Spilling Guts

Part 83 - Where Did the Fun Go?

Will's mind, full of big and little worries, was eager for any facts or theories to grapple with other than his own. He'd rather fight with a frosty wampa on Hoth than the inky thoughts crawling around his mind. Reading Louis' report of the Devil's Neckbrace took almost half-an-hour, not due to its length, but because Will had to reread paragraphs. He could not focus and parse the words. A full day's sleep had not been enough.

The occasional hunger pangs that rolled through him like a spiked ball also did not help.

Louis somehow managed to remain quiet long enough that Will forgot he had the blond stuck inside him. After half an hour of almost successfully blanking out the emotional roller coaster of the previous hour, an interruption

"So... what now?" hedged Louis.

"Right now I'm reading," said Will. He didn't know if Louis was willing to talk about what happened, or wanted to bury it under meaningless conversation. Which he would prefer was still up in the air. "Or at least trying to. Mind is willing, eyelids are heavy."

"Anything good?"

"Your report on the Devil's Neckbrace."

"Oh."

Will remembered Megan and Teegan's file of retrieving the Neckbrace and where they had gotten it from. He knew it had been used to facilitate human trafficking. He hadn't expected Louis' report to go so far into the trauma the victims suffered, and apparently still suffered. The ones that survived.

Will set the report down and adjusted the back of his bed via the remote; horizontal enough that if sleep approached mid-conversation, he'd be an easy catch. "The futures for these victims are pretty dire. Dead, in a hospital, or assisted care."

"Those are the rare few," said Louis. "I think the likelihood of people acquiring a sleeping disorder due to the Neckbrace is maybe one out of twenty or thirty. Most of them have issues due to being trafficked more than anything else. But the Neckbrace might have made it worse. For every worst case, there were twenty that managed to walk away okay. In comparison."

"Lucky me." This wasn't the small talk Will figured they would have, but it worked, it put a layer of dry dirt between them and the session. Very depressing dirt.

"Rachel can figure this out," assured Louis. "Watch One might have the most money, but we got the sharpest brains."

"Definitely not mine," Will muttered. He tapped his finger on the open page of the report. The next page had a graph. Pete's sake, I never thought Louis could be so thorough. "And all this was prompted by you seeing a note on my desk?"

"Kind of," said Louis, hesitating. "I needed a distraction."

"Wow." Will stifled a laugh. "You really didn't want to do patent paperwork."

"Pasta pots, cheese shredders, carbon-paper knock-offs!" Louis grumped. "Shooting Novocain into my skull would be less mind numbing."

Will's jaw dropped at the familiar, warm sensation of Louis shoving himself deeper into his stomach walls like a petulant child. He'd missed that feeling. He kept the conversation going, hoping for more. As long as Louis didn't complain about the closeness. "The worst one I got was a chicken-de-boner. Disturbing. You should see the patents upstairs."

"How much worse were they?" Louis drawled. "Mind numbing, frustrated at humanity, or just plain put you to sleep?"

Will hesitated. Should he bring up the patents about intimate toys to continue breaking the awkward ice, or leave it be?

Really think bringing up sex with Louis right now is a good thing?

Nope.

"Let's just say they get the fun stuff. Though some had questionable design choices." said Will. "Mind wide awake."

"Hm."

And the room, with one person laying on a bed, went back to awkward silence. Will lay still, hoping for more. After a minute he gave up. So, that was it, a few handfuls of semi-shallow conversation to cover their hurt. At least it hadn't ended with a shouting match.

Will squinted at the graph and it's dry numbers that probably meant something important. He should have turned on the bedside light.

Louis interrupted, voice faint and wondering. "When did we stop making fun of this?"

Oh, we're not done. And I'm confused. "What do you mean making fun of this?"

"This... situation. Me being swallowed like this. In you." Louis' voice became firmer, stronger. "When you don't think about it too hard it is kind of funny. Elementary edutainment would take this as an opportunity to explain the human digestive system and how the stomach breaks down food."

"Did you want to teach a class, Ms. Frizzle?" said Will. And he could imagine Louis' sarcastic commentary as his insides became an after school special.

"See? That. Us making fun of this," said Louis. "I made fun of it at first; once I was out after Freewill. I called you agent Deepthroat. You laughed."

"Heh. I did." It still made Will smirk, even now. "And then I played "Under My Skin" after the jellybean test." Will put his hand over his middle, wishing he could feel as elated and happy now as he did then. It had been one of the few happy moments after the Luvor mission. "You didn't laugh then."

"It was still funny. I laughed a little, just not as loud. It wasn't as crass as mine."

Another shift in Will's middle, like a person turning over in their bed. Oh, that felt so good.

"So when did we stop laughing?" continued Louis. "How did this go from a weird thing that we made fun of to hide our fear or our embarrassment, to therapy?"

Will wanted to say when he punched Louis in the rain, but knew the tension had come long before that. The Luvor mission, the idea that Louis and Doctor Massaru Devi could have been hurt if they had been inside when he he'd been shot. It was tiring to even think about it. "When we saw how it could go wrong?"

"Or when it became other people's business," offered Louis, doing something to Will's inner walls that made his head sink deeper into the pillow. "Committees and panel discussions."

"Invasive tests," said Will his voice slurring, and the pages of the report blurring. "The secrecy. It was fun before, having you in me on a test day and going about my business and no one else knowing where you were. Hide and seek up to eleven. But part of that secret became a weight no one else understood."

And if anyone had asked him right then, while his mind slipped into a warm syrupy space, he would say his feelings of lust, admiration, and affection for Louis were part of that secret weight. And if they had asked him to elaborate, they wouldn't get an answer. The tilted bed and long day had been effective in setting up Will as bait for slumber. The warm massage inside his core tipped him over the edge and sleep caught him.

Why can't I fall asleep this easily all the time?