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Will comes out to his parents on a Saturday and leaves on a Sunday.
He had thought at first that his parents were… not okay with it, exactly, but not the worst, because his dad had gotten quiet and his mom had gotten teary-eyed but they hadn't… said anything, exactly. But then the next morning, early in the morning, his dad had woken him up and said that he was upsetting his mother and that they didn't want him to come back until he's figured himself out. And so he packs the rest of his stuff up and shoves it in the back of his truck and drives away.
And the thing is, the horrible thing, is that he was expecting this. Not that anybody really expects their parents to kick them out, but he had been planning for it for a couple years, working when he could, buying a car, getting that scholarship. He was being responsible, his parents thought, and he was. Just as a precaution against them.
And they weren't even the sort of God hates fags homophobes. More the “Ellen would be better if she just found herself a man to straighten her out” homophobes. It's never been a thing they've talked about a lot, but they made it pretty clear that gay people were someone else's problem, and they didn't want them to be theirs.
But anyway, he leaves on Sunday and drives down to Massachusetts and just sort of… lives out of his car for a few days until orientation. He gets a job at a car garage but it won't actually start until the week after orientation so he just has to skate by until his scholarship kicks in and he can eat in the food court and live in the dorm. Though he can't even actually go skate, because he can't afford to go to public skate right now and has to wait until he had access to Faber through hockey.
When Will meets Derek Nurse, his first thought is, I guess I'm going doubly to hell for this one.
--
Nursey is lecturing Will on privilege, and Will is shouting, “Have you ever thought that it's a goddamn privilege to have enough money to worry about this shit,” and he's so, so tired.
--
When someone asks him his holiday plans he makes vague noises about how expensive travel is and goes to the accommodations office and says, my parents kicked me out and I need to stay here. He's not the first one, he thinks, when they let him stay
1 in 4.
That break is spent alone and tired, working what hours the garage can give him and teetering just on that edge of a full depressive episode. He stays on the right side, mostly, and skating takes care of the rest.
Bitty is one of the first ones back, from the team, and he looks wild-eyed and just a little bit on edge, on the wrong side of a different line, and he skates like he's trying to escape something.
Will skates like he's trying to find something, sometimes, so he can't really judge.
--
When Nursey comes out, Will can't help but think, I will never be that fucking brave, black and bisexual and able to smile about it while Will is one bad grade away from the rest of his life spent living out of his car and working in a garage and too fucking afraid to tell the only people he knows wouldn't judge him.
And then Nursey gets in his face, just drunk enough to start down the road towards belligerence, and demands, “Do you have a problem with that?”
And Will stares at him and says, “Wow,” and then, “wow,” and then he turns and walks of the room, windpipe burning in his chest.
--
See, the thing is that Will know he has some fucked up shit in his head, that sometimes he's surprised at how smart Nursey is in a way that has more to do with how black Nursey is than how smart he is, that he's more likely to listen to a guy than a girl, that he flinches a little bit whenever Shitty mentions boys having vaginas.
But mostly, he just wants to stop being fucking lectured about privilege by a guy whose family has a vacation home in Paris when Will's going to college in the first place relied on this scholarship no matter his relationship with his parents.
And he gets that it sucks to be black in America, and he gets that he'll never really get it, and he's working on it. He just wishes they'd stop looking at him like he's about to say the n word when he asks to stop fucking being lectured on microaggressions because he has to go study for an exam that's worth 40% of his fucking grade.
They.
Nursey.
Fuck.
--
At a party Nursey is dancing with some guy, and someone gets out fag nig - before Will decks them in the face. He's so furious he literally can't get any words out of his mouth, not even when Bitty is ushering him away towards the kitchen of a place that isn't even theirs, not even when Nursey is looking at him.
Bitty presses a wet paper towel to his knuckles, more sober than he usually is at parties like this, squinting at Will’s hand like he’s expecting it to be broken or something, even though Will’s known how to throw a punch since he was seven or so.
