Can Anybody Find Me (Kiss Me at Midnight)

by Julia Alaric

  Will twisted to grin over his shoulder. "Then they're not doing a very good job. I get close to your head all the time."

  Andrew narrowed his eyes. "No head jokes, please."

  "Wasn't gonna," Will lied, eyes innocently wide despite the twitch he could feel at the corner of his lips. "There was no double meaning in that."

  Andrew raised an eyebrow skeptically, but he didn't call Will's obvious bluff. "I just think you've got the perfect hair. Mine grows in such an annoyingly dense thicket around my head that I might as well just spray-paint it purple and slap on a Vikings logo because it looks like a helmet."

  "Oh, yes please," Will snickered. "Will you wear the tight pants, too? Because I could totally get into that. Your ass would look amazing."

  "Incorrigible," Andrew sighed fondly, his arm dropping back to Will's hip. Will snaked his own arm up and over Andrew's so he could twist their fingers together, bringing their hands up to his mouth for a quick kiss.

  "Love you," he murmured, yawning.

  "Love you, too," Andrew returned sleepily. "So much." Max, finished ingesting his daily dose of MSG, clambered up on top of them and lay down between their legs. A minute later, Andrew's snores were blowing softly across the curls he so admired. Despite knowing they should get up and go to bed before they spent half the night on the couch, Will closed his eyes and let himself drift off, more at peace than he'd felt in ages.

  *~*~*

  Only two more days. He was running out of time. For what, Will still wasn't entirely sure, but he had a definite sense that he had to make up his mind about everything by his birthday. Unfortunately, he was no closer to making a decision than he had been a week earlier. He was only more torn.

  Will waited until Andrew was out that evening to head into the study, where he proceeded to put on the playlist entitled Regret he'd been gradually compiling over the last month, curl up on the floor, and pull a blanket up over his head. There in the self-imposed darkness, for the first time in months, he stopped fighting and let everything crash over him.

  He thought about college: how much he had loved his classes, the proud smiles on his professors' faces when they talked about his future, the plans he had made before Andrew. How many of them he had given up to be with Andrew.

  He thought about the other men he had dated. The list wasn't long, but there had been a few who mattered. None of them would have required the same sacrifices from him. Other sacrifices, undoubtedly, but not the ones that currently lay heavy on Will's heart.

  Before Andrew, Will had dated a sophisticated international relations major named Braden. He had been horrified by Will's ignorance of wine and food. When he had mentioned where he was from and Will just stared at him blankly, Braden had nearly expired from the shock of learning that there was a human being alive who had never heard of Napa Valley. Thanks to internships and semesters abroad, Braden had spent a year and a half dating Will but only four months in the same state with him. He hadn't taken Will seriously about breaking up until the day he had come back into town and run into Will already wearing Andrew's ring. It had just reinforced Will's confidence that he had chosen wisely; the whole reason Will had wanted to break up was that Braden never listened to him. He heard what Will said, but then he assumed Will couldn't have meant to contradict his own opinions. Will would say, "I don't want to go to that movie," and Braden would show up with tickets anyway, because "we agreed we wanted to see it." Will may not have regretted the entire relationship, but he definitely didn't regret ending it. Andrew would never steamroll him like that; he always wanted to know what Will thought about everything and why.

  Before Braden had been Clint, the linguist who had sat next to Will in Colonial US History and flirted outrageously whenever he got the chance. One hot summer romance later, Will was reeling from the double blows of Clint's excited transfer to Berkeley to study psycholinguistics and Will's realization that he actually couldn't stand Clint most of the time. He had so many annoying little mannerisms, like the way he clicked his pens and giggled at his own jokes. Will wasn't quite sure how he had managed not to notice sooner, though he imagined Clint's mouth might have played more than one role in his distraction.

