Playing By Ear (AI, R)
Title: Playing by Ear
Source: American Idiot
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing: Johnny, Will/Tunny/Extraordinary Girl
Word count: 2,770
Disclaimer: Unbelievably fictional.
Summary: Dinner and a show. Follows Keeping Time.
Sara is a little out of breath when she opens the door, jacket on and hair gathered in a fist.
“Ew,” he says. He puts his hand up as a blinder before he steps into the apartment.
As she slides some kind of clip in place, she sticks her tongue out at him. “Nice to see you, too, Will.”
With a grin, Will passes over the bottle as a peace offering before lobbing his sweatshirt toward the couch. He had to ask the guy at the store what to get, wine not really being his thing, but she gives it an appreciative look, so he figures it must be okay.
“I forgot about this baby shower for my coworker this afternoon,” she says, setting the bottle down in the kitchen and grabbing her keys off the counter, “which means I also forgot to buy a gift for it.”
“So this is stress-rushing, not sex-rushing?” he asks. “Then I take back my disgust.”
She pats him on the shoulder. “They’re called ‘quickies’ for a reason,” she says confidingly.
He laughs. “And it’s yours again. Some things you don’t talk about in mixed company,” he tells her as he reaches for the door handle.
“Good thing you don’t count as company.”
Tunny’s still nowhere to be seen when Will shuts the door behind her, so he heads into the bedroom and falls onto the (thankfully made) bed, bouncing the strap right out of Tunny’s hand.
“Asshole,” Tunny says in greeting. He goes back to fitting his leg on. Apparently that comes before the shirt … which Will supposes makes sense.
There’s still steam drifting out of the bathroom, beads of water on Tunny’s back. And now Will’s wondering about logistics, which is just a new level of disturbing. Sometimes he would pay cash money for a less active imagination. To take his mind off it, he says, “Johnny’s called me six times already.”
Tunny laughs. “Sucks to be you. Did you ignore them?”
“Fuck yes.” He flat-out refuses to deal with this until an hour before the date. If Will didn’t love him so much, Johnny wouldn’t even get that. “Why doesn’t he ever do this shit to you? You fucking lived with him.”
“Because I told him I would twist his balls off with one of his guitar strings.” He stands slowly, testing his weight and the fit before moving to the dresser.
Will blows out a puff of air. “If only I’d thought of that.”
Pausing with his shirt lifted halfway toward his head, Tunny looks at him. “You couldn’t, and it wouldn’t work even if you did.” He grins. “You’re too much of a sweetheart, sweetheart.”
“Fuck you,” Will says darkly, and flips him off when Tunny laughs again. “Make your own fucking dinner.”
Tunny waves a hand like Will just made his point for him before sitting back down to pull on his jeans. “It’s what makes you a good dad, douchebag. You care about other people more than yourself.”
Will stares at Tunny’s back, sort of glad Tunny can’t see whatever his face looks like right now, even if what he said is bullshit. Swallowing, he says, “You just want me to have to deal with Johnny.”
Tunny’s hand, still warm from the shower, wraps around his ankle. “That, too,” he says, and then he gets up and walks out of the room.
It takes Will a minute to follow.
.....
He heads straight to the couch and the remote because those are things he understands, things that don’t surprise him or change when he’s not looking or become a grownup without him. Tunny’s probably in the kitchen, like, cooking a balanced breakfast, no, brunch, and making fresh-squeezed orange juice. Will keeps flipping until he sees Astroturf.
When Tunny walks out, he’s stuffing a slice of cold pizza in his mouth. He scoops an arm under Will’s feet, tossing them to the floor, and drops beside him.
“Where’s mine?” Will asks.
“What’s wrong with your legs, plural?” Tunny says in reply. Will could honestly fucking kiss him.
Instead, he goes for the pizza, bringing back the rest of the box and dropping it pointedly on the coffee table. Tunny smiles at him. “Grab some drinks while you’re up?” he asks sweetly, like an asshole, and Will’s palms itch to touch.
He shifts his weight, hoping it will make him fit in his skin again. Tunny rolls his eyes. “Sit down, princess. Want anything?”
“Anything,” Will says. It’s times like these he really misses his bong.