“I’m not sure what you were thinking,” Bitty is saying. “You’ll be lucky if you’re not suspended from the team. Punching someone, Dex, really.”
“I’ll try to keep you from being suspended,” Jack says, coming up behind him. He looks like he’s thinking of putting a hand on Will’s shoulder, but something on Will’s face makes him reconsider it. Will isn’t sure what his face is doing. “I heard what the guy said, what he was saying.”
“What--”
“I’m not going to repeat it, and you don’t need to hear it.” Jack moves to stand behind Bitty, hovering protectively, and even through that buzz of rage, Will has just enough brain cells to think, huh, maybe the rumors were true. “You mind if I speak to Dex alone for a minute?”
Bitty looks at Will, then at Jack, then back at Will, and then he says, “Sure, sweetheart.”
Jack waits until Bitty is gone from the room before saying, “I appreciate you defending a teammate, but you can’t get away with violence off the ice. There’s a level of violence we internalize--”
“I’m a fag too,” Will says, and he sounds like he’s choking on something. Behind that, though, behind the rage, his mind is suddenly very very clear. “I did it for Nursey, but I did it because I’m gay too.”
Jack goes very very still, and then he asks, “Are you out to anybody? Other than me, I mean.”
“My parents,” he says, and he wants to leave, to leave this party, to be somewhere cold and quiet where he can scream until his voice cuts out and he can’t scream anymore. “I’ll try not to hit anyone else.”
“I’ll talk to the coaches if it becomes an issue,” Jack tells him. “Maybe go get some air, take a breather. Don’t get drunk tonight.”
Will nods. He swallows. The rage is fading a little into something aching and hot in the center of his chest. “Please don’t…”
“I won’t out you. It’s none of anyone’s business.” Jack claps him on the shoulder on his way out of the kitchen. “Don’t do it again, but I’m proud of you.”
A noise comes out of Will’s throat, and he curls up a little on himself. He’s tired now, and angry, and hurting, and scared. He hurts.
--
“What the fuck?” Nursey demands, and Will is angry, sharply and instantly, drawing himself up to be as big as he can. “I don’t need you to defend my fucking honor.”
“You’re welcome,” WIll snaps.
“I’m serious,” Nursey says, and Will genuinely, truly does not understand why Nursey is so angry about this, but at the moment he also doesn’t really give a fuck about the why. “I know that white boys can get away with this shit, but you can’t go around punching people and then claiming it was for me.”
Will never said that, he never said that to anyone, he never talked about what happened with anyone other than Jack, and he has to ball his hands into fists to keep from doing something stupid. He has a temper, he knows he has a temper, but he’s not violent in the way Nursey and everyone else seems to think he is, arbitrarily randomly violent.
“Fine, then,” he grits out when he has himself a little more under control. “Next time I’ll just let him call you--” He can’t say the word, doesn’t even what to think it.
“Call me what, Dex?”
“You know what?” Will pushes away from the table and stands. “Fuck you, Nursey.” And then he walks away, and Nursey doesn’t say anything behind him.
--
That summer is spent living in a room in the back of the garage, on a cheap mattress that sits flat on the concrete floor, and it’s Massachusetts but it’s fucking hot all the fucking time, and when he’s microwaving soup from a can in the garage’s grimy microwave all he can think is, this can’t fucking be the rest of my life or I’ll lose my fucking mind.
Lying on his bed staring at the off-gray ceiling, he can’t help but think, being gay isn’t worth this.
The garage owner is a lifesaver, though, a middle-aged man who came from Guatemala and knows more about cars than anyone Will has ever met before. Sometimes they even get exotic cars, the ones that are usually worked on by specialists, because Mateo knows how to fix those, too.
But more than that, he looks at Will and says, “I don’t know why you won’t go home, but I don’t turn kids out. It isn’t much, but it’s better than you sleeping in that truck of yours again.” He reaches out and ruffles Will’s hair. “You stay in school, mijo, but if you can’t, you make a good mechanic.”