  And Clint had been a rebound from Will's first love. Pete had been younger than Will, almost embarrassingly so by high school and college standards. Pete had only been fifteen when he had plucked up the courage to ask eighteen-year-old Will on a date and then promptly swept Will completely off his feet. Pete had been smart, funny, and more than a little dorky. He and his friends had done things like replace the lyrics to popular songs with odes to chemistry and physics, making records of themselves singing them to keep for posterity. Pete had played the trombone so much that he had a thin, round scar circling his lips. Will had liked to trace it with his tongue. Pete wore thick woolen socks with his sandals no matter how many times Will tried to make him stop, he had the oiliest skin Will had ever encountered, and Will had been completely, one hundred percent head over heels in love with him.

  Losing Pete was one of the biggest regrets of Will's life. It had been entirely his own fault, start to finish, which only made it worse. Suddenly as a college sophomore, after two years of dating, Will had been gripped with panic that he was missing out on something by staying with his first love. What if he lived his entire life without ever having kissed another pair of lips but Pete's? What if he never went on another first date? What if there was someone out there who would make Will feel things he had never even imagined because all he had ever known was Pete? Before he knew it, he was pulling away from a kiss one night in his dorm room, tears streaming down his face while he choked out, "I can't do this anymore. I just can't." He hadn't stopped crying for about a month. By the time the tears dried up, he started to wonder why he had thought he might want someone else when he already had the man he loved. But every time he thought about groveling at Pete's feet, he remembered that Pete was applying to college out of state in a few months, and he told himself that they both had a lot of growing up to do before they were in a position to make any serious commitments, and that there were still a lot of other men in the world. So he stayed away. Last he had heard, Pete was working his way through a PhD in physics somewhere in Illinois.

  Will was not naïve enough to think that his relationship with Pete had been perfect. He knew he looked back with rose-colored glasses, remembering the good and forgetting the bad. Probably he would always wonder how things might have turned out if they had met and dated four years later than they had. Will strongly suspected there would be a different man warming his bed at night.

  But then there had been Andrew, who had fallen for Will before he and Pete had even broken up, and who had then waited years for the right opportunity to do something about it. No one had ever hurt Will the way Andrew did. No one had ever made him cry as hard or as often as Andrew. No one had ever made him feel as unimportant, unattractive, or uninteresting as Andrew. But nobody had ever made him laugh harder, love more deeply, or feel more special than Andrew did, either. Nobody had ever made him feel more awe-inspiring or more breathtaking. Nobody had ever made Will feel half as much anything as Andrew did.

  Andrew liked to pull Will into his lap, nuzzle his neck, and declare that he had known the moment he saw Will walking into their calculus class that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with him. Will always felt slightly guilty that he couldn't say the same. The truth was that it had taken a week for Will to notice Andrew even existed, and then Andrew had only taken up residence at the back of Will's mind as the kid half the freshman girls in class were panting after. Will had mostly noticed because it had struck him as hilarious that nobody was getting more female attention than the guy in the room who was most uncomfortable with it. They had gradually become friends, thanks largely to Andrew's persistence, but it had taken Andrew nearly three years to get up the guts and find the perfect timing to ask Will on a date. He had actually trembled the first time he had kissed Will, the softest, slowest, most rev
erent kiss of Will's life. Now here Will lay, thinking about how much he wished he had a different life. He was such a jerk.

  Will pulled the blanket higher up over his head, trying to become unrecognizable as a human being by melting into a lump of quilted fabric on the ground. He knew Andrew would be home soon, and he didn't want to attract Andrew's attention while he lay there full of regret for all of the things he had given up to stay with Andrew. He didn't regret Andrew. Really, he didn't. But that didn't make all of the consequences of his choice easy to bear. He just needed a few minutes to grieve for them. He knew Andrew would have done anything for him, but there were some things Will would never ask. He didn't want Andrew to be hurt too.

  Lying there, eyes slowly leaking tears, Will let himself sink into the confusion and pain. He wished he knew what to do. Somewhere had to be a solution where they could both be happy. At the moment, however, he felt like he had a better chance of guessing Bill Gates' personal password than figuring out how to fix his life. Wallowing in misery, he drifted off into an uneasy sleep where he lay in the middle of the floor.

