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The walls of Will’s childhood bedroom hadn’t been so oppressive when he was small. The navy back then had felt like the night sky, comforting in its expanding perpetuity. Now, in the dim yellow lamplight, the navy turned grey around the edges and he felt crammed somewhere he didn’t belong.
It was strange, staying with his parents as an adult. In the years since he’d moved out, he’d forgot what it was like to hear his dad’s heavy tread down the hall, his mam’s muffled voice calling him into the kitchen for supper. The same living room was a little smaller and a little more cluttered than he’d remembered, but the spotless tan carpet was the same one he’d driven firetrucks across when he was five and the same one he’d spread out class projects on when he was fifteen.
This sense of reverting to childhood didn’t help the way Will’s head had been spinning since James’ show that night. The post-concert high was a familiar feeling to Will, the adrenaline in his veins and bass in his heart nudging him towards pure giddiness.
So the heightened emotions after the concert were to blame for his anxiety, hoping his parents liked the show, liked James. His delirium was to blame for the way he recalled James’s gaze spearing him like a lance every time he looked at him while performing. And the pride bubbling up in him at every new realization of all James had accomplished could be chalked up to the bottle of beer he’d had on the way to the venue.
His insides were a mess, was the long and short of it, so Will was grateful that his parents’ early bedtime afforded him a couple hours of solitary decompression time before he himself dropped off to sleep.
Freshly showered and propped up in bed, he’d opened Instagram, intending for a leisurely scroll before sleeping.
Of course, James didn’t allow that to happen.
Will knew the high after attending a show.
He also knew the high after a performance.
The same heady, champagne bubbles of elation, feeling on top of the world, untouchable.
It had to be that which prompted James’s stupid, insane Instagram caption.
the love of my life
Will’s chest got all tight and panicky, and he read the words again and again as if they would change. He burned them into his cornea, then watched their negative blink on his ceiling.
James had said he was dedicating the song to Will. Then he’d said he was dedicating it to Will’s parents. Love of his life. Well, he’d not said loves of his life, plural, so it wasn’t Will’s parents that were the love of his life. Will recalled James had said he loved Newcastle—was that his love? But that hadn’t been in the video, so it would be stupid if that were the intent behind the caption.
James had really fucking done it this time—spun Will all around until he couldn’t tell which way was up. James kept blurring the lines. How was Will meant to know what to believe?
Before Will could think (and if he had, he wouldn’t have done it), he was ringing James.
“Jimbo,” Will said by way of greeting, “what the fuck is that caption?”
James’s chuckle, gentle like the flap of a butterfly's wings, almost knocked Will dead, even now, a scant few hours after having seen him. “Hello to you too.” His voice was always a little deeper over the phone, weightier. Will swallowed harshly.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes, Will. It’s midnight, I’m in bed. I don’t have a groupie in here with me.”
Obviously he didn’t, Will just didn't know if he’d gone out for post-show scran or if he’d been lounging in a bandmate’s hotel room, glorying in their success or whatever the fuck a fucking rockstar did after a show.
Will swiped over to Instagram and stared at the post, as if he could have forgotten those five words that had made his insides all topsy-turvy.
“‘The love of my life’? There’s leaning in and then there’s a bloody love confession. You know what the blue-haired lot are like.”
“I didn’t @ you. It could mean anything.”
That it could mean anything was the problem. But, now that Will could breathe again, an uncomfortable truth—or a too-comfortable one, perhaps—was settling itself firmly in his skull.
“It doesn’t just mean anything, though, does it.”
“What does it mean to you?”
Will sighed, raking his hand through his hair. He should have known James would turn this around on him. He’d always been rather good at that.
What everything meant to him—the dedication in his hometown, the caption, James accepting his call even when he was surely exhausted—it was a powerful something that Will refused to name. In naming it, he would give it power over him which he couldn’t trust himself to withstand.
That something was the electricity in their touch that James might not feel. The conviction that Will would give his life for James without a moment’s thought. The sense of abject unworthiness to be associated with someone so impressive as the man he’d built his life alongside.
