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Will starts the morning with an early workout.
He doesn’t mean to, exactly. Or at least he doesn’t mean to be doing it at the crack of dawn. He makes his way over to the gym at Faber after waking up much earlier than his alarm is scheduled to go off, and staring at the bottom of the top bunk for what feels like an hour or maybe more. He tries, in earnest, to get back to sleep several times. He rolls over onto his stomach, pulls the covers over his head, even cuddles his stuffed lobster.
But it’s no use, because he can hear Nursey, in the top bunk, nothing more than the sound of his steady sleep-breathing as he rests above him. Will has grown accustomed to this sound, has turned it into one of the many white noises of his life that bleed into each other— the Haus furnace in the basement, intermittent cars passing on the road outside, the occasional late-night movement by Chowder or Bitty in the hallway, Nursey breathing. He doesn’t snore, exactly, but the sound isn’t far off.
It drove him crazy at first, but today, laying under his bunk on the last morning of junior year, Will realizes he’s going to miss it.
He doesn’t know what will happen with their rooming situation next year. They haven’t talked about it, and he’s not sure he wants to, lest they fall back into the argumentative, bitter state from the end of fall semester this year. They’ve healed this spring, grown back from what fell apart when Will built his basement hideaway. He’s slept more in this room this semester than he has downstairs.
He never thought he’d admit this, but he prefers Nursey’s company to that of the faulty basement appliances.
The point is. He gets up early. He has to get used to the waking up early thing, anyway, because when he drives home to Maine today, his summer routine begins, and that means mornings up to run at five, shower at six, make breakfast at six-thirty, and get on Uncle Tommy’s boat to chase the sunrise east all before the rest of the sleepy little island even wakes up.
He should be savoring his last real chance to sleep in until August. But he’s done on the treadmill in Faber before he even registers that fact.
When he gets back to the Haus, it’s quiet in a heavy way, a way that intensifies the ache in his stomach at the fact that the school year is really, truly over. He and Nursey— he and Derek— are the only ones left in the Haus. Chowder had to get on an airport cab at three this morning to make his 6:00 flight from Boston to San Jose, and before that, yesterday, Bitty, Ollie, and Wicks all left right after their graduation ceremony. There were goodbyes and some tears and promises for alumni visits. They cleared the Haus; the newly dibbed brought in their boxes; Bitty dropped the keys into Dex’s hand.
And that was that. When he leaves today, he’ll lock up. He plans to be the first one back here in August.
He’ll… be a senior. He’s already a senior; Bitty is a graduate.
His stomach hurts.
When he’s finished with his post-run shower, he walks back into the room to find Derek zipping up his suitcase. It’s all that’s left of what he’ll bring home— like Will, he’s leaving most of his stuff here, because there’s no need to uproot your entire room when it’ll be your room next year, too. Derek’s parents were here right after his finals finished, to help him pack up his (extensive) wardrobe and a few other things he wanted for the summer.
Today, he’ll follow them home to New York, and he’ll be eight hours away from Will, and Will doesn’t want to think about that too hard but it’s tough not to when his suitcase is staring you right in the face.
“Hey, sexy Dexy.” Derek grins up at him, finishing the suitcase zipper job. “How was the shower?”
Will shrugs noncommittally and grabs a clean t-shirt from his small stack of remaining clothes. “Did the job.” He pauses. “I’ll wipe down the bathroom before I go.”
“Chill.” Derek glances at his watch, then lifts his backpack, which is at the floor by his feet, to hoist it over his shoulder. He’s wearing his trademark green hat, and has his sunglasses strapped onto it with a Samwell croakie, which is… something. “Thanks, man.”
Will sits at the edge of his bed while he pulls on a fresh pair of socks. He doesn’t expect Derek to take a seat next to him, but he does, backpack and all. He bumps their shoulders together, a wordless gesture Will leans into because he can.
He tries not to sound too invested in the answer to his question when he asks, “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah, baby!” Derek grins from ear to ear. “Wheels up in, like… three hours?”
“Wait…” Will squints at him. “You’re flying?”
Derek tips back on the bed, then counts on his fingers as he starts to explain. “A, I hate driving,” he says. “As an institution. B, my parents brought my car home when they were here on Friday. C…” He sits up again and shrugs. “JetBlue Airways and I have a special relationship.”
