Chapter Text
In the photo, Derek’s suit jacket is fluttering in the breeze as he presses his face into the neck of the other person there. They’re both caught in the sunset and haloed in gold, and with the angle and the gentle glimmer, it’s almost impossible to see how badly Derek is panicking.
But that’s not where it starts. The whole long chain of terrible decisions starts much earlier, in a flower shop on the corner of Main and Greenhaven, at 3:18 on a Thursday.
Derek knows it’s 3:18 because he’s looking at the clock and wondering if the hands are stuck. There’s no way time is supposed to go this slowly, not when it said 3:15 the last time he looked at it, and that feels like it was eight hours ago. He’s about to text Lardo and see if he can close up early when the door bangs open so hard it nearly knocks over an entire display of lemon verbena.
“Hi—” He starts to say, but the guy, a redhead with an angry flush to match, doesn’t pay him any mind. Instead, he starts pacing around the shop, mumbling under his breath and scrubbing at his eyes. Derek isn’t entirely sure if he should be terrified or laughing.
Redhead stalks from one fridge to another and cards his hands through his hair until it’s sticking in six different directions. After circling the shop three full times, he ends up back at the counter. Derek slaps on a customer smile, but before he can say anything, Redhead blurts, “I have a specific request.”
“Okay,” says Derek. He’s a little wary of special requests since the erotic shrubbery fiasco of 2015, so he presses on. “How specific, exactly?”
Rifling through his pockets, Redhead pulls out a few bills out of a cracked wallet and counts them out. “I have twenty…forty…fifty-three bucks here, and I need to know how you say ‘fuck you, you actual toe wart, and your whole goddamn nepotistic asshole family too’ with a bouquet.”
Derek blinks. He wants to ask if the guy’s okay, but what he actually says is, “How soon do you need it?”
Redhead raises an eyebrow. “Can you do it for Saturday?”
He glances at the clock. 3:20. Forty minutes left on shift before Lardo takes over, and the store is dead. “I got nothing else to do.”
Redhead smiles with relief and sticks out his hand. “Thanks, man. You’re really doing me a solid here.” Derek shakes it. His fingers are long and pale, thick with spiderweb tendons. “I’m Will.”
“Derek,” Derek replies, gesturing at his nametag, the only uniform standard Lardo insists on. “This should take me about a half hour, you wanna stick around?”
“I got nothing else to do,” Will parrots. He pulls a laptop out of his backpack and gestures at a stool in the corner. “Mind if I work? I’ve got a data project due in a couple days.”
Derek turns away, throwing a “Go for it” over his shoulder as he stops to check one of the fridges. For about twenty minutes, all he hears are keystrokes on the laptop until Will lets out a heavy sigh and unzips his bag. When he turns back, Will is slumped on the stool, looking frustrated. “Hey, man, you good?”
“I just—” He falters and messes with his hair again. “I’ve got a lot on my mind. Can you just fucking, like, talk to me for a minute so I calm down?”
Pulling the last of the stems he needs from the fridge, he turns back to the counter. “I can do you one better than that. I’ve got some chai in the back, you want some?”
Will smiles again. He has a dimple on one cheek, giving his face a lopsided kind of charm. “Actually, that would be sick.”
Derek hits a button on the old stereo system as he goes into the break room, and Stevie Nicks croons through the speakers. When he comes out, a steaming cup of tea in one hand, Will asks, “Fleetwood Mac?”
“Yeah, I know, I’m a seventh-grader that just discovered Wicca.” He rolls his eyes. “I’ve heard it all.”
“No, I love this album! My dad used to play it when I was a kid.” Will takes the tea gratefully. “Actually, I used to think this song was called ‘Rihanna” instead of ‘Rhiannon’.”
He sips his own hour-old tea, which has gone cold on the counter, and turns his attention to the flowers. “I got into them in middle school—you know how every indie kid loves ‘Landslide’. Always wished I had some musical talent. Do you play?”
