Chapter Text
On the morning of the digital release of Mindfuck, Mike wakes up groggy, having had too many anxiety-numbing beers the night before. Jay is beside him in bed, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling, and before Mike even hefts himself over with a grunt to put his chin on Jay’s shoulder, he can tell Jay managed barely an hour’s worth of sleep.
“You must secretly hate the ending if you’re dreading the reviews this much,” Mike says, still close enough to sleep to be honest about what he’s thinking. He’s also just gotten better about being honest in general since Jay moved in.
“I want to look at apartments today,” Jay says, sounding like he smoked a whole pack of cigarettes after Mike passed out. Jay has never smoked, doesn’t now, but his voice gets so scratchy when he’s exhausted. “I don’t want to just obsessively read the forum,” Jay says, turning his face against Mike’s on the pillow. Mike presses two fingertips into the pulse point on Jay’s throat and isn’t surprised to feel that his heart rate is elevated.
“Okay,” Mike says. “You know we’ve already been reviewed, right? Positively?”
“Of course I know that, but those reviewers are industry hacks that Gil probably paid off.”
“You don’t know that. I thought you liked the way it turned out?”
“What does it matter what I think? Or what some reviewers who have to dance around the big spoiler said? I’m just afraid our longtime fans are gonna feel-- Betrayed.”
“I’m expecting them to feel pretty fucking catered to and thrilled, but okay.”
Mike sits up with a groan and rubs his hands over his face. Lately he sleeps so deeply that he wakes up with his eyelashes stuck together. It’s always a relief to find Jay beside him, back where he belongs, but Mike knew this day was going to be a trial, and he wishes Jay would at least pretend not to be freaking out until after breakfast.
“I’m serious,” Jay says. He sits up to drape himself onto Mike’s back and loop his arms around Mike’s chest in a way that feels a little bit like an apology, scratching his beard against Mike’s throat in the way he knows Mike loves. “I want to apartment shop today. Maybe we won’t even look at the forums until dinnertime. Because then there will be more of a consensus. I don’t know if I can stand seeing reactions come in live.”
“It’s been out since midnight. You really haven’t looked?”
“I haven’t. I-- Let my phone die on purpose so I’d be less tempted. I don’t know, I feel so strange.”
He’s asking Mike to take care of him, please, which makes Mike smile a little at the corner of his lips. He knows it’s demented, but he never feels more proud of himself than at moments when he feels like he’s trained Jay well: to talk about his feelings, ask for help, come to him in a crisis without pretending he’s okay for weeks. Mike’s ability to do this had a lot to do with learning when to tell Jay no, turns out. But that’s not what he needs to hear now.
“Okay,” Mike says, petting Jay’s hand. “I’ll take you out for breakfast, then we’ll drive around and look at open house listings.”
“That sounds perfect. Yeah. Also, could you fuck me?”
Mike answers by turning and pressing Jay down to the bed, determined to fuck him so well that he’ll need to take a little nap afterward, finally soothed into real sleep. Jay smiles up at Mike tiredly and closes his eyes for Mike’s kisses. He makes rough little grunt-like noises when Mike pinches his nipples. He’s almost snorting, like a half-awake puppy, and he opens his eyes again when Mike laughs.
“How can you be in a good mood?” Jay asks. He’s whining about it, probably envious.
“Because you’re here,” Mike says. “Now shut up and hold yourself open. Gonna eat that ass for breakfast.”
“Ew,” Jay says, but he’s grinning and reaching down for his thighs, already spreading them.
At one point Mike is pretty sure that Jay is kind of falling asleep with Mike’s tongue in his ass, but he’s also still moaning, still hard. He gasps when Mike bites at his shaky thighs, just hard enough to wake him a little.
“Still want it?” Mike asks, sitting up on his knees and holding his dick.
“Yeah,” Jay says, his voice even croakier now. He pushes his arms up over his head and folds them there, pushing his chest out and looking so surrendered that Mike wants to take a picture. “Get the lube,” he says, settling his foot on Mike’s thigh to nudge him in that direction.
He’s yawning by the time Mike has it, and Mike doesn’t bother with stretching or teasing. Jay doesn’t need it when he’s in this mode, all soft and easy for Mike, needy but calm, too. He closes his eyes and sighs when Mike pushes into him, his stomach flexing under Mike’s hands as he takes it.
Mike forgets his hangover when he’s inside Jay. It always happens this way, like magic, and his deeper worries disappear along with it. He’s drinking less lately anyway, because Jay gives him grief about being too old to drink like he used to, which is true. Tonight, however, if the reviews on the fan forums and from randoms online who can’t have been influenced by Gil’s company are good, they’re going to party for real, like they used to. That, or drown their sorrows together, though Mike doesn’t think it’ll play out that way. He’s become an optimist since the love of life came back to him against all odds, but he has a good feeling about the work anyway, weird as it turned out. Weird has always been their thing.
Jay takes a long time to come, too drowsy to even focus on being fucked, but Mike is in no hurry and is still hard inside Jay when he finally goes off with a little squeak, holding Mike’s head against his throat while he spills between them. Mike has been making out with Jay’s neck because Jay won’t accept kisses after Mike’s mouth has been on his ass. He sits up with a grunt and watches Jay wind down from his orgasm, his eyelids all heavy, shiny lips parted.
“You want it in you?” Mike asks, starting to snap his hips. “Want to get filled, or--”
“Yeah,” Jay says, nodding. “Gonna, mph. Shower, after, so.”
“Like hell you are,” Mike says, because Jay is gonna be asleep before Mike pulls his dick out all the way. He can feel it, see it, and isn’t sure if Jay grins because he likes being told what he can and can’t do while he’s like this or because he understands, too, that he won’t make it into the shower before he sleeps for real.
Mike feels amazing when he’s fucking into Jay hard, and not just because he’s about to come. He feels like he can see the path of the rest of their lives opening ahead of them, like all the traps and roadblocks are behind them. It’s the idea of having new work out there, something he actually likes that’s already been watched and discussed, also purchased. He doesn’t give that much of a fuck about what everybody else thinks. He loves it, and having made it with Jay makes loving it a thousand times better. Not that he’s ever known what it’s like to love something he made without Jay.