His phone buzzes in his pocket as soon as he’s down, and he fumbles for it. At this second, he’d rather face Heather or his mom or even his boss trying to call him into work than whatever the fuck just happened.
The screen reads Johnny.
Yeah, he decides, he’s that desperate.
“Hey.”
There’s a pause before Johnny says, “Sorry, I totally expected to get voicemail again.”
“I can hang up,” he says.
“No, no … but now I don’t remember what I was going to ask.”
“Johnny,” Will says, because seriously. Tunny gives him a soda and a disbelieving look. Will’s not sure who it’s directed at; it’s pretty fucking valid either way.
After another pause, Johnny says, “Yeah, I know. What are you guys doing?”
“Uh, some game’s on. Just come over, dude.”
He looks at Tunny sort of late, considering it’s his place, but gets a nod. Tunny says, “Tell him Sara will probably help him pick a shirt if he brings a few.”
Will relays the message and adds seriously, “Until then, we’re not fucking talking about it.”
“Deal,” Johnny says. He hangs up.
When Will closes his phone, Tunny’s giving him the faint, warm smile. “Nice job, Dad.”
Will feels himself grinning back.
.....
At Johnny’s knock, Tunny yells, “Get your ass in here” so he doesn’t have to move. Will has no clue how he ever thought Tunny had matured.
“What a warm welcome,” Johnny says, hanging a ridiculously thick pile on the coat hooks.
“I’m regretting it now. How the fuck is that ‘a few’ shirts, Johnny?”
Will says, “Seriously, man, why do you even own that many?”
“Hey, I have, at certain times, been a productive member of society,” Johnny says. “That comes with a dress code.”
Whatever. They’re not dealing with it until Sara’s back, so Will says, “Grab some drinks while you’re up?” It makes Tunny snort, and Johnny looks at them suspiciously before going.
While he’s out of earshot, Will leans over to ask, “Does Sara know you volunteered her for this? Can I have your Gibson when she kills you?”
“I said she’d ‘probably’ help,” Tunny says. “And I’ll make it up to her.”
Johnny’s back before Will’s brain can offer visual aids. He sets all three sodas in front of Tunny. “Open them.”
“It was an inside joke, you tool, not a conspiracy.” When Johnny doesn’t move, Tunny taps the cans and cracks them open, flicking the last tab at Johnny. “Now relax before I fucking sit on you.”
Johnny takes one and collapses on the couch between them.
.....
He surfaces from the beginning of a dream when Johnny digs an elbow into his side.
“Distract me.”
Will palms his face, trying to focus. “That’s why they invented TV, numbnuts.”
“It’s not working.”
He looks over at Johnny picking at his cuticles. It’s his biggest, most annoying tell. “Obviously.” His vision drifts past to the other side of the couch. “Where the fuck did Tunny go?”
“Groceries.”
Will must have been out deeper than he thought. All he can remember from the dream is rain and some kind of candy. Which is--weird. “That’s a distraction,” he points out.
“I tried. The asshole ordered me to stay here, like he was in long enough to give anybody orders.”
Will groans. “Dude, you gotta let that go. So he joined the army. It was less destructive than a lot of the other shit we did voluntarily.”
“Tell that to his fucking leg,” he mutters around a finger. Johnny never stops until after he’s drawn blood.
Will thinks there’s more to it, that part of the bitterness is because Tunny wasn’t there to keep Johnny from nuking his own life, or whatever he had with that girl he won’t talk about. And nobody gets that better than Will, but for him, having them back is bigger than the fact that they left. He’s realizing that shit happens, and all they can do is deal with it. They have to deal with it.
He wishes he’d realized it sooner, before he fucked things up with and for Heather, but that’s just another part of the shit.
Digging the travel pack of Kleenex out of his pocket, he tosses it in Johnny’s lap and tries to think of a story. All of them are about Billy because his kid is fucking amazing. So he says, “My kid is fucking amazing,” and goes from there.
.....
Sara raises an eyebrow at the shirts, and at the big, sad eyes Tunny met her at the door with, but after leaning up to kiss him, she turns to Johnny with a smile. “How long do we have?” she asks. Tunny presses his mouth against her temple gratefully.