“Guitar, bass, a little piano.” Will ticks them off on his fingers. “I had the same thing with Steven Tyler. Grew my hair out and everything.” Derek eyes him incredulously. “Yeah, it was exactly as bad as you think. I burned all the photos.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I had a Bowie phase where I wore glitter on my face to school.” He laughs ruefully. “It was kinda crossed with my Kesha phase.”
“Was Kesha really a phase, though? I feel like she’s kinda forever.”
“Yeah, you’ve got me. My love for her will never die.”
For the first time, Derek really studies Will’s face. He can’t figure out quite how he looks familiar, and then it hits him. “You don’t go to Samwell, do you?”
It obviously catches Will off guard. “Uh, yeah, I do. Why do you ask?”
Derek shakes his head, a little embarrassed. “Oh, I’m in the English program, but one of my high school friends plays on the hockey team. I might’ve seen you at a party. Do you know Shitty Knight?”
Will’s eyebrows shoot up. “Know him? Yeah, he plays on my line.” He looks intently at Derek for a second before something registers. “You’re… Nurse? He’s mentioned you.” His eyes widen in surprise. “Wait, oh my god. You must know his girlfriend, right? Lard—uh, Larissa?
“Dude, Lardo’s my boss.” Derek laughs in surprise. “We met at an art thing a while ago, and I started working here last spring. Her aunt owns the place.” He shakes his head, incredulous. “This is so weird. We’re like, on the edge of each others’ bubbles.”
“No, wait.” Will snaps his fingers. “I know exactly where I know you from. I saw you—”
And then he catches himself, like he’s not sure he can say it. Derek grins. “Where? If it was ‘dancing on a table’, you’re gonna have to specify.”
A breath. Will looks both ways, like he’s checking the store is still empty. “I saw you at Pride last year, I think. At the block party with Shitty.”
And now Derek understands the hesitation. The last time Will had seen him, he’d been mostly naked, wearing a trans flag like a cape, and probably belting “Everytime We Touch”, and it’s not the mention of Cascada that’s making Will nervous. He smiles again, this one coaxing. “That was a pretty good day. Explains why I don’t remember you, though, I was pretty schwasted after about noon.”
Will nods in either agreement or understanding as his entire body relaxes another degree. “It was a good one, wasn’t it?”
“Fuck yeah it was.” Normally, he’s not supposed to swear in front of customers, but they’re already past the queer threshold, so he figures they’re good on that. “I’m pretty sure I spent all my money on tips at the drag show.”
“I think—” Will laughs, almost nervously, and his eyes flicker to the corners of the room again. “I woke up the next morning with my binder in a tree and glitter just fuckin’… everywhere, dude.”
Derek holds up his fist. Will bumps it gratefully. “So, a completely successful Pride.”
“I guess so.” The smile finally reaches Will’s eyes. “Oh,” he blurts, and holds a hand to his chest. “He/him/his.”
“Same. Or they/them, but mostly he.”
“Good to know.” For the first time, Will looks like a person instead of a caged animal, and Derek realizes again that he’s actually really cute. He gestures to the preliminary sketch Derek has worked up between them. “So, changing the subject, how do you know what flowers to use for this?”
Derek shrugs. “I grew up gardening with my moms, so it kinda stayed with me. And, you know, I’m an English major, so the whole flower-symbolism thing—” He stops as Will scoffs. “What?”
“Sorry, sorry, knee-jerk reaction. I’m a CS major. All we do is shit on English majors.”
“Oh, look at me, I’m Will and I’m gonna have marketable skills after college. I guess I won’t tell you what all the cool flower language means.”
“Hey, sorry, man,” says Will, holding his hands up apologetically. Again, Derek notices his hands, the fine bones of his wrists. “We all know we’re never gonna be employed till the old people retire anyway.”
Derek quirks an eyebrow. “So, does that mean you want to hear the meanings?”