He comes with a full body shudder and drops down onto Jay, into his arms. Jay hugs him and sighs, milking him out. It’s the best feeling in the world, Mike thinks, almost wanting to sob for it: disappearing into him, deflating with his face pressed to Jay’s warm, soft throat while his dick empties with the last lazy pulses, knowing that after this they’ll spend the whole day together and climb back into this bed again when it’s done. All of it.
Jay falls asleep just like Mike thought he would, already going under as Mike pulls out and totally gone by the time Mike returns with a towel to wipe him down. Jay is curled up facing Mike’s side of the bed, curved toward that space like he’s waiting for Mike to fill it even while he sleeps. Mike opens the curtains just a little, so they won’t sleep for too long, then slots himself in beside Jay. He considers grabbing his phone and taking a look at a their fan forum, but decides to wait, in support of Jay’s plan and because maybe he’s a little nervous, too, post-orgasm. He just doesn’t want anyone putting the idea that the movie sucked into Jay’s head. It’s not exactly their masterpiece, but it represents a new direction that Mike wants to keep moving in.
Within two hours Jay is rousing Mike, saying he’s hungry and that he’s getting in the shower now, telling Mike to get ready and look up some listings. Mike does so on his phone. He considers checking the forums and again decides to wait. He does as Jay asked instead, browsing Milwaukee apartments for sale. He’s determined to get a place with a lake view, which they can afford now that they’ve delivered Under the Lake’s product. He hasn’t missed the irony in this. Pre-sales were on target after the first time video leaked and Mike did an interview about the drama surrounding the whole production, conducted by a college friend of Jocelyn’s who writes for a non-industry magazine with a wide readership. He hadn’t wanted to do it, but Jay said he probably should, and offered to do his part by hosting a solo Q&A about the release of the first time video for his followers once he was feeling up to it. Mike knew he was right, that they still needed the money. Now they’ve got it, and probably more coming, and Mike has no delusions that he’ll ever end up in a penthouse like Simon’s, but he wants to move Jay into someplace nice.
As soon as he leaves the bedroom he’s confronted by all their clutter: Jay’s still unpacked boxes, DVDs and even VHS tapes stacked around the TV because they don’t have a place to put Jay’s collection after they watch something from it, and the two coffee pots on the countertop, because Jay doesn’t like Mike’s and Mike refuses to admit his is inferior. It doesn’t help that Mike is prone to clutter anyway and had plenty of his own before Jay moved in. He feels like he can barely walk as he maneuvers past boxes, the extra couch that Jay didn’t want to get rid of, and trash bags full of old clothes Jay is apparently sentimental about and doesn’t want to throw away. Mike offered to store this stuff at the studio, but Jay seems protective of it, like he needs to be surrounded by some semblance of ownership after giving up his apartment.
It’s been almost six months since Jay moved in, and the fact that he did so in a state of semi-emergency made them both nervous for a while, unsure of what would happen when the dust settled. Now it has, and when Mike said they should buy a place together after finishing the final edit of the movie, Jay lit up like Mike had proposed marriage in a way he actually liked.
“I found three places I want to check out,” Mike says when Jay comes out of the bedroom freshly showered and dressed, managing to look like he got a full night’s sleep after a good dicking and a post-coital nap. “They’re all downtown.”
“Great,” Jay says. “I need coffee. Good coffee, I mean. Let’s go.”
It’s early March, still very cold, but there’s some sun that breaks through the clouds and their favorite place to eat breakfast is crowded in a cozy way, the windows that face the street steamed up. Jay drinks three cups of coffee and chatters nonstop about the places Mike wants to look at, the neighborhoods he’s been researching obsessively, and whether or not he’d feel comfortable working out in a small apartment gym.
“We could get you a membership to someplace better,” Mike says. “We could write it off, even, as part of our operating expenses. Keeping you in shape.”
Jay snorts and looks up at Mike.
“It’s my job to not be in shape,” Mike says, wagging his finger at Jay. “That’s part of our appeal. The contrast.”
Jay doesn’t say anything to refute that, just nods and looks a little queasy, probably thinking about how their brand will hold up or evolve after the new release. They’ve talked nonstop over the past six months about what to make next, in bed at night after long days spent working on finishing Mindfuck. They haven’t settled on anything yet, but they spend weekends independently working on scripts in coffee shops or on Mike’s couch, if it’s too cold to go out. Sometimes these scripts get acted out in part during sex, but mostly they just send each other drafts and exchange notes.
“Maybe you could just come with me,” Jay says. “To the gym.”
“Ehhh.”
“I meant as my bodyguard! And if you want to pace slowly on the treadmill next to mine, that’s fine, too. Couldn’t hurt, health-wise.”
“You’re worried about my health?”
Mike glances down at the few remains on his huge breakfast plate: crusts from toast, the peel of an orange slice, and grease. Since it’s a special occasion, he got the full Lumberjack platter.
“Well, yeah,” Jay says, flushing. “Not in any specific area, but in the sense that I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Not in any specific area,” Mike says, doubtful and grinning, patting his gut. “Yeah, okay. I’ll be your bodyguard. Hey, there’s an idea. A pornstar who falls in love with his bodyguard.”
“That sounds a little cliche. But I guess there’s potential.”
“Yes, if you’d listen, Jay, before deciding my ideas are cliche. The idea would be that the bodyguard sort of grooms the pornstar guy to be too dependant on him, until it’s like who’s working for who here, and it gets all dark and shit, until the little pornstar guy is threatened by an outside element, and then the bodyguard gets feral and protective--”
“I thought we were gonna try new things,” Jay says.
“We are, but we also have to make stuff that will sell. This is our brand, and now we know people are still buying it.”
Jay groans and puts his elbows on the table, hands over his face.
“Let’s not talk about work,” he says. “At least not till later, when we read the user reviews.”
“Fine,” Mike says, though it’s hard for him to stop trying to write scripts based on everything they talk about. He’s felt especially inspired for months now, since they sent the final cut to Under the Lake, and the scope of what he can or might do feels suddenly limitless. “Let’s talk about Rich’s wedding.”
Jay takes his hands away from his face and blinks at him.
“What about it?”
“As the best man, I’m supposed to plan the bachelor party.”
“Oh god.”
“Yeah. Dima and the other guys of course want to go to Vegas. Honestly, so do I. But I brought it up with Rich, and he groaned and said he just wants to have a video game tournament at the studio and order pizzas.”
Jay snickers, sits up straight again, and the subject is effectively changed. Mike has gotten good at ushering him into safe harbors without missing a step.