He points a finger at Will, so Will pushes himself off the couch and follows him into the kitchen. The food Tunny bought is still on the counter. It looks like a lot, and none of it microwaveable.
“So how does this work?” Will asks.
“The recipe’s over there,” Tunny says, digging a pan out from over the stove. “You tell me what it says. I do it.”
“Nice. Will you call me ‘sir’, too?” He reaches for the paper. Handwritten. He wonders if it’s somebody secret recipe, like maybe the old ladies a few doors down who randomly love Tunny despite his … everything. Will’s mom tried, and he loves her for it, but she never really got fancier than whatever was printed on the back of the box.
“I’ll call you something,” Tunny says. “Just fucking read.”
Will reads. He also chops things, and opens cans, and grabs stuff when Tunny points at the low cupboards. Johnny leaves somewhere in all that after coming in to laugh at them, and eventually Sara wanders in wearing those yoga pants Heather likes and a t-shirt Will remembers Tunny practically living in during high school.
She hooks her chin on Tunny’s shoulder, arms wrapped around him, watching him stir. “I don’t know if you guys know, your best friend is kind of a chick.” She laughs when they nod. Really, it’s more that Johnny only has two settings: doesn’t give a fuck, or gives too much of a fuck. “Just checking,” she says before coming over to steal a strawberry off Will’s chopping block.
Damnit, he’d just figured out how to cut them into that shape. “Go sit down,” he says. “Men are working here.”
Sara smiles at him, taking a pointed bite out of the strawberry, and pulls herself up to sit on the counter. “So what’s the plan for the rest of the evening, men?”
He figured they’d kick him out after dinner, but Tunny’s looking at him with raised eyebrows like he gets a say. Will shrugs.
Tunny turns to Sara and copies the shrug.
So does she. “Good plan,” she says.
And that’s it. Will’s not sure if he should feel better knowing he’s not crashing a grand romantic gesture. Instead he’s crashing their life.
.....
Dinner is surprisingly edible, and only a little overcooked. But that was Sara’s fault. She snagged Tunny’s sleeve when he went past to get the pepper, legs curling around his, and he got caught up in kissing her, palming the counter on either side of her hips, her hands slipping under the back of his shirt, and by the time Will remembered he should watch the food … anyway, with wine, the burnt taste is barely noticeable.
.....
It’s a little difficult to pay attention to this movie he could quote in his sleep with Tunny rubbing his leg every two minutes. “Dude, just take it off.”
Tunny’s hand disappears from Will's line of sight, and nothing else happens, so Will pushes his head back against the seat cushion to look up at him.
“It’s fine,” Tunny says, eyes on the screen.
He rolls his head further to look at Sara, who shrugs. Okay, Will can respect that. He doesn’t need her help for this anyway. He turns, propping his arm on the couch, and says, “You know I don’t care, right?” Tunny’s still not looking at him, but Will sees his mouth tighten. Stupid, stubborn son of a bitch. “I mean, it’s totally repulsive, but I don’t care.”
Sara laughs, fingers playing along Tunny's annoying hard head. Tunny’s mouth twitches upward this time, but he says, low, “Knowing about it is different than seeing it.”
That makes Will roll his eyes. “It’s called the fucking Internet, Tunny. Fuck you very much if you think I haven’t found everything it could tell me about what my best friend’s dealing with, including the fucking pictures.”
“Fine,” Tunny says. “If it hurts, I’ll fucking take it off. Happy?”
“It’s a dream come true.” Will moves up to reclaim some of the couch, giving Tunny a shove. “Move over, snookums. Your floor is hard.”
Tunny shoves him back. “It must be if your flabby ass can feel it, petal.”
He can’t really blame Sara for shaking her head, but at least she looks amused, too.
.....
Sara saying “I should go home” makes him lift his head to look at the cable box. When the hell did it get to be after 2? He could swear they just got Johnny’s 2 beers w/dinner. date 2 nxt wk she liked shirt ilu sara text, and that had been around midnight.
Without moving, Tunny says, “No, you shouldn’t.”
“Should I go home?” Will asks.
“No, you shouldn’t.”
