sound nonchalant as Will climbs back onto the bed.

"Yeah," Will tells him, rolling his eyes. "Just needed to confirm for some jock that my stepdad is, in fact, a former cop who won't hesitate to track him down."

Mike responds with a half-hearted laugh. That's...new information. He wonders how Will's stepdad would feel about him sitting on his son's bed on a Friday night with the door closed.

Just as he's about to ask where, exactly, Will's parents are tonight, and how likely it is that they'll return, Will leans forward and wakes up his laptop again, hitting play. The Mandalorian starts up again — they're at the beginning of episode six, apparently — and Will settles back against the wall, arms crossed.

"Would you rather be a Twi'lek or a Devaronian?" Will asks, eyes locked on the screen. "I mean, if you had to choose."

Mike blinks. Hadn't they been about to kiss, before Will left? This is not about-to-kiss behavior, nor is that an about-to-kiss sort of question. Twi'leks have giant flesh tentacles sprouting from their heads, and Devaronians look kind of like Hellboy, except with full horns and no tail. Is Will into dudes who look like Hellboy? Mike is pretty much the exact biological opposite of Hellboy.

"I don't know," he answers honestly, doing his best impression of a guy who's not freaking out. "Neither? I really like having hair." He tucks a curl behind one of his ears self-consciously. It's possibly the only feature he's proud of.

Will smiles a little, then turns back to the screen. The conversation dies, slowly and painfully, because Mike is too busy overthinking to ask Will, "What about you?"

He watches the episode play on the laptop without absorbing a single second of it. He's doing his best to go over the last fifteen minutes and figure out what must have happened to make Will not want to kiss him anymore. Did Will see some guy he liked from school in the party crowd? That doesn't make any sense, Mike thinks, because why would he come back? The only logical explanation — and the one that makes Mike want to sink to the bottom of the nearest ocean — is that Will had simply never been trying to kiss him at all. Had he really misinterpreted things that badly?

After he has officially reached the almost-physically-panicking phase of this process, Mike mumbles something about needing to use the bathroom and goes through the door that Will points out. Luckily, neither El nor any other teenagers are already in there puking. He fumbles his phone out of his jeans and texts Lucas again.

ok now im in the bathroom freaking out

Lucas FaceTimes him again. Mike rejects the call. Again.

hes 1 room over jesus just text

1 sec. playing catan w/ erica

Mike stares at the dancing dots on his phone, wondering how long, exactly, he can stay here without Will thinking that he's taking a shit.

ok shoot

he came back and just started watching tv again like nothing happened. and now im like wtf maybe nothing actually happened

how long have u been there

Mike looks at the time on his phone. Damn. He told his parents he'd be home like, two hours ago. Good thing they don't actually care.

since 7

you've been there for 6 HOURS?

and he just now made a move???

what else have u guys been doing????

watching star wars stuff idk!

Mike tries not to let despair swallow him whole as he waits for Lucas' response. It doesn't exactly look good, seeing everything typed out like that. A 34-second voice recording pops up on his screen, and Mike frantically brings his phone to his ear to play it, making sure the volume is as low as possible.

"Okay, so, you know how you have, like, no game?" Lucas says, with no preamble. "Like, at all?"

Mike rests his forehead against his fingers, already tired.

"I'm thinking maybe Will doesn't either. So the good news is, I think you still have a shot. Because, like, yeah, your boy is being fuckin' weird, but you're also in his bedroom at one in the morning."

It's pathetic how fast Mike perks up at that, how his heart does a little cheer over your boy.

"The bad news is that you have to make the next move, because he probably psyched himself out."

"GOOD LUCK, VIRGI—" Erica calls from somewhere just before the recording cuts off.

Mike takes a deep, fortifying breath, tells Lucas ok thx, and heads back into Will’s room.

You have to make the next move. That’s fine, Mike thinks, wiping his palms on his jeans. He can do that. It’s 1 a.m., and he’s riding high on adrenaline and sweet, acid-reflux-inducing romantic anxiety. What’s the worst that can happen, he fails catastrophically at his first foray into homosexuality and has to further delay coming out to his parents? Quelle horreur.

