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It had happened three days before. Derek had been going through one of Will’s drawers (carefully, so as not to leave anything out of place), looking for some notes Will had asked him to take to Tango at dinner. Will’s filing system was meticulous, but Derek, unfortunately, had yet to figure out the order of it. Nothing was labelled, of course, because Will knew how to search through it in his sleep, so Derek was resigned to flicking through every section in search of the right topic. Then, in frustration, he had flipped right to the end and found Will’s ‘rough notes’ section. Of course, rough notes in Dexland didn’t mean untidy, but rather notes on things which had nothing to do with any of his ordinary filing categories. Mostly, they were lists. Sheets upon sheets of handwritten lists mapping out Will’s plans, budgets, and potential outcomes for different situations. Derek shook his head in exasperation at the one for their relationship. He understood Will trying to avoid a broken heart, but his fixation on there only being so many ways it could end was frustrating. He flipped the sheet across, and looked at the next one. Once he realized what it was, his blood went cold.
I get dibs, DN doesn’t - Best outcome
I get attic, DN gets LD’s dibs (or v.v.) - Okay. Can work with it.
Neither of us get dibs - Not great. Will have to rework budget and share.
DN gets dibs, and I don’t - Not likely. Should not worry about it now.
We both get attic - Will not work. Hopefully AB&JO think we hate each other enough that this will not happen.
Derek didn’t know what to think. He had known for a long time that sharing a room was something Will had only ever put up with, and at the end of their first year when they had come to apply for second year accommodation, Derek had been sympathetic to Will’s reasoning behind wanting a single. He had the budget for it; that was the main type of room offered to sophomores; and Will had never had a room to himself. He also knew that the taste of freedom this past year had made Will even more reluctant to go back to sharing any time soon. All that didn’t explain why he was resistant to even the idea of being in the Haus together. Derek’s eyes zeroed in on the words ‘best outcome’, and he found himself obsessing over what ‘can work with it’ might mean.
That had been three days ago, though, and Derek knew that Will was confused and hurt by him being distant.
“What are you thinking about so hard?” Ollie asked as they left breakfast.
“Hm? Oh, just dibs.”
“Lards still hasn’t decided, huh?”
Derek frowned at him. “I don’t know. There’s the attic as well.”
“The attic’s gone.”
When Derek only blinked at him in confusion, Ollie took pity on him. “Rans and Holtz gave their dibs to Wicks and me way back in February, my dude. You’ve only got Lardo’s to fight for, now.”
Derek turned that over in his mind. It took him by surprise, honestly, because he had thought he and Will would get the attic. If not, he had still thought no matter where he ended up, Will would get Ransom and Holster’s dibs. He had done so much for the Haus over the past two years and was tight with both the older defensemen, whereas Derek had only been doing things for Lardo - his safety net for if Ransom and Holster decided to let Will have the attic to himself. If Ollie and Wicky had the attic, that left one room up for dibs. On the one hand, Will’s budget relied on him getting into the Haus, and if his only other option was sharing in dorms, Derek was probably the only person he could stand to do that with. On the other hand, Derek was fairly sure his own mental health relied on him having people around him. There had been too many times this year that he had been drowning, and being in the Haus would help keep his head above the surface.
By the time he left his last class of the day, he knew that he either had to convince Will to share with him, or they were going to have to go up against each other for the room. His reasons for needing it might not be financially-based, but they were just as much about surviving. He pushed away the thought that it might be petty to spring this on Will now, especially given that he was still upset about the list.
“You’re allowed to be selfish for your own health, Derek,” he told himself.
He found Will at Founders with a handful of teammates. They had an audience, so this couldn’t be a serious conversation. He threw a chirpy smirk on, strutted up to his boyfriend, and tried not to think about the fact that Will looked both surprised and happy to see him after a couple of days of him keeping his distance.
“Bro, you will not fucking believe what I just heard.”
In another circumstance, the way Will’s face dropped may have been comical. “Don’t call me ‘bro’. That’s weird.”
Derek had to bite his tongue to stop himself from laughing “Ollie and Wicky have the attic.”
Will frowned at him. “What does that mean?”
“Seriously, they—” he glanced at the others nearby, glad to see Ollie was among them. “Yo Ollie!”
Ollie drew closer to them with a nod of the head and a casual, “‘Sup.”
“Tell Dexy what you told me this morning.” Derek flashed Will a grin, but it went unseen.
