Sharing a bedroom had become their normal since the Halloween decorations incident, yet somehow sharing a bathroom still gave Owen a tiny flutter of anxiety. Even if this bathroom was larger than any he'd ever known. Even if Mike was either scrupulously neat – or only sporadically remembered to use it.
Once he was done brushing his teeth, Owen made sure the sink was spotless and twitched up the towels so they hung at the same height. Mike never complained if they weren't, but still. Old habits. Or not rocking the boat.
"Got a strange call today before work," Owen recalled, switching off the bathroom light. The warm glow of Mike's reading lamp made the bedroom beyond feel cozy and quaint, like stepping into a cocoon of good vibes. Owen muffled a yawn behind his hand. "Caller wanted to confirm he'd be arriving tomorrow morning. Very confusing." Owen had been in a rush to get working on the new, lobster-ified Todash menu and hadn't paid much heed.
Now, though, as he clambered into bed in his plaid pyjamas and flopped down right on top of the covers, the call came back to him, irritating like a splinter under a fingernail. "Obviously a wrong number, but now I'm worried the bloke'll arrive tomorrow and find they gave away his hotel room. Think I should try calling him back?"
Mike would have probably never noticed if the towels were the same height on any given basis. When he went through the motions, he did make sure to clean up after himself, and fixed things as needed but he didn’t really go out of his way to be anal about it, either. It just didn’t hurt – to be a good significant other and roommate. He liked to think he’d been pretty good at that part of things with Lily, too, when it had mattered.
He made up for it by not understanding the point of making the bed most of the time, though. Maybe just because he liked knowing he’d been there, that the room hadn’t reset itself when he looked away. That the both of them were real, in a place that was also real.
Glancing up from his book, Mike rose an eyebrow and then reached out for Owen’s hand. Not for any reason. Just because he wanted to. “They – what? Arriving where? Here?” There was no way, though. “That’s got to be a wrong number.”
He glanced down at his book again, and then frowned. “Maybe call.” Dunwich was fucked up in a lot of ways.
Owen eyed his alarm clock – which he never set these days because neither he nor Mike had anywhere to be in the morning – and, despite the late hour, nodded. "You're right." He gave Mike's hand a squeeze before letting go.
Finding his phone was a bit of a challenge. Not having owned one before Dunwich, he kept having to remind himself to pack it when he left the house and constantly misplaced it while at home. Tonight, he found it, inexplicably, inside the pocket of his bathrobe.
Thankfully, there weren't many received calls to scroll through. Only two: one from Mike, one from the unknown caller. Owen dialed the latter and held the phone up to his ear. It rang. And rang.
And rang.
"He's not picking up," he told Mike. "And it's not going to voicemail."
Mike eared the page he was on – a little fold of the page, to keep it there, because he firmly believed in books looking like they’d been read and loved – and then set it aside for the time being. He pulled his legs up so he could get his arms around his knees and watched with bemusement how Owen had to search around the room for his phone.
“You should just plug it in at night,” he advised, and had more than once already. But then he waited in curious silence while the phone rang and rang.
“Well,” he said after a beat. “It was probably the wrong number, and it is late so…” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “No one’s going to show up to a residential house and expect a room, anyway. There’s a motel in town.” A creepy one, but still.
Owen ended the call and rubbed his eyes. It was very late. Normal people – who didn't work in pubs – would be asleep at this hour. The only reason Owen couldn't remember to charge his bloody phone. Despite being told more than once.
"No, of course." He set the phone gingerly on the nightstand and got into bed. "I should've been clearer when they called." That would've avoided the entire mess.
Not that any mess had unfolded yet. Mike was probably right; who in their right mind would show up asking for a room from a random person?
Owen twitched up the covers. "Well, um, good night."
It was probably fine. And if it wasn’t and someone showed up randomly on their doorstep, Mike would simply do the right thing and turn them away without a second thought on the matter. Obviously.