Will blessedly says nothing about Mike’s prolonged absence as he clambers onto the mattress. Mike settles some of his weight against Will, who doesn’t flinch or otherwise react. He takes that as a positive sign. They’re shoulder to shoulder again. Mike can see two of the moles on Will’s neck in his peripheral vision. They trail up under his jaw. Mike wants to follow them, see where else they go.

Will hits play and says something about Mando’s shadowy past, some theory he read on Reddit. Mike wants to pay attention. He wants to have something interesting to contribute, but it’s hard to put words together over the unending command echoing in his head:

Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it.

Do what, Mike thinks. He knows what, generally — make a move — but he has no idea what, specifically. He can’t just start kissing his coworker’s neck in the middle of episode six of The Mandalorian.

He side-eyes the moles under Will’s jaw again. Can he?

Will uses his thumb to crack the knuckles on his right hand. Mike watches each of Will’s fingers curl and flex and eventually settle, as Will rests his hand on his own thigh. If Mike stretched out the fingers on his left hand a bit, their pinkies would touch.

And just like that, he has an idea. He knows how to make his move.

Mike stares at Will’s hand for another moment and then, channeling the confidence of a much smoother person — a person with a non-negative charisma modifier — he flips it over and holds it, palm-up, in both of his own.

“Has anyone ever told you you have really nice hands?” he asks.

And yeah, maybe he’s blushing furiously and he can’t look Will in the eye, but it comes out exactly as he’d practiced it in his head, no stuttering or anything, so fuck Lucas, he has at least an iota of game.

Mike steadies Will’s palm in his left hand, tracing over the lines there with the fingers of his right. He brushes his thumb over the mole on Will’s wrist.

It’s all very fucking Victorian, and not even first base. It’s whatever the baseball term is for hitting the ball but only running, like, halfway to first base. Whatever, Mike doesn’t know sports.

But hey, he thinks — he hit the ball.

“No, actually,” Will responds, sounding kind of shaky. Mike chances a glance over at him, and he looks surprised, all raised eyebrows and wide hazel eyes. The tips of his ears are pink. Mike wonders, briefly, if you can die just from looking at someone.

“What?” Mike huffs, and if he’s shaky on the delivery this time, sue him. “But you’re an artist.”

He ghosts his pointer finger over a smear of purple ink on the heel of Will’s hand. There’s a small bump on his ring finger from the strange way he holds his pencils.

“I don’t know!” Will laughs, and it comes out a little high-pitched. He covers his face with his other hand, the one with the star tattoo. “People aren’t exactly lining up to flirt with me about my hands. Or like, at all.”

Even with his hand blocking the way, Mike can see that Will’s blush has spread to his face. He can’t help but grin. He did that. They’re flirting.

And also, while a very petty, jealous part of him is delighted to hear that people don’t generally flirt with Will — do people seriously not flirt with Will? What’s wrong with them?

“I mean, girls flirt with me all the time, for some reason,” Will continues, obviously flustered, as if reading Mike’s mind. He gestures emphatically with his free hand, and the one Mike’s holding twitches slightly. “Like, completely random girls,” he adds, looking pained. “But that’s, um.”

Mike nods, biting down on his smile. That is very um. He thinks about 12-year-old him, who would have died to be in Will’s shoes, and almost laughs. What a difference puberty makes.

“That’s stupid,” he tells Will. He pulls on Will’s pinky finger and repeats, “You have really nice hands.”

Will exhales, shaking his head. “This is so—” he says, looking at the ceiling, his voice strained. He breathes out a harried laugh. And then, suddenly, he’s climbing off the bed. “Hang on.”

Mike does his best not to pout about the sudden loss of Will’s hand in his. He watches Will root through a pile of sketchbooks on his desk, unabashedly staring at the pink creeping up the back of his neck and the way his shoulders shift under his shirt, how his hair curls slightly at the nape of his neck. Mike gets so distracted thinking about threading his fingers through that hair that he startles when Will extracts a sketchbook, holding it up purposefully. It’s a black Moleskine with a Triforce sticker on the front. Mike recognizes that sketchbook. Will had drawn in it during a few of their shifts together.