“Well, that’s kind of the point of ordering it.”
Turning the drawing to show him, Derek points to each flower in turn. “So we’re basing this around orange lilies, for hatred, paired with tiger lilies for pride. Very classic. Set that off with a few narcissus—egotism, obviously—and I’d throw in some geraniums, which tend to represent stupidity, but they wouldn’t quite go, so I’m gonna fill it out with privet instead of our usual greens. You know those privacy hedges that rich people put up? It literally means “stay away”, so what we’re saying here translates essentially into “you’re selfish, stay away from me, I hate you.”” He pauses. The bouquet isn’t quite complete. “Is there anything else you can tell me about the recipient?”
Of course, he doesn’t actually need to know that, but Will is, frankly, distractingly attractive, and this is an easy way to get him to open up. He isn’t quite expecting the way Will bites his lip, the little bit of hurt in his eyes. “It’s my cousin’s wedding,” he admits. “And I love her, I do, but the guy she’s marrying is a dick. I’m, uh,”—flapping a hand dismissively—”recently out to my extended family, and he didn’t really want me to attend. Didn’t even send me an invitation until I asked why not, and when he did, his excuse was that he thought I’d have trouble finding a plus-one.”
Derek’s eyes are wide when he finishes. “Ah,” he says, for lack of a better word. “That’s kinda fucked up.”
Will shrugs it off, but Derek can still see how hurt he is. Instead of pushing it, he announces, “I know what the arrangement needs.” He picks up his pencil again and scribbles in three peonies, nestling them carefully among the lilies. “Peonies. Shame.”
By the time he has the arrangement punched into the computer, Will seems to have relaxed entirely. He’s almost beaming as he pulls out his wallet again to pay, but Derek shoos it away before he can. “Don’t bother. This one’s on the house. Come back at like five on Saturday, we’ll have it ready.”
“I can’t do that.” Will shakes his head. “It’s a personal thing. I’ve gotta pay you somehow.”
There’s a dirty joke to be made in that, and Derek pointedly ignores it. “Look,” he says, resting his elbows on the counter. “You’ve already gotta deal with your shitty in-laws. Least I can do is give you a nice passive-aggressive screw-you to do it with. Is there anything else I can do for you?’
From the way Will grimaces as he sips his chai, Derek can tell there is. Finally, he asks, “You know where a guy can get a date in twenty-four hours? I don’t exactly have the funds for an escort service.”
Derek frowns. “Don’t people in the wedding party usually get paired up?”
“I’m not in the wedding party, though. I’m just a guest. And…” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “I kinda told my cousin I had a boyfriend because of what her fiance said. The wedding’s in three days, and if I don’t find a date by the ceremony, I’m screwed.”
The smallest semblance of an idea starts to bloom in Derek’s mind. It’s a terrible idea, especially considering he’s checked out Will’s ass at least three times since he set foot in the store, but it’s an idea all the same. “You know,” he begins.
Will glances up at him. “Yeah?”
The idea dances on the precipice of his lips, leans dangerously out into the open. Derek yanks it back. “I’m sure one of the guys on the team would offer to be your fake date if you asked,” he finishes. He’s pretty sure he’s imagining the twist of disappointment on Will’s lips.
It’s gone in an instant. Will smiles—and god, it’s a great smile—and pushes his hair back again, shoving a few dollars in the tip jar. “That’s actually a really good idea. I’ll check with Shitty. He’d love the chance.”
“Good call.”
“I’ll see you round, yeah?” Another flash of that smile. Derek curses himself for being such a coward.
“Yeah, definitely.”
The bell rings once as Will leaves, and again a second later as Lardo walks in. “Hey, kiddo,” she calls.
Derek ducks a little so she can ruffle his hair as she passes. “Hey, boss.”
Lardo dumps her bag unceremoniously behind the counter and grabs her apron from its hook. “Yo, was that Poindexter I saw walking out of here? I didn’t know you guys knew each other.”