Ollie shrugged. “Yeah, Holtzy and Rans gave Wicks and me dibs way back, man. Shook on it and everything. You gotta talk to Lards.”
Derek just gave Will a slap on the shoulder, as Ollie walked off. “I’m going to the Haus, now. You coming?” He didn’t wait for a response before walking off.
Will choked out, “This isn’t right.”
Derek felt the words like a stab through the heart. Did his own boyfriend really despise the idea of him having a shot at living in the Haus so much?
They got to Lardo’s room at about the same time, but no words had been exchanged along the way. Will’s shoulders were tense as he told Lardo about a smudge of charcoal on her cheek. Derek wanted to smooth the knots out with his thumb, but he settled for pulling the conversation onto the right track.
“Lards. We’re here to talk to you.”
“Please wash it off!” Will begged. Derek rested his hand on Will’s elbow, trying to ground him; to remind him that a bit of mess wasn’t important, or a problem, but Will flinched so much that Derek took a step away.
“Talk about what?” Lardo asked, as she walked into the bathroom to check how bad it was. Water started running a second later.
“Dibs.”
“I’m giving them to Wicky.”
Derek shook his head, even though Lardo couldn’t see him. “That’s why we’re here. Ollie told me this morning. Ransom and Holster gave them their dibs in February.”
She came to stand in the doorway, clean-faced and looking confused. “Both of them?”
“Ch’yeah.”
“Those fucking— Ugh. So you’re here to fight over mine, then? Great.” She scowled, but when she sat down on the beanbag under her bed, she waved a hand at them vaguely. “Go on then. Make your pitches.”
Will spluttered and walked properly into the room. Derek followed, but while Will went over to the opposite wall, he stayed in the middle as if he were making a presentation. “I need this, Lards. Poindexter doesn’t even really want to live here, he just wants to pay less on rent. I need to be around the team. I— You know.” He was relieved to see the understanding in her eyes from over the laptop she had pulled towards herself. It had been a long time since he had dissociated in front of her, but they had talked about it more recently, and about how the quickest way to ground himself was to surround himself with people.
“What?!” Will demanded, his voice raising almost to a shout.
“Woah, Poindexter, chill,” Derek responded, automatically. Any reminder that it was supposed to give Will that he was allowed to channel his emotions in other forms than anger didn’t work. Will bristled at the word.
“Don’t fucking tell me to chill over this. What do you mean you need it?”
“You really think you’re the only person for who getting dibs goes further than just wanting to have less far to walk?”
“Yeah, but you can live anywhere on campus. Getting off the meal plan and paying Haus rent actually saves me—”
Derek flung his hands into the air, then settled them into folds across his chest. He had thought they were past this, by now. “Oh my God. Poindexter. You’re not the only guy at Samwell paying board and room—”
Lardo piped up, now, but it was only to say, “Hi Bits.” Derek turned to see Bitty standing in the doorway, an annoyed frown on his face. They must have interrupted him videoing.
“What on Earth are they bickering about?”
It was as if Will was kick-started into motion. He was lunging across towards Bitty, pleading to him to get involved. Derek reached out to grab him around the waist, talking over him. He got an elbow to the face for his efforts, and the only part of Will he could reach, short of shoving him away, was his ear.
Then, Lardo was in between them, pushing them apart. “They’re arguing about my dibs,” she said. Derek was pretty sure he had never heard her so furious. As she explained the situation, Derek tried to catch Will’s eye. He wasn’t expecting such a sour glare when he managed it. He tried to put all his pain and desire for reconciliation into one look, but Will’s lip curled in anger, and Derek couldn’t take it any longer.
“It’s not that you don’t deserve dibs, Dex, but I was banking on you getting the attic—”
“You were banking ?”
All of Derek’s guilt disappeared without a trace. This was getting ridiculous.
“Enough,” Lardo said. “Full team lottery. Only fair.”
Derek bristled. The fair thing would be for them to share. The fair thing would be for Will to calm down and stop overreacting.
“Sorry, but how does Nursey deserve dibs?”
