Chapter Text
The second they walk into the reception, Derek feels it.
It’s almost imperceptible, the way the room shifts. They’d managed to stay mostly unnoticed during the ceremony, but a reception’s harder to hide in, and by now most of the relatives have gotten the news that they’re here. Shoulders stiffen. Heads turn toward them for an instant and away. As the usher approaches, the conversation picks back up again, but the hairs on the back of Derek’s neck keep prickling.
“Name?”, the usher chirps.
“Poindexter. Will.” Will’s voice is flat and hard. He must’ve felt the room too, and Derek reaches out quickly to squeeze his arm. This, he knows, was Lillian’s peace offering, however small: no matter how much the relatives dislike it, Will won’t be deadnamed on the seating charts or invitations. A small gesture, maybe, but still there, and still kind.
“William,” says the usher with a small smile. It’s genuine, if customer-servicey. “And guest. Right this way.” She leads them across the mansion’s ridiculous ballroom, decked out in scarlet and and pale baby blue. There’s a little part of Derek that’s delighted that both the bouquet and he, in his pink suit, both clash horrendously with their surroundings. Finally, they stop at a table near the back.
Derek pointedly doesn’t mention that they’re not sitting with Will’s parents.
Instead, he finds himself surrounded by more distant relatives, most of whom don’t look like they belong with the yacht-club crowd or Will’s hardy ginger family. Across the table, a teen with an infected lip ring regards him with sullen interest, and to his right, an old man with a nose like a plum tomato lets out a whistling snore. His tie is trailing in his drink. Derek considers removing it for him, but the wine stains on the tie are a better look than the actual pattern. He leans over and whispers in Will’s ear, “So who are we sitting with?”
Will inclines his head toward Derek, speaking just loud enough for him to hear. “That’s my cousin Germaine across from us. Jamie for short, but right now I think she’s going by Raven. Deep into her emo phase. Cool with me, though.” He pauses. “Then again, every emo kid I knew is gay now, so that might be why.”
Raven spares him a glance a little softer than the withering look she’d been giving her salad fork. When Will smiles back, she jerks her head toward the sleeping man and pulls a face that’s an extraordinary rendition of his drooling one. “Hey, asshole. I lipread, remember?”
She taps a hearing aid in among the studs on her ear. Will lets out something approximating an apology, and she shakes her head. “Nah, it’s cool. Just don’t mention that to my mom, yeah? Don’t need her finding out about my gal pal just yet.”
“Hey,” says Derek, giving a half-wave. “Derek. The boyfriend. Aquarius, Gryffindor, and ENFP, if that helps.”
He thinks the twitch of her mouth is the closest to a smile he’s going to get from her. “Nice of you to show out for Will.”
“Least I could do.”
She nods again and reaches into her purse to pull out a battered copy of a Terry Pratchett novel. Derek waits a minute more for a response, but she seems to be done with him, so he turns back to Will and gestures to the old man. “Who’s he?”
“That would be one of Niles’s more distant relatives. They don’t really talk to him, but he’s loaded. Apparently, he once straight up decked Warren Buffett over a poker game.”
“Impressive.”
“I guess. He doesn’t do much of anything now but sleep. He…” Will trails off, and his expression dims a degree as he takes in the other people around them. “Oh, Christ.”
Derek frowns. “What?”
“Oh, Christ,” Will mumbles again, putting his head in his hands. “They put us at the reject table. It’s where they send the relatives they didn’t want to invite.” He looks across the table at a tiny old woman in an elaborately flowered hat. “Hi, Aunt Minnie.”
“Hello, dear,” she warbles. “How’s school?”
“School is good. This is my, um, boyfriend. Derek, meet my great-aunt Minnie.”
Great-Aunt Minnie smiles brightly at Derek over her sherry. “It’s so nice to see you kids finding love,” she announces. “My goodness, I miss my wild days.”
“Really?” asks Derek, ignoring Will’s frantic head-shaking to his left.
“Oh, yes, dear. I was quite the adventuress back in the day. When I was your age, my boyfriend concussed me from bending me over a desk.” She glances at Will. “Your uncle Robert was a creative lover, dear.”
Derek decides he quite likes the reject table.
The meal goes by mostly uneventfully, impressively bland chicken and not enough wine. At one point, Maggie runs over to say hi to Raven, and the two have a quick, hushed discussion that mainly consists of gesturing at Derek and giggling. The most interesting part by far, though, is Will. Now that they’ve faced down the first introductions, he seems possessed by the sudden need to prove to everyone in the room that yes, he does in fact have a boyfriend. Derek is all too happy to follow his lead.