For half a second, Derek freezes in the middle of taking off his nametag. He has to bite back what he was actually about to say, which is Lardo, I am so fucking gay, or maybe I’ll give you all my tips for a week to introduce me.
“Not really. We only just met.”
Later that night, Derek is hunched over his desk and stress-shredding a page of his notebook when Mambo No. 5 blares across his room. He picks up the phone. “Hey, Shits.”
“Nursey,” says Shitty. “Nursey, Nursey, Nurse, you beautiful motherfucker.”
“How many have you had?”
Shitty grumbles, insulted. “I’ll have you know that I am stone-fucking-cold sober right now. Is that really so surprising?”
Derek stands up and paces across the room. He can never seem to stand still when he’s on the phone, so he counts twelve steps, stops, and turns around. “A little bit. What’s up?”
“Do you remember that time in high school where I swapped lab partners with you in bio so you could be with Alice McCaffrey, and you guys hooked up?”
He does. Alice had been a year ahead of him, a tiny stage manager with a chip on her shoulder and a prosthetic leg she painted herself, and he’d spent the first year and a half of high school with a hopeless crush on her. They’d messed around a few more times until Alice realized she was more into girls and called it off. “Yeah?”
“And you said to me, ‘Shitty Knight, to thee I pledge my undying—’”
“I definitely did not say that.”
“Yeah, okay. And you said, ‘Shits, I owe you one’?”
He remembers this too, only vaguely. “...yeah?”
“Well.” In the background, he hears the unmistakable pop-hiss of a beer opening. Derek can still picture Shitty lounging across one of the Andover common room couches, IPA in one hand and pipe in the other with the phone balanced under his chin. “The time has come, my stunningly handsome friend, to cash in that favor.”
“I’m not having a threesome with you.”
A long pause and a glug as Shitty takes a sip. “Derek. Don’t be ridiculous. Obviously, our charming father-son dynamic is too good to compromise, and anyway, if you fall in love with me, it’ll be due to my charm. No, this is something else entirely.” Another pause. “My d-man just came out to his family, but some of his soon-to-be in-laws having some trouble processing because they’re disgusting upper-class fucks. As such, he may or may not require the services of someone willing to be his one-time date, so obviously, I thought of the most beautiful man I know.”
“Aw, Shits—” Derek begins.
“But since Jack Zimmerman is both an NHL player and in a relationship, I decided you’d do.”
Derek shakes his head to clear it, feeling not unlike an Etch-a-Sketch. “Wait, Jack Zimmerman’s dating someone?”
Shitty hesitates for half a second, just long enough that Derek knows he isn’t supposed to know that, but that he isn’t going to get any more about it. “Beside the point. The point, my dearest darling Derek, is that I’m offering you a chance to eat delicious bite-sized wedding hors d’oeuvres and piss off shitty white people, which I think we both know are your two great passions in life.”
Suddenly, the last piece snaps into place, and Derek realizes what he means. “You’re not talking about—”
“That’s the best part.” God, Derek can hear the shit-eating grin in his voice. “You’ve actually met this guy, Der-bear. Redhead, 6’2”, looks like a physical manifestation of your type?”
“Shitty, you’re insane.”
“Well, unless he came back to the house today talking about some other insanely hot florist who knows me and Lardo.”
Derek stops dead. “Insanely what?”
“Christ on toast, Derek. Here was me, thinking our boy Will didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. But then he shows up at the Haus all starry-eyed, going ‘god, Shitty, I’ve met a real life Oscar Wilde with hair like a goddamn Calvin Klein model.”
“He did not say that.”
“Well, he actually said ‘you didn’t tell me your friend was hot’, and I went ‘which friend’, and he went, ‘Andover friend, Nurse’, so I was like ‘oh, do you want his number’, and then he screamed into a pillow. Same deal.”