The fair thing would be for Will to stop being a terrible boyfriend. Emotions bubbled up inside him, but Derek had to keep himself in the room. Emotions meant stress, and stress meant losing himself. His eyes flickered around the room. Five things he could see: Will’s hair, Will’s shirt, the bathroom door (now closed), blank canvases, Will’s scowl. Four things he could feel: his jumper, soft against his fingers, the stiffness of new shoes, not yet broken in, a tension in his shoulders, slowly relaxing as he focused on sense instead of the conversation, the anger rolling off Will. Three things he could hear: Lardo defending him, his own voice responding mechanically, Bitty talking. Two things he could smell: charcoals and the polish Will used for his shoes. One thing he could taste: blood. He should probably stop biting his tongue now.
“One flip,” Bitty said. “Will? Derek?”
“Huh,” Derek said. It was always a little strange to be pulled back to ground, and back into a conversation he had only subconsciously taken anything away from. “Poindexter.”
“Nurse,” Will replied, and held his hand out to shake.
Skin against skin helped, too, even if Will’s grip was a little firmer than sometimes, and both of them were shaking more than they would ever like to admit. This was good, though, Derek told himself. Let fate decide, and if he won then he would bring sharing up to Will later, when they were alone and had time to really talk. If Will won, perhaps he would still bring it up, or perhaps he would see if anyone else on the team wanted to share a double with him in dorms next year.
The coin rolled across the floor, and straight into a crack in the floorboards, wedged upright. Derek felt a rush of relief run through him. He didn’t need to bring sharing up as a complicated topic to broach. There it was, right in front of them.
“Chill!” he said. He watched, unable to wipe the grin from his face, as Will crouched down to get a closer look. Of course, this would be torture to Will. A crack in the floorboards was something he would have to fix before they moved in, not to mention a coin never landing on either heads nor tails was the sort of thing that would frustrate him no end; he whose whole way of thinking was based on logic and staying inside the box and reasonable outcomes.
Demanding a re-flip, though, seemed a little extreme. Only now did Derek hear the real panic in Will’s voice, and he was quick to join him on the floor, one hand resting on his back, rubbing small circles, and the other closing around the bottle of Xanex in his pocket, which he had carried around with him ever since he first learned about Will’s panic attacks.
“Come on, Poindexter, it’s a pretty big room, and rent’s even lower this way,” he said, opening the bottle without even taking it out his pocket. It was hard to keep his voice even for Lardo and Bitty’s sake. When his words did nothing to placate Will, he tried chirping, as he slipped a pill into Will's hand. Then, Chowder was there and Derek jumped at the opportunity for distraction.
“We should totes have a frog night in celebration,” he suggested, and let Chowder pull him through into the next room. When Will didn’t follow, though, his smile fell. It felt as if all the energy had been taken away from him, and he collapsed onto Chowder’s bed.
“Nursey?”
“He doesn’t want to live with me. He— I think we might be over, C.”
His voice was hollow. Lying there, he could almost feel his concern draining away. Whatever Chowder said, Derek didn’t listen. He let his friend wrap his arms around him and settled into the hug. Five minutes later, he was asleep.
He woke up three hours later, feeling a little uncomfortable from sleeping in jeans, but surprisingly alert. Derek scratched at his wrist. His insomnia had been getting worse for a couple of weeks, now, and it was getting harder to ignore. Carefully, so as not to disturb Chowder, he climbed out of bed and slipped his shoes on. He went down the stairs as quietly as he could, and froze when he heard a door opening just as he reached the bottom step.
A moment later, there were the sounds of someone using the bathroom, and Derek let out a sigh. He hurried from the Haus and towards his own dorm. Hands shaking, he took a pill, and then another, and he washed them down with a bottle of flat coke. At random, he picked up one of the books he was supposed to be reading for class, and stared at the pages until the sleeping pill kicked in.
He woke the next morning to four sharp raps at the door. Will. With a groan he pulled himself up, and took a moment to sit and gain his bearings before he went to open the door.
“I can’t do this right now, Poindexter,” he said, straight away. There was no point beating about the bush or pretending he could bear to stand through a conversation about how they had to break up.
Will winced, but seemed undeterred. “We need to talk about how we’re going to live together.”
Derek felt anger bubble up inside him at the statement. “How? We lived together all of last year. We practically live together now, we just happen to still have our own space to go back to if one of us wants it, but usually I thought we were in love enough that it wasn’t necessary.”
“That was different,” Will said. He held a hand up when Derek opened his mouth to respond, to indicate that he had more to say. Derek scowled but he knew that communication was the thing they had always had to work hard at. “That was before us sharing a bed became something we might have to do in the Haus without anyone else in the Haus realizing what was going on. I don’t know how to live with you and not make it obvious to everyone else we live with how much I love you.”