He really does have no idea how it happens, but barely thirty minutes into the reception, he’s hip-to-hip with Will, who’s playing with his fingertips and smiling softly as they recount the entirely fake story of how they met. The cousin they’re talking to is young enough to be happy for them, and from the look on her face, she’s enchanted. “So I walk into my tutoring appointment and I’m thinking, like, okay, English major taking his math requirement, just gotta get this guy through finals and get paid, and of course it’s the guy I spent all of Intro Mythology staring at.”
Derek can’t help the way his cheeks burn when Will looks at him. He presses his lips together and replies, “Took you long enough to ask me out, though.”
Will grins. “How was I supposed to know that Derek Nurse, top ten in Samwell’s Most Beautiful two years running, was into me?”
“You are so dumb,” Derek replies, and leans over to peck Will on the cheek.
There’s a half second, not unlike Shitty’s pause on the phone, where Will freezes just as Derek kisses him. Not enough that you’d know to look for it, because Will relaxes and squeezes Derek’s hand, but one you might see if you were.
“So have you met the sisters yet?” One of the endless number of uncles wants to know, a big blustery man who gestures with his drink when he talks. “Can’t miss ‘em.” He inclines his glass toward two girls in yellow dresses near the edge of the room. One of them is Maggie, and the other has Will’s unmistakable hair and freckles. “Maggie and Maisie. Maggie’s eleven, Maisie’s six. M names, the whole family.”
Will’s fingers are suddenly stiff in Derek’s. He doesn’t look up from the table. It doesn’t go over Derek’s head that Will isn’t an M name, or that the uncle is starting to lean a little too heavily toward them. He squeezes Will’s hand once, a message. Is this the guy?
A nod, almost imperceptible, in return. Yeah.
“I’ve met Maggie, sir,” he replies. “She’s a very nice girl.”
“Bright, definitely.” The uncle swirls his whiskey. He won’t make eye contact with Derek, instead choosing to stare at Will while he talks. “She’ll make her parents proud, sure. They got that one right.”
The extra emphasis on that is definitely bait. Beside him, Will’s shoulders are beginning to rise, and the hand that isn’t holding Derek’s is twisted tightly in the tablecloth.
The uncle smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “Pity, that family. They always wanted a son.”
In his mind, Derek gets up and decks the guy so hard in the jaw that he’s knocked out of his chair. He can almost feel the way teeth would loosen beneath his fingers as he followed through with all his weight. Derek isn’t usually a violent person by nature—the only time he’s ever fought off the ice was at Andover, and he’s not risking cops again—but there’s something about this guy that makes his teeth grind.
But he can’t do that here. Will needs him. Besides, Derek knows this game all too well, and it’s one he’s only ever played to win.
Instead, he smiles his best, brightest smile, and presses a quick kiss to Will’s hand. “Well, then,” he replies, voice lethally polite, “lucky them for getting such a good one.”
The uncle stares at him for one dangerous second longer, and then harrumphs, turning back to his whiskey. A large drop of it catches on his aggressively bristly moustache and drips onto the tablecloth. Derek realizes with a twinge in his stomach that the table has gone absolutely silent around them. None of the rest of the relatives seem to want to look at him, let alone engage.
Without warning, Will stands up so quickly he nearly knocks his wineglass over. “I think,” he announces a little too loudly, “I’m going to find the bathroom.” His hand brushes over Derek’s shoulder in a perfunctory thanks, and then he’s gone.
Derek follows without a second thought.
He finds Will slumped against the side of the building. He’s crying, quiet, shaking sobs that rack his entire body. Derek sits gingerly beside him and says nothing.
“I’m fine,” says Will.
“I know.”
“I’m fine,” says Will again, like he’s trying to convince himself. His voice is past breaking, already broken, and Derek would love to say he doesn’t get it, to pat Will on the shoulder and listen for a minute and go back inside, make nice with the relatives.
But he does get it. He knows that tone. That’s Shitty, curled over with his head in his hands after his dad called him on his eighteenth birthday to ask him why he wasn’t going to Yale. That’s the catch in Lardo’s voice when she jokes about her family’s opinions on her art. That’s Derek, sitting alone in the hallway on parents’ weekend for the third year in a row and waiting to see if his moms texted back this time.