Will flips to a page as he moves to stand in front of Mike. When he finds what he’s looking for, he holds the book in front of Mike’s face, keeping it open with his thumb. Mike’s mouth falls open in surprise.

Red and blue colored pencil sketches cover both pages. They’re all drawings of hands — pointing, gesturing, waving. Long, spindly fingers in myriad positions. Even with the limited color palette, the hands are obviously pale and veiny. Before Mike can talk himself out of the assumption he’s making, his eyes land at the top of the pages. There, in bold, red lettering, are the words MIKE JUNE 15.

Mike looks up at Will, wide-eyed. “I— what?” he says quietly, almost whispering.

He takes the book out of Will’s hands so that he can look at the drawings more closely, run one thumb lightly over a page. His brain is skipping like a record — surely this is not actually happening.

“Safe to say I think you have nice hands, too,” Will says, low and a little hoarse.

And okay, apparently Lucas was also very, very wrong about Will’s lack of game, because Mike would like to save that in his brain forever, thanks. He’s looking at Will’s mouth again, and he’s pretty sure Will is doing the same. That intense energy from before is back, and Mike is about to put the sketchbook down when he realizes something.

“Wait.” He looks at the top of the spread again. “June 15th?”

Will purses his lips, embarrassed. “Yeah.”

“That was, like, our third shift together.”

“Yeah,” Will says again, like he would very much like to die.

“Oh my god,” Mike says meaningfully. He would laugh if Will wasn’t so obviously mortified. “We are so dumb,” he announces, like it’s a groundbreaking discovery. Like their apparently requited attraction is a new moon orbiting Jupiter, or Shakespeare’s true identity.

Will still stands there, feet shifting, like he’s considering sprinting out of his own house. Mike tries to clarify. “I don’t have to help out with my little sister.”

Apparently, this clarifies nothing. Will just blinks at him. “What?”

Mike hunches forward, knees on his elbows, and shields his face with Will’s sketchbook. “I lied,” he chokes out. “About why I switched my shifts. It was because I had such a giant, stupid crush on you and it was so distracting that I was literally in danger of getting fired.”

The words trip out of him faster and faster until he’s blurted the whole thing out, and then he just sits there, notebook in front of his face, only somewhat comforted by the knowledge that Will is no longer the most embarrassed person in this room.

“Oh.” When Mike lowers the book and looks back up at Will, he’s relieved to find him fighting a smile. “I thought you were just really bad at your job.”

Mike laughs around a gasp. “Fuck you,” he says, hitting Will on the arm with his own sketchbook.

Will laughs too, trying to shove Mike’s hands away. And then Will is in Mike’s space, standing between his legs, and everything shifts.

Mike doesn’t even make a conscious decision to drop the sketchbook, only hears it clatter to the floor as Will leans down, one hand on each side of his face. He’s moving toward Will at the same time, two fingers in one of his belt loops and the other hand at his waist. Mike tilts his head up, for once grateful for his stupid, awkward height, and they meet in the middle. It’s so orchestrated, so ridiculously perfect, that Mike feels like this is where tonight was always going to lead. Like they were ships circling a whirlpool, just waiting for the courage to sink.

It’s the best kind of sinking — succumbing, free-falling. Will gasps into the kiss and Mike spreads his fingers over Will’s side, his left thumb at the bottom of Will’s ribcage. The feeling of Will’s hands in his hair sends a pleasant shiver down the back of Mike’s neck and he opens his mouth, punch-drunk and lax and so, so glad he can stop pretending not to want this. Will kisses him back like he has a score to settle, like he wants payback for all the time he spent doing anything else. His fingers curl in Mike’s hair and Mike makes a reedy sound from the back of his throat. It doesn’t even occur to him to care, because Will is so close and warm and there, chasing his mouth like he never wants to stop. Mike thinks, deliriously, of Plato and Aristophanes, of Shel Silverstein, of the countless cliches about other halves and missing pieces. He snakes one hand under Will’s shirt and presses his palm to the skin of his back. He thinks about fusion.