“That's such bullshit. This wasn’t about us, or you would have cared more about what happened to me. You would have fucking listened when I tried to tell you I need this as much as you. You wouldn't have made a fucking list which said me having dibs but not you is somehow worse, and not only that but less likely than neither of us having dibs.”
His words were followed by silence. Derek expected Will to be annoyed that he had gone through his stuff, but Will didn’t even look surprised. He supposed he was less subtle than he had thought. “You know I have to make those. You know that's part of my therapy. ”
“You don't go to therapy.”
Will stepped back as if he had been slapped. “ You're the one who told me that I was better with Samwell counselors than nobody. Maybe if I'd got dibs last year, I'd have enough in the budget to see a psychiatrist. For now, I'm quite happy making my head lists and heart lists.”
Derek swallowed back a retort about how it wasn't his fault that Will didn’t get dibs last year. “Where was your heart list for this then?” It was Will's own term for them. He had told Derek once that his head lied to him. It was frustrating to him, as someone who had grown up believing that following your head was the logical thing to do, to admit that he couldn’t always do that. Intrusive thoughts stopped that from being feasible, and so while Derek had always teased him for having more logic in his so-called ‘heart lists’, calling them that was in part a reminder that he was allowed to act based on raw emotions, and that those (at least for Will) never lied.
“I don't file them. I keep them in my wallet.”
He chewed on his lip for a second, then abruptly left the room and came back almost immediately from his own dorm, wallet in hand. He flicked through a bunch of papers until he found the right one which he held out for Derek to read.
I get dibs, DN doesn’t - It will be relatively easy on our relationship for me, and easy on the finance. I'll have to see if Derek is okay, but he can stay over as much as he wants anyway.
I get attic, DN gets LD’s dibs (or v.v.) - We'll need to talk about how it will change our relationship but this would be the best outcome overall, because we'd both be there and paying less than dorms, but still have our own living space.
Neither of us get dibs - In terms of our relationship, this would be the best because of avoiding the difficulties of keeping it hidden from the team in a close living situation. It will be harder financially.
DN gets dibs, and I don’t - I'll have to rework my budget, and find someone I trust enough to share with.
We both get attic - We'll need to talk about how it will change our relationship, but it will be swawesome.
“So why the freak out?” Derek asked when Will had taken the list back.
“I was already freaking out over the thought of the attic being gone just like that. I was faking my breathing for like… the whole time.”
“You're an idiot.”
“I got in my head about it. I'm sorry. But then you said I didn't even want it and—” Whatever he had been about to say, he couldn’t get it out. He shook his head, eyes watering. It was probably a bad time for Derek to note how enviable it was that Will cried just as easily with an audience as without. Will hated it.
“I'm sorry. But I do— I mean the way you reacted, babe, it was as if you'd rather not live there than share with me, and in your own head or not… if having your space is so important to you, why would you want to live there? Money aside. Whereas I… Shit, Will, I don't know how to sleep without you half the time. And other times I can't get out of bed and I think if only this week wasn’t one where Will wanted his space. If only we were sharing still because it would be like last year then and he could sit with me and help me out the slump.”
Derek closed his eyes when Will’s hand cupped his cheek.
“Baby,” Will said, softly. “I can’t fix you. I wish that was how it works, and part of me’s still learning that, but you can’t— you can’t put it on me to get you out your slumps. I want to help you. I’ll do that any way I can, but you can’t— It’s not fair on me, you know? If you’re dependent on me like that.”
A whimper fell from Derek’s lips. He knew that it was something Will struggled with - the fact that fixing other people wasn’t as simple as diagnosing an oven’s problems. He knew that it was why he had stopped going to visit his grandparents, and that was why Derek being hungover in first year had led to him finding out that Will suffered from panic attacks. He leaned into the touch, and tried to explain a little better. “That’s why I just wanted to be in the Haus, though. There’d be four other people who can help me, too. I’m not looking for a fix. I know it doesn’t work like that.”
He felt Will’s lips brush against his forehead. “I just— Can you see why I’m worried? We want different things from this, and we’ve never figured out how to act around the team. I don’t think I can live with you without them working it out.”
“So tell them.”
Derek regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. Will went tense all over and drew away. When Derek opened his eyes again, Will was on the other side of the room.