Downing most of a second bottle of wine, the beers after, means that Will is fine with this plan. He fucking hates his apartment when it’s dark and empty, and he’s crashed in way worse places than Tunny’s couch, even right now, with Tunny’s head in Sara’s lap and Will’s legs propped over his (still plural), feet on the coffee table. It makes Sara getting up to see if she has any clean scrubs kind of a group project. Tunny holds out his arm, and Will hauls him up hand over hand so Sara can get clear.
And then Will kisses him. Because he’s happy, so he has to fuck it up. It’s his talent. Tunny shakes his arm free, and Will waits to feel his face bruising. Tunny cradling it instead, opening his mouth to the kiss, hurts worse. It makes Will pull away.
“That wasn’t because of our stupid game,” he tells Tunny. He would, so he doesn’t blame Tunny for doing it, but he didn’t, and he needs Tunny to know. Because he’s a fucking idiot.
Tunny’s still not hitting him. “If it had been, I would have kicked your ass for doing it in front of Sara.”
Will looks past him, finds Sara still in the doorway. Throat tight, he says, “I’m sorry.” He is amazingly fucking sorry.
She says, “Be sorry if you didn’t mean it.”
“No,” he says, eyes on hers, willing her to get that she’s a part of it, “I mean it.”
After a minute he can feel in the pounding of his blood, she seems to decide something. “Then we’ll figure it out tomorrow.” She goes into the bedroom-and comes out with all the pillows and blankets from their bed.
Tunny’s smile is meant for Sara, but he looks at Will. “See why she’s the brains of the operation?”
Will nods, too relieved to even smile back. He’s done and said enough for one night, so he gets up to help spread everything out on the floor. Sara touches his face, kisses him softly, and he thinks maybe she’s right.
As he’s sinking towards sleep, muted light from the streetlamp washing over Sara’s head on Tunny’s shoulder, Will remembers.
Their first tattoos were done in scented marker. Before his mom caught them and scrubbed their skin raw, Will licked his arm to see if they tasted like they smelled. It’s one in a long list of bad decisions.
But in his dream, Tunny’s skin tasted like licorice and Sara’s hair smelled like the air after a storm.
Source: American Idiot
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing: Johnny, Will/Tunny/Extraordinary Girl
Word count: 2,770
Disclaimer: Unbelievably fictional.
Summary: Dinner and a show. Follows Keeping Time.
Sara is a little out of breath when she opens the door, jacket on and hair gathered in a fist.
“Ew,” he says. He puts his hand up as a blinder before he steps into the apartment.
As she slides some kind of clip in place, she sticks her tongue out at him. “Nice to see you, too, Will.”
With a grin, Will passes over the bottle as a peace offering before lobbing his sweatshirt toward the couch. He had to ask the guy at the store what to get, wine not really being his thing, but she gives it an appreciative look, so he figures it must be okay.
“I forgot about this baby shower for my coworker this afternoon,” she says, setting the bottle down in the kitchen and grabbing her keys off the counter, “which means I also forgot to buy a gift for it.”
“So this is stress-rushing, not sex-rushing?” he asks. “Then I take back my disgust.”
She pats him on the shoulder. “They’re called ‘quickies’ for a reason,” she says confidingly.
He laughs. “And it’s yours again. Some things you don’t talk about in mixed company,” he tells her as he reaches for the door handle.
“Good thing you don’t count as company.”
Tunny’s still nowhere to be seen when Will shuts the door behind her, so he heads into the bedroom and falls onto the (thankfully made) bed, bouncing the strap right out of Tunny’s hand.
“Asshole,” Tunny says in greeting. He goes back to fitting his leg on. Apparently that comes before the shirt … which Will supposes makes sense.
There’s still steam drifting out of the bathroom, beads of water on Tunny’s back. And now Will’s wondering about logistics, which is just a new level of disturbing. Sometimes he would pay cash money for a less active imagination. To take his mind off it, he says, “Johnny’s called me six times already.”
Tunny laughs. “Sucks to be you. Did you ignore them?”
“Fuck yes.” He flat-out refuses to deal with this until an hour before the date. If Will didn’t love him so much, Johnny wouldn’t even get that. “Why doesn’t he ever do this shit to you? You fucking lived with him.”
