C4 - SUNDAY, MORNING

"Good morning, boys." Janelle smiled warmly as Mike, with Micky hot on his heels, made it into the kitchen while the girls were still asleep.

Mike had just woken up a few of minutes prior, getting out of bed before anything at all could have the potential to happen, so he hadn't yet had time to think through anything at all. In fact, he found that most of his initial cogitive function this morning had been reserved for concentrating on not noisily bumping into anything in the unfamiliar environment of the bedroom, hall, or bathroom in his sleep-addled haze, particularly while he was changing his clothes. And the next thing he knew, here Micky was behinf him, dressed as well and looking perfectly chipper.

"Morning, Mom!"

"Good morning, Mrs.- Janelle.", he corrected awkwardly before turning and giving a small, curious, lopsided grin at his vivacious companion. "What's got you wide awake this early, Mick?"

Micky's mouth split wide in a grin focused back at him. "Life, man. Life!"

Mike chuckled and shook his head slightly.

In the midst of what amounted to them making vertical pillow talk but not watching them to pay attention to that fact, Janelle spoke up, more to herself than anything. "Shoot."

"What's that?", Micky asked around a mouthful of turkey he'd snatched from the counter shortly after walking in.

His mother backed out from spelunking around inside the refrigerator. "Oh, we're almost out of butter. I thought I had an extra stick, but I suppose not."

"I'll go get some for you.", a now well-awake Mike piped up helpfully, going to grab his jacket from where he'd left it the day before.

"No you don't. I'll just go out while the girls are in school tomorrow." More softly, she said with a hand on hip, thinking out loud, "We'll figure something else out for today."

"It's no problem, M— Janelle." He fished the keys out of his jacket pocket and checked the other pocket for his billfold.

"Mike, really. No. You don't ha—"

"Don't argue with him, Mom.", Micky laughed with his interruption, teasingly eyeing Mike. "He'll out-Mom you if you push him."

The man in question tried and failed not to grin at Micky with a touch of exasperation, finding the knowing look on his boy's face coquettish to the point of captivating. Much like the look he got from Micky yesterday shortly after they'd arrived here, Mike had to force himself to look away.

His mother softly chuckled through a sigh and made a put-out, amused face at Mike.

Sobering up just as she looked over at him, he courteously pressed, "That all you need?"

She hummed with affected drama, then added an extra item. "Milk?"

He nodded, obliging.

"I'll go get you some money."

"I won't take it.", he stated firmly.

There was that gratefully frustrated face from her again.

"Want me to go with you?", Micky asked him.

But Janelle had other ideas. "How about you stay and catch up with your only mother before the girls wake up?", she recommended before Mike could respond to him.

"Sure.", he shot her a happy smile before giving Mike directions to the nearest grocery store a few streets over. Once the Texan was out of the door and headed for his car, Micky gave her his full attention, leaning back against the counter. "Did you honestly think he'd take money from you?"

She shook her head. "No, but it was right to offer. He's a good kid." She glanced at the food she'd recently laid out on the counter. "You can be a good kid too by helping me heat up some of this food before he gets back and the girls get up."

Micky went to work doing just that.

"Really, it's very kind of him. Which reminds me, I should mention it to you again: I appreciate you sending money back to us, but I hate that you're working so much. You're young and should have some time for yourself."

"I'm still at the music store. It's not a hard job, and I get to hear all the latest releases and play around with some of the instruments we have in stock. I don't mind it at all. Keeps me busy and out of trouble, right?" He knew his mother would be amused that this activity gave him some focus because as a kid he was always being told he was all over the place. Not that Mike would disagree with that assessment given it was still true about him as an adult.

"Speaking of, we've missed you this year."

"Aw, Mom, I don't mean to be gone all the time—"

"No, I know you have your life. All I'm saying is that I'm just sad that you've grown up so fast and are an independent young man now."

"I don't know about that.", he responded truthfully with a small laugh. The three of us are pretty much tied to Mike's hip. "Mike takes pretty good care of me and the guys. He for sure keeps us out of trouble. Well, most of the time. Well, as much as he can.", he amended with a sheepish grin.

She smiled. "So you've said before." Her next words came out so easily and naturally that he never saw them coming. "How long have you two...?", she left her question intentionally open-ended. She didn't make eye contact, working at the stove as if she had just asked a pedestrian question on par with 'What do you usually eat during your lunch breaks at work?'.

His breathing hitched, and his vision started to narrow down while time seemed to slow to a stop as his brain ground to a halt at what she was asking. "Wh— I— Whaddya mean?"