The first apartment they tour is not as nice as it looked in the pictures. It’s much smaller, with dingy bathrooms. Mike can see that Jay hates it on sight, so they don’t waste much time there. The second place is fine, with a better view, but feels kind of soulless. The third place is the one Mike held the least hope for based on what he saw online, but it’s nicer than he expected and has a huge outdoor pool, rare for a Milwaukee apartment building that isn’t outrageously expensive. It also has a small workout room with a decent city view, and Mike can tell when they tour this part that Jay feels comfortable here. There’s something about the place that makes them both talk seriously about making an offer, all the way back to Mike’s apartment, which looks newly dumpy and awful in comparison.
“Let’s do it,” Jay says, eyes bright, when they’re standing in Mike’s tiny kitchen the way they do when they discuss serious things, Jay on one side of the bartop and Mike on the other.
“You think?” Mike says. “I did like that bedroom view a lot. And the balcony.”
“It had really good storage capacity for a two bedroom,” Jay says. “And the location feels like downtown, close to everything, but the drive to the studio would be easy.”
“I liked the hardwoods.”
“And the fireplace! I haven’t had one of those since I was a little kid, and that was only at my grandma’s house.”
This seals it for Mike: Jay beaming at the thought of having a room with a fireplace where they can curl up together during the long winters, and this being something he’s never had all for himself, something Mike can finally give him.
They make an offer on the apartment and celebrate by going to the fancy grocery store and buying fancy things, including champagne, both pretending they’re not also thinking of celebrating the other milestone involving the release of their film. Mike has blocked Gil’s number, and is sure that if he hadn’t he’d have a hundred text messages and missed calls. They still communicate through email, for business purposes. Gil gave quotes for the same article Mike was interviewed for and reliably made himself sound like a frothing lunatic who is happy to be the villain of their story, because that means he gets to be in it at all.
“We should at least wait till sundown,” Jay says when Mike is spreading some of the goodies they got out on the coffee table in the living room: bread with nice cheese and several kinds of expensive cured sausage, plus two glasses of champagne from the bottle Mike has already popped. He worked up an appetite while apartment browsing, and he needs a drink.
“It’s basically sundown,” Mike says, because the clouds have thickened outside and the afternoon has dimmed toward darkness. “Here’s to our new place,” he said, lifting his glass. “And to all the other new stuff coming our way. And to the old stuff, too.”
Jay sniffs and toasts, then drinks. He almost spits his first mouthful out when suddenly he starts laughing.
“What?” Mike asks, touching his stubble. “Something on my face?”
“No, I was just thinking about that awful lunch we had with Gil, and him ordering champagne like a jackass.”
“Is there anything Gil doesn’t do like a jackass? But, yeah. God, that was almost a year ago.”
“Mhmm.” Jay looks down at his glass, still grinning like he finds this hilarious. “Fuck, okay. If we can get through that, why are some reviews scaring me so bad? Let’s check ‘em out.”
Mike’s heart beats faster as he grabs for his laptop, and he knows Jay will feel it when he settles against Mike’s side on the couch, tucked under Mike’s arm, which fits around Jay’s shoulders like armor. Jay clutches at the front of Mike’s sweatshirt while Mike navigates to their main fan forum and selects the General thread. At the top of the page there’s a topic with sixteen pages of comments: MINDFUCK REVIEWS AND COMMENTS (SPOILERS).
“Hey,” Jay says, grabbing Mike’s thigh when he moves his hand to open the thread. Jay’s eyes are so sweet and scared-looking that just looking down into them makes Mike’s heart beat faster, like he needs to protect Jay from whatever’s about to happen. “I did like the ending,” Jay says, his voice small. “I do. It’s perfect, it’s nuts-- I like that we shot the big twist part here,” he says, turning to glance toward the bedroom. “It makes it feel like moving out of here will be, just. Closing this whole chapter out and going on to the next one. You know?”
He turns back to Mike, still with his eyes so soft that Mike wants to hurl the laptop away rather than expose Jay to any feedback that might give him a moment’s displeasure.
“I know,” Mike says. “It’s like we memorialized this place in film after we did all the editing work here, and, you know. Reconnected. Got back to the way things should be. I’m glad we didn’t try to shoot the bedroom scene at the studio. Glad it was just us, like old times.”
The rewrites ended up being even more extensive than Mike had originally envisioned, once he’d talked them through with Jay. There was stuff that wouldn’t work thematically alongside the big reveal at the end without alteration, and Mike had to tweak and sometimes soften the Vince and Barney interactions, to the point of reshooting a few. Everyone was energized post-meltdown, and the work went quickly, with the shoot wrapping only a couple of weeks later than they’d planned. When it came time to shoot the first scene where the script diverged from the original draft, they did it here at the apartment, with Barney desperate and falling apart, pounding on Vince’s door and demanding access to his cock during the weekend, outside of their usual pre- and post-work meetup schedule. They had Rocky shoot the scenes at the door, with Vince trying to tell Barney he’d crossed a line while also tugging him inside, but for the full on fuck scene that took place in Mike’s actual bed it was just the two of them and a series of flat shots coupled with handheld closeups of each other’s faces, shot by whichever of them wasn’t on camera while they were still connected, like the real old times. Mike wanted it to have that original style MikeNJay feeling but also a certain level of intimacy, because that scene represents a turning point for the characters.
The story changes after Barney gets fucked in Vince’s bed, and Mike was careful with the cinematography, too, wanting everything to feel different from there on. Barney wakes up while Vince is still snoring away, sated and oblivious, and stares at him for a while, frowning like he’s trying to figure something out. He creeps away from the bed, and the scene takes on an almost horror movie feeling, with tense music and menacing shadows as he starts snooping quietly through Vince’s things. There was high risk of this part feeling ridiculous, and Mike might be about to read reviews that say so, but he thinks it turned out perfect. Barney finds an old picture where Vince is much thinner and sporting spiky green hair, flicking off the camera. He’s Sid, actually, and Barney’s eyes go wide and terrified when he remembers that he’s Dex.
The fact that they left off Sid and Dex’s story with that alien abduction plotline makes this work, at least in Mike’s opinion, and he thinks it’s kind of spectacular that their confused brokenness back then lead them to what he hopes is a brilliant plot twist that’s insane enough to be funny, too, just the right level of absurd to fit into their old universe. Sid had rescued Dex from the aliens in their final release about those characters, but the new movie’s canon establishes that the aliens came back and wiped both their memories, giving them new personalities and names before reinstalling them in society on Earth. They’d been monitoring the two from afar since then, and the hypnotist is really an alien scientist in disguise, using his techniques to cruelly see how much he can control Dex’s behavior or not, both with and without Sid’s involvement.