“Shitty,” Derek says with as much control as he can, “you son of a bitch.”
“I resent that gendered language, Nurse. My mother is a goddamn saint. Will you do it?”
Derek looks at the clock. It’s way too late to be arguing with Shitty. This’ll just keep going for hours. And, well. Will’s hot. He’s only human.“I hate you. I really, really do.”
“So you’ll do it?”
He sighs. It won’t go that badly. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
“Fantastic. I’ll give Will your number. Trust me, this’ll be great.” Nursey is really going to kill him one of these days. “Oh, and Nursey?”
“Yeah?”
“Bring your pink suit.”
“You realize, of course, that this is a terrible idea,” Lardo says. Her little elephant-shaped pipe is almost empty as she takes another hit, and she curses when it refuses to light. “Pass me the grinder?”
Derek lobs it across the bed, nearly spilling greens everywhere. His entire body feels very sideways right now. He says as much to Lardo, and his voice sounds far away.
Lardo huffs a few strands of hair off her face. Derek watches them fly through the air, catching ten shades of black in the afternoon light. She grins at him over her lighter. “Dude, you’re fucking gone.”
“Lemon skunk, dude,” Derek agrees happily. “Best strain on earth.” Lardo’s words register with him, and he sits up quickly, the world feeling a touch too yellow for his taste. “Wait, why’s it going to be a bad idea?”
“Because you’re going to fall in love with him.”
He shakes his head slowly. “I am…I’m not going to do that. He’s pretty, but I’m just doing him a favor. A favor for a very pretty friend.” He takes another hit when Lardo offers him the pipe. This week’s blend is cut with blue lotus, and it goes down so ridiculously smooth, like silk scarves running down his throat. “And I get an open bar out of it, so, like, who’s losing?”
A smoke ring drifts above his head like a butterfly. He considers catching it, but it dissolves in a sunbeam, and it’s so beautiful that he’d write a poem about if he could move his arms. Lardo says something that he registers but doesn’t understand. “What?”
From a long way past his ears, he hears Lardo say, “You’re losing, dumbass. This is a goddamn indie romcom in the making. I mean, ‘he stormed into my shop and asked for a very specific bouquet, then by coincidence I ended up his wedding date’? This is, like, Anna Kendrick opposite Zac Efron. And because you’re you, you’re gonna eat that shit up.”
Derek takes another handful of Doritos, eating them as slowly as he can. “Lardo, you’re probably making a really good point about white people and romcoms, but I’m just…really experiencing these chips right now.”
She glances at the bag. “Derek, those are Cheetos.”
He looks at his hand, which is indeed full of Cheetos. “Chester the Cheetah is okay with people calling him daddy on Twitter. Are we gonna have to kinkshame a cultural icon?”
Before she can answer, his phone buzzes on the bed. Derek starts to lunge for it, but he’s moving through syrup and Lardo gets there first. “It’s him.”
They’ve been texting nonstop since Shitty gave Will his number, but Will’s been in lab and hasn’t answered for a few hours. It’s a little hard to hide his delight. “Lemme read it.” She hands him the phone, rolling her eyes. Derek reads the sentence as individual words, then as a whole: wait, you haven’t read hitchhiker’s guide?
nah bro, he texts back.
The response comes almost instantly. dude, it’s the best. a CLASSIC. you want to borrow my copy?
Derek grins goofily at Lardo. “He’s lending me a book.” He lies back down, sprawled on the bed like a Greek statue, or maybe an octopus. “He’s lending me a book, Lardo.”
Lardo collapses next to him with a sigh that seems to hang in the air between them. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you, okay?”
“I won’t.”
“And you really think you won’t end up liking him?”
“I promise.”
“You’re lying,” she murmurs, pushing a little of his hair back with a paint-spattered hand.
I know, he thinks, but he’ll never tell her that.