“You sure it’s okay if I stay here?” Will asks, because he doesn’t want to spend the summer sleeping in his car, but he also doesn’t want to be a burden on people. He already feels like he’s taking too much, sometimes, but he tries to work his way through whatever he can. He’ll pay for himself.
“Don’t go bragging about the housing in the back of my garage, but I can give you a couple months of a shitty cot and a shower that barely works.”
--
Things are flowing.
Will passes, and Nursey is there, turning with sharp edges and soft hands as he shoots, and Will is grinning, adrenaline pounding through him even though it’s just a practice, because that was brilliant, that was perfect, and they’re on .
“‘Sawesome,” Nursey says, bumping him, and Will knocks shoulders with him, laughing. “A few more times, and we’ll be good.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourselves,” Jack says, skating past them, but he’s smiling too, a little, or at least his face is vaguely happy-shaped in the way only Jack’s can get. “But nice job.”
Will’s smile grows, and he feels like he’s going to float away, because he’s back on the ice, and he hasn’t lost his touch despite barely being able to practice over the summer, and there’s something about being on the ice playing hockey with his team that just feels--
“Pointedexter.”
Will stops on a turn, skating over to where Coach is standing near the entrance to the rink. “What’s up?”
“There’s someone here for you--he says he’s your brother.”
Something freezes in Will’s chest, and his feet almost go out from under him. “Who--”
“His ID says John Pintedexter.” Coach frowns at him. “You okay? I can tell him to go away if you want. I wouldn’t have interrupted you at all, but he seemed like it was urgent.”
Will hasn’t seen John in years--he had been deployed in Seoul for almost nine months when Will was kicked out--and he can’t imagine what John is doing here now. “No, I’ll go--is it okay if I miss practice for this? He’s been deployed overseas, and I--”
“Yeah, of course. He’s just outside” Will steps off of the ice, and Coach claps him on the shoulder. “Let me know if something’s wrong or if you need anything.”
Will rushes through pulling off his skates, grabbing them by the laces with one hand after he shoves his feet in sneakers. He’s already gross and sweating, but he doesn’t want to take the time to shower. He can’t shake the feeling that, if he takes too long, John is going to disappear.
But John is there, hands jammed in his pockets as he stands in the entry hall of Faber, and he looks up when Will walks out. “Liam.”
Will can’t help rolling his eyes, because John is the only one who calls him Liam anymore, and he’s never been able to get him to stop no matter how much he’s complained that it’s a kid’s name. “Hey.” He stops a few feet from John, wanting to stick his hands in his pockets too but needing to hold on to his skates. “What’s, um. What are you doing here? What’s up?”
“What’s up is that I got home on leave and you weren’t there, and Jason said you hadn’t been back the entire summer or last Christmas, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t talk about you at all, and I have another week of leave so I’m here to find out what the hell is going on.”
Will doesn’t know what he was expecting, for his parents to out him or for his siblings to not notice that he was never home--or for them to be glad he was gone, once his parents explained why--but he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that they never mentioned it. If they don’t want him to admit it, they wouldn’t want to admit it to anyone else.
But John used to make jokes, just like his parents did, just like they all did, and Will wants few things less than to see the look on John’s face that he saw on his parents’, disgust and incredulity mixed in with that little bit of fear, like they think they’ll be infected if they get too close, like they think that gayness is something that rubs off on you.
“I don’t--”
“If you’re in trouble,” John says, and takes a step towards him, and Will takes a startled stop back. Something uncomfortable shifts in John’s expression, and he stops, his hands open at his sides. “If you’re in trouble, I can help you. Whatever it is. Just tell me what’s going on.”
Will swallows and thinks, if I’m going to hell at least I won’t be alone, and then he says, “I’m gay.”
John freezes.
