The Pad is unusually quiet for ten o’clock at night.

The television is on, but nobody’s really paying attention to it. Davy is stretched out across one end of the couch flipping through a magazine while Peter sits cross-legged on the floor with a guitar in his lap, absentmindedly picking at the strings and staring off into space.

Micky is lying upside down in an armchair for reasons nobody understands.

“Do bats get dizzy?” he suddenly asks.

Nobody answers.

Micky waits another second before sitting up slightly. “I’m serious.”

“You ask that every week,” Mike says from where he’s sitting in the corner chair.

“You never answer me.”

“Because I don’t care.”

You’re sitting on the couch listening to all of it unfold. Honestly, this is a pretty normal night.

The five of you have lived together long enough that nobody feels the need to constantly entertain each other anymore. Sometimes everyone just exists in the same room.

Mike is sitting closest to you, one arm draped casually across the back of the couch.

Not touching you. Just close. That’s kind of how Mike always is.

He isn’t obvious about anything, especially feelings. If somebody asked Mike whether he had a crush on you, he’d probably deny it before the question was even finished.

But you know.

Not because he flirts. He doesn’t.

At least not in the way Davy does.

It’s smaller things. The way he notices when you’re upset before anybody else does. The way he gets quieter when you’re talking because he actually wants to hear what you’re saying. The way he’s somehow softer with you than he is with everyone else in the room.

Even when he’s being sarcastic.

He doesn’t know why he likes you. He just does.

Across the room, Peter suddenly misses a chord and grimaces. Micky immediately points at him. “Wrong note.”

Peter points back. “You don’t even know what note I played.”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“It feels relevant.”

Davy closes his magazine with a sigh. “I’m surrounded by idiots.”

Peter starts laughing. Micky laughs too. Even Mike smiles a little.

You catch it for a second. And when Mike notices you looking at him, he immediately looks away toward the television.