Chapter Text
Jon was so deeply, naively certain, that first year of university, that he was making things work.
They had met a coffee shop, their mutual favorite. Will had accidentally picked up Jon’s order and not realized until he’d started drinking it. They’d argued. Jon had ended up taking Will’s and liking it better than what he’d ordered. It was the sort of drivel he’d expect from a rom-com in the silent subtitled waiting room at his grandmother’s doctor’s office.
Will was tall, at least in comparison to Jon (though, to be fair, most men were). He had disastrous brown curls and warm brown eyes and a crooked smile. He wanted to go to medical school. He and Jon had no classes together. They studied together anyway. He held the door for Jon, and rubbed his shoulders when they ached from hunching over a desk too long, and brought an extra scarf for him come wintertime. Jon, meanwhile, kept finding more ridiculous ways to carry his belongings, leaving his hands full and conveniently kept forgetting his scarf – and so what if he was a little less careful with his posture during their shared study sessions? Will never seemed to mind. He was gentle. He was kind. He kissed Jon good night in the hallway outside his door so sweetly it made his chest hurt. Jon did his coursework at all hours so they could spend evenings together, and worked desperately to keep him hidden from his grandmother.
As Jon understood it, they moved in together as a matter of convenience. Jon’s roommate from the fall semester had elected to move in with his girlfriend, and Will’s roommate got himself kicked out of university with a spectacular combination of academic failure, illicit business dealings, and campus vandalism. Afterward, trying to defend himself to himself, Jon would try to remember – he was young. He’d been a quiet sort all his life, and kept to himself. He was wildly inexperienced and blinded by his own happiness. He hadn’t known to worry.
Looking back, Jon would later wonder if he’d have gone along with it, had he been able to read Will a little better. Would he have said yes? Would it have been worth it to him, aged seventeen, faced with the prospect of disappointing the first person he’d ever really trusted to love him?
Maybe. Probably.
But the fact of the matter was that he hadn’t known. Jon read Will’s thousand tiny facial expressions and posture shifts and tones of voice the same way he understood the rapid Bengali his grandmother spoke to him – he caught half of it at best, and tried to cover up the gaps in his knowledge with smiles and nods and noncommittal hums. He knew it annoyed people when he asked constantly for clarification, and he figured Will would tell him if he missed something important. When Will asked him, early on, how he felt about sex, and Jon had nervously and honestly replied that he wasn’t quite sure just yet, Will seemed to take it well. He also seemed not to mind later on, when Jon said he still wasn’t sure if he was ready, or when he would be. “We won’t worry about that for now, then, yeah?” he said, and kissed Jon’s nose. Jon believed him. He didn’t worry about it.
This meant that he was caught thoroughly off-guard by the argument when it happened.
Here is how it went: Jon came home from an exhausting two-hour exam, shed his coat and his worry at the door, padded to the tiny kitchenette in his socks, and collapsed gratefully into Will’s waiting arms. They swayed together for a moment, Jon letting him take his full weight as he buried his face in the soft cable knit of his jumper. Eventually Will guided them a few meters across the flat to the sofa and collapsed back, pulling Jon fully into his lap. He cupped Jon’s face in both hands and smiled at him like he was the most precious thing in the world. That was always nice. He took Jon’s glasses off. He rubbed a thumb over the bridge of Jon’s nose, massaging the red marks on either side, then leaned in to kiss him. That was delightful.
Then things – well, they escalated, in a way that made Jon pull back and decide he’d had enough, at least for now. He laid one more kiss on Will’s chin, right where it dimpled, then grabbed his glasses and said something about making a grocery run before it got too late.
Later, Jon wouldn’t remember much of what happened next. He would remember Will being upset, and saying something about Jon leading him on. He would remember there being something about Jon needing to be honest with him about whether he was ready to commit. He would remember Will saying he felt taken advantage of. He would remember stammering apologies, and focusing his eyes on the a threadbare patch of couch cushion behind Will’s shoulder, his heart fast and face numb in shock, trying very hard not to cry.
Will, to his credit, apologized quickly and sincerely. They hashed it out, like good boyfriends ought to do, and tried their best to find a way forward. The damage had been done, though, and the home they shared never quite felt the same way again. Jon, having been blindsided once and not wanting to be again, could no longer stop himself from reading intent into every glance, every touch, every gesture, and Will seemed to grow more frustrated and resigned every day. Their conversations grew shorter. Jon stopped crawling into Will’s bed to snuggle. By the time Jon thought he might have figured out the words to explain himself, there was a neatly folded note on his desk from Will explaining why they needed to go their separate ways.
Their paths crossed again, of course, through mutual friends and favorite places, and Will behaved irreproachably. Jon gathered that he was never spoken of unkindly, or blamed for their disastrous end. He didn’t need to hear it from Will, though – on quiet nights when he allowed himself to mull over the events of their relationship, Jon knew, quietly and shamefully, that he had been the one to break the rules of engagement. Maybe he’d been silly to think he could get away with it for so long.
He refused to let himself feel badly towards Will, who had been nothing but kind to him, and swore he’d do better the next time around.
Well. If anyone else would ever be willing to put up with him.