They break apart and come together again and again. Every time Mike tries to really pause, to get some air, he’s confronted with Will — the moles on his neck and his kiss-bitten mouth — and decides that oxygen is overrated. When they finally separate for longer than a moment, they just look at each other, and Mike resents his flaky memory. He wishes he could save this view of Will above him, his eyes wide and lips parted like he can’t believe his luck. No one has ever looked at Mike the way Will is now, and it makes him wonder if he was onto something with all those loopy, romantic thoughts.

“Woah,” he says quietly, awed, trying to convey even a fraction of what he’s feeling.

Will pushes some of Mike’s hair out of his face. “Yeah.”

At the same time, they seem to register the unexpected quiet around them. Will’s laptop is blank and dead on the bed, his latest record rotating silently on the turntable. The party sounds have dissipated. Mike looks at his watch.

“Oh, shit.” He winces. “It’s almost 2 a.m.” He droops against Will, his head on Will’s chest. “And I’m opening tomorrow.”

“Nooooo,” Will groans sympathetically, his fingers scritching against Mike’s scalp. “And Where the Crawdad Sings just came out.”

“A Karen movie,” Mike grumbles.

“Frances hated it,” Will confirms.

Mike buries his face in Will’s shirt in an attempt to muffle his voice, like if Will can’t understand this next thing, it doesn’t have to be true.

“I told my parents I’d be home at 11.”

Will’s fingers abruptly stop moving in his hair.

“Is a search party about to show up at my house?” Will asks the top of his head. “How has your phone not exploded with messages?”

Mike sighs and extricates himself from Will. He leans back, palms flat on the bed, and briefly wonders if there’s, like, a coy, sexy way to deliver this next bit of news.

“My parents don’t actually care where I am, like, ever? But they’re too classy to just embrace the fact that they don’t give a shit, so we all have to pretend like they do, because god forbid my mom think she’s a bad mom for two fucking seconds, the world would literally end. So they get the basics whenever I leave the house — because it’s my job to assuage their guilt, obviously — and then they do nothing with them. Fuckin’ rocks, I literally can’t wait to go to therapy about it when I’m no longer on their health insurance.”

He gets more sarcastic as he goes, for plausible deniability, and even finds himself making the “rock on” symbol with one of his hands by the end. It is easily the most Mike has said about anything real this evening, and he’s ready for Will to run for the hills.

Will doesn’t move an inch — just raises his eyebrows. “Wow,” he remarks. “‘Assuage.’”

“Aspiring English major,” Mike reminds him with a shrug.

Will kisses him again, of all things. It’s quick but intentional, leaving Mike to sit there in a daze as Will goes back to his closet. He comes back with more practical footwear — canvas slip-ons with Sharpie doodles on the heels — and looks at Mike expectantly as he puts them on.

“As much as I don’t want you to go,” he says, “we should probably get you home.”

Mike follows suit, equal parts reluctant and smitten. As they head for the door Will stops and doubles back, diving for the sketchbook on the floor. He opens it up to the drawings of Mike’s hands again and tears out one of the pages (the one that says JUNE 15 at the top, not MIKE), folding it in half. Will holds the paper out to Mike with a small smile and Mike takes it between two of his fingers, trying very hard not to let his outstretched hand shake.

It’s like Will read his mind again, specifically the part that had been obsessed with two halves of a whole. Mike is incredibly aware that he needs to be on time to work tomorrow, just as he knows he shouldn’t test his parents’ indifference. He’s also very tempted to push Will back onto the bed and prove how badly he wants to stay.

“You— this is— fuck,” Mike sputters, waving the page at him.

Will grabs his free hand. “Come on,” he says, pulling him out the door. “I’m not gonna be the reason you get fired after all that.”

Mike is about to complain that Will is being totally unfair, reading his thoughts and giving him horny drawings, but Will threads their fingers together and he shuts right up.

