#shoutout to meghna for having the biggest brain on the whole entire fucking planet

[clumsyclifford]

official request! don't you go sequel to your backseat serenade muke pleeease (if it was just a one time thing why are you still here with me)

instead of attending to the myriad other prompts that have built up in my inbox i wrote this one. why? great question. possibly just because i love don’t you go more than words and meghna you are truly inspired

so this is a sequel to the backseat serenade fic which i encourage you to read before you read this <3 don’t you go rights in this house

-

Luke wakes up confused.

For a moment he can’t quite figure out why he’s confused. Everything seems relatively normal; even the hangover from last night has mostly receded. He’s waking up alone, but he usually is.

Oh. Wait.

Michael.

Luke swallows. A glance at the clock reveals it’s noon. Jesus Christ.

And Michael’s…gone, apparently.

It feels so much more like a tidal wave than Luke wishes it would. That’s the game; Michael comes, and they fool around, and in the morning Michael leaves. It’s been months of this, so Luke shouldn’t feel disappointed, shouldn’t feel like he’s drowning. He knows the rules of the game. He’s been playing it too.

It’s just, well. He’d thought maybe it was different. He’d thought that when Michael had wanted to go back to sleep, when Michael had kept Luke in bed instead of allowing him to go make breakfast, that had meant something.

But apparently not.

Luke takes a breath so deep he feels it in his heels, in his spine; he sits up and kicks the covers off himself, then slowly gets out of bed and pulls a t-shirt on. Barefoot, he ambles to the kitchen. He’d planned to make pancakes, maybe, for him and Michael, but maybe he can make them anyway, just for himself. If that’s overkill, so be it.

He yawns and squeezes his eyes shut as he reaches the kitchen. For a moment he just stands in the doorway, bracing himself against the doorframe.

“Oh, good morning,” he hears, and his eyes fly open.

Michael is there. Michael is here. Michael’s still here. Michael is in his kitchen, holding a spatula.

Michael’s here.

“Oh,” Luke says dumbly. “Good, uh, morning?” He swallows. Michael gives him an uncertain smile. Luke knows he’s staring but he can’t bring himself to stop. 

Michael’s still here.

“I, uh,” Michael says tentatively, “I woke up before you somehow, so I figured I could make breakfast. Or, like, lunch. Whatever meal this is.”

“Yeah, okay,” Luke says. “Thanks.”

“So,” Michael says. “Pancakes.”

Luke exhales in disbelief. “Really,” he says distantly. “Inspired. Truly. Uh, I’m gonna go to the toilet.”

“Yeah, sure,” Michael says. He squints at Luke. “Are you okay?”

“Splendid,” Luke says, giving a thumbs up that he’s sure isn’t reassuring at all. “Back in a jiff.” Back in a jiff? Jesus. He stumbles out of the kitchen and to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him and locking it for good measure.

The Luke in the mirror has definitely had better days. His hair is disheveled, so Luke pulls an impatient hand through it, sorting the curls out until they’re at least vaguely presentable. 

Mirror Luke stares out at Luke, beseeching. Luke stares back. Is this a problem? he wonders to himself. He wants Michael to still be here, doesn’t he? This is good. So why is Luke freaking out? What the fuck is wrong with him?

“Get it together, Hemmo,” he mutters to himself, and turns the faucet on. Once he’s splashed some water on his face and brushed his teeth he feels better, cleaner. A shower would be amazing, but that will have to wait. He’s already been in the bathroom a suspiciously long time, and Michael will likely be wondering what’s happened to him.

The collar of his shirt is damp, so Luke tugs uncomfortably at it before resigning himself to the minor inconvenience. He gives himself a steely glare in the mirror and leaves the bathroom.

Right into Michael.

“Oh,” he says, surprised. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem,” Michael says, but he says it tersely, like there is a problem, and his eyes flit back to Luke’s room. “Um, the pancakes are done — I put them in the oven — like, I mean, to keep them warm.”

“Okay,” Luke says, confused. “We can have them now, if you want?”

Michael bites his lip. Luke watches. “Uh, you can. I think, um, I think I — I should probably go, I think.”

Luke’s heart sinks to his stomach. “What?” he says, feeling like he’s watching this happen from outside his own body. “Why?”

Michael blinks at him. “Because — that’s — it’s what we do. Isn’t — isn’t that what we do?”

And it is what they do, but Luke would give anything to change that.

His tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth, and all he can say is, “Um?”

“Okay,” Michael says embarrassedly. “I’m — just gonna grab my shit, and I’ll — yeah.” He steps past Luke, disappearing into Luke’s room.

Fuck, fuck, this wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Luke’s already had this crisis this morning, and once was enough. No, no, no way. It’s time to play an open hand; this is already a mess, wires too crossed to ever come untwisted organically. The only solution is to cut them at the source. 

It’s too many metaphors, but it boils down to this: Luke has to be honest.

He turns on his heel and follows after Michael into his room. Michael is pulling on his jeans. “Don’t go,” Luke blurts out.

Michael’s head snaps up. “What?”

“Don’t go,” Luke repeats. “Please. I don’t want you to go.”

Michael studies him, guarded. “This isn’t — that’s not what we do, Luke. This is a one-time thing.” A one-time thing more times than Luke can count on his fingers, but, he supposes, it’s a one-night stand in the sense that Michael never lingers.

“Then why are you still here?” Luke challenges him. “You could have left, this morning. You had the chance.”

“I should have,” Michael says tightly. “Don’t push your luck, Luke.”

“I’m not forcing you to do anything. Just hear me out.” Luke steps closer, right hand curling around his left, nails digging into his palm. “You always leave, and this time you didn’t,” he says quietly. “And I don’t want you to leave. I know this isn’t what we do, but it can be. You can stay. I want you to stay.”

Michael stares at him, lips parted in surprise. “You didn’t seem too pleased to see me cooking in your kitchen,” he accuses.

“Okay, I wasn’t expecting you to still be here. Can you blame me?”

“Yeah, because this isn’t what —”

“Stop saying it’s not what we do. I’m part of it too, you know. I know that just as much as you do.” He takes another step, and Michael doesn’t move. His gaze holds Luke’s steady. “Are you hearing what I’m saying?”

“You’re saying I can stay,” Michael says. Luke nods, tilting his head, like, well? Michael ducks his head. “It’s not a good idea. The band.”

Luke laughs incredulously. “Hate to break it to you, mate, but I’m pretty sure the bad idea already happened when we slept together, like, a hundred times.”

Michael cracks a small smile. “Fair enough.”

“Just stay.” Luke finally gets close enough to reach out and touch Michael, so he does, curling his fingers around Michael’s forearm. “Have breakfast-lunch with me. Don’t go yet.”

Michael looks up into Luke’s face and his smile grows a bit. “Okay,” he says at length. Luke beams. “Alright. Pancakes.”

“Pancakes,” Luke agrees, so Michael stays for pancakes.

And then he keeps staying. He stays for dinner, and stays after to play Fifa, and he doesn’t go.

(“We can take it slow,” Luke offers, and Michael shakes his head and cuts him off with a searing kiss.

“Little too late for that,” he murmurs, and Luke inhales sharply, thinking that this is a train wreck, bound to end in fireworks or flames; thinking there’s no one he’d rather crash and burn with, nothing else that he would rather do, to do it with Michael.)