Will shakes his head, but he’s smiling, which he definitely wouldn’t have been doing for no reason while talking to Derek at this time a year ago. “You are so fucking weird.”
“Look… my dad has sky miles, okay?” Derek pulls his phone out of his pocket. “And the flight is, like, two seconds long, so.”
“Is it Logan or Providence?”
“Logan.”
Will considers this. If he doesn’t have a car, then… how is he getting to Boston? “Do you need a ride?”
“Nah.” Derek switches through the apps on his phone, then Will sees him open Uber. “I’ll just Uber over.”
He watches him go through the app, punch in the location of the airport, and scroll through different ride options. The quiet that hangs in the air between them isn’t awkward, but something compels Will to make an offer his emotional turmoil might regret later.
“Nursey, that’s stupid,” Will says. “Let me give you a ride.”
“What? No.” Derek grins like this is ridiculous. “You’ve gotta get on the road, bro. You’ve gotta drive, like, ten hours.”
“It’s only four and a half,” Will replies, then nudges him. “Seriously. Dude. Why would you pay for an Uber when I’m literally right here and have a car?”
“Because why would you subject yourself to driving through Boston when you don’t even have to go through there to get home?”
Will takes his phone from him, closes out the Uber app, and sleeps the display. Derek starts to protest, then drops his hands into his laps, nods like he’s accepting his fate, and says, “Okay. I’ll ride with you.”
“Thank you.” Will places his phone neatly back into his hands, and does not think about the subtle ways their fingers brush as he does so. “That’s much more sensible.”
*
Something has changed between them.
It’s something small. He and Derek are still very much themselves , still the yin to each other’s yang; Derek is chill and bravado where Will is tension and mechanism. But something has clicked, and Derek is… just the smallest bit gentler with him; there’s a newfound tenderness that wasn’t there before. Will knows why. Six days ago, he spilled his biggest secret to Derek in their room, the culmination of a panic attack and an emotional comedown about finals and moving out and missing Derek before he was even gone all at once. Derek took it well, better than Will ever could have imagined him taking it.
And two nights before graduation, he did it again— in a frog-shaped pile on the floor of Chowder’s room, with his head tucked into Derek’s shoulder and his feet stretched across Chowder’s legs, hyper-focused on all the places he and Derek were touching, he said those same words, and his secret was out in two places. It lifted a weight off his shoulders— a small one, sure, but a weight all the same.
I’m proud of you , Derek had said to him, on Thursday night after he came out to Chowder, and Will had smiled.
Thanks. I’m proud of me too.
So something is different. But it’s a good different. It’s a different he hopes they can build on.
Derek is his best friend. In daydreams he know he can’t have in reality, he’s that and so much more. But in this world, in this life, he’s his best friend, and he drives him crazy, and he wouldn’t trade him for anyone else.
It’s not that they’re not them in this slightly altered state; they’re still, and always will be, Nursey and Dex. It’s just that he thinks they might also be learning how to be Derek and Will.
*
They lock up the Haus, and in the car, Derek asks him, “Are you gonna miss me?”
Will doesn’t say no, or even roll his eyes. With Samwell fading in the rearview mirror, he shrugs a little and chirps, “In some ways.”
“Wow!” Derek hollers in his passenger’s seat. It’s not the first time he’s ridden in Will’s pickup, and won’t be the last, but all at once as he looks over at him in the May morning’s sunlight he realizes that he really, really likes the way he looks there. He likes it so much, in fact, that he forgets he’s being chirped for a second. “Who are you and what’ve you done with William J Poindexter the second?”
Will puts his eyes back on the road, but he’s biting back a smile and he knows it and so does Derek. “It’s junior.”
“I can’t believe it, Dexy.” Derek puts a hand to his heart. “You’re gonna miss me.”
“Of course I am,” Will says, and it comes out way more vulnerable than he means or wants it to, but he doesn’t care. He came out to Derek six days ago, and that’s as vulnerable as it gets. “How will I survive without your daily poetry readings from the top bunk?”
“A, those were not daily,” Derek says, “and B, it was only when I really needed to work my thoughts out.” He leans his elbow out the open window. His curls are blowing, just a little, in the wind that comes through it. “But don’t even think I’m letting you get through the summer without talking to me.”
“Who says I don’t want to talk to you over the summer?”
He shrugs. “Just a precaution. I’ll have you know, there are quotas for Instagram memes and Skype calls.”