The doorbell pierces Derek’s ears as he stumbles to the door, trying to figure out who would turn up to his door at the crack of fucking dawn on a Saturday. When he yanks open the door, he finds Will trying to balance two travel mugs in one hand as he rubs his eyes with the other.
“You packed?” asks Will, because apparently greetings aren’t a part of Maine culture.
“It is the crack of fucking dawn,” Derek replies flatly.
“It’s eight a.m., calm down.” Will hands him the cup and walks into his dorm uninvited, staring around at the mess. “Jesus, dude, read much?”
Derek, who’s still struggling to even keep his eyes open, glances around at the overstuffed bookshelf, the piles on the desk, the three novels splayed open on his bed. “English major, remember?”
He drains a quarter of the travel mug in one go, and at the exact same moment that Will turns around, saying, “Oh, I didn’t know how you take your—”, Derek realizes that the coffee is black, scalding, and has the approximate viscosity of motor oil. He chokes on the taste, nearly spluttering all over his copy of American Gods.
“Jesus fuck!”
He stumbles around the room, jumping up and down and shaking his head to clear the bitterness out of his mouth. When he’s done, Will has one hand over his mouth, stifling laughter. “I was gonna say,” he grins, “that I have creamer and sugar if you want it.” Biting his lip, he digs in his pocket and pulls out a handful of them. Derek nods gratefully, puts his coffee down precariously on a nearby stack of textbooks, and dumps four creamers and six sugars into the cup before taking another careful sip. Will looks incredulous. “You, uh, want some coffee with that?”
“Some of us actually like having taste buds. Jesus fucking H, Will, what is that?”
“That’s what’s going to get us to Maine in the next five hours, not including traffic. C’mon, grab your bag. You can sleep before your shift.”
Derek blinks. “My what?”
A little crease appears between Will’s eyebrows. “Driving shift. To Maine. Where we’re going.”
Derek blinks again. “Will, I’m gay. I can’t drive.”
“Hey.” Will points a halfway-accusatory finger at him, but his tone is laughing. “I resent that stereotype. Everyone knows city gays can’t drive, but us country gays gotta learn. It’s the only way to meet other country gays. This your bag?”
He gestures to Derek’s suitcase. Derek stares at it for a second. “Oh, yeah.” He’d almost forgotten it was there.
Will grabs the bag and hefts it over his shoulder. “Alright, get dressed, city gay. You can sleep in the car.”
As it turns out, Derek doesn’t sleep in the car, as much as he’d like to. The entire drive up, he’s learning things about Will, and somehow, it’s interesting enough that he forgets he’s running on caffeine and gummy bears. He learns, for instance, that Will’s at Samwell on a combination merit and athletic scholarship, that he’s been playing hockey since he was eight, that he’s majoring in computer science but maybe minoring in theater tech for fun. That he and his siblings (two sisters, who he adores) have competitions to see who can come up with the most creative insults to other drivers. That he’s been out to his family for six months now, and in grand Catholic tradition, his parents listened, nodded, and then never talked about it again.
He learns Will’s got a great laugh, one that starts which a grin and a wheeze and then bubbles up out of his throat like he’s surprised by it.
And Will listens too, really listens when Derek talks. He laughs at all the right times when Derek tells stories about his and Shitty’s misadventures at Andover and Lardo’s erotic shrubbery fiasco, jumps in with new ideas when Derek talks about the thesis he wants to do on recontextualizing Othello for the modern age. It’s easy in a way that this is never easy for Derek; Will doesn’t cut him off when he spends five minutes ranting about “Kerouac as the Great American Novel, really, like they’d never even heard of Zora Neale Hurston”, and Derek nearly chokes on his chips when Will describes some kind of ceremony involving a Gretzky standee and a sacrificial goat made out of old socks.
He’s not surprised, exactly, but kind of delighted to find that he really likes Will. They’ve got fuck-all in common in terms of background, but Will’s sharp-tongued and matches Derek’s pace easily, and Derek thinks maybe they be friends when all this is done.