Will had convinced himself that James had so much more about him. As much as James did for Will, it was hard to feel special when James loved so many people so easily, so deeply. James kept himself busy, his life a carousel of friends and partners, while Will, alone in his flat on a weekend night, couldn’t go two hours without thinking of James.
And if that wasn’t a sad fucking thought.
James controlled Will’s heartbeat. Quite literally, nearly, because Will didn’t think he would be still walking this Earth if it weren’t for James.
“You’re stuck in me head. Like a song lyric that won’t leave.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good thing,” James remarked easily, non-confrontationally.
Will hesitated, fiddling with the duvet, which lay warm and heavy over his hips. He dropped his head back against the headboard; it made an audible bang. He hoped the sound didn’t carry over the phone. “It’s comforting, like,” he began.
He had more to say, words a formless feeling rising in his gut. James never failed to intuit Will’s needs and had a ridiculous comfort with silence, so he allowed Will a moment to put words to his thoughts.
“It’s like you’re always with me. Even when you abandon me to fly halfway across the world. I’m still imagining what you’d say, thinking of you every time I take a photo, wishing you were there so I could have a decent fucking conversation.”
The line was deathly silent, and then Will heard a measured inhale. “We’re even, then,” James murmured. “Because I’ve got you imprinted in my skin.”
Will nearly dropped his phone.
He recalled when James had tweeted the photo of his Otto tattoo with the caption “always with me on tour now.” Yeah, yeah, cute. But his eyes had been immediately drawn to the hot coffee cup next to the cat. About a hundred questions flew through his mind (chief among them: whose fucking coffee was that? Not James’, he got all sensory about hot coffee). But, as usual, Will pussied out of saying anything.
When he next saw James, they didn’t do their usual routine where Will noticed the bald patch and grabbed James’ arm to see what he’d got and James pretended he didn’t want to show him.
No, this time, James had presented it to Will. Held out his arm, and Will had swiped his fingers over the healed ink, just over Otto’s paws and the mug, and looked up at James who had an earnestness in his expression that made Will’s chest tighten, so he’d dropped James’s arm and muttered some shite about how it was a nice tattoo, proper meaningful, and James just went, “Yeah, it is,” still looking at Will.
Will gripped his phone more tightly and, with all the courage he could muster, asked, “How long do we do this? How long do we keep pretending it’s a joke as we edge the line closer and closer?”
There was a long pause. “Closer to what, Will?”
Will shut his eyes and thanked fuck for the distance between them. “Closer to what we really want.”
There was a beat, during which Will’s heart physically stopped.
“You said it first.” There was a smile in James’s voice. “I didn’t think you’d have the nerve.”
Will grinned foolishly into the night. “You said it first, man! I mean, really—love of your life?”
“Performing, I meant!”
“Of course you did. Bastard,” Will huffed. Ready to move past the jokes that kept him trapped on unstable ground, he said, “I’ve done the heavy lifting here. What do you…what do you want from me?”
“Whatever you’ll give,” James said immediately. “But, listen. I believe that, in all the universe, you’re the person who I was meant to meet. Whatever happens, please stay.”
There was a soft shuffle over the phone, like James was changing position. Will pictured him, hair all messy, wearing a soft vest, phone in hand resting on the pillow, talking to Will even after such a draining day.
He was still here. Will clutched his phone to his chest and smiled so hard it hurt. Could this really be the same bedroom in which he’d cried about his first heartbreak? He was rewriting the history of his walls.
“That astrology shite is nonsense and you know it,” Will managed. “But there is no world where you exist and I’m not with you. I’m not going anywhere.”
James chuckled lightly, but with a tenderness that made Will know James had heard him. “Sometimes you need to throw a love confession into the void.”
“You’ve thrown several, as I recall.”
“Someone didn’t want to commit.”
“Someone wouldn’t be fucking straightforward about it.”
“I’ll be straightforward as fuck now that you—now that we’re talking about it.”
“Yeah?” Will breathed. He couldn’t help but feel a little guilty, thinking back to all the times he’d shut down James when he’d tried to deepen their conversation. The times he’d allowed fear to overcome him, the times he’d kept his mouth shut when a word could have changed everything.