“Don’t.”
“Will, please. It’s not going to be—”
“Don’t.”
“Everyone understood with Jack and Bitty. It doesn’t mean—”
“They can’t know.”
Derek huffed. “That’s your OCD talking.” He had figured out as much about eight months before, but he had been holding himself back from accusing Will as such. It had gone too far, now. The only way Will was ever going to open up to the team was by accepting that his reasoning for keeping it a secret was shaky at best.
Will glared at him, and a second later the door was slamming behind him. Derek swore, and followed. Will was in the corridor fumbling with his keys.
“I’m sorry. That was an asshole thing to say, and I know you’re mad at me, but I’m still mad at you for last night. I fucking get to be mad at you as well. It’s not just all about you. You’re not the only person here with mental health issues. You’re not the only person who wants to save money and I know that it’s different for you and that I have the privilege of saying that I just don’t want to sponge off my parents, but you made this all about you. You—” He swallowed, but he couldn’t find the venom to say what else was on his mind. He slumped back against the door frame, watching the way Will’s eyes darted across the beer-stained floor. “You are not fucking thinking of bleaching this floor while I’m telling you why I’m upset with you.”
“No!” Will’s eyes snapped up to his. “No, I won’t. I— I’m sorry. I was only thinking about myself and I know— Shit, it’s like the scholarship all over again, right? Maybe I couldn’t afford to lose it, but there was still a reason you wanted it and that doesn’t make you more selfish than me. Lardo would have given it to you. If I hadn’t made a fuss, you would have got dibs. And I know that’s a big deal to you and I—”
“You said I didn’t deserve them.”
Will bit his lip and nodded. “I was wrong. Okay? I didn’t know about all that stuff you’d done, but I still shouldn’t have questioned it, and when she said it, all I thought was that it wasn’t as much, and it wasn’t any harder than what I’d done but that— You shouldn’t have to work harder than anyone else to get the same recognition.”
“He listens,” Derek breathed. It wasn’t that he’d ever really doubted that Will was listening to him when they talked about issues like this, but rather that he was really hearing in such a way that he could understand what he had done wrong.
“What would fix this?”
It was growth that Will would ask such a question. A year ago he probably would have turned the issue into sorry, you can have full dibs and I’ll live somewhere else. That sudden turning the tables on the situation white guilt which Derek really didn’t want. “You saying that you want to share with me.”
Will nodded. “I do want to. I’m still not sure if it’s a good idea, though.”
“Will—”
“You can’t keep pressuring me to tell the team. Just because Jack did, doesn’t mean I have to.”
Derek sucked in a breath. “Okay.”
“But that’s not all. I’m worried about how much we argue still. I know half the time it’s not real, but this— Maybe we’re not good for each other. It took you a long time to be ready for a relationship with me, and now we’ve got it I’m tearing it apart. We can’t be sure that in the next two years we’re not going to have a really messy break-up.”
Derek leveled a look at him to try and remind him that they had talked about this before, and how Will’s insistence that eventually they were going to break up was the most likely thing to drive them towards a split. It was hard to be positive when someone was so focused on the potential negatives. Will stared back at him, stubbornly, though.
“If we break up when we’re living together, it will be messy. You can’t deny that.”
“So what are you saying? One of us forfeits dibs now while there’s still time to find someone to share with next year and apply for dorms? Except neither of us are going to want to forfeit dibs and whoever draws the short straw will end up begrudging the other.”
“I’m saying… I think we didn’t end up killing each other first semester of first year.”
Derek frowned. They hadn’t killed each other in the year and a half since then, either. Rooming together wasn’t the issue, he had thought: just rooming together in the Haus. First semester of first year, though. That was before they started dating.
“Wait—”
“Think about it. We don’t have to worry about the Haus finding out about something that isn’t happening any more. There won’t be any compromising situations for them to walk in on. We can both be there for each other as friends, without the added pressure of a relationship. It’ll be better like this.”
“You’re an idiot if you think we can be friends, nothing more, nothing less.”
Will shook his head. “I think we can do it. By August, we’ll be there. I’ll give you whatever space you need, okay? I’ll just see you at practice and duck out of any other team stuff so that you can still go and not have to see me. I’m sorry. But, I think in the end… Yeah.”
He slid his key into his door and disappeared, leaving Derek stood, stunned, in the corridor.