Eventually, they get to how the lie came about. As Will maneuvers off the 95 and onto Route 1, his voice drops a little and his knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. “I knew I wasn’t going to be in the wedding party, but I didn’t realize I wasn’t going to be invited. And we’re at this get-to-know-the-in-laws thing and someone asks me what I’m going to be doing that weekend, so I go, ‘Attending a wedding, I assume’.”
Derek wants to laugh, but it isn’t the time. Instead, he leans over and turns the volume down a few notches on the sound system.
“And Niles—that’s Lillian’s fiance’s dad, short for Cornelius Dorian—looks so fucking shocked, but like he’s trying to hide it, and he says something like ‘it might be a little expensive for you’, and I know I’m saving up for top surgery but Jesus, they don’t know that, they’re just doing it to piss me off, so I say I’m sure it’ll be fine, and—”
Ahead of them, a red soccer-mom minivan runs a red light to cut them off. The truck swerves sharply, and before Derek can even react, Will’s laying on the horn and yelling, “I swear to Christ I will take your goddamn teeth!”
He actually does snort then. Will relaxes too, lets out a quick bubble of laughter. When it subsides, Derek glances back at him. “And then?”
Will’s answer comes out on a heavy sigh. “And then one of the uncles laughs and goes, ‘Bet you’d love to be a bridesmaid, right?’”
“Ah.” There’s not much else to say to that. “And you’re sure he—”
Will nods. “He definitely meant it like that.”
“Ah.”
“So I made the obvious decision, and I said something like, ‘Well, I don’t know how my boyfriend would feel about me being paired up. I can bring a plus-one, right?’”
Yeah, Derek definitely likes him.
“Come on,” he chides. “One selfie. One really gross, sweet selfie. You can post it on their wedding hashtag.”
They’ve been arguing about this for ten minutes now, ever since getting out of their shared room. Post-shower and shave, saying Will cleans up nicely is an understatement; he’s stunning in a pale grey suit, apparently gifted to him by a graduating senior. Derek, admittedly, isn’t doing too shabbily in his favorite pastel pink suit, even if Will seemed a little shocked when Derek offered him a tie to match.
“Dude, I don’t do selfies.” Will waves at his face. “This whole...shebang doesn’t play so well on camera.”
Derek, personally, thinks that whole shebang would work just about anywhere, but he keeps this to himself. “Who said it was about either one of us looking good?”
“Isn’t that, like, the entire point of selfies?”
“No. No, no, no, Will. You misunderstand.” Derek gestures to the people around him getting ready to take their seats. “Do you think they’re trying to look good in these photos? Fuck no. All they’re trying to look is more in love than the people actually getting married. It’s the ultimate thunder-stealer. You become the best-looking person on the hashtag, you win the wedding. Otherwise nobody would even bother dressing up.”
Will rolls his eyes, but he’s halfway to smiling. “I don’t think that’s how any of that works.”
“So, prove me wrong. Let’s take one. C’mon, think how mad they’ll will be when we get more likes than them.”
“Oh my god, fine,” Will relents. “How do you suggest we pose this? I know exactly one selfie angle, and it’s not pretty.”
Unfortunately, Derek knows this. He stalked Will’s Instagram for a little while, if thirty minutes counts as a little while, and while Will does have a decent eye for lighting, it doesn’t seem to apply to him. “The trick is to make it look natural. Like someone just turned and caught you with a camera.”
Will snorts a little. “I’m gonna be honest, that sounds like performative bullshit.”
“That’s the point. It’s better if you can get someone else to take it, though.” Derek scans the crowd for someone who looks like they might know their way around an iPhone, and after a second, settles on a lanky kid with Will’s flaming ginger hair. “Do you know her?”