“Because I told him I would twist his balls off with one of his guitar strings.” He stands slowly, testing his weight and the fit before moving to the dresser.
Will blows out a puff of air. “If only I’d thought of that.”
Pausing with his shirt lifted halfway toward his head, Tunny looks at him. “You couldn’t, and it wouldn’t work even if you did.” He grins. “You’re too much of a sweetheart, sweetheart.”
“Fuck you,” Will says darkly, and flips him off when Tunny laughs again. “Make your own fucking dinner.”
Tunny waves a hand like Will just made his point for him before sitting back down to pull on his jeans. “It’s what makes you a good dad, douchebag. You care about other people more than yourself.”
Will stares at Tunny’s back, sort of glad Tunny can’t see whatever his face looks like right now, even if what he said is bullshit. Swallowing, he says, “You just want me to have to deal with Johnny.”
Tunny’s hand, still warm from the shower, wraps around his ankle. “That, too,” he says, and then he gets up and walks out of the room.
It takes Will a minute to follow.
.....
He heads straight to the couch and the remote because those are things he understands, things that don’t surprise him or change when he’s not looking or become a grownup without him. Tunny’s probably in the kitchen, like, cooking a balanced breakfast, no, brunch, and making fresh-squeezed orange juice. Will keeps flipping until he sees Astroturf.
When Tunny walks out, he’s stuffing a slice of cold pizza in his mouth. He scoops an arm under Will’s feet, tossing them to the floor, and drops beside him.
“Where’s mine?” Will asks.
“What’s wrong with your legs, plural?” Tunny says in reply. Will could honestly fucking kiss him.
Instead, he goes for the pizza, bringing back the rest of the box and dropping it pointedly on the coffee table. Tunny smiles at him. “Grab some drinks while you’re up?” he asks sweetly, like an asshole, and Will’s palms itch to touch.
He shifts his weight, hoping it will make him fit in his skin again. Tunny rolls his eyes. “Sit down, princess. Want anything?”
“Anything,” Will says. It’s times like these he really misses his bong.
His phone buzzes in his pocket as soon as he’s down, and he fumbles for it. At this second, he’d rather face Heather or his mom or even his boss trying to call him into work than whatever the fuck just happened.
The screen reads Johnny.
Yeah, he decides, he’s that desperate.
“Hey.”
There’s a pause before Johnny says, “Sorry, I totally expected to get voicemail again.”
“I can hang up,” he says.
“No, no … but now I don’t remember what I was going to ask.”
“Johnny,” Will says, because seriously. Tunny gives him a soda and a disbelieving look. Will’s not sure who it’s directed at; it’s pretty fucking valid either way.
After another pause, Johnny says, “Yeah, I know. What are you guys doing?”
“Uh, some game’s on. Just come over, dude.”
He looks at Tunny sort of late, considering it’s his place, but gets a nod. Tunny says, “Tell him Sara will probably help him pick a shirt if he brings a few.”
Will relays the message and adds seriously, “Until then, we’re not fucking talking about it.”
“Deal,” Johnny says. He hangs up.
When Will closes his phone, Tunny’s giving him the faint, warm smile. “Nice job, Dad.”
Will feels himself grinning back.
.....
At Johnny’s knock, Tunny yells, “Get your ass in here” so he doesn’t have to move. Will has no clue how he ever thought Tunny had matured.
“What a warm welcome,” Johnny says, hanging a ridiculously thick pile on the coat hooks.
“I’m regretting it now. How the fuck is that ‘a few’ shirts, Johnny?”
Will says, “Seriously, man, why do you even own that many?”
“Hey, I have, at certain times, been a productive member of society,” Johnny says. “That comes with a dress code.”
Whatever. They’re not dealing with it until Sara’s back, so Will says, “Grab some drinks while you’re up?” It makes Tunny snort, and Johnny looks at them suspiciously before going.
While he’s out of earshot, Will leans over to ask, “Does Sara know you volunteered her for this? Can I have your Gibson when she kills you?”
“I said she’d ‘probably’ help,” Tunny says. “And I’ll make it up to her.”