Will drives like he’s scared of it, his hands at 10 and 2 and foot light on the gas pedal. Mike takes it as a huge compliment that they kiss at every red light anyway, reaching for each other like junkies as some obscure, indie playlist seeps out of the speakers.

He knows he’s being dramatic, but if this doesn’t go anywhere — if Will loses his number tomorrow or suddenly decides to take a gap year — Mike’s pretty sure he’ll die. He’d seen it happen once, on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy he’d sat through with Nancy: broken heart syndrome. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy.

Mike asks Will to pull up across the street from his house, even though none of the lights are on inside. Will doesn’t ask why, especially after he sees the AMERICA FIRST sign in the front yard.

“It’s a nice place,” Will offers, looking at the pristine white siding.

Mike hums in agreement. “Not the kind of place where you want to leave a rainbow name tag lying around, though.”

Will reaches over the gearshift to take his hand, but it doesn’t feel pitying. It feels like he understands.

“I hear Providence is basically the opposite,” Will says seriously. “Rainbow name tags everywhere. They’re inescapable.”

Mike smiles. “Inescapable?”

“They’re taking over the town. You can run but you can’t hide.”

“Finally, an eldritch horror I can get behind.”

“Providence is famous for them,” Will tells him. “H. P. Lovecraft wrote ‘Call of Cthulhu’ there.”

Mike knows this. It’s the first thing that attracted him to the area. It’s why he wants to study English at Brown. His heart squeezes a little, and he swallows. He likes this guy so much it’s insane.

“My shift ends at 4:45 tomorrow,” he says, apropos of nothing.

Will gets it anyway, because of course he does. “Wanna pick me up at my house after? Like, 5:30?”

“Yeah.” Mike can feel the grin taking over his face. “Totally.”

They promise to see each other soon (in about 15 hours, Mike notes giddily), and Mike lets infatuation drown out his parental paranoia long enough for a goodnight kiss. Longer, actually — he forgets where he is remarkably fast, and Will has to push him away when he starts sneaking a hand under the hem of his shirt.

Will tells him to go home, eyes closed like it physically pains him, and Mike tries not to look too lovestruck as he walks around the far side of the house. He sneaks into the basement and his phone vibrates in his pocket. It’s Will.

You in OK?

Mike’s face hurts from smiling. He didn’t know that actually happened to people, he thought it was just a figure of speech. Against all odds, this perfect guy seems to like Mike an insane amount, too. Mike could throw up. He could actually throw up.

He sends Will a quick yea. get home safe ❤ and then swipes over to his conversation with Lucas, typing so manically that autocorrect kicks in on almost every word.

holy shot I did it I’m dating cute movie theater guy

He doesn’t even have to wait to crow about it on his break tomorrow. Lucas FaceTimes him immediately.

Mike collapses onto the couch, laughing, and hits Accept.

#byler #stranger things #fic recs

55 notes · View notes

inky-iridescence · 6 months

Note

i would loveeee to read touch prompt 10 or 21 in your style! (if either of them tickle your fancy 🫡🫡)

10. spooning at night

As he comes to, Will faintly registers something warm on his arm, a quiet voice near his ear.

"Will. Hey, Will."

It's a nice voice, he thinks. He likes it just in general, but it's also good not to be woken from a nightmare by someone sounding shrill and alarmed. This is a soft but insistent whisper, like El prodding him awake in study hall or Jonathan getting him up for school.

"Will."

As soon as his addled brain recognizes the voice, slots a face next to the sound, his eyes shoot open. The nice voice is Mike's. The warm thing on his arm is Mike's hand.

It's almost impressive that he still has nightmares, Will thinks ruefully. One would expect his brain to have run out of material by now. He likes to think he would laugh, if he wasn't so busy gulping air and shivering involuntarily.

Will slowly turns to sit up, untangling the blankets around his legs. Mike's hand slips off his arm and he feels slightly more capable of breathing. He stares up at the top of the tent, forearms perched on his knees, and he can't see anything. They're so deep in the forest that the trees block out the stars.