Somehow that makes it easier to keep talking, because he can just get it all out and then he won’t have to do this again, it’ll be out there and he won’t have to keep wondering, and if it’s bad it’ll only be bad once, like pulling off a bandaid all in one go. “I’m gay and Mom and Dad kicked me out and told me not to come back until I’ve figured myself out, except I have figured myself out, I’ve figured out that I’m gay, and that’s just not what they want from me.”
“Oh, fuck,” John breathes.
“Yeah,” Will says, and his voice is louder now, he’s almost shouting, and some distant part of him hopes nobody comes out to see what’s going on. “So that’s it, and you can go back home now, and tell everyone else so I don’t have to bother, because I’m never going back there.”
“No, that’s--” John starts heading towards him again, and when Will steps back this time John just keeps coming until he’s close enough to hit Will, but he doesn’t, he reaches out and pulls Will into a hug, and Will thinks that this is the first real hug he’s had since he left home. “Fuck. I’m not going to--fuck, Will. That’s so fucked up, that Mom and Dad did that.”
Will doesn’t know what’s going on, so he pulls away, skates banging the side of his leg. “What are you talking about?”
“What do you mean, what am I talking about?” John steps back just enough to look at him, and he looks confused and hurt and not the angry that Will was expecting, or the disgusted. “You can’t think--”
“I remember you making jokes about that kid in your class, the one who came out. Talking about how you didn’t want him in the locker room with you in gym class, how you thought he was blowing the teacher for good grades.” Will had been fourteen, just realizing that he was more into Tony Arnetti’s ass than Lisa Arnetti’s, and he had stared at himself in the mirror and thought, I can’t ever be this thing, and if I have to be, they can’t ever know.
John scrapes a hand across his mouth, eyes wide. “I didn’t--I was wrong, Liam. I was wrong, and I’m sorry, and I’m sorry you had to hear me saying things like that. I’m sorry I didn’t know that it would hurt you.”
Feeling wrong-footed and confused, chest aching, Will looks away. “Mom and Dad--”
“Are wrong, too.” John sighs. “My best friend in the Army is bi, and I have to admit it bothered me a little at first, but I met his boyfriend over Skype, and they’re...they’re so in love, and if you could have that, if you could have someone who looks at you the way they look at each other, why is that worse than--than what Mom and Dad have, or what Molly has with Steven. And Mom and Dad, kicking you out over--over that, I don’t know what they were thinking, but I’m so angry, and I’m so sorry, Liam, for all of it.”
“It’s not your fault,” Will mumbles.
“I sure as hell didn’t help.” John hesitates, and when Will looks back up at him, he looks torn. “Liam, where did you sleep over the summer? Where did you live?”
“The garage where I work as a mechanic,” Will says, and that’s when the door behind him opens and Nursey spills out, and Will blurts out, “Oh, fuck.”
Nursey still has his skates on, with hard guards on, and he frowns at Will before asking, “Is everything okay out here?”
“It’s fine,” Will says, but Nursey is still walking towards them, frowning at him. “What?”
“Did you say you lived in a garage over the summer?”
“I, um.” Shit, Will never intended for Nursey to know this, never intended for any of them to know this. It’s his mess, it doesn’t need to be anyone else’s. “Look, don’t worry about it. Go back to be practice, I’ll be there later.”
“I’m not going to--” Nursey’s frown deepens, and then he glances at John and says, “Right, we can talk about this later.”
Will’s chest flares with panic, because later means with everyone , but Nursey is already stomping back towards the rink, and there’s not a fuckton Will can do to stop him from making this a thing.
“He one of your teammates?” John asks.
“Nursey,” Will says, then clarifies, “his name is Nursey. He’s, um. We live together at the Haus, the--it’s like a frat house where most of us live, on the hockey team.”
John eyes him, then smiles a little and asks, “Do you like him?”
Will feels his face heat up, and he has to look away before he can get out, “Most of the time, we hate each other. Or he hates me, at least.”