"Micky, I'm not upset. Not really. I'm just wondering."

How... How does she know? He hadn't even taken the time yet to begin to consider how displeased she might be to learn her son was 'like that' with Mike. Or with any guy. She was normally an open and understanding woman, certainly, but he'd found that sometimes with people, when an issue would hit close to home for them, their opinion could suddenly color and warp. He hadn't been prepared in the least for this to come out now. And he knew Mike sure wasn't. How did she figure it out? Did I say something?

She wiped her hands on her apron and finally looked over at him then, apparently reading his mind. "I'm your mother."

How long have we..., he repeated her question in his head. He could lie to her. He could play it off as him not understanding what she meant or being disgusted by what she implied or being offended on Mike's behalf. Any of those things. That would be what a ...a normal guy would do — deny it, distance himself from it, even get angry about it — right? But he had never liked lying to his mother. He was bad at it besides, having never been in possession of anything resembling a poker face.

While he contemplated just how to give an honest response, before he knew it, seconds had ticked by, and he was looking stupidly, blankly mute, staring past her off into oblivion. He had to say something. And now it'd been so long that there was no way he could reply in any fashion besides honestly anyway, even if he couldn't quite look her in the eye at the same time as speaking.

So, eyes dropping down, he picked at a bit of skin on the side of his thumbnail. "Since the night before last." Er, not quite what he intended to say — maybe a little too direct and factual — but there it was. It was out in the open now, the knowledge no longer confined between the two young men in question. As fear trickled into his veins at having exposed them, especially after Mike had specifically pleaded with him not to say anything to his family right now, he made a mental note to work on learning how to be convincingly evasive. As if that would even fly with his mother anyway.

"Ah. That must be it."

Her simple, agreeable-sounding statement set him back on edge, and he looked right back up at her. "'That'? What do you mean 'it'?"

"That must be why I could tell. That dreamy look I've caught in your eyes a few times now." She didn't specify whether she meant him exclusively or both him and Mike, but he assumed the former.

His mouth drooped open. Oh boy. Oh man. He worked his jaw up and down a couple of times before finding sounds to exit with the movement. "He's gonna flip out.", he said aloud, biting down on his lower lip. I didn't think for a second I'd given us away. I can't believe I—

"I won't say a word."

He looked at her, confused as much as appreciative, and had to admit that if he could trust anyone, it'd be his own mother. If she said she wouldn't say anything, then she really wouldn't say anything to anyone — even, as she indicated, to Mike.

"I can't say I don't understand." She raised and dropped her eyebrows in a shrug. "He's terribly sweet. Helpful, responsible, steady, quiet, handsome.", she rattled off all positive adjectives which had a calming effect on Micky. "I think his presence has been very good for you."

Micky had to blink at that. His mom standing there saying those complimentary things about Mike just to be saying them was one thing because yes, being a woman with a pulse, she was charmed to the bone by Mike, no question in his mind. But her saying all those complimentary things in relation to the two of them being together as a couple? That was something else. He'd never really talked to her about this sort of thing before and never really expected he'd have to. "He is." His reply was just as thoughtful as hers, and he couldn't help but form a smile thinking about him. "He's all that and more. He's been my best friend since, well, since we met. But you knew that part already."

"I did. So," she stirred some leftovers on the stove, "what made you decide 'the night before last'?"

Micky's smile gleamed. "He— well— I mean I guess I've probably always had a crush on him. But I would've never... Because I had no idea he felt that way about me. Except Davy had hung up mistletoe around the pad before he left, and I happened to be standing under one, and Mike worked up the courage. Said he was gonna kiss me, and then he did. And it went from there.", he reminisced with warmth, politely leaving out the details.

She nodded at his recounting of the innocent story. "As long you're not confusing your feelings."

"Huh?"

"That you don't think of him as a father figure, since...", she trailed off, the end of the thought not needing to be said aloud.

"What?", his eyes went wide. "Yuck, Mom, no!", he cried quietly so as not to wake his sisters. "It's nothing like that!" Suddenly feeling queasy, he leaned forward and faintly flapped his hands in the negative in front of him. "Nothing like that at all. I think of him as Mike."

"All right, that's fine, then." She patted him on the arm and smiled tenderly at him before a cloud settled over her features. If they hadn't already talked some and she hadn't sounded tolerant of the situation, he would have assumed her expression was the heavy look of disappointment he'd expect from any parent upon hearing their son was involved with another man. But instead it was merely the concerned lead-in to her dispensing an important warning: "Micky, you need to be very, very careful out there. Very careful. Most people in this world aren't so understanding, and there could easily be some irreparable harm done if it got out."