Mike can admit that it’s kind of convoluted, but it’s a porn-based universe and he feels this allows for some forgiveness when it comes to contrivances. Where the movie goes from there is his favorite part, the scenes that really elevate this thing to something he’s actually proud of: Dex returns to the bedroom and wakes Sid, angrily confronting him with the picture. Sid is confused and even vulnerable, not catching up as quickly as Dex has on the recovered memories that the picture triggered, which are represented by a tender montage of Sid and Dex moments from their old releases. They had Rocky’s teenage prodigy cousin do the music and he sort of blew Mike away with how well he nailed the mood of all these scenes, especially as they build toward the climax where Sid remembers, too, and goes to confront the hypnotist as planned in the original ending. This time the hypnotist laughs and brags that he’ll just wipe their memories and start again, and Jocelyn gets a cameo as the alien queen who shows up to check on the status of this pet project. She’s wearing a ‘human disguise,’ too, and does a flawless job conveying that she’s an evil alien underneath, mocking Sid and Dex for thinking they can escape their predicament.
“Pitiful,” she says, arms crossed smugly over her chest after Sid screams at her that he won’t let her or anybody hurt Dex again. “Why do you think we selected you two for abduction? Because of your bond. Breaking it is a feature of the experiment.”
“And you’re not so special,” Simon tosses in, reclining comfortably in his hypnotist’s chair while he watches this play out. “He got on his knees for me, too. And I’m not even human!”
This is the point at which Sid loses his mind and the scene turns into an almost but not entirely comical bloodbath. Dex pitches in at one point when the aliens are teaming up on Sid, finding his courage and tearing off the alien queen’s human mask, revealing an alien face underneath that they paid a fortune to commission from some old friends from film school who do special effects for studio features up in Canada now. Jay was most excited about this scene, of course, and Mike is pretty sure Jay has never looked hotter than he did at its conclusion, when the aliens are ripped apart and strewn around the set and Sid approaches Dex, both of them breathing heavily and blood-soaked. Mike has been obsessed with the shot of Jay looking up at him with light in his eyes and blood on his mouth ever since he shot it. He’s pretty sure it’s the great achievement of his life, and when Sid grabs Dex’s face and gives him a bloody, possessive kiss while the music swells, the whole thing comes together in a way that feels to Mike like proof that he’s doing what he was meant to, making these things with Jay both back then and now. There was a hiatus, painful and real, but it feels like an inconsequential dream already, like the half-lives Sid and Dex were living as their non-selves, away from each other.
“We gotta get out of here,” Sid says, still holding Dex’s adoring upturned face in his hands while he turns to look at the wreckage of the aliens. “We’re gonna be on the run for a while,” he says when he looks down into Dex’s eyes again. “You good with that?”
“Uh-huh,” Dex says, and he reaches up to hold Sid’s wrists so he won’t take his hands away yet. “But what if more aliens come here and find us?”
“I think they gave us superpowers by accident. Look what we just did to ‘em.”
Dex beams at this, newly confident. The final shot is them in a cool old car Mike rented for the day. He’d paid a fortune for it, because they were in their blood-crusted costumes and no amount of him insisting they could use movie magic to keep from staining the interior would convince the car’s owner not to ream them for the full cost of cleaning, upfront. Mike didn’t care; it was worth it. The final shot is so pretty, he wants to give his camera guys a huge bonus for making it perfect. It’s a classic hero ending, windows down and elbows out the window, Sid and Dex driving away from the scene of the crime and looking pleased with themselves, not even worried about the fact that they are incriminatingly caked in alien blood. The sun is going down and the light is glowing in deep orange and bright pink, like the whole world has been reset for their happy ending.
Mike thinks the whole thing turned out kinda beautiful, in a cheesy and somewhat sleazy way. It’s exactly what he hoped to achieve, anyway, a kind of treatise about why he and Jay will end up back together no matter what tries to separate them. He takes a deep breath and scans through the comments on the forum with this in mind, not wanting public opinion to puncture his confidence even a little.
“Of course the first few pages will be good,” Jay says as they read down the page. Most comments so far are people reacting with all caps surprise and expletive-laden disbelief about the return of Sid and Dex. “The critical ones will be more substantive.”
“It’s like you want people to hate it,” Mike says.
“No, I don’t! I’m just trying to prepare myself for real feedback. This feels so personal, like. I don’t know, it’s like we brought them back to life and saved them.”
“Them?”
“Sid and Dex, and. I want people to be glad we did.”
Jay turns to give Mike a sheepish look when he feels Mike beaming at him as subtly as he can. Mike rests his hand on Jay’s knee. He feels the same way, but he’s not afraid that people saying they hated the movie or thought the choice was dumb might ruin it. It’s like they freed two trapped spirits that had been waiting for rescue since the only people who knew where to find them left them stranded, and that can’t be undone by anything. They’re out now, back in the world where they belong.
Mike pours more champagne for both of them and settles back on the couch with Jay curled up under his arm, navigating around the laptop that rests on Mike’s gut. There are few comments about how the movie wasn’t hot enough, but the users who say they got surprisingly emotional over the reveal and the ending make up for those, in Mike’s view. He laughs so hard he almost spews champagne from his nose when he reads ‘why is fat old Mike actually hotter somehow??’
“These are pretty encouraging,” Jay finally admits after they’ve read through ten pages of comments. He’s still obsessing, tense under Mike’s arm, but he’s grinning a lot, too. “I’m-- Relieved. Like I said, I knew it was good, but that’s why I wanted them to like it.”
“Fair,” Mike said, leaning over to kiss Jay’s forehead. He feels almost teary, like he’s at the happy ending scene of his own movie. “We can do a livestream thing if you want.”
“Not now,” Jay says, curling in closer under Mike’s arm. “Maybe later, like. I need a few days to just bask in the sense of closure.”
“Sure,” Mike says, nuzzling at him now, thinking of celebratory sex. “You deserve it.”
“So do you,” Jay says, his voice worryingly soft and small. He glances up from the screen to meet Mike’s eyes. “Mike-- You saved this. Them, I mean, our old characters. And, you know.”