That’s the moment when you realize that they’re never going to love you like you need them to, and there’s nothing you can do to change it.
“I’m sorry,” Will says then, and Derek looks up at him, but Will doesn’t look back. His eyes are squeezed tightly shut. He’s chewing on a thumbnail, and for the first time, Derek realizes Will’s nails are bitten down beyond the quick. “I didn’t—it wasn’t supposed to be this bad. I didn’t want even really want to be here, it was just their stupid money and their stupid faces when they said I couldn’t.”
The nail tears. Blood blooms Will’s finger. He shakes his hand and curses quietly, and before Derek can think twice, he grabs Will’s hand, squeezing it hard. After a second, it stops shaking.
“I know,” he says quietly. It isn’t enough. He swallows. “After I came out, my moms brought me to this art opening in SoHo. And everyone was all nice about it, and they were all trying to prove they knew everything about it, like oh, Derek, I heard you’ve come to a decision recently, you know my daughter’s cousin’s friend has been doing a thesis on the constraints of gender recently, I’m glad to know you’ve been feeling so goddam free with your identity, like they knew anything about it and they—”
He cuts himself off. The hand that hasn’t been holding Will’s is scratching unconsciously at the ground, and his fingernails are caked in dust. Whatever they’re doing here, it’s territory Derek still edges around, even with well-meaning friends. But Will needs this right now. Derek needs this right now.
“And none of them would look me in the eye,” he finishes. “Not like they had before.”
Will’s voice, when he speaks, is quiet but very clear. “My mom won’t touch me anymore.” He doesn’t look at Derek. “Or my dad. Maggie, she’s pretty cool about it, and Maisie’s too young to get anything that’s going on, but. Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
A long, vacant pause. Derek thinks vaguely of the white noise machines in his therapist’s waiting room. With his free hand, Will rubs at the corners of his eyes. “Your moms, they took it well?”
“We had—” a quick, unintentional laugh— “five minutes of ‘no, I’m not a boy’, and then another twenty minutes of ‘no, I don’t want HRT, I’m not a girl’, and Ammi minored in linguistics, so after that it was less of a coming out and more of a discussion of the gendered etymology of the word ‘they’ until I told them I still went by he, and then Mama opened a bottle of wine to celebrate how progressive they were both being.”
Ducking his head, Will laughs too, just enough that it’s encouraging. “So is that the New York version of the classic Maine ‘nod and repress’?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
The edges of a smile play on Will’s lips. “My mom asked me, word for word, if it was because we read Twelfth Night in English.”
“Wait, really?” Now Derek’s smiling too, just the ghost of one. “Because of Viola?”
“Yeah! No joke, they called the school and tried to get it taken off the curriculum. It was mortifying. I think my teacher was actually scared of me for a bit.”
For half a second, the smile slips, and Derek can’t let that happen. “Ammi,” he begins, and his voice threatens to break in either tears or laughter, “left a book outside my door about the history of sexual fluidity and told everyone about it at their next dinner party.”
They really lose it then. Of course, absolutely nothing about the situation is actually funny, but it’s so much easier to laugh than anything else, so before Derek knows it, they’re both doubled over and laughing so hard it aches. “That,” Will gasps, “is so fantastically fucked up.”
“But it’s funny.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
And isn’t it funny, too, he thinks wildly, how he even likes Will like this, with dirt under his fingernails and snot on his jacket sleeve, fucked up and funny and hardly even painful. How easy it would be, if he wanted, to reach out to Will, wipe the tears off his cheeks and straighten his collar. Easy to press his lips to Will’s neck and breathe him in and let all the sadness drift out of their lungs and dissolve into stars.
He doesn’t think that’s how stars work, but that’s beside the point.
Will’s breathing slowly evens out. “Do you wanna go back in?”
“No,” Derek replies, and the vehemence in his voice surprises even him. “I don’t. At all. I spent all my fucking formative years with these people, and they made my life hell.” He chews his lip, thinking of the times in high school he came back to his dorm to find all his clothes thrown out on the roof. “I don’t want to be anywhere near them.”
Will squeezes his hand. “Do you want to go?”
Weirdly, that idea hadn’t actually occurred to Derek. It’d take them ten minutes to get their stuff, another ten to get the car from the valet. They could be back at Samwell before midnight. He takes a strained breath in, and then a longer one out. “No.”
“No?”
