“So why are we cleaning?” Wes gripped as he opened the trash bag for Jackson to drop in another chunk of wallpaper. “I mean. You’re moving. You don’t need to clean. You just pack up your shit and, you know. Move.”

“Well, the house belongs to my family and when I leave it, someone else will move in.” Jackson said carefully as he swiftly drove his putty knife up and under another patch of wallpaper, reaching up with a gloved hand to yank it off the wall entirely before dropping it into the bag. "Better have it tidied up."

“Why, though? When I moved into my place, all the walls were covered in shit – literal shit – and there was a dead rat in the closet.”

Jackson frowned down at him. “That’s the truth.” He said with a curious tone.

“Yeah." Wes said, holding his gaze as his eyebrows lifted. "My landlord is an asshole. I wrecked the shit out of my place before I left.” He said with a cheeky grin. “Took a bag of dog shit I found on the sidewalk and threw it into the air vent. Fucking enjoy that in the summer heat, you fuckers!" He laughed with glee, "Usually I’d be a little bit more cautious, but since he figured out that I had a Lock hanging around, he’d been avoiding me!” He said gleefully. “If I had known he’d be like that, I would have told him months ago I was a Key, man!” Wes cackled.

Jackson shook his head, but was he was smiling to himself. Through their connection, Wes felt that Jackson was thinking he was a bit of a shit, but he didn't mind one bit since it was true. He was sorely tempted to just peek into the other man’s mind, but he tried very, very hand to make that a line he wouldn’t cross. Jackson swore up and down he didn’t mind, but that level of privacy invasion was...not something Wes wanted to cross unless he had to.

Jackson had been too good to him for that shit. If Jackson was say, an asshole, then yeah, Wes would have taken absolute joy in going in there and messing around with Jackson. But Jackson wasn’t an asshole. He was like...really decent. Like the kind of guy that Wes had used to imagine he might grow up to be, someone dependable. Someone that people respected because they were just...awesome.

Every day Jackson seemed to be getting better and better, more put together, more at ease, and now they were just like two normal dudes. Occasionally something Wes would say or do would catch Jackson off guard and Wes would feel something through the connection he suspected was surprise, if Jackson look was anything to go by, but then the other man seemed to absorb it and move on.

Most people would have run for the hills by now, but Jackson was still here.

And Wes didn’t get the distinct feeling it was because he had to be here. It was because he wanted to be here, which was something else entirely.

It was really, really nice.

And kind of what Wes had always wanted in a best friend.

After Yuriy had gotten removed from their hometown, Wes had spent a lot of time retreating to a ‘what could have been’ fantasy, a place he could retreat to when he felt especially lonely. You wouldn’t think that a guy who shared a room with four brothers – and sometimes, one of their girlfriends – would feel lonely, but the year that Yuriy got removed, he was lonely a lot. When he got shit faced after a party and wondered home afterward, he had confessed to his grandpa just how terribly lonely he had felt.

His grandpa had reasoned that it was because he was a Key and thus on a totally different wave length from the rest of the population, and that had been something that he had shared with Yuriy and only Yuriy.

His grandpa then spent the rest of the night laughing at Wes while the younger had drunkenly tried to find which trailer was his parents' own, which had resulted in most of the family loudly taking bets on how long it would take for him to get it right. Wes slept under his favorite tree that night after four further failures.

His fantasy was pretty tame, considering how wild they would get later on.

Really, it was the classic image tv sold that all young adults needed to do once they graduated from high school.

He was a young adult, and he and Yuriy were sharing an apartment in the city. Yuriy would be at some prestigious university and, somehow, Wes was there as well. They’d work together part time - thought the place of work always varied from fantasy to fantasy. Occasionally they’d have to solve a mystery or kill a coven of vampires, but whatever. The point was, they were just doing their thing together, and now he as kind of doing that with Jackson...minus the vampire thing. Sometimes there would be a mystery to solve, but it was almost always “Let’s find out where Wes left his shoes” or something like that.

But still.

It was...nice.

It was really nice.

And now they were moving in together.

He highly doubted that they’d ever work together, though. Wes had quit his job at the pizza place since Jackson was pretty much paying all his bills, and seeing as Wes sure as fuck wasn’t going to join the military…

Yeah. He doubted that part of the fantasy was ever going to be filled, but he was fine with that.

the only thing he'd really fix was the fact that he just wasn't getting laid at all recently, and in the fantasy, he was always getting some.