A twig snaps somewhere out in the woods and neither of them jump. Will thinks about growing up by this forest, about Mike making up stories about what was in it with a flashlight under his chin. He wishes he could go back to before he knew the terrible truth: The scariest things don't let you know they're coming.

"Sorry," Will says, his chest still heaving. His breath comes out foggy. It'll be too cold for these stakeouts soon. "Bad dream."

"That's okay," Mike tells him, sounding like he means it. He'd been propped up on one elbow, but he shifts to sit up, too. "You wanna talk about it?"

Will puts the heels of his hands to his eyes and his fingers in his hair, trying to ground himself. The dream is so close that he can't remember what was happening in it, his thoughts weighed down by the gravity of sleep. Statistically speaking, though, he'd probably been dreaming about—

"Will?"

Mike puts a hand on his shoulder. Will flinches, but Mike keeps his hand on the sleeve of his raggedy henley, steady and sure. It's Will's favorite and least favorite thing about Mike these days — how Mike can touch him like it's nothing.

"No, it's fine," Will tells him. They’ve had this exact exchange many times since the world ended, often forced to share close quarters because they’re best friends, basically brothers. Will hates his life.

He says No, it’s fine instead of the truth, which is I dream of you dying almost every night. No, it’s fine is easier. He doesn’t have to admit that he could — should — be spending all that energy, or at least some of it, worrying more about his mom or his brother or his sister. He doesn’t have to test the deep-seated fear that his dreams are prophetic.

Not prophetic, he thinks, hopes. Just pathetic.

And then he’s shaking again out of fucking nowhere. He remembers Owens reassuring his mom about this once, a lifetime ago. Not Satanic convulsions, just a panic attack coming out sideways. Either way, he looks like a nut job.

“Woah,” Mike says softly, his hand still firm on Will’s shoulder. “Hey.” And Will is back to making himself feel crazy, thinking about every other time Mike has spoken to him like this, like he’s something worth taking care of. Does Mike get like this with anyone else? Has he just not been around to hear it?

How delusional is he, exactly, that he would ever think that Mike might love him back?

Mike presses on his shoulder just a little and Will lays down, breathes deeper. His head feels like a walkie-talkie tuned to the wrong channel, full of static. Maybe the universe will be kind to him tomorrow. Maybe he’ll go to sleep and wake up and never remember any of this.

Will looks up at Mike for a moment. He’s just barely able to make out his furrowed brow and concerned frown, the hair that’s sprung free from his low ponytail. He’s wearing some mangled sweatshirt that probably used to belong to Steve. A moment is long enough, Will thinks. Too long.

He shuts his eyes and lets out a long, slow, exhale. “Sorry.”

“For what?” Mike says, a little more fiercely than is appropriate for the current mood, and Will doesn’t respond. They’ve had this exchange many times, too.

Mike sighs and lies down, too, curling up on his side to face Will. He keeps his eyes closed, focuses on getting his heart rate down. He can feel Mike’s breath on his cheek.

Sometimes he’ll allow himself little things like this, glimpses into alternate lives where they sleep next to each out of desire rather than convenience. It’s grounding, having Mike next to him, just feeling that he’s there. Will already knows how tomorrow will go: He’ll wake up before Mike and get to see him, sun-dappled and sleeping like a rock, and that’ll be another glimpse that he can hold onto. Another thing he can tuck into some safe pocket and carry around, pretending it doesn’t weigh a thousand pounds.

“You know when you moved to Lenora?” Mike says, quiet and careful, just loud enough for Will’s nearby ear.

Will shifts a little, opening his eyes. This is a new conversation.

“Yeah.”

“I said it felt like I lost you,” Mike says.

Will swallows. As if he could forget that conversation. “Yeah,” he repeats. He keeps his eyes fixed straight above him, on the roof of their tent — a blank, dark nothing.

“Sometimes I feel like that now, too,” Mike tells him. “Except you’re right here.”

Will huffs out a little laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because Mike’s admission actually sort of winds him. Breathing is suddenly a challenge again, and he has to wrench out the exhale.