"Yeah.", he nodded solemnly, swallowing. "I know. I know about that. And I will." With a sympathetic nod from her, he sagged back against the counter, the tension seeping out of him. "We'll be really careful, I promise. Thanks, Mom. You're the best.", he added with an asymmetrical smile after a pause. What else could he say? That she was giving her blessing without dressing it up with one personally negative word on the front or back of it was in and of itself pretty incredible. He reminded himself just how lucky he was to have a family like his to care for him and look after him and wished not for the first time that Mike could experience that level of support from more of his own relatives.

Truly, he knew he had been coasting so far, not having had a pressing reason to give much thought to what others would think of the two of them being together. When it came to their roommates, he was sure he knew how Peter would take it. Who he wasn't so sure about was Davy. He'd always thought of Davy as the little brother he never had, so he would be devastated if the Englishman severed their friendship over it. Not knowing how he would be able to cope with that, he chose to push all the thoughts on the topic into the back of his mind to consider and discuss with Mike later, preferably at the last possible second.

At any rate, there was no way he was going to tell Mike that his mother knew anything because Mike would worry about things unnecessarily. So it would have to be their secret for the time being, at least until Mike felt comfortable enough with her. And I'll have to be more careful about how I look at him when other people are around., he reminded himself, the mere idea of it already making him miss his guy.

His mother leaned forward and pinched his cheek lightly. "You're doing it again."

He cringed.

She just shook her head, not sure what to do with him. She didn't know that she wasn't alone in that as Mike didn't know what to do with him either.

-—-—-

By the time the Texan returned, the girls had gotten up and about. Micky had opened the door for him with a purposefully anemic smile, which was returned in kind, and his eyes flicked between Mike and his mother as her guest handed over the procured items to her. She nodded, following that with a friendly "Thank you, Mike. That was very nice of you."

Nothing seemed any different between them, he noted. His mother wasn't looking at Mike any differently than she had before. Nothing seemed different from normal about either one of them. Mike was still Mike. So is anything really different at all?

He contemplated if his feelings for Mike had changed him at all or if what they had done together changed them as people. We haven't had sex yet. Will that change us, make us different?, he wondered. When he and Mike were intimate for the first time on Christmas Eve, he thought it felt odd only at first because it was Mike and because the particular experience of touching a man's penis rather than, say, a woman's breasts was new to him. Mike getting him off and him getting Mike off had felt terrific. Not that terribly weird. Truth be told, he was still in shock that Mike would let himself go like that. He looked incredible yesterday morning., Micky thought back, shivering in a good way. He kept his head down with that thought, not trusting himself to look up at Mike or anyone else just then. He couldn't make the mistake of giving anything away again.

What would people think indeed? It wouldn't be good in any way, shape, or form, that he knew, even without the serious warning from his mother on that point. He hadn't considered before now whether being with Mike 'like that' made him or would make him a homosexual. He'd heard about those people a number of times and, the way many talked about them, they were most definitely made to sound different; dirty and unnatural — repulsive, even. But Micky didn't feel any of those things on the inside. Now that he'd experienced being with Mike, it seemed natural enough to him.

It was true that Micky had looked twice at a few guys before, but he was able to brush his stray thoughts off easily and quickly enough each time. He hadn't ever genuinely considered going down that path before he started looking at Mike like that. And even then, he'd tried to quash the feelings and not give them more than a moment's thought. But now that this was real? I still like girls., he reminded himself, remembering all the young ladies who had caught his eye in the recent past. I like some guys alright, yes, I can admit that now. And I definitely still like girls. I just like Mike more.

The object of his current deep thoughts shed his jacket onto the back of a chair before sitting down at the table. "Everything alright?", Mike asked off-handedly, finding Micky contemplative rather than talkative as he'd expected him to be with his sisters now running about the kitchen.

"Wha?", Micky snapped out of it. "Oh, yeah. Just thinking about stuff.", he shrugged his internal deliberations off with a smile. "Hey, we heated up food. Want some?"

Mike nodded although eyed Micky while the younger man grabbed him a plate and fork. Thanking him, Mike put aside the slightly "off" vibe he had gotten from him when he'd come in. Hopefully he's having second thoughts. That'll make it easier., he decided before tucking in to his breakfast.