“No. I think…” He stares at their clasped hands. The edges of Will's nail are feathered brown-red with drying blood. “I think I need to be here. I don’t know about you, but I think if I can piss them off this once, it could be really cathartic.”
Will stays silent then for so long that Derek wonders if he was even listening. Finally, he says, “That’d be pretty satisfying, wouldn’t it?”
“What would?”
“Pissing them off. Showing them they don’t own what we do. That we’re here.”
“And queer, and they better get used to it?”
“Exactly.”
From an open window down the wall, Derek can hear the strains of a waltz. Cornelius’s family—the Carmichaels, apparently—shelled out for a full band, and the music seems to rise and fall with the soft breeze around them. Before he can really think better of it, he blurts, “Do you wanna do it right now?”
“Yes,” Will replies vehemently.
He stands and holds out his other hand. “C’mon, babe, let’s dance.”
He doesn’t know what Will was expecting, but it doesn’t seem to be that. “Like, out here?”
“No, dumbass.” He digs in his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief, silently thanking his moms for training him into carrying one. Will takes it and blows his nose. “Like, in there, in front of real actual people.”
“You’re serious.”
Derek grins, halfway a smile and halfway a dare. “They were expecting a pride parade if you showed up, right? Let’s give them a fucking pride parade.”
He drops Will’s hand and straightens his jacket instead, letting his hands linger slightly on the dove-grey lapels. Will leans into the touch. Derek can almost swear he shivers. “You’ll be there with me?”
“Always,” Derek replies, and he thinks he might mean it.
It isn’t until they’re actually on the dancefloor that Derek realizes exactly how badly he’s fucked up. Even with only a couple drinks in his system, he feels intoxicated as Will puts one hand on his hip. A few older relatives whisper at the tables, and Cornelius Dorian looks openly scandalized. Derek leans close to Will’s ear and whispers, “So, do you think they’re more terrified by the pink suit or the seven piercings?”
“You have seven?” He sees Will glance at the rings in his ears and eyebrow, counting. “I only see five.”
He shrugs lightly. “You can’t see all of them.”
Will’s pupils dilate like someone flicked a switch. Sliding one hand to the small of Derek’s back to pull him a little closer, he grins. “Little of both, then. And I’ve got the matching tie—they’ll think you’re corrupting me.”
“Should’ve given you a flower crown.”
He makes a face. “I think Cornelius Dorian would burst a blood vessel.”
They’re still just standing, swaying a little to the music, when Derek gets another, equally bad idea. He’s been doing really well with those lately. “Hey, Will, didn’t you say you can dance?”
Will looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Derek, we’re dancing.”
Derek shakes his head. “You know that’s not what I mean, asshole. Like, you can actually dance?” When Will still looks confused, Derek rephrases. “Have you ever waltzed?”
Finally, Will seems to get what he means, because a wicked smile splits his face. “Three years of high school theater. Let’s go.”
Instead of answering, Derek steps back, launching them further onto the floor. True to his word, Will can actually dance, falling easily into the rhythm as they glide through the other couples. He seems to savor the way the room’s eyes follow them, and despite his trepidation, Derek can’t help but enjoy it too.
Right in the middle of all of it, time seems to stop, and for one perfect, blissful, stupid moment, all Derek can see is Will. There’s a high flush in his cheeks that makes his freckles look like cinnamon over starlight, a dash of gothic beauty in the air. Derek realizes with a sharp jolt that Lardo was right: there’s no way he’s getting out of this with his heart intact.
They circle the room once, twice, and make it halfway around again before the song ends. As a final flourish, Derek spins Will out, nearly tripping over his own feet in the process, and draws him back in so they end up chest to chest again. Will is a little breathless and absolutely glowing. “Think it’s working?”
There it is: a reminder that no matter how much he’d like it to be, this isn’t real. Derek forces a laugh, glancing around the room. “Oh, definitely.” He lets go of Will’s hand to poke him in the ribs, and Will lets out a thoroughly unattractive and very cute squeak. “So, high school theater?”
Will rolls his eyes. “We’re never mentioning that again.”
“Oh, we’re definitely mentioning that again. Tell me you were the kind that burst into song in the cafeteria.”
“No, I definitely wasn’t, and I won’t stand for this slander in my own house.”
“This isn’t even your house.”
Will snickers. It is, unfortunately, adorable. Derek looks at him and thinks how ridiculous it is that he’s so wrapped up in a boy he’s barely known for a few days, and how well and truly screwed he is when this is over.