Johnny’s back before Will’s brain can offer visual aids. He sets all three sodas in front of Tunny. “Open them.”
“It was an inside joke, you tool, not a conspiracy.” When Johnny doesn’t move, Tunny taps the cans and cracks them open, flicking the last tab at Johnny. “Now relax before I fucking sit on you.”
Johnny takes one and collapses on the couch between them.
.....
He surfaces from the beginning of a dream when Johnny digs an elbow into his side.
“Distract me.”
Will palms his face, trying to focus. “That’s why they invented TV, numbnuts.”
“It’s not working.”
He looks over at Johnny picking at his cuticles. It’s his biggest, most annoying tell. “Obviously.” His vision drifts past to the other side of the couch. “Where the fuck did Tunny go?”
“Groceries.”
Will must have been out deeper than he thought. All he can remember from the dream is rain and some kind of candy. Which is--weird. “That’s a distraction,” he points out.
“I tried. The asshole ordered me to stay here, like he was in long enough to give anybody orders.”
Will groans. “Dude, you gotta let that go. So he joined the army. It was less destructive than a lot of the other shit we did voluntarily.”
“Tell that to his fucking leg,” he mutters around a finger. Johnny never stops until after he’s drawn blood.
Will thinks there’s more to it, that part of the bitterness is because Tunny wasn’t there to keep Johnny from nuking his own life, or whatever he had with that girl he won’t talk about. And nobody gets that better than Will, but for him, having them back is bigger than the fact that they left. He’s realizing that shit happens, and all they can do is deal with it. They have to deal with it.
He wishes he’d realized it sooner, before he fucked things up with and for Heather, but that’s just another part of the shit.
Digging the travel pack of Kleenex out of his pocket, he tosses it in Johnny’s lap and tries to think of a story. All of them are about Billy because his kid is fucking amazing. So he says, “My kid is fucking amazing,” and goes from there.
.....
Sara raises an eyebrow at the shirts, and at the big, sad eyes Tunny met her at the door with, but after leaning up to kiss him, she turns to Johnny with a smile. “How long do we have?” she asks. Tunny presses his mouth against her temple gratefully.
He points a finger at Will, so Will pushes himself off the couch and follows him into the kitchen. The food Tunny bought is still on the counter. It looks like a lot, and none of it microwaveable.
“So how does this work?” Will asks.
“The recipe’s over there,” Tunny says, digging a pan out from over the stove. “You tell me what it says. I do it.”
“Nice. Will you call me ‘sir’, too?” He reaches for the paper. Handwritten. He wonders if it’s somebody secret recipe, like maybe the old ladies a few doors down who randomly love Tunny despite his … everything. Will’s mom tried, and he loves her for it, but she never really got fancier than whatever was printed on the back of the box.
“I’ll call you something,” Tunny says. “Just fucking read.”
Will reads. He also chops things, and opens cans, and grabs stuff when Tunny points at the low cupboards. Johnny leaves somewhere in all that after coming in to laugh at them, and eventually Sara wanders in wearing those yoga pants Heather likes and a t-shirt Will remembers Tunny practically living in during high school.
She hooks her chin on Tunny’s shoulder, arms wrapped around him, watching him stir. “I don’t know if you guys know, your best friend is kind of a chick.” She laughs when they nod. Really, it’s more that Johnny only has two settings: doesn’t give a fuck, or gives too much of a fuck. “Just checking,” she says before coming over to steal a strawberry off Will’s chopping block.
Damnit, he’d just figured out how to cut them into that shape. “Go sit down,” he says. “Men are working here.”
Sara smiles at him, taking a pointed bite out of the strawberry, and pulls herself up to sit on the counter. “So what’s the plan for the rest of the evening, men?”
He figured they’d kick him out after dinner, but Tunny’s looking at him with raised eyebrows like he gets a say. Will shrugs.
Tunny turns to Sara and copies the shrug.
So does she. “Good plan,” she says.
And that’s it. Will’s not sure if he should feel better knowing he’s not crashing a grand romantic gesture. Instead he’s crashing their life.
.....