It’s not that Will hasn’t thought about just getting it over with and saying it. He practically says it all the time anyway — on a smaller, less life-destroying scale. It’s what he means when he says things like He’s not going out there alone or Guys, I think Mike has a plan. It’s what he means by carrying extra hair ties on his wrist and extra pens in his pack.

He’s even thought of ways it could maybe happen without him ruining everything. Deathbed confessions. (Because that’s what all this is leading up to, he thinks, isn’t it?) He wonders if it might make it less terrible, less selfish, if he could say it knowing that, soon, he would never bother Mike again.

“Sorry,” he says a second time, his voice thick. He knows Mike will tell him he doesn’t have anything to be sorry for. He wishes he had the courage to tell him how wrong he is.

Mike lets out a big breath. Will’s sure he’s frustrated, and he thinks that’s perfectly fair. Will’s frustrated too.

But when Mike says his name this time, he just sounds sad. Like maybe he’s a little lost, too. “Will.” Will doesn’t say anything back. He just lets the sound of his own name ghost over his cheek. “Can you…?”

Will spins his wheels, tryin to fill in that sentence. Can he… Give Mike more of the blankets? Shut up and go to sleep? Stop being such a self-pitying idiot?

Mike puts an arm around Will’s waist and Will’s brain just. Stops. He can feel Mike shift closer to him, hear his breath get even closer to his ear.

Mike bumps his forehead against the side of Will’s head. “Turn over.”

Will does, tucking one arm under his pillow as he turns to face the tent wall. Mike fits around him: his forehead at the back of Will’s neck, his ribs against Will’s spine. It should maybe feel more monumental, Will thinks, but it’s just — Mike fits.

“Is this okay?” Mike murmurs, nearly inaudible, like maybe he doesn’t actually want to know the answer.

Will laughs, a little winded again, a little hysterical. “No,” he says honestly. “Probably not.” Mike’s arm tenses around him. “But you should keep doing it anyway.”

Mike’s arm relaxes slightly. He breathes more evenly against the back of Will’s head, rustling his unruly, overgrown hair. It’s not like they haven’t slept like this before, but it has been a good eight or nine years. Will’s learned a lot more names to call himself. He puts his schoolyard bullies to shame every day inside his own head.

He’s surprised at how normal this feels, then. How the warm weight of Mike’s arm and the steady rhythm of his breaths make him feel like sleep might actually be relaxing.

“Um,” Mike says against the back of his shirt collar. “You know that I care about you. Right?”

When they were eight, Mike’s mom had taken them all the way to Indianapolis for the state fair. Nancy had goaded the two of them onto the Tilt-A-Whirl, and Will had spent the entire ride smiling, adrenaline-drunk and scared out of his mind, feeling like his stomach had taken up residence somewhere in his windpipe.

He gets a taste of all that again, now: overwhelm and elation and joyful, terrified nausea. It shouldn’t still feel this good, he thinks, cresting another loop on this two-year roller coaster of mixed signals.

“Yeah,” he tells Mike, and it’s true. Mike has always cared about him. It just recently stopped being enough.

“Okay,” Mike says, letting out a sigh Will can’t interpret. He feels goosebumps at the back of his neck, for once entirely un-supernatural in origin. “Night.”

“Night,” Will breathes, doing his best to relax against the hard forest floor. He wants to stay just like this. He hopes that, in the morning, he’ll still be something Mike can fit around so perfectly. It would be worth not getting to see him, unguarded and asleep.

Will thinks about all the things he can’t say. For a brief, bright moment, he wonders if Mike has things he can’t say, too.

Animals rustle through the leaves. More twigs snap. Somewhere above them, a lone bird sings. Mike’s leg twitches against Will’s as he falls asleep, his even breathing eventually giving way to soft snores, and Will curls up, held and dazed and so in love it’s embarrassing. He savors this feeling, like he’s one half of a whole.

He closes his eyes, exhausted and warm, and sinks into a dreamless sleep.

#ficlet #byler #fic recs

106 notes · View notes