Taking his hand again, Will skims his thumb across Derek’s hip. Derek’s brain glitches a he speaks. “You know,” he says casually, “we could freak them out even more.”
“I think a striptease would be taking it a little far.” His tone is as casual as he can make it, but he's just a little breathless as Will’s fingers slip under his jacket.
Will’s eyes are wide and dark, barely inches away. He whispers, “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” Derek says, no hesitation.
Another smile. “Tell me if this is okay.”
Derek opens his mouth to ask what, but before he can, Will is kissing him so softly his heart aches. Without thinking, he lets go of Will’s hand, hardly noticing when it drops to his waist, and cradles Will’s jaw, tracing the fine lines of his cheekbones. Will’s lips are so warm, and when Derek exhales a little into his mouth, his tongue traces Derek’s lower lip. A few tables away, someone chokes.
He pulls away. Will’s eyebrows shoot up, and he starts to babble. “Oh, Christ, I am so sorry. That was over the line. We can just forget that happened, if you want—”
“No, it’s good.” Derek cuts him off.
This time, they’re a little more urgent, his teeth scraping Will’s lower lip as Will’s arms wind all the way around his waist. Something burns hot in the pit of his stomach. Will shifts to kiss the corner of his mouth, then his jaw. His lips brush Derek’s earlobe. Derek shivers.
They’re kissing again and god, he really needs to clarify whether this is real because it’s starting to go a little far. In a moment of absolute risk, he mumbles against Will’s lips, “We should maybe talk about this”
“Probably.”
Derek pulls back just a little, relishing in the way Will’s lips chase his. “We could, uh, do that.”
He feels more than sees Will’s eyebrows raise, his mouth pull into a smirk. “Is that really how you’re going to start this?”
“Is it working?” For good measure, Derek leans in to catch his mouth again, biting lightly at his lower lip and breathing in every desperate little noise Will makes. An older woman a few feet away makes a disapproving harumph. Derek jerks his head in the direction of the back staircase. “It’s quieter over there. C’mon.”
The three glasses of wine roil in Derek’s stomach as he leads Will across the dancefloor. Just before they get to the door, manicured fingers dig into his arm. One of Cornelius’s relatives they spoke to earlier (Cassie? Karen?) grips his bicep like a steel trap.
“Hi, Carol,” WIll half-grimaces.
Carol, apparently, hiccups into her gin and tonic. Her face is uncomfortably close to Derek’s. “I just wanted to tell you,” she manages, pointing a shaky finger, “that you two”—hiccup—“are so brave for coming here, and being yourselves, and being out here, and I am so inspired by your actions today, and I am so okay with you two being here together.”
It’s so strange that Derek isn’t sure whether to laugh or stare at her. He settles for a little of both, but before he can say something stupid, Will pries Carol’s hand off his arm. “Thanks, Carol. That means a lot. You know, I think I heard Dirk over there talking about health care earlier. Do you want to go see him?”
She spins tipsily and points at a guy across the room to a crowd of blonde men. He isn’t entirely sure which one is Dirk, but they all look like the villain in a movie where the protagonist is a golden retriever. “That man and I—” hiccup—”need to have some words.”
As Carol wavers away, Will glances at Derek, an apology in his eyes. Derek cuts him off, leaning in to whisper, “And I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could have, Derek.”
Will snorts so loudly that Carol almost turns around, but she stays on her almost-steady course towards the blonde men in the corner. “Out of curiosity,” Derek continues, “which one is Dirk?”
“Oh, he doesn’t exist,” Will replies lightly. “I just thought it sounded like someone who might be here.”
In the half second it takes Will to pull him out into the hallway, Derek’s heart feels soft, fragile, and, just for a second, completely full.
He really means to talk to Will once they left the reception, but the second they step into the hallway, Will tugs him toward the stairs. At that moment, Derek would followed him anywhere at all, be it hell or Manhattan on Thanksgiving Day, which he kind of considers the same thing. So he follows, barely saying a word in case he breaks this magic thing between them, as Will pulls him through the dusty old hallways of the house, past dusty statues and moonlit alcoves and into this room. Their room.
He can feel it coming in his toes, in the anticipation curling in his stomach, what’s about to happen. And he wants to be here with Will. Wants to touch him again, wants to take him apart slowly and see what makes that tightly coiled spring Will seems to live in work.
But he can’t explain the drop in his stomach when Will turns to face him, closing the door with a click that resounds in the moonlit room. Will isn’t moving, and they aren’t talking about it.