  When Will woke, eyes gritty as though he had been sleeping in a sooty street like a Dickensian urchin, the room had fallen dark around him. He emerged from his blanket cocoon like a newborn butterfly needing to pump blood into its wings and learn to move all over again. If only he had undergone a similar transformation himself, Will thought wistfully as he arched his back and rotated his shoulders. His stiff muscles required a good stretch before he could even attempt to walk with any semblance of coordination.

  Before he could stumble out, the door opened a crack, sending yellow light spilling in along with the aroma of eggs and cheese. Andrew's head poked through, and warmth flooded Will's heart at the sight of him.

  "I made you dinner," Andrew offered with half a smile. "We both know I'm not much good in the kitchen, but you seemed too exhausted to make anything tonight. I thought even cheesy eggs homemade might be better than ordering take-out again."

  Will drew close enough to kiss him, holding Andrew's face still just long enough to make it more than a peck. Andrew would never be happy moving around from place to place, and Will would probably never get his PhD. He would never know what would have happened with Pete if he had called him up and asked him for another chance. But Andrew would be there for Will, he would love Will with all he had, and Will would do the same for him. That was enough.

  *~*~*

  Will gripped the steering wheel tightly, forcing air deep into his lungs.

  Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, hold it. Let it go.

  His heart was racing, thundering painfully inside his chest, forcing his blood to careen wildly throughout his arteries until it turned and crashed back through his veins, into the chambers of his heart, and out for another go round. He had a vision of himself clinging tightly to one of the red blood cells, riding it like a rubber raft over white water rapids. He thought perhaps the image was borrowed from one of the Magic School Bus books, but he wouldn't put it past his brain in its current state to have conjured up a graphic novel of its own describing the tale of his complete disintegration to the point of riding his own cells within his body. He couldn't even think coherently anymore, and that was the one thing Will had always been able to do. His body was mediocre when it came to feats of strength and endurance, his emotions were unreliable at best, but his mind had always been sharp as a tack. Now it was falling apart with the rest of him. He wondered what Andrew would think if he knew just what Will was going through. Putting himself through. Experiencing. Whatever the word was for being completely unable to handle one's own life and afraid to ask for help.

  His flailing mind snagged on one concept and held tight: Andrew.

  Impulsively, Will picked up his phone from the center console and flicked it back to life with his thumb. He typed a quick text message to Andrew and sent it before he could convince himself he was being stupid.

  I love you.

  Inexplicably, the instant his thumb hit "send", the air rushed back into his lungs. Half the weight disappeared from his shoulders. For a moment, Will was stunned. How could one phrase he had said several times a day for over eight years make such a difference this time? But he could not deny the panic that had been threatening to overwhelm him had abated, or at least something was holding it at bay. It was still there at the edge of his consciousness, because The Day was within twenty-four hours and no decisions had been made, but it was not blocking out the sunlight.

  Maybe that was what it was, Will thought whimsically. His love for Andrew was his sunlight, and he had allowed the oppressive darkness of his confusion choke it out. Or maybe Will had been adrift without anything to hold onto, forgetting that he already had an anchor. He may not have known what he wanted to do with his life; he may not have known whether he was wasting himself and his own potential; he may not have known whether he should quit school, or whether he should stick it out and give it a chance; but he knew that he loved Andrew. He knew that he had committed himself to Andrew. He knew that he and Andrew would always be together because they had promised. He knew that when push came to shove, whatever he decided, Andrew would be there with his underwear all over the floor, and his keys lost somewhere in the pile; his dirty dishes littering the coffee table in the basement; his tiny dick off limits most of the time but so good the rest of the time; his blue eyes bright above uneven teeth when he smiled; his arms warm, secure, and waiting for Will.

  His phone chimed with a text from Andrew.

  Love you too. Have a great day! : -D

  Will could do this.