Through it all, though, James was still beside him. And he’d never stopped loving Will, easily and openly, in any form.
James said, “If I’ve loved anyone, I’ve loved you. When I see you, you’re getting a hug that will break your ribs. And a fat smooch if you’re lucky. No comments on ‘fat’!”
Will shut his eyes, imagining. His muscles yearned to wrap around James, squeezing him back just as tight.
“If you didn’t have your bastard tour responsibilities, I’d sneak out like I was sixteen and a badass and come to meet you.”
“What would we do?” James’s voice had a lilt to it that could have been a tease.
Will smiled. “Talk. And if you were nice—which you wouldn’t be—I’d tell you every time I’ve wanted you.”
“I’m always nice,” James said, the lying prick.
“James.”
“Will.”
Will’s hand felt sweaty against the aluminium of his phone. He chewed his lip, then burst out, “I think I might agree with your caption. Thank you. For everything. For being here, for waiting for me, for making me better.”
“Always,” James said, voice uncharacteristically tender. “Shit, mate, my phone’s nearly dead and Kiwi’s got my charger.”
“Oh.” A keen disappointment flooded Will.
“I’ll see you soon enough. Will, because of you, I’ll wake up happy tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, and every day. Sleep well, mate.”
“Ni—”
The line cut off, and the silence weighed heavier. Will clutched his phone to his chest as if that could bring James close to him. James’s voice was no longer in his ear, but he was still in Will’s heart and mind. And the walls had turned once more into outer space, because Will was spinning in infinitude.
Keeping secrets had always come easily to Will, but he took one look at his mam the next morning, wearing her Mrs. Claus apron in November, arranging a full English on a plate for him, and it all came spilling out over breakfast.
“You know my mate James?” It was an idiotic question; the two of them had met the night prior. James had apologized for all the “your mum” jokes he’d made over the years, but Will’s mam was unfazed, patting James’s arm all motherly-like and then talking the whole drive home about how nice he was.
“How could I forget! Lovely fella. You know, the way he looks at you, I can tell he loves you.”
The expression on her face was one intimate to Will, because he’d seen it on his own face a dozen times in videos. A cheeky sort of look, fond around the edges. In this context, it looked like she knew just what the events of last night’s show had meant to the two of them.
Will flushed at the thought of her knowing, but she’d made his job far easier. “He does, yeah.” His mam watched patiently, hands wrapped around her coffee. “I—” Will’s heart raced. “I love him too.” He darted a look at her. Her expression hadn’t changed, hadn’t twisted in anger, no shadow of sadness crossing it.
She reached a hand out, holding his own, and Will felt ten again.
“I can tell, darling. I’ve never seen you so happy as last night, watching him sing.“
“Mam—”
“He’s welcome here any time. Your dad and I adore him. Bring him to Christmas. Your sister’s bringing Elliott. We’re just thrilled you visited, your dad and I, and that you got us those tickets. And over the moon, really, to have met your friend—boyfriend? Partner? I don’t know what you lot call it these days.”
“We don’t know either,” Will smiled.
“Hold him close. He’s a keeper.”
“Don’t think I could get rid of him if I tried.”
His mam pulled him up and hugged him, and although he was nearly a foot taller than her, he melted in her embrace. He almost gasped with the relief of being known.
When Will and James next met, it wasn’t with a run across the platform, a spinning hug, an earth-shattering kiss. They didn’t have a giddy date night with candles and hands held under the tablecloth. Nor did they fall into bed together, hands clumsy, giggling all the while.
No, Will Ubered to James’s front doorstep and rang the bell enough times to be annoying, and James tugged him in with his usual thinly-veiled fondness until they were sitting on the sofa.
And they talked, and talked, and talked. About everything that Will had kept tamped down, about all that James had held back. About what they had been and could be and would be.
Until James drew the curtains against the blackness of night, and sat down closer to Will, the heat of his skin beckoning Will closer. And the energy shifted, James’s hand lifting to Will’s cheek.
The final line, what they both wanted: a love, requited. And they welcomed it wholeheartedly.