Chapter 18 #5
Will holds up a hand, smiling at him. “I don’t want to sell the farm to anyone, Casey.
Not Nimbletainment or anyone else. I thought…
” He pauses, biting the inside of his cheek, but: This is what he came here to do, isn’t it?
This is the plan he discussed with Selma, what he , Will, wants to do, or at least wants to do today; it’s just a matter of doing it.
He squares his shoulders, sets his jaw. “I thought it might be cool to, uh…set up a lab here, actually. These trees have been growing a long time, and there’s plenty of them to work with, and I’d have a lot more leeway than I do with the orchard I work with in Illinois—it’d be easier to get to, too, at least if I was living down here.
I thought I might stick around a bit, do some thinking, put a funding proposal together.
But, you know—” Will finds he can’t actually look at Casey for this part, even though—perhaps because—he means it so desperately, and with so much of himself.
“I don’t think I’d be able to do, ah, both, so.
I’d be looking for—partners, you know. Or, uh.
Partner. To go in on the business with me.
Someone to manage the farm, keep things running.
What you already do now, basically, to be honest.”
“Oh?” Casey’s voice is so controlled that Will can’t help but look at him after all. There’s a fire winking in his eyes, Will thinks, but it’s banked, still smoldering; maybe it’s just a trick of the light. “And when were you planning on holding interviews for that position?”
“Uh,” Will says, and winces. “Right now? Because, I mean, if you don’t want it, I’m not hiring—I’m not interested in anyone else.
” He swallows hard, and, weakly, trying for casual now himself, adds, “Though of course, I’m not trying to, like, force anything on you here?
If you’d rather…I could always be a, um, a silent partner, if that would be better.
I mean, I’d need to set up the lab, obviously, and mark some of the trees for experimenting, but I was thinking back of the third orchard, anyway, so you wouldn’t even have to see me if you didn’t want to, and?—”
Will’s voice dies in his throat as Casey smiles, and shakes his head, and steps closer, his right leg slipping into the space between Will’s as though it was always meant to be there.
He braces himself with one hand against the rough bark of the tree, and uses the other to lift Will’s chin, so their eyes are meeting.
Very seriously, Casey says, “Listen to me, Will: If anyone calls our names, or one of the goddamn teenagers appears from thin air, or the local water main explodes, or whatever , we’re going to ignore it, okay? I think, after all this, we’ve earned a few minutes to ourselves.”
Breathlessly, Will says, “Yeah, I won’t fight you on that one,” and then Casey’s kissing him.
Their last kiss was desperate, and pleading, and intense.
It was a great kiss, one whose memory, hand-in-hand with an endless photo reel of choice moments from their night together, chased Will all the way to Chicago, and all the way back.
But this kiss is filthy , so rich with promise of the things to come that they might as well be doing them.
Will loses himself a little in the sensation, dizzily trying to catalogue the places Casey has touched him and, for once, finding the fine details too arduous to be bothered with; wherever Casey touches him, it sends sparks of white-hot electricity through Will’s every nerve ending, so the minutiae doesn’t seem important.
When Casey tilts Will’s head to deliver a series of kisses along the side of his neck, Will lets out a groan that he would, normally, be a little embarrassed to release even alone in the privacy of his own apartment.
But somehow today, even under the buckeye tree in front of his parents’ house, even in earshot of every ghost that’s ever haunted him and probably also, God help him, Daphne, he doesn’t care who hears him.
It could be that he’s growing as a person, but Will suspects it has rather more to do with the way Casey chuckles against his ear, says, “Oh, so you like that, then? Okay. Noted.”
“God,” Will says, and catches Casey’s mouth again so he won’t have to say anything else.
He can’t quite remember most of the words in his personal dictionary right now.
His world has narrowed down mostly to sensations: the warmth of Casey’s hands against his skin, the weight of Casey’s body against his, the soft cracking and crunching of buckeye nut shells being crushed under the soles of his shoes.
What words he can call to mind are hardly descriptive enough to do the situation justice, and are instead the basic, simple, bedrock ones, like “good” and “wow” and “yes.”
When, eventually, Casey pulls back, it’s only a little; he allows Will to remain in the circle of his arms, which Will thinks is good, because he’s not totally sure he trusts himself to stand on his own in this critical moment.
Half of him is almost blissed out to a degree that’s a little frightening, and another third is scrabbling to get back to the unresolved conversation and whether or not being kissed nearly to death counts as agreeing, and the awkwardly sized sliver that remains is thinking ridiculous thoughts like, I should send Anthony the Lizard Man an anonymous telegram that says “In the time since we parted, I have grown reasonably sure you’re NOT actually good in bed,” which, while entertaining, isn’t productive.
Will’s not even sure how he’d go about sending a telegram at this particular moment in human history, nor how to contact Anthony, who had communicated largely through a series of burner photos and via a social media account, from which Will has since been blocked, for his lizard.
God, and Casey’s just looking at him, warm and smiling, eyes crinkling at the corners, and…
“Oh my God, man, you have to say something,” Will groans. “You can’t just kiss me like that and look at me after I make a proposal like that, are you in ? Does that mean you’re in ? Or do I need to, like, read it from your mind while you stare into my eyes?—”
“Yeah, see, I just don’t think you have it in you to be a silent partner,” Casey says, grinning at him now, his eyes dancing.
“Not really how you’re wired, is it? So I’d say I’m in, but, you know.
Only for the version where you talk.” Smiling down at Will, he adds, “It’s your name on the building, after all. It’s only right.”
Will smiles back up at him, brimming suddenly with so much happiness he feels like it might just spill out of him, bubble over like a pot left too long on the stove. “Eh,” he says, feeling a little laughter slip out on the words. “A name’s just a name. It’s what you do with it that counts.”