The snippet of my pineapple on the pizza conversation in my fic. Andy is being a gay Sherlock Holmes about Mike and Will here:
After a few minutes, another nurse with the same absolutely resigned face called up all the “tests and shots” patients to wait in the corridor with the multiple exam rooms, away from the main traffic. The narrow benches filled with pensioners complaining about weak bladders and trying to cut in line, parents with loud, rowdy toddlers, exhausted young professionals, and some guy who frankly looked like he needed several showers.
“Are you gonna tell him then?” Andy asked suddenly, his breezy attitude faltering completely once they occupied the farthest seats in the fluorescently lit hallway.
“Probably not,” Mike replied warily. “The timing is wrong— it’ll look like I’m just freaking out. Plus, it’s not… within the antibody formation window, so it’s no use to even test for me as it is.”
There was no way to make testing out of solidarity with Andy sound normal to Will under the circumstances, so Mike grimly chose the whole “my body, my choice” defence, even though it sounded too weak even to himself.
“You and your biology, man. Antibody formation window, my ass,” Andy mused sarcastically. “You did it, didn’t you? Played baseball?”
“H-how is saying it like that any better?” Mike hissed, his eyes darting nervously around the corridor in case someone was listening in.
“Well, we’re in public, aren’t we?” Andy noted with a shrug. “I bet it was New Year’s.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Mike protested, his cheeks suddenly heating up.
“You did. Antibody formation window? People don’t usually test after a handjob,” Andy said, his finger tracing the sentences in the very pamphlet Mike had provided him like a loaded gun.
“Andy,” Mike tried weakly.
“Don’t fret, I don’t think you’re here because of Will,” Andy reassured him with the most self-satisfied smirk in the world. “You’re both blushing virgins. I mean, look at your face. Am I wrong?” He pointed with his hand towards Mike’s bright red cheeks.
Mike cleared his throat, trying to regain some semblance of dignity as Andy continued his ridiculous post-match interview.
“So… Did you pitch or did you catch?” he asked nonchalantly.
“I— I’m not discussing it with you, Andy,” Mike babbled, giving him a sharp look.
Andy’s smirk faded a little, his blue-grey eyes studying Mike’s scandalised expression.
“Did Lou-Lou try talking to you?” he concluded with an exasperated sigh, as though Luis had done some irreparable damage and that’s why Mike wasn’t eagerly dissecting his own sex life in a packed hallway. “Oh, I bet he did, didn’t he? Moron… Okay— PSA from someone who’s known that disaster for many years. He doesn’t understand jack shit. He’s that bisexual who says shit like ‘an ass is an ass’.” Andy made a face as though someone just puked again in the waiting room and rolled his eyes. “But you’re a biology major. You know the difference.”
Mike felt slightly vindicated about refusing even to listen to the “brotherly advice” next to the toilets in Foxhole.
“What do you mean, Andy?” he asked cautiously, curiosity getting the better of him.
“The anatomical difference between males and females of the human species? The philosophical difference, probably?” Andy mused, waving his hands around as though demonstrating the said difference. “Anyway— Luis would screw anything with a pulse…“ he lowered his voice conspiratorially, “but ask him to catch, and he’ll think you’re making him sign up for the different team.”
Now it felt as though Andy was giving Mike the ammunition against Luis’s perpetually smug grin, and he didn’t know whether to feel grateful or disturbed about it. It wasn’t as though Mike was particularly surprised; he had heard enough of Casanova Carter and his ideas of what was considered “deviant” before labs.
“Why are you telling me this?” Mike said, intrigued despite the circumstances.
“’Cause I see some potential in you, Boy Scout,” Andy snickered and gave him a knowing wink. “I’m not gonna reinvent the wheel for you. You probably read a few books already. But, you know. It’s like…” Andy paused, searching for another highly embarrassing innuendo. “Pineapple on the pizza. ‘Try before you deny’. That’s a Californian proverb,” he laughed at his own joke a little, and Mike was reminded of Argyle during the road trip from hell and how Mike had desperately told a lie just to save El.
Mike snorted despite himself and thought about it for a moment. It had been mortifying when Will asked him if he could finger Mike before Christmas. He had stopped instantly when he thought Mike was panicking, so maybe if Will was careful again, Mike could…
And what the hell did Andy mean by potential? Potential to do what? Lie down and think of England? That would probably be the only thing Mike could do, if not just die of embarrassment. He wasn’t magical like Will; he didn’t know how to move or what to look like, what face to make. Did people make some sort of face?
Mike belatedly realised that he was blushing right next to Andy, who could read him like an open goddamn pamphlet. He had to stop, put a lid on it. Pineapple didn’t belong on a pizza, and Mike Wheeler’s humiliating thoughts about letting Will… fuck him didn’t belong in the corridor of St. Vincent’s right before they were about to get tested.
“So no girl then?” Andy went on as though it was a normal way to continue this absolutely unhinged conversation. “Not even once?”
“Uh, I had a girlfriend but—“ Mike started, instantly regretting even saying anything to Andy in the first place. “No, we weren’t… that close—“
“Damn, Boy Scout,” Andy said with a low whistle. “You got yourself a merit badge.”
Surprisingly, Andy wasn’t mocking him. He looked almost impressed… as though Mike’s embarrassing inexperience was something rare and worth giving trophies for.
“What’s— What’s that, Andy?” Mike babbled, unhelpfully imagining some sort of queer Mr Clarke putting a sticker next to Mike’s name on the roster.
His failing to even close his eyes while being kissed by the girl he was supposed to love didn’t feel like it deserved an award.
“It’s a joke,” Andy reassured him. “Look it up in a zine sometime—“
Mike made a mental note to go through Will’s side of the book pile one of these days, since he doubted they put such definitions in Merriam-Webster.
After that, he couldn’t help but ask Andy quietly, “What about you?”
“Unfortunately. I’ve been around too many girls in dancing studios— and you know what they’re like when they see a decent-looking guy. Piranhas,” Andy said with a theatrical shudder, as though herds of women were around the corner to chase him. “But… there wasn’t, like, a spark or something? No orchestral music, no chorus singing, no applause at the end—“ His mouth quirked at that, and Mike suddenly understood what “applause” might’ve meant. “Besides, there were plenty of male dancers that were veeery willing— Not many straight guys do ballet.”
Mike didn’t want to picture all the “willing” dancers around Andy, but, regretfully, he had eyes to understand that Andy wasn’t just being vain. He would get free drinks at bars by just existing in a nice shirt. He would just swat away unwanted attention as though all the men propositioning him were annoying vermin. He would give one disdainful glance at some hot-shot calling him a “stud” and then continue chatting with the ARC as though it were a mild inconvenience. Mike remembered Andy calling other men “flies” when they were in Foxhole, and he had even warned Will about apparently warding them off Mike of all people.
“But hey—,” Andy went on breezily. “I bet somewhere in this building there’s a thirty-year-old married miserable fuck that has just discovered he’d been playing the wrong sport this whole time—“
“Probably,” Mike agreed, reluctantly acknowledging that Andy was unusually compassionate when he wanted to be.
Check out the whole thing here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/79263006/chapters/237586451