He doesn’t say that Mike saved him, too, because it wasn’t that simple, but he’s thinking something along those lines, and letting Mike see it in his eyes. Mike shrugs, not sure he’s capable of dealing with Jay while he’s half-drunk and uncharacteristically sincere.
“I guess,” he says. “Gil had a little something to do with it, in his own evil way.”
“Yeah, but it’s perfect, like. That we’d have an evil Cupid who’s basically a demon. He was always there in our lives, lurking, and we could never figure out why we put up with him. Now we know.”
“That sounds suspiciously like you suddenly believe in fate, Jay.”
“I don’t! It’s more like some kind of subconscious, uh. Awareness of, um. Jesus, I don’t know, but I’m glad he never stopped bugging us.”
“I still never want to see him again,” Mike says, thinking of that first time video, Jay’s skinny legs and blurry buck-toothed smile. Some of the jokes about it that he’s seen online have not amused him.
“Oh, of course,” Jay says, and he clicks his glass against Mike’s to toast that sentiment. “That goes without saying. We can produce our own stuff now, from here.”
Seeing real confidence and optimism in Jay’s eyes makes Mike need to gulp from his glass to prevent a kind of watery sigh of emotion that would probably make Jay snicker, though he seems to be in some kind of mood himself, squirming against Mike’s side with antsy glee. Mike rubs his face against Jay’s cheek until Jay turns into it and kisses him, and when Mike folds Jay into his arms the laptop gets wedged between their bodies.
“Do you want to keep reading?” Mike asks, pulling it out.
“Wanna ride your dick,” Jay says, slurring this with his teeth grazing Mike’s lips. He’s drunker than he should be after a few glasses of champagne, but Mike gets it. He feels it, too, more drunk on this new cozy happiness than the booze.
They’ll both always have a thing for couch sex. Before the first time video leaked, Mike thought that other people seeing it would ruin the magic somehow, but as they’re both professional exhibitionists he should have known it would just make actually having been there and lived it more special to them. Even having their emotional stuff splashed online for the world to see wasn’t the devastating exposure Mike expected. They’re still in a secret, unseen world together, whatever chunks of their reality might circulate elsewhere. Mike can feel it when he arranges Jay over his lap so he’s straddling Mike’s thighs. Mike opens his jeans, lets Jay reach inside for what he wants and moans under his breath, his head tipping back onto the sofa cushion.
“Where is lube,” Jay asks, already looking and sounding brainless while he strokes Mike to hardness in his palm.
“Good question,” Mike says. He strokes Jay’s sides, not really in a hurry to get off. He wants to fuck for hours while those forum pages fill up with more comments. “Try under the couch,” he says. “I think I stashed some there.”
“Why bother stashing it?” Jay asks, already off Mike’s legs and scrambling to check. “We never have company.”
“It’s tacky to leave an economy-sized bottle of lube on the coffee table, Jay. Even for just us.”
“This place is a disaster area,” Jay says, looking around the cluttered living room after he’s located the giant bottle of lube, still on his knees. “Honestly, Mike. I thought you’d be better at housekeeping by now.”
“Why the fuck would you think that?” Mike asks, and they both laugh hard as Jay flings himself back into his lap again.
For a long time they just make out, Jay’s arms hugged around Mike’s neck and his stomach all fluttery with excitement and some laughter against Mike’s gut. Jay always likes kissing a lot when he’s in a good mood. Mike indulges him and strokes his fingers up under the back of his t-shirt for a while before tugging it off, messing up his hair. Jay sits back and bites his bottom lip while he lets Mike look at him. Mike will never be able to fully wrap his mind around how lucky he is. He feels like he did on that other couch, that first time, like he’s going to wake up from a good dream and find the heat of Jay’s skin isn’t in reach anymore.
But the feeling is more remote now, off in the distance, so familiar and well-disproved that it’s almost cozy, like a porch light.
“Do it like we’re them,” Jay says when Mike swoons in to kiss him. He ducks Mike’s gaze, then chews on his lip again when their eyes meet. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Mike says, grabbing both of Jay’s biceps and squeezing pretty hard. “Like. An epilogue to the movie?”
“Uh-huh. Exclusive content. For us only.”
“You don’t want to wait till we’re in the new place?”
“No. It’s safe enough, here.”
Mike kisses Jay, buzzing with the sense that he knows what Jay means, that it’s safe here for Sid and Dex, on the run from aliens. They’ve talked about having sex as them again, the way they used to, off camera, for practice. Only there’s nothing to practice for anymore. They both agreed that Mindfuck was the conclusion to Sid and Dex’s story, that they successfully ride off into the sunset together and never get abducted again. Dex uses his technological genius to raid the bank accounts of rich people, thereby funding their lifestyle of staying on the move. Sid scares anybody who looks at them for too long away with a single look, and secretly gets off on having killed for his little dweeb. He gets a big tattoo on his left bicep, a gory but intact heart with Dex’s name at the center, so he’ll never forget who he belongs to again, alien brainwashing or not.
“Get these off,” Mike says, using his impatient Sid tone when he yanks at Jay’s jeans.
“Sorry,” Jay says, his forehead knocking against Mike’s as he hurries to do as told. Mike almost wants to dig the prop glasses out from whichever one of Jay’s boxes they got stashed in, but they both decided the aliens gave Dex laser eye surgery to correct his vision and make him less recognizable.
“Fuck, baby,” Mike says, running his hands all over Jay’s body. He’s shivery, because the room is chilly and he’s turned on, and because he’s Dex, that tooth going back to that lip to hold in his old objection to being called Sid’s baby, because they’ve been through too much shit for it not to mean something he likes, now. “Where’d these even come from?” Mike asks, squeezing Jay’s pecs. “D’you grow tits just for me?”
“They’re not tits,” Jay says, pushing his stiff nipples against Mike’s palms, shoulders going back as he spreads his chest open for this groping.
“No? Then how come you’re getting all wet when I play with ‘em?”
Mike brings one hand down to the leaking head of Jay’s cock to tease that, too. Jay makes a high-pitched begging sound and closes his eyes, grinding into Mike’s touch.