For some reason, his dating apps were always forgetting his login credentials - and as Wes sure as fuck wasn't going to remember them, he was always having to make a new account, which was just way to much work. 

So he hadn't actually gotten matched with someone in like a month, hadn't gotten laid in three, and was pretty much getting hard off of really stupid shit now. It was getting ridiculous what was getting him turned on, and he was a horny dude on a normal day. And Wes without an actual hook up in three freaking months? Fliers for buy two get two at a freaking burger stand were starting to do it for him.

But Jackson had bought him a new game station, so there was that. Plus, Jackson let him win - not by much, but just enough for Wes to legitimately question at times if he had won sincerely or not, which is exactly how Wes liked it. 

"Didn't you ever have a bedroom that you were moving out of, and needed to clean up for the next person?" Jackson asked in what Wes saw was a clear attempt to draw parallels to his need to clean up his old apartment.

Wes wasn't biting, however. "I had the same bedroom I was born in, man. Literally born in, right under the window. Had that room until I fucked off to the city." He stated firmly, fixing Jackson with a hard stare.

Jackson looked to him and held his gaze for a beat. "Oh."

"Yeah, 'oh'. How you feeling now, Mr. Big Bucks?" Wes said with a smirk as he opened the trash bag for another strip of wallpaper. Jackson didn't say anything, instead just shaking his head a little in silence. "Yeah. Not everyone gets to play musical chairs with bedrooms. Some of us are lucky if we even get our own bed. I had to double up with someone after I was twelve."

"What happened when you were twelve?"

"Sissy turned ten and Mom figured she was too big to share the bed with her and Dad, so she got my old one." Wes said with a shrug. "I had to bunk with one of the twins after that point." He sighed, looking annoyed then. "The cruel irony of it all is that I jumped ship the second I turned eighteen and moved here...and then all my fucking brothers moved out and got married, so there was plenty of room then, the shits." He growled as Jackson stepped off of the toilet to take the trash bag from him.

"How many brothers do you have?"

"Five older ones. And then my younger sister." Wes said. "What about you? you never, uh, say much shit about your family?"

"I have one younger brother - who will very likely be the one to take this apartment after me." Jackson said as he dragged his gaze around, looking for anything else that needed to be removed or fixed.

"Dude - if it's your brother, then you really don't need to fix anything!" Wes laughed as they went into the living room where they had been leaving the other trash bags. After Jackson tied off the bag he went into the kitchen, Wes right behind him. "Your younger brother is supposed to get worn down shit, it'll teach him that he has to work for nice shit. That's your job."

Jackson looked uncomfortable and through their connection, Wes could feel it as well. "I don't...want my family seeing what I did to the apartment." He said carefully as he went to the fridge to open it, getting Wes a soda. "They'd realize how...disturbed I was. How deep my psychosis had gotten." He tossed it to Wes and his confused look.

"Why? You'd get sweet, sweet pity points, man." Wes wondered. "I'd be milking that shit so fucking hard, man. I'd find a way to bring it up all the time, get a free pass on shit." he sniffed a little, his eyes narrowing as he thought about that situation. He'd be at home, having his mom doing his laundry and bringing him lunch while he laid on the couch, moaning and groaning about how much he was suffering.

Damn.

What a life.

It was times like this that Wes realized how badly he was short changed.

"I don't want them to think I was weak." Jackson said quietly. "They already know I was unstable, but I don't want them coming here and seeing just how unstable I was." Jackson said blankly as he surveyed the kitchen, most everything having been stripped down or scrubbed clean.

Wes pulled a face and jerked his head back a little. "It's just wallpaper, man."

Jackson's expression darkened. "I also punched a dozen holes into the bedroom wall."

Wes face screwed up in confusion. "That's....not normal?" His phone rang and he frowned and fished his phone out of his pocket to read the text message there. His face lit up. "Oh shit - Porty’s coming to see our new apartment - he always brings me some shit from home!” Wes said excitedly, “Let’s hope he brought pie!”

Wes frantically chugged down the rest of his soda before he threw it to the open trashcan in the kitchen, missing it completely. "Let's get home before he gets there, cuz that fucker will break a window to get in!"