Before Will can respond, the girl turns and sees them and before Derek can even respond, she’s sprinting over. Will catches her right as they collide, lifting her off the ground and whirling her around, and she laughs wildly before he sets her down. “Derek,” he says, grinning, “this is my little sister Maggie. She’s a pain in my ass, so you guys would probably get along.”
“Maggie, huh?” It’s all Derek can do to cover up his surprise. Somehow, it never occurred to him he’d be meeting Will’s immediate family. “Derek. Nice to meet you.” He sticks out his fist, and Maggie, after a half-second of hesitation, bumps it. She makes a little bah-lah-lah motion as she pulls away, and Derek mimics it in kind.
“Hi!” She’s got a big, toothy grin that’s going to need braces in a year. “So, does my brother know you’re out of his league yet, or d’you need me to tell him?”
That in itself, both the ease with which she says brother and the authenticity of her smile, says as much about her and Will’s relationship as he needs to know. He smiles back just as easily and replies, “Well, considering he’s helping me get through math this semester, I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell him quite yet.”
Maggie laughs again. She and Will have the same laugh, but hers is brighter, starts a little further up her throat than his. “Gotcha. Our secret?”
“Our secret,” Derek agrees, and flashes a questioning look at Will. Does she know?
No, Will mouths. For the first time since they got in the car, there’s a little bit of fear in his eyes, like maybe they won’t pull this off.
Maggie hasn’t seemed to notice any of this and is talking a mile a minute instead. “—but Will didn’t tell any of us he had a boyfriend, so Aunt Agnes threw a fit about seating charts until Siobhan calmed her down. She gets this huge vein on her forehead when she’s stressed. I thought it was going to pop. It was super weird, though, ‘cause Will wouldn’t even show us a photo of you and I asked why and he said he thought I was going to Facebook stalk you, which is dumb, because I don’t even have Facebook. I’m not allowed for another year. I’d use Instagram like everybody else. So I thought you were going to be ugly or something, but you’re not. Do you like my brother?”
The last question comes at such an abrupt cutoff that for half a second, Derek doesn’t even remember to answer. “Yeah,” he says, a beat late. “Yeah, I really do.”
She regards him for a second. “You could do better. Mom says I’m gonna like boys eventually, but I don’t think so. She says—”
“Alright,” Will interrupts. “Maggie, don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“No.”
Will grimaces. Nursey, who’s dealt with his downstairs neighbors back home enough to know how to distract kids, cuts in. “Yo, Maggie. Will and I actually don’t have a lot of pictures together ‘cause he’s terrible at selfies. Would you mind taking one for us?”
She holds out her hand immediately, and Derek hands her the phone. Once she’s opened the camera, she starts barking instructions with terrifying efficiency, half drill sergeant and half Yorkie terrier. “Okay, stand back. You’re in weird lighting right now. Um, turn this way. Left. No, my left, and smile. Jeez, Will—” putting the phone down for a second— “at least try to look like you’re dating each other.”
Derek laughs, but Will looks a little pained. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbles, adjusting his arms to be even stiffer than they had been. “She’s gotten worse since I went to school.”
“Don’t worry about it. Here.” Stepping behind him, Derek loops his arms around his waist and rests his chin on Will’s shoulder. “This better, Maggie?”
“Thank you, Derek. Someone understands my vision here.”
Derek adores her.
Slowly, Will relaxes and crosses his arms over Derek’s. Derek feels more than sees the smile curling across his face. A few yards away, Maggie yells, “Look in love, dangit!”
In the two seconds before she takes the picture, Derek presses his face into the side of Will’s neck. “Think of it this way,” he whispers. “Either we get through this, or we die in pursuit of an open bar.”
A quick, surprised laugh. The camera flash goes off, and in that half second, Derek realizes three things.
One, that Will smells like Old Spice, which Derek usually hates, but somehow it’s really good on him;
Two, that his hand is on Derek’s elbow and pulling him a little closer, so Derek can feel it when that laugh reverbates against his chest;
And three, that this might have been the worst idea of his life.