“Gimme a kiss,” Mike says, murmuring like it’s something dirty, and it feels that way when Jay dives for his mouth and licks inside, desperate and breathing in hot little huffs. Jay loves doing scenes like this where he’s still overeager to a virginal degree, because it’s the easiest mode for him to slip into, since he’s kinda like that for real. It makes Mike dizzy, thinking about how perfect all of Jay’s contradictions make him. One of the reviews of the movie called him ‘still a convincingly innocent-seeming porn star, even at this age.’ Another said Jay has always been ‘somebody who looks like he needs rescuing’ and that Mike is ‘irreplaceably’ cast as the person who ‘earnestly makes it seem like only his huge dick can save the day.’
They don’t call each other Sid and Dex out loud, but it’s there in their eyes every time Jay manages to lock his swimmy gaze on Mike’s, a familiar energy that pulses between them like an electric charge. They’re themselves, but also these other guys, and inhabiting their old characters is like slipping back into their youth together. Being inside Jay makes Mike feel like a wizard or an interdimensional traveler, powerfully of another world because Jay goes there with him on command.
“Look at my best boy bouncing on my cock,” Mike says when Jay is fucking himself on it as measuredly as he can, also wanting this to last. “You like that?” Mike asks, bumping his mouth against Jay’s.
“Yeah,” Jay says, nodding, sweet. “Feels suh, so good--”
“Right back where it belongs,” Mike says, stroking up and down Jay’s sides. He shunts his hips up hard to demonstrate. “Hmm?”
“Yes, god, fuck yes.”
“Never letting you go again. You hear that?”
“Mhm-hmm,” Jay says, closing his eyes and letting his forehead knock against Mike’s.
“Look at me when you’re agreeing you belong to me.”
Jay gasps, high and tight in his chest, maybe just for the greedy roll of Mike’s hips up into him. He opens his eyes and puts his hands on Mike’s shoulders, holds his gaze with his mouth hanging open.
“M’yours,” Jay says, mumbling it shyly like he’s Dex. “You don’t have to make me say it, you jerk,” he says, lifting one hand to run his fingers through Mike’s hair. “Don’t wanna be anything else, anyway.”
“Tried that, didn’t you? Nothing’s as good as sitting here on your throne, is it?”
Jay snickers, maybe as himself, but there’s something bashful about it that’s Dex-like, too.
“The little prince of cock,” Mike says. “Is that you?”
“Shut up,” Jay says, slamming himself down now, his pecs jiggling a little. He’s not perfectly tight across his chest anymore, and Mike loves that he’s able to take credit for this, because that’s Mike’s bad influence, full time indulgence, his current favorite love mark on Jay’s body. “Fuck me harder,” Jay says, whining. “If, if you really want to make me feel-- Owned.”
Mike does that, putting Jay on his back ramming into him in the angle they long ago perfected, a mutual favorite their bodies have memorized forever. It’s the most basic thing, Mike thinks, watching Jay start to come undone underneath him, his ass clenching up tight in a telltale away, but it’s also so complicated and fragile and part of such a long and winding history, being able to make each other feel good like this.
Jay moans and goes all liquid in Mike’s arms when Mike fucks him through his orgasm. Mike is close, too, and leaning in to mouth at Jay’s hard nipples puts him over the edge in an unexpected way, because he’d done it to try to last longer. It’s the way Jay shivers against him, all tired and overwhelmed, and the bitten back little noises he makes. Mike is a goner for it, burying himself deep and jamming his face against Jay’s throat while he groans and pulses inside him.
“S’that what you needed?” Mike asks when he lifts his head, slurry and sort of Sid again, smug about how lost and sleepy Jay looks after getting pounded like that. “You’ve been tense all day. Feeling better now, aren’t ya?”
He means now that they’ve read the forum comments, too, and can see by the way Jay smirks up at him that he understands this.
“Better, yeah,” Jay says, his voice still small and Dex-like. “Did you see, um. Someone even said they were impressed with the gore effects.”
“Of course they were. We nailed that shit.”
“Other people were agreeing with them, yeah.” Jay plays with Mike’s hair, not in a hurry to get out from underneath him like he can be sometimes, wanting to clean up or spare the couch. He sighs, yawns, and winces a little when Mike shifts inside him. “Mike,” he says, grabbing for him when he starts to move back.
“Who’s Mike?”
He’s joking, grinning. The scenes usually end after they come, undiscussed.
“You really want me to keep being Dex right now?” Jay asks, mumbling this like it’s embarrassing but also like he’ll do it if that’s what Mike wants.
“Dex was always the one who needed the most coddling after sex,” Mike says. He shifts so his dick pops free but he’s still wrapped up in Jay’s arms, pressed against him. “Or maybe I’m wrong about that,” he says, petting Jay’s hair, knowing he’ll hate this next remark. “Maybe that was you all along.”
Jay sniffs and blinks up at him, so soft and surrendered right now that Mike has no idea what he’ll think about that, actually.
“Maybe,” Jay says. “You definitely get off most on being the coddler.”
“The coddler, oh god. That sounds like a horror movie, written by you.”
Jay snickers and Mike dips down to hide his grin against Jay’s throat, as if he’s Sid and still embarrassed to be this visibly happy about making him laugh.
They spend the rest of night snacking on the things they bought and getting drunk for real after finishing the champagne and switching to glasses from the bottle of scotch that Under the Lake sent them as a thank you gift for delivering the final edit on time. They’d joked that it was probably actually from Gil and poisoned, that they would never drink it but would hold onto it like a liquid trophy, but tonight it feels like there is no poison on Earth that could harm them, least of all some low level potion from their personal evil Cupid.
“I have an idea for tomorrow,” Jay says when they’re curled up together in bed, naked under a pile of blankets and dizzy-happy.
“Tell me,” Mike says, his eyes already closed against Jay’s shoulder.
“Nuh, it’s a surprise. But what if I forget it.”
“Tell me so we can both forget.”
At the moment this is hilarious to them, so much that they basically fall asleep laughing, Jay’s idea still untold.
Mike has a headache in the morning, but it’s not bad. They didn’t get far with the scotch before feeling like maybe they shouldn’t push their new confidence that there wasn’t some amount of sinister energy lurking within it and decided to put it away for the night. He rolls over to spoon up against Jay’s back and falls asleep again. When Jay wakes him hours later the headache has mostly faded.
“I remembered my idea,” Jay says. His breath is all minty, and he’s already showered, has just one knee on the mattress and is crouched over Mike, kissing his neck to wake him. “You have to get up for it now, though, or we’ll be too late.”