“Quotas, huh?”
“Fucking spreadsheets, dude.”
“You are not that organized.”
“Try me.”
When he looks over at him again, Derek is grinning. The sunlight glints off his shades, and he’s, fuck, he’s so beautiful. He always is.
“Anyway, just ‘cause we’re apart doesn’t mean we won’t talk,” Derek continues. “What are best friends for?”
Best friends .
Miss him. Of course he’s going to miss Derek. He misses him whenever they’re apart.
He’s been dreading this day, this separation with a summer stretched out between them, and even though his stomachache lingers, Derek’s presence in the car is enough to at least postpone the inevitable Feeling Like Shit that’s going to come when their year together is truly over. Derek is going home to New York, and Will will be in Maine, and that’s an awful lot of distance between two people who, when you get down to it, are nothing alike, and are only best friends because of some Samwell Hockey freak of nature that pushed them together, and who probably won’t stay in touch after graduation, even if one of them is in love with the other and won’t say it because he can’t figure out how to tell Derek that he feels so much for him when he has no idea if any of it is even vaguely reciprocated—
Will takes a long breath. He signals to get on the highway. It’ll take them about forty minutes to get to the airport in Boston, and then another four and a half for him to make his way back to Bar Harbor.
All by himself.
“When does your thing start?” he asks Derek, which is just spectacular wordsmanship, but luckily Derek knows what he means.
“What, the internship?” he asks. Will nods. “Next Monday.”
“Are you looking forward to it?” He knows the answer to this question, and maybe it’s a stupid question for that reason, but in this moment, he’ll do anything to cling to conversation with Derek, in person, in his truck, here with him.
“Ch’yeah,” Derek says, right on schedule. “But I’m kind of scared of the publishing people, to be honest.”
Derek’s summer internship is at some famous publishing house in New York. It’s exactly the kind of thing Will could see him doing after graduation. The day he got his acceptance, back in March, he whooped and hollered at the Haus ceiling, scored a goal at their home game that night, and made Will do a celebratory toast with him at the kegster afterwards.
“Scared?” Will echoes. “Derek Nurse isn’t scared of anything.”
Derek chuckles. “He’s scared of senior editors who worked on his favorite books of all time.”
“That’s cool, though,” Will says. “It means you’re working with the big guys.”
“Yeah.” Maybe there is anxiety in his voice. “Exactly.”
Quiet falls. Will wonders if he should pry, then decides it’s a good topic to text about, when he’s back home fishing for reasons to reach out to him.
Is this really what he’s come to? Planning out text conversations with Derek Malik Nurse in his head?
He drums his fingers on the wheel.
“What about you?” Derek asks, after a moment. “You getting back on the boat?”
Will nods. He can already smell the saltwater. “All day, every day.”
“Fuck yeah. That’s the grind.” Derek fist-bumps him, but because he gives no warning, it’s more of him nudging Will’s hand as it rests on the gear shift. “You can work on your tan.”
Will snorts. “More like work on my burn.”
“Take care of your skin, Will.” His stomach flutters at his own damn name. Derek has been calling him Will since the coming-out conversation. He’s decided he likes it. A lot. More than he should. “Put some aloe on that shit.”
“I try,” he insists. “It’s the Irish.”
“Yeah.” Derek is grinning at him, for some reason. “Luck of the Irish. You leprechaun.”
Will laughs. He lets up on the gas, like that’ll change the finite number of miles ahead of them.
*
When the hazy skyline of Boston creeps up at the freeway’s edge, Derek leans back in his seat and remarks, almost reverently, “I think we had a good year.”
Will glances at him and furrows his brow a little. “What, the team?” Which, of course they did. Winning Frozen Four is pretty much the definition of ‘having a good year’. They went out on the highest note you possibly can.
“No.” Derek laughs, and then commits a cardinal sin by saying, “Lol,” out loud. Will is about to unleash the powers of chirping hell on him when he puts his hand down on his, on the gear shift, and all falls silent. When Derek speaks, it’s back to that sincere, retrospective tone. “You and me.”
Will swallows. He thinks his face is a lot redder, all of a sudden. “Oh.”
Derek is touching his hand.
He’s taking it, actually. He laces their fingers together and squeezes, then smiles. “We survived rooming, y’know? And we’re… we’re good. You and me. We’re doing good. And I’m happy for that. I’m grateful for it.”