It hits him then what’s actually happening. This is Derek’s usual pattern: they’ll hook up, fall asleep, and explain it away the next morning. They’ll be friendly after, but not friends. It’s what he does whenever he really starts to get close to someone, because if there’s one thing that really keeps people at arm’s length, it’s the day after a one-night stand. He’s got a healthy sex drive and an anxiety disorder. This is just the natural consequence.
See, if there’s one thing Derek knows about himself, it’s that he breaks things. Phone screens, regularly. Mugs, a little less so. Once, in a particularly legendary incident at the shop, three vases and his big toe falling up a set of stairs. He does the same thing emotionally, according to his therapist, and as much as he hates to admit it, she might be right. It’s so much easier to ruin things before they can get ruined for you.
He just really didn’t want to ruin this, that’s all.
Derek stares at the floor, then his hands. He can’t let himself talk for fear of what he might say. Will leans against the door. The moon plays a soft sonata on the carpet. “Derek?”
He looks. Stupid. Will is staring, one of his hands halfway out. “Derek,” he says again, softer now.
“Yeah.” A statement. Not an answer. He’s waiting for Will to make the first move, because everything will be easier after that.
Fuck. Derek likes hookups, always has. He likes losing himself in the feeling of another person, wants maybe more than anything for Will to kiss him again so Derek can quiet his brain. He can’t ever remember this kind of hesitation. But Will feels different. Derek feels different around him. He’s not sure he wants that separation tomorrow.
“Derek, will you just look at me?” Now his voice is breaking again. It hurts—fuck, it hurts, that wanting note in Will’s voice.
He isn’t sure exactly what his face looks like at the moment, but he rearranges it into an easy grin and fixes his eyes just to Will’s left. “Yeah?”
“What do you want?”
The question catches him almost off-guard. Instead of letting it show, Derek licks his lips and watches Will’s eyes dart to his mouth. “I think… right now, I want whatever you want.”
“That’s not an answer.” Will takes a step closer. Suddenly, the moonlight from the window splashes across his face, throwing his features into stark relief. Derek touched that face, curled his fingers into that impossibly red hair, now turned cool by the light. He realizes, suddenly, that he might not get the chance to do that again, and the thought makes his breath catch.
Neither of them mentions that they haven’t turned the light on.
“You’re right.” Depersonalized flirting, that’s easy. He’ll make Will laugh, and they’ll be right back where they were, and Derek can forget the feelings clogging his throat. “I’m not a mind reader. Why don’t you tell me what you want, and I’ll see what I can do about it?”
“I—” Will starts to move toward him again, faster this time, but he goes straight past Derek and sits down hard on the bed. He’s chewing on his nail again. Derek wonders distractedly if it’ll start bleeding. Automatically, his hand goes to his pocket to grab his handkerchief, but he freezes with it halfway out when Will says, “I don’t want to sleep with you right now, okay?”
This time, Derek can’t hide the way whatever’s on his face. He doesn’t sit down so much as the bed seems to kick his legs out from under him. Will must notice, because his hand goes out toward Derek (pity, probably), and he immediately starts to equivocate. “Fuck, wait, like, I didn’t mean it like that. Derek, hold on, don’t—”
“It’s alright.” Derek tries to muster something like a shrug. “This never happened, yeah? No big deal.” He smiles brightly and hopes his face doesn’t break in two. Disconnect from the situation. Go somewhere else. All that stuff his therapist keeps telling him not to do. “In that case, we should get downstairs.”
Will’s words float by him like large, colorful moths in a tunnel. “Oh, my god,” Will is saying. He sounds halfway to pissed off. “How can you be so smart and so, so dumb?”
Derek snaps back to reality. “What?”
“Like, we go to the same school, right?”
“No, no. What are you talking about?”
“I said not right now, not not ever.”
And the penny drops. “Wait, have you been flirting with me?”
“Yeah, since we met.”
Derek’s head is spinning. He doesn’t know how to process anything that’s happening. His brain shuffles wildly, filing images—Will’s full-face smile back at the florist’s, the way he’d pulled Derek closer for the photo, his face when they were dancing downstairs—into place. A pattern. Come to think of it, a very clear one. “You never said.”
“Look.” Will props himself up on his elbows. All the irritation drains out of his voice, and he only sounds tired now. “I know we’re in a pretty fucked up situation right now. A very fucked up situation. Actually, like, I don’t even think there are worse circumstances for us to be in right now.”