“Jesus,” Mike says, sitting up and rubbing at his face, alarmed by Jay’s urgency and the fact that he’s fully dressed. “Does it involve, uh. Something illegal?”
“What?” Jay laughs with a single jerk of his shoulders, wrinkling his nose. “No, Mike. It’s literally brunch.”
“Oh. Wait, what?”
“Just at that place where we first met up after-- You know. With Gil and the champagne. I wanna go back there, can we?”
Mike nods, still half asleep as he hefts himself across the bed and out from beneath the blankets, into the somewhat frigid room. He hopes their new place will have better insulation, needs to schedule an inspection.
Jay is pretty quiet on the drive to the restaurant, and Mike thinks of that car ride with Rich that day of their first meeting with Gil, his stomach twisted to shit and everything in him screaming that he should run in the other direction, as if he thought Jay would kill him on sight. It’s somehow still too fresh, making his empty stomach twist even with Jay beside him now, and he makes himself think instead of the first time they had a date, the morning after their fuck on that couch.
They hadn’t exactly talked about their relationship’s future after it happened. Jay saying he didn’t want to erase the sex tape they’d accidentally made wasn’t something Mike had a script ready for in terms of how to proceed. Mike had stayed over that night, and they’d fooled around mostly with Mike’s fingers up Jay’s ass while they kissed, both of them embarrassed by how much they loved it, even in the pitch dark of Jay’s bedroom. In the morning Mike felt weird, because Jay took a way too long shower and was kind of shifty-eyed afterward, creeping around his room with his towel around his waist and pulling his clothes on with his back to Mike, who stared shamelessly.
“I’m hungry,” Mike said when Jay finally looked at him, dressed in his usual oversized, tent-like clothes, which had never looked more like armor. He’d even put on his shoes while Mike lay there naked and nervous in his bed. “You?”
“Uh, sure,” Jay said, fussing with the spiked-up fringe on his hair. “You want to go--”
“Yeah,” Mike said, sharply, before Jay could drag this out any longer. He sat up in bed and tried to look commanding, letting the blankets slide down to reveal his then still pretty fit chest. “On a date,” he said, holding Jay’s skittish stare. “I’m gonna take you out now.”
“Jesus,” Jay said, going pink. “I can’t-- Tell my mom or anything--”
“I’m not inviting your mom and I’m not gonna tell anyone, if you don’t want. Though I hope we can someday.”
Jay’s eyebrows went up.
“Someday?”
Mike sat there waiting for him to say something awful that would wreck everything. He knew Jay wanted to, not because he didn’t love Mike or didn’t want to be his little boyfriend but because he was scared of what that would mean about how other people would see him. Maybe that was the only thing Jay was scared of, back then. He got over it in the most ballsy way possible, not too long after that morning when he stood there trying to decide if he was going to just stay safe inside himself, without Mike.
“You know I don’t fuck around,” Mike said, though he kind of did at the time, sex-wise. “I only want you, if I get to have you at all. Nobody else.”
Jay blew out his breath and touched his hair again, didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He was grinning like he was about to laugh at Mike, or like he’d wanted to hear that.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ve never been on a date with a guy I’ve fucked. Sounds like it could be pretty, uh. Good.”
Mike rolled his eyes at the implication that Jay had done the fucking, even if technically he’d been the one with his dick inside Mike that first time. He threw the blankets away and got up so Jay could scan his eyes down his body while he stretched, faking confidence.
“Good,” Mike repeated, a little mockingly. “So you agree to be my boyfriend.”
“Just don’t go telling everyone,” Jay said, shifting his gaze down to his shoes. “I mean, yet. I’m not gonna lie to people, but. I need a second, uhh. To let it be just us who knows.”
Mike crossed the room and put his hands on Jay’s shoulders. He wasn’t surprised to feel him trembling. Jay stared at Mike’s chest for a few blinks, then looked up at him.
“The just us part is all I really need,” Mike said, and when Jay leaned up to kiss him it was pure relief. He could taste Jay feeling it, too, that he’d also worried it would be harder in the light of day, away from the camera, or something. It was so easy, though, to grab for each other and kiss while Jay wore clothes and Mike didn’t, until Mike broke free to pat Jay’s blushing cheek and move around him toward the bathroom, feeling like he’d just done triple flips on a tightrope and made it to the other side of the platform in a highwire act with no net down below, trying to pretend he’d known it would be that easy.
Jay says nothing when they’ve parked at the restaurant, and Mike knows he’s reliving that day they reunited here, too, bringing others along as if anything could insulate them from what they would feel when they locked eyes again. They make their way inside, out of the cold and into the crowded lobby where other couples wrapped up in coats and hats are waiting for tables.
“You okay?” Mike asks after they’ve added his name to the wait list. Jay’s stalker’s parents decided the best thing for their son would be to move him to the other side of the country after his stint in psychiatric care and they’ve heard nothing from him since, but Jay still gets on edge in big crowds at times. He nods when Mike reaches over to rub his back.
“M’fine,” Jay says, inching closer to Mike in the cramped corner they’re standing in. “Just starving.”
When they finally get a table, Jay surprises Mike by pulling him into the same side of the booth that he’s wedged himself into, as if he wants Mike to serve as a wall between himself and the loud activity of the busy restaurant. Mike gladly obeys and knows better than to make a comment about it, just grabs for the menu.
“I was just thinking about our first date,” Mike says after they’ve ordered coffee and orange juice. “Remember that?” he asks, tapping Jay’s hand under the table.
“Of course I remember.” Jay digs his phone out and places it on the table. Mike gets the feeling he spent the hours before he woke Mike for this excursion reading every possible comment on Mindfuck that he could find. “I, uh.” Jay leans over to whisper into Mike’s ear. “I remember my ass was sore because you’d decided to start training me for your dick the night before.”
“Aw, you were sore?” Mike rubs at Jay’s hand, doesn’t actually feel guilty. “I mostly remember wanting to ask you like ten thousand more times if you were actually going to be my boyfriend, like. I wanted to know the exact terms. Like were you still gonna want it tomorrow? In a week, a month, a year? I wanted to make you sign a goddamn contract.”
“I did, eventually.” Jay grins at the look on Mike’s face. “No, yeah-- I was yours, trust me. God, it’s good to be back here,” he says, looking around at the restaurant like it’s a rediscovered promise land. “With you, like this. That day, last year. God.”
“It was intense.”
“Uh-huh. And I thought I’d want to murder you as soon as I saw you.”