Will’s heart is pounding with the feel of Derek’s hand in his own, and it’s not the first time he’s held it, and Derek is a touchy-feely person, but the weight of his words combined with the smile on his face and the way is touch is so gentle, it’s— it’s a lot. Will tries squeezing back. Derek’s smile widens.
“You’re right,” he says, over his internal screaming. “I’m happy too.”
Mercifully, Derek lets go of his hand, but then, when his grip on him is gone, he’s cold and he wants it back. He wonders what it would be to hold his hand for the rest of the ride to Logan, and he almost reaches out to take it, almost tries to see for himself.
Then he doesn’t. He wraps his fingers around the gear shift again.
“Thank you,” he blurts.
Derek tips back in his seat. “For what?”
He tries to gather his thoughts, takes a long breath. “For… being so good about me coming out. I… I really needed a friend, and you’ve been really good to me. So thank you. Seriously.”
“Hey, you don’t have to thank me, Will,” Derek says, and there’s his name again; God, he’s definitely blushing. He loves him more than he’d ever care to admit at this point a year ago, a month ago, a week ago. He hates that he’ll probably never know if it’s one-sided, because he’ll never be brave enough to take steps toward finding out. “I’m here for you, okay?” Derek says. “Anytime, anyplace. And I’m grateful you trusted me with that truth about yourself. I know coming out isn’t easy.” He pauses. “But I’d do anything for you, dude. So you don’t have to thank me. Ever.”
Will exhales. He’s only shaking a little. His stomach is a sea of butterflies.
“Thank you. Thank you anyway.”
*
Logan Airport is a mob scene.
But then again, it always is. Will pulls onto the curb in the JetBlue terminal loading zone, and when he puts the truck in park, a surge of finality passes through him, and he doesn’t want Derek to leave but he knows he can’t stay either.
“I’ll get your bag,” he tells him.
“Wow,” he hears Derek say, as he walks around to the bed of the truck, where they stuck Derek’s suitcase with Will’s few remaining things to bring home. “Chivalry is alive and well, and his name is Will Poindexter.”
Will rolls his eyes. Fully. Smilingly.
He lifts Derek’s suitcase— it’s not heavy— over the side of the bed, then plunks it down on the sidewalk next to where Derek has gotten out of the passenger’s seat.
Will looks up at him, meets his eyes. “Well,” he says. “Security awaits.”
And for two airport seconds, they’re quiet.
Then Derek steps forward. “Bring it in.”
They meet in the middle, and when they hug, Will wraps his arms around his waist and buries his face in his shoulder. Derek smells like coconut oil and beechwood soap and lavender, and he tries to inhale that smell and memorize it, so he won’t forget it over the next three months spent apart. Derek squeezes him so tightly that he thinks for a second he might not let go, and that he’d be okay with that. It’s the longest hug they’ve ever shared.
He swallows. He’s not going to cry. Why would he cry? It’s just Derek. It’s just an airport goodbye, on a beautiful summer day.
He’ll see him in August.
“Okay,” Will says, half for himself and half for Derek, as they pull away. “You should get going.”
“Yeah, I should.” Derek pauses, smiles with a fond softness Will isn’t sure he’s ever seen before, and says, “Have a safe drive up, okay?”
“I will.” He smiles back. He can’t believe he’s smiling at him. Not smirking. Not chuckling. Smiling. “I—”
And holy shit, holy shit . He has to catch himself. He nearly let something slip that had no business being said between two best friends about to part for the summer.
“Fly safe,” he manages to get out.
Derek pulls up the handle on his suitcase, pulls his backpack over one shoulder, and tips his green hat at him. “Aye-aye, captain.”
Will laughs a little and nods. Derek starts up the curb, rolling his suitcase, off to join the stream of travelers headed to all ends of the globe.
New York isn’t that far away.
“Derek?”
He watches him look over his shoulder. They’re about five feet apart, but it feels like a mile already.
He takes a breath. “Will you text me when you land?”
Derek grins. “‘Course I will.”
Will watches him fade into the crowd at the terminal.
And then he gets in his truck to brave the drive home.
*
Sunday, 10:02 AM
You changed contact info for “Nursey”
Contact name changed
New contact name: “Derek”
*
Sunday, 1:32 PM
Text Message
Derek: hey.
Derek: touched down at jfk safe and sound.
Derek: :)