He let out a little laugh over Owen’s awkward goodnight. “Really? Good night – jesus, come here for a second.” They shared a bed, it wasn’t like a kiss or a cuddle was going to be out of the question, even if Owen on occasion was sure it was. They didn’t always sleep at the same time (and Mike didn’t always sleep, period) but in the instances they did, Mike didn’t want Owen to think they needed to start at square one on repeat.
Owen had been about to roll over and try to will himself to sleep. He was surprised – relieved, really – when Mike laughed. "Oh!" Mike wasn't upset.
Mike didn't often get upset, something Owen ought to have understood by now, and if he did, he bounced back quickly. Whatever grudges he held didn't involve petty arguments and or mind games.
Owen scooted closer. "I wasn't sure if… Sorry. Got into my head again," he admitted, yanking his pillow closer so there was no more than a couple of inches between him and Mike. "Maybe I should see someone. Get the noggin screwed on right."
Mike didn’t do upset all that often. He did prickly, sometimes, that was true. He did snark on many occasions, but rarely at Owen so much as just – their circumstances and the city around them. To be fair, it was even kind of hard to be mad about that when his alternative was literal nothing.
“What’s to be upset about?” He asked, genuine, even as he got his arm around Owen’s waist, pulled him in closer in order to be the big spoon. He pressed his nose to the back of Owen’s neck. “Maybe you should. If you think it’d help.” Mike wasn’t a therapy guy, but he was pretty sure it probably would have been a good idea on more than a few occasions in his life.
Owen hummed, as much from the tickle of Mike's breath on his nape as the subject at hand. "Can't say I've ever thought about it seriously. Lying on a couch and talking about my mum doesn't seem so bad, though." Just useless. He'd had a great relationship with his mother. Didn't think it had anything to do with his relationships.
But maybe he was wrong. Doctors could diagnose all kinds of things.
He turned slightly, pressing into the warmth of Mike's body. "Have you ever…?" Gone to therapy. Felt the need to unburden himself. "Not that you need it."
“I don’t think they make you lay down,” Mike said, completely unhelpfully, but mostly just because he was thinking versus being dismissive. “Unless you want to. But that’d probably be – uncomfortable.” At least, it would to Mike. Who was a person who tended to stand a lot, or sit at the edge of his seat. He was fidgety when he was nervous. And extra talkative.
“I haven’t. I probably should have though.” Though it was nice of Owen to say he probably didn’t need it. Mike probably had, at least at one point. It was easier to admit that when Owen was technically turned away from him. Even when he rolled over a little. “Probably wouldn’t hurt now either, but I think the damage was already kind of done on – you know.” No eye opening attitude adjustment was going to get him to better cope or get him undead, at this point.
Mike's losses stacked up. But whose didn't? Sure, most people didn't still carry them after death, but–
Owen thought of Hannah. Her smiling face. Her big eyes. How she'd lingered on, because Miles needed her. Because they all did.
"I love you, damage and all." Owen turned to lie back with his back to Mike, but laced their fingers together tightly, as if to keep Mike there with him. As if to stop him fading away.
It was late and he was tired, and hyper-focused on ways he could be better, and whether he should go to therapy – so he didn't realize what he'd said until he was halfway asleep. By then it was too late to do anything about it. Or worry that Mike might feel pressured to reply in kind.
The silence stretched, thick and warm, and Owen eventually drifted off into an exhausted sleep.
Mike wasn’t sure how he could sleep after a comment like that – and it was probably a good thing that he didn’t really need to. He could just sit in the silence and breathe, their fingers intertwined until one of them rolled over naturally.
Eventually he must have fallen asleep though, because when he woke – it was to the sound of the doorbell going off. “What,” he said – not quite one hundred percent aware enough to realize it was the door and not an alarm. But neither of them tended to set one, because Mike worked his own hours and OWen worked afternoons and nights.