“I thought that, too. That you’d murder me, I mean.”
“Yeah.” Jay closes his fingers around Mike’s under the table, squeezing two of them into his palm. “And then. I was so glad you were there that I wanted to fucking cry. I don’t think I let myself realize how scared I was that you might not show. I thought maybe Gil was pranking me, or just lying to get back at me for some time I’d been mean to him. I was willing to get screwed over by that guy, though, if it meant I might actually get to see you.”
“Mhm.” Mike turns his palm over so they can thread their fingers together. He smiles dopily down at their hands, will never get over how much he loves the fact that Jay’s look tiny when they’re clasped against his. “Yeah,” he says, because Jay still seems to want to hear that Mike felt the same. “I already wanted to fling everyone else away and get you alone. I mean. I thought there was gonna be some big moment where I either forgave you or not, and same for you with me. But I just looked at you and felt like, get over here, what are you waiting for.”
Jay nods to himself and presses his shoulder to Mike’s, staring down at the menu that’s draped over his plate. The waiter appears with the coffee and juice and takes their food orders. Jay’s phone dings.
“Oh god,” Jay says, tapping the screen. “It’s from Simon.”
“What’s he want?”
“To congratulate us on the release and to tell me he feels like he has ‘actual punk indie cred’ now that he’s been in a successful MikeNJay production.”
Mike snorts, and Jay wrinkles his nose in agreement: corny, dorky Simon. It’s kind of endearing, too, like everything about him. He sold his Milwaukee penthouse a few months ago, which seemed like a final raising of the white flag on his attempts to be a big part of Jay’s life. Mike feels bad for him, but he’s probably got some other soulmate out there. He’s smart enough not to try to steal Mike’s again, anyway.
“That reminds me,” Mike says. “I think we should rename our production company.”
“Yeah?” Jay looks surprisingly amenable. “To what?”
“Index Pictures. It’s a little more classy, but still an allusion to me fucking you.”
Jay snorts and shoves at Mike before settling their shoulders together again. He picks up his coffee mug and sips from it without adding cream or sugar or waiting for it to cool.
“I was thinking something even more classy,” he says. “Like Milwaukee Sausage Factory.”
“That sounds more like a band.”
“I was joking, Mike.”
“I know, but I’m still right.”
“No, we shouldn’t rebrand now,” Jay says, going all businesslike in a way Mike finds cute and leaves him unable to resist squeezing Jay’s leg under the table. “The old stuff still has good name recognition, and it’s thematically linked to the new release, now. Also to us.”
“To us?”
“I mean, we’re the brand. Mike ‘n Jay. And I think that works. Long term even, if we make non-porn stuff someday. It’s like saying we’re not ashamed of anything we’ve done. ‘Cause we’re not.”
Mike nods, considering that. Is he ashamed of anything he’s done? Running away, not looking back, marrying Candy when he was still in love with Jay, getting fat over the years, working himself up over Simon as if he ever had a chance?
Not really, he decides, and he slides his arm around Jay’s shoulders. That’s just the way things went, and he’s here now, with no real regrets. Jay sips from his coffee again, cupping the mug in both hands. Mike stares across the table at the spot where he sat in a similar booth in this same restaurant, not even a year ago. He already doesn’t know how he survived being that far away from Jay, in a place where he could look but not touch.
“Look at this,” Jay says, reading from his phone after their plates are cleared and they’re awaiting the check. “This isn’t even on our forum, this is from a random gay porn sub.”
“Ugh,” Mike says, wishing Jay would relax with scouring the internet for some cruel comment to fixate on. He should know better.
“No, it’s funny,” Jay says. “Somebody says they heard you bet me that I couldn’t make a movie with you without ending up in love with you again. And I lost the bet.”
“That’s--” Mike says, making a face. Jay is grinning like he really does find this funny. “That’s kind of insulting to you,” he finally says.
“No, it’s not. It’s exactly what happened, except that I was already, you know. Still.”
Mike opens his mouth to reply, but before he can his phone dings. Jay grabs for it as if it’s his property, too, and Mike feels more loved than ever, glad to let him put his little hands everywhere.
“It’s a text from Rich,” Jay says, reading the screen. “He says he’d just like to say, on the occasion of our feature release, that he’s proud to have been a part of it, even if he only helped with the gore scenes, and also that he told you so.”
“Mhm,” Mike says, narrowing his eyes at the phone. Rich is always right, and Mike has always envied that. “Yeah, fair.”
“What’d he tell you so about, that the movie would sell?”
“No. He told me you wouldn’t murder me if I took that meeting here. He basically had to drag me out of the car once we’d parked.”
“You were that afraid of me?” Jay asks, grinning like he’s flattered.
Mike looks over at him, not sure how to respond. He was afraid Jay would be mean to him, yes. But more than that he was afraid this thing he’d secretly kept safe inside himself all that time wouldn’t still be there when they were together again. As soon as their eyes met he knew it was intact, strong enough to swallow him whole, and there was plenty of related dread and a different kind of terror, but also relief, even before he knew that Jay didn’t hate him. He’d wanted above all to feel the way he had when he was younger, like if he just had Jay nearby he’d be okay somehow, even if there was no promise that Jay would stay.
“It was more like I was afraid seeing you would prove I wasn’t really me anymore,” Mike says, staring down at their phones on the table, side by side like some kind of symbol. “But then I saw you and it was like a mirror, like. There I was, same guy as ever with the same half of me missing.”
“Yeah,” Jay says, his eyes all glittery with his caffeine high when Mike sneaks a look at him. “Exactly. That’s why I was scared shitless, too. ‘Cause I didn’t think I wanted to see the old me at all, ever again. And you were like this walking museum of him.”
“Aw.”
“But now I don’t even care that the first time video is out. Like, fine, whatever. Take it or leave it, the whole thing. The fact that it’s such a long story is what makes it interesting.”
Jay still checks his phone overmuch in the coming days, but eventually he tires of reading reactions to their last project and moves on to obsessing over the next one alongside Mike. They’re still debating a dozen different ideas, workshopping them in bed when necessary, and have decided not to commit to one until after they’re moved into their new place in May. It will be spring then, warmer and brighter with longer days, and they’ll finally be in a space that’s big enough for all their old stuff with room for new things, too. On the first really nice day they’ll throw the balcony doors open and invite everything good that’s coming their way inside, fearless.
**