“That’s not wrong,” Derek concedes.
He presses his lips together quickly and swallows. His face is the most open Derek’s ever seen it. “But I like you. And I wasn’t going to bring it up while we were here until what just happened. Look, I’m really not into hookups on the first date, but if you wanted to go on, you know, a real one without my family here, I’d like that. A lot.”
“A date.” He’s starting to feel like the backing vocals in a bad call-and-response song.
For the first time, Will actually looks nervous. He goes to bite his thumbnail again, seems to think better of it, and sits on his hands, his voice suddenly small. “Yeah. Unless, oh God, you don’t want that, in which case this never happened and I’m so sorry for putting you on the spot like this.”
Derek interrupts. “And what if I do? Want that, I mean?”
Will raises his head and looks right at him. In the dark, his eyes are huge, one shade off from gold, and they search Derek’s face as his tongue darts across his lower lip. On the covers between them, Will’s hand moves by degrees until the tips of his fingers are barely touching Derek’s. “In that case, we drive back home.”
“Yeah.” Just as slowly, Derek takes Will’s hand, hearing a sharp intake of breath as he does.
“You and I go for dinner.” Derek’s heart leaps a little as Will amends, “Well, we get pizza or I’ll make something, cause I’m a little short right now, and then, you know, we see where this goes.”
Derek grins. “You can cook?”
Will raises one eyebrow. “You can’t? This another one of those city gay things?”
“Fuck you,” Derek’s other hand is on Will’s face now, pulling him closer.
“I just told you, not on the first date.”
And Derek really means to stop kissing him so they can keep talking, but Will exhales into his mouth and suddenly, the knot of anxiety in his stomach finally starts to dissolve. Will laughs as Derek tugs playfully on his pink tie, and it’s the best sound he’s ever heard. “I like that idea,” he gets out, “but you left something out.”
“Which is?”
He wrenches himself away from Will, rolling to the edge of the bed to pick up the phone. “Well, way I see it, we have a fancy hotel room on Cornelius Dorian’s dime, and they do room service. Feel like late night ice cream?”
The way Will is stretched back on the bed, arms behind his head and shirt halfway untucked, makes him look like a Victorian dandy from a classic novel. If Derek were a painter, Will would be his only subject. “I’d like nothing better.”
When they leave the next morning, Maggie ambushes him on the way to the car. Out of her fancy dress, she dresses a lot like Will, with all that ridiculous hair scraped back into a messy ponytail. She rocks back and forth lightly on her feet before launching in. “Do you really like my brother?”
“You asked me that yesterday,” he points out.
Maggie shoves her hands deep in her pockets. “Yeah, but things change. I didn’t used to like him but now I do, and my parents liked him and now they don’t so much. So do you?”
She’s such a smart kid, and it breaks Derek’s heart that she knows how her parents feel about Will. He wishes he could do more, but the best he can offer her is a quick ruffle of her hair and a soft, “Yeah, I really like your brother, and for the foreseeable future, I will.”
Maggie regards him for a second longer. Then she throws her arms around his waist, squeezes tight, and sprints back toward her family’s car. “Coming, Ma!”
From behind him, Will asks, “Good to go?”
Derek gives Maggie one more glance. When her mother isn’t looking, she leans out the car window and waves wildly at them. He smiles. “Yeah, let’s.”
The drive back to Massachusetts the next day seems much shorter and infinitely longer than the drive up. Whatever time isn’t spent with Will’s fingers playing on the back of his neck, he’s itching with anticipation and counting the exits until they pull up outside the hockey team’s frat house. Will pulls the truck deftly into the driveway and idles it. “So, I can get the bags, and then if you want, we can get food?”
Before Derek can answer, the door to the house bangs open and Shitty catapults himself out. “William motherfucking Poindexter! You wanna tell me how your date weekend went? I was promised deets, and you will deliver!”
He skids to a halt outside the truck. “Oh, hey, Nursey.”
Derek starts to say “Hey, Shits,” but Shitty does a double take back to him. “Oh, fuck, Nursey! If you’re here—” pointing to Derek— “and you’re here—” pointing to Will— “who’s driving the oblivious bus?”
Will flips him off. Shitty grins. “Successful weekend?”
A second of silence. Will ducks his head, blushing. “Yeah,” Derek says, and reaches over to tuck Will’s hair behind his ear. “You could say that.”