Dinner is surprisingly edible, and only a little overcooked. But that was Sara’s fault. She snagged Tunny’s sleeve when he went past to get the pepper, legs curling around his, and he got caught up in kissing her, palming the counter on either side of her hips, her hands slipping under the back of his shirt, and by the time Will remembered he should watch the food … anyway, with wine, the burnt taste is barely noticeable.
.....
It’s a little difficult to pay attention to this movie he could quote in his sleep with Tunny rubbing his leg every two minutes. “Dude, just take it off.”
Tunny’s hand disappears from Will's line of sight, and nothing else happens, so Will pushes his head back against the seat cushion to look up at him.
“It’s fine,” Tunny says, eyes on the screen.
He rolls his head further to look at Sara, who shrugs. Okay, Will can respect that. He doesn’t need her help for this anyway. He turns, propping his arm on the couch, and says, “You know I don’t care, right?” Tunny’s still not looking at him, but Will sees his mouth tighten. Stupid, stubborn son of a bitch. “I mean, it’s totally repulsive, but I don’t care.”
Sara laughs, fingers playing along Tunny's annoying hard head. Tunny’s mouth twitches upward this time, but he says, low, “Knowing about it is different than seeing it.”
That makes Will roll his eyes. “It’s called the fucking Internet, Tunny. Fuck you very much if you think I haven’t found everything it could tell me about what my best friend’s dealing with, including the fucking pictures.”
“Fine,” Tunny says. “If it hurts, I’ll fucking take it off. Happy?”
“It’s a dream come true.” Will moves up to reclaim some of the couch, giving Tunny a shove. “Move over, snookums. Your floor is hard.”
Tunny shoves him back. “It must be if your flabby ass can feel it, petal.”
He can’t really blame Sara for shaking her head, but at least she looks amused, too.
.....
Sara saying “I should go home” makes him lift his head to look at the cable box. When the hell did it get to be after 2? He could swear they just got Johnny’s 2 beers w/dinner. date 2 nxt wk she liked shirt ilu sara text, and that had been around midnight.
Without moving, Tunny says, “No, you shouldn’t.”
“Should I go home?” Will asks.
“No, you shouldn’t.”
Downing most of a second bottle of wine, the beers after, means that Will is fine with this plan. He fucking hates his apartment when it’s dark and empty, and he’s crashed in way worse places than Tunny’s couch, even right now, with Tunny’s head in Sara’s lap and Will’s legs propped over his (still plural), feet on the coffee table. It makes Sara getting up to see if she has any clean scrubs kind of a group project. Tunny holds out his arm, and Will hauls him up hand over hand so Sara can get clear.
And then Will kisses him. Because he’s happy, so he has to fuck it up. It’s his talent. Tunny shakes his arm free, and Will waits to feel his face bruising. Tunny cradling it instead, opening his mouth to the kiss, hurts worse. It makes Will pull away.
“That wasn’t because of our stupid game,” he tells Tunny. He would, so he doesn’t blame Tunny for doing it, but he didn’t, and he needs Tunny to know. Because he’s a fucking idiot.
Tunny’s still not hitting him. “If it had been, I would have kicked your ass for doing it in front of Sara.”
Will looks past him, finds Sara still in the doorway. Throat tight, he says, “I’m sorry.” He is amazingly fucking sorry.
She says, “Be sorry if you didn’t mean it.”
“No,” he says, eyes on hers, willing her to get that she’s a part of it, “I mean it.”
After a minute he can feel in the pounding of his blood, she seems to decide something. “Then we’ll figure it out tomorrow.” She goes into the bedroom-and comes out with all the pillows and blankets from their bed.
Tunny’s smile is meant for Sara, but he looks at Will. “See why she’s the brains of the operation?”
Will nods, too relieved to even smile back. He’s done and said enough for one night, so he gets up to help spread everything out on the floor. Sara touches his face, kisses him softly, and he thinks maybe she’s right.
As he’s sinking towards sleep, muted light from the streetlamp washing over Sara’s head on Tunny’s shoulder, Will remembers.
Their first tattoos were done in scented marker. Before his mom caught them and scrubbed their skin raw, Will licked his arm to see if they tasted like they smelled. It’s one in a long list of bad decisions.
But in his dream, Tunny’s skin tasted like licorice and Sara’s hair smelled like the air after a storm.