So it was –
Ding–
He sat up, hair wild. “I got it,” he muttered, pushing the blankets aside and stumbling toward the stairs to downstairs.
There was a single man on their doorstep when Mike opened the door. Mike was, momentarily, slow to notice the suitcase beside him. “...Yes?”
Half-awake, Owen rolled over and stretched out an arm toward Mike's side of the bed. He found it empty, the sheets already cool. He remembered a sound – the doorbell? Or was it something he'd dreamed? Only one way to be sure.
It took a few pats of the night stand until he found his glasses, then a similar dance with his feet until he could slide them into his slippers. "Mike?" The bedroom door was open. Through it drifted a cool February breeze that woke him the rest of the way.
"Honey?" Owen padded out of the bedroom and, carefully, down the stairs, "Is everything…" There was a man in the foyer, suitcase in one hand and duffel bag slung over one shoulder. "...okay?"
Mike turned ‘round from the man who was standing there looking ready for a room and a spare key and looked at Owen, a little helplessly overwhelmed. “I was just telling this man that we’re not – there’s no room for rent. He can’t stay here.” He said, enunciating in a way that said he was feeling some kind of way about the whole situation he’d accidentally walked himself into simply by waking up.
"Stay here?" Owen repeated dumbly.
"Yes!" The man beamed a big smile. "You must be Mr. Sharma? We spoke on the phone yesterday?" And he ducked around Mike, hand optimistically outstretched.
Owen couldn't think of a reason not to shake it. "We did, but-"
"I already wired you the fee," the man went on. "Right before I hopped on the bus from Memphis."
"Err, Memphis?" Owen did his best to follow. "...bus?"
The Grey Hound, the man – their prospective tenant – explained. A last minute decision. He'd had car trouble the previous week. Didn't want to risk it. Catching the Lobster Festival had always been his dream. A bucket list thing. He had promised himself he'd make it this year, whatever the cost. "After Miss Butters died…" He sniffed.
"I'm so sorry," Owen said, reflexive but heartfelt. "Your…?"
"Lobster." The would-be tenant blew his nose and dabbed at his eyes. "She was with me since I was a boy." And he burst into tears, right there in Mike and Owen's foyer.
Oh no.
There was a man crying in their foyer. About a lobster. A dead lobster, even. “Er, we’re very sorry about Miss Butters – it’s a shame she died so single and –uh. Tragically,” Mike said after a very awkward beat of silence where he tried communicating by facial expressions alone with Owen, but he kept missing because this random man was in his way.
“The motel is fully booked,” the man said, trying to sniff off his lobster-related woes.
"The festival?" Owen guessed. He found tissues in the pocket of his coat and offered them to the stranger. "Here you go…"
While the man noisily blew his nose, Owen caught Mike's eye and winced. They couldn't just kick the man out in the cold, could they? It'd be awfully inconsiderate.
"I guess, err, we do have that spare room…" Mike's, but it wasn't like he'd slept in there since Halloween. Thanks to Owen's disastrous attempts at seasonal decor, the gutter was still broken and dripped loudly whenever it rained. But it wasn't raining today. And the lobster festival wouldn't last forever. "If you already wired the rent…"
Nose blown, the man smiled a watery smile. "Thank you. Thank you so, so much." He picked up his suitcase with one hand and vigorously shook Owen's, then Mike's, with the other. "You're so kind. I promise, you won't even know I'm here." And he scampered eagerly up the stairs, steps creaking as if in protest.
Owen watched him go, then looked wearily – and warily – back at Mike.
“He doesn’t even know where the room is,” Mike said, meeting Owen’s gaze with a frazzled one of his own. Maybe they should have tried calling multiple times last night. Not that that probably would have helped anything. This was kind of just their luck when it came to Dunwich.
“I’ll just – uh. I’ll go help him out. And work from home for a few days.” At least, if nothing else, the steps didn’t creak when Mike ascended them.