  *~*~*

  When classes were finished, Will headed home feeling lighter than he had in ages. Thanking the laziness that had kept him from changing the contents of his iPod after Andrew had last borrowed it, Will put on Queen's Greatest Hits in a fit of nostalgia. The familiar sound tugged a smile onto the corner of his mouth, which felt nice after weeks of worry pulling his facial muscles in the opposite direction. By the end of "Don't Stop Me Now", he was unabashedly singing along and sending up prayers of gratitude that Andrew wasn't around to hear his terrible, off-key caterwauling or make fun of his car dancing, though just the thought of Andrew's laughter made Will's grin widen.

  They had been listening to Queen together the day that Andrew proposed. Will had wanted to take a real break before senior exams began, so Andrew had dragged him to his parents' lakeside cabin bright and early one morning and informed Will that they weren't going to be home until at least midnight. A little giddy with lack of sleep, anticipation, and complete head-over-heels infatuation, Will had pretended to sleep while he stared surreptitiously at Andrew's profile the entire forty-five minute ride up.

  When they arrived, Andrew flashed Will a grin and tucked him into a heap of blankets on the sofa before stocking up the wood stove hot enough to leave them sweating a few hours later. Then he had put on a Queen CD and started to sing along. Will was soon gasping for breath between teasing Andrew for his taste in music and giggling at his Freddie Mercury imitation, tears rolling down his cheeks and his stomach aching from laughter. Will had decided at that moment that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Andrew.

  "Can anybody find me," Andrew had sung in a surprisingly good voice, "somebody to love?" Then he had collapsed onto the sofa on top of Will, trapping him between his arms. More softly, he had murmured, "Well, hello there. Don't suppose you'd like to be my somebody to love?"

  "You're so corny," Will had replied, but he hadn't been able to wipe the smile off his face as he reached up to kiss him.

  When they parted, Andrew traced Will's features with one fingertip. "I do love you," he had said seriously. "I think I've been half in love with you since the first time I saw you, really." He had smiled then in a certain way that always made Will's breath catch, a little twist of lips that still seemed awed to find he was allowed to be there with Will that way. "By the end of our first class together, I had decided you were the sort of man I wanted to m
arry. By the end of our first semester together, I had decided you were the man I wanted to marry. I just didn't think you'd ever feel the same way."

  "You know I do," Will had replied, voice a little gruff in a vain attempt to act unaffected.

  "So you say now," Andrew had grinned, pressing another quick kiss to Will's mouth. "So, while you're still deluded into that way of thinking, I've got a question for you."

  Will's eyebrows climbed nearly into his hair. "Yes?"

  "That's the answer I was hoping for," Andrew laughed, "though I'd prefer a little more conviction."

  Will rolled his eyes indulgently. "Stop messing around. What did you want to ask me?"

  Andrew's mouth opened, but no sound came out for a moment. Tilting his head to the side, he requested simply, "Marry me?"

  Will had been too shocked to do anything for a minute but blink, his eyes wide. "I can't. It's not legal," he had blurted idiotically when he found his voice again.

  Andrew's eyebrows lifted. "No, but it will be someday. I'd rather not wait that long to ask, though, since I'm sure you'll figure out way before then that you're far too good for me. Every other phrasing sounded lame. Asking you to partner me sounded like we were working on an elementary school project, asking if you wanted to commit to me was both too vague and too Hallmark, so just … legal or not, will you marry me, Will?"

  Will's brain had finally spun back into gear, and his face had broken into a smile so wide his cheeks hurt. With Freddie Mercury and the echoes of his laughter singing back-up, he had answered, "Absolutely."

  *~*~*

  When Will pulled into the driveway, all he wanted was to feel Andrew reaffirming that he and Will were something Will could count on. He knew, however, that he was going to have to maneuver carefully past Andrew's insecurity. As he came through the door, he could see Andrew in the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards. When he heard Will enter, Andrew turned around and smiled. "Hey, sweetheart. How was class?"