“He didn’t look like he hated you.”
Will shrugs. “Yeah, well, hockey’s different. We’re not--I’m not out to him, or any of them. Other than our captain, but that was an accident. And guys like Nursey end up with, you know, Ivy League types, guys who are lawyers or politicians or whatever, someone who goes on ski trips and goes, you know, vacationing or some shit. Not fuckups who have to work in a garage to pay for books and shit.”
John’s staring at him, and Will is about to demand to know what’s going on with him now when John says, “I don’t make a lot, but if you need money--”
“I’m not taking your money,” WIll tells him. “You’re going to find a wife someday, have kids, and I want them to be able to go to college. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine if you’re living in the back of some garage.”
“It’s better than my car.” Before John can think about that too much, Will continues, “Look, I appreciate it, I do, but just...you know, call or something, if you can. Or email. I don’t have a good phone plan, but I can Skype. And maybe come back, if you can? I can’t go back--Mom and Dad won’t let me back in, and I won’t--I’d like to see you again. If that’s, um.” Will feels a little like he’s going to cry, his face hot and his sinuses burning. “You know.”
“Yeah, of course.” John pulls him into another hug. “I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch with you before. I just assumed--but I was wrong, and that was my fuckup. And I’ll tell Molly and Jason to email you, too, and screw Mom and Dad if they get mad.”
Will shakes his head, pulling away a little. “I don’t want anyone else to get in trouble.”
“You’re our brother. You’re family, and that doesn’t change just because you’re gay.” John reaches out and ruffles Will’s hair, laughing when Will bats his hand away. “And besides, you’re my little brother. I don’t have to listen to what you say.”
“Dick,” Will says, and John laughs again.
--
They wait until everyone is back at the Haus, and then Bitty is the one who brings it up, calling them to order with seven pies that seem to have appeared out of thin air sometime between him getting back and now.
People sprawl around the main room, inhabiting various couches and chairs--and the occasional spot of floor--but Will stays standing, arms crossed as he leans against the wall. He’ll be here, but he’s not going to sit down and have them talk to him like this is some sort of intervention.
“Honey,” Bitty says once he’s done distributing pie, “Nursey said that you, uh, spent the summer living in the garage you work at.”
Will wants to tell him to fuck off, but it’s Bitty so he can’t, which is, he’s sure, why Bitty was chosen to start this. So Will just says, “Yeah. Mateo has a back room he let me stay in.”
“Why didn’t you go home?” Nursey cuts in, and Will sees Jack watching him and thinks, he knows. He may not know , but he knows.
And there’s no point in keeping this a fucking secret, not anymore, not now that John knows and the rest of his siblings are about to, if they don’t already, and Bitty’s out and so is Nursey and everyone is fine with both of them. So he says, “My parents kicked me out for being a fag.”
Bitty flinches, looking down at his hands, and most of them stare at him with wide eyes, and Chowder breathes, “Bro.”
And then Nursey asks, “Why didn’t you tell us?” and Will gets mad.
“Why didn’t I tell you? Why didn’t I tell you which part? The part where I’m gay or the part where that’s such a problem for my parents that they decided they didn’t want me anymore? And was all of that supposed to come before or after you asked me if I had a problem with you being bi? Which I don’t, by the way, because I’m not the raging homophobe you seem to think I am, thank you very fucking much, but what I am is sick of you assuming things about me.”
He’s shouting now, and he doesn’t want to be shouting, he doesn’t want to be saying any of this, but he can’t make himself stop. “I get that it sucks to be black, and I’m sorry about that, but it fucking sucks to be me, too, and I don’t need you trying to make me out to be something worse than what I am. I have my parents for that already. So yes, I spent the summer living in Mateo’s garage, and I’ll probably spend next summer living there too, and the summer after that, and then I’ll graduate and who the fuck knows where I’ll be, but maybe I’ll even manage to live in some shitty apartment if someone will hire the kid who won’t have had a permanent address in four years. But hey, great intervention guys. I’ll really start turn my life around now.”
And with that, he turns and walks out of the Haus, and keeps walking, because if he stays for one more minute he’ll say something he really regrets.
--
Jack’s the one they send after him, who finds him sitting on a bench at Faber feeling numb and hollowed-out inside. All of the anger is gone now, and most of what he’s left with is hurt, and regret, and exhaustion.
“Did they pick you, or did you volunteer?”
“Both,” Jack says, sitting down next to him. Will doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t want to, doesn’t think he can. “Are you okay?”
Will sighs. “Yeah.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I think I already did enough of that.”
“That was more screaming than talking,” Jack says wryly. “Look, I’m not going to make you. But I also want to let you know that there are a lot of places for you to spend the summer that aren’t the back of a garage, and Bitty’s already planning on how to kidnap you to make sure you have somewhere to stay.”
“I need the work,” Will says, and he feels like he should feel ashamed of that, somehow, but he doesn’t, because it’s honest work, hard work, and he’s done it all on his own.
“There’s a rink near my parents they’d be happy to let you coach at.”
Will looks up at that. “I don’t need--”
“You do, and that’s okay.” Jack looks down at his hands. “You know about my OD.”
It’s not quite a question, but Will nods anyway.
“I spent the nine months before it hiding a relationship with Kent Parson. I thought--I don’t know what I thought, exactly. I didn’t think my parents would kick me out, but...there’s this feeling, you know. That you could lose everything, if it comes out. If you come out. And then I nearly lost everything anyway, because I was trying to do it on my own and couldn’t. And I was lucky, because I survived, and because my parents didn’t care that I’m bi, and because I have the financial security to be able to do what I need and want to do.”
“I’m not--”
“Just--let me finish.” Jack lets out a shaky breath. He still hasn’t looked up at Will. “My parents do it quietly, but they help kids in your situation, kids who’ve lost their home or their parents or their family because they’re gay or bi or trans, because I could have been one of those kids, had things gone differently. I should have gotten you in contact with them earlier, because I had my suspicions, after you came out to me, but I didn’t want to...overstep. I want to call them tonight, but I’ll only do it with your permission.”
“I don’t need--” Will swallows. “I don’t need your charity.”
“Trying to do things alone almost killed me,” Jack says, and now he looks up, and his eyes are shining like there are tears in them, and Will has never seen his captain cry. “It did kill me. And I don’t think you’re going to kill yourself, but that shouldn’t be what it takes to keep you from going it alone. You shouldn’t have to wait until it’s a life-or-death situation before getting help.”
Will wants to say no, because he doesn’t need rich families throwing their money at him out of guilt or anything else, but looking at Jack’s face right now, what comes out is, “I’ll think about it.”
--
Nursey finds him when he’s on the ice, just skating around and around on ice chewed up by public skate that just ended, and when he joins in next to him at a steady clip, Will can’t find it in himself to get mad.
He doesn’t want to be mad, anymore.
“I’m trying to be better,” Will says finally, when Nursey doesn’t say anything. “But it’s hard to want to, when you’re always going to assume I’m going to be the worst possible version of what I could be.”
“There are things that happen when you’re black--”
“And there are things that happen when you’re poor, and I’m not pretending they’re the same thing, because they’re not, but you can’t act as though the privileges that I have are the only ones that exist. It pissed me off, someone who never had to worry about money telling me about the things that made their life shitty, and I didn’t want to listen. And maybe that’s on me, but it’s not a hundred percent on me. I’ve got my own shit to worry about, and I can’t always carry yours, and maybe that makes me a bad person, but either way it’s the truth. So I’m trying to be better, but I’m never going to be as good as you want me to be. Okay?”
“Okay,” Nursey says, and then he breaks off towards the other end of the rink, shouting, “Last one to the end is on Chowder Watch,” and Will races after him, swearing and laughing and shouting back.