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Will's waiting at the corner store.
He always waits for Bill. His class gets out earlier; he's in AP Organic Chemistry and he has a free period towards the end of the day, which he uses relentlessly because he's a honors student and fuck you very much his GPA is fantastic with or without his presence being required, Ms Colman, end of discussion. Bill gets out later—either he's in detention, or he's busy tutoring someone, or he's busy catching up on work.
(It's kind of crazy how much Bill's juggling. Class, friends and multiple evenings spent in detention because somehow, between the two of them, Bill wound up the troublemaker; Will mouths off but Bill has always had the bite to back up his bark.)
So Will saunters into the corner store, buys himself a popsicle stick, and saunters back out with his backpack slung over one shoulder and the stick melting in his hand. His wrists are sticky, but Will doesn't care, props himself up against the worn red brick and licks it off, eyes half-lidded against the burning afternoon sun, sheltering in the meagre shade the building offers. The sidewalk sizzles like water on the surface of a pan, and the air is so muggy he can see the trees visibly wilting from across the road, but it's always been his favorite season.
Bill hates summer. Says he likes winter, which makes sense, because Bill runs warm like a fucking oven. Every year they share a bed, Bill complains that Will is the blanket hog, which he is so maybe he can't argue that, but Will wouldn't need to if Bill wasn't such a fucking horrible kid to cuddle, all bony limbs and squirmy and kicking him in his sleep; because Bill runs like he's burning food for heat. And he does, probably, because Bill is always fucking hungry. Sometimes Will's had to resort to giving him his lunches when they're trying to make $54.50 stretch across a whole week.
It's not that often but often enough that Will has to worry about Bill going through another growth spurt, even at 17; can that happen? Puberty says no. Will tells puberty where it can shove it, because they're six-foot and Bill seems to get bigger and bulkier by the day. Jay is much the same (that one makes sense. He's fourteen. Kid's growing.)
He wipes his spit-wet wrist on his trackies. Sanitary? No. Does he care? Also no. Everyone's sweating and exhausted in oppressive July, and hardly anyone gives him a look because it's goddamn Canaryville, there's more concerning things to worry about.
Like making a meagre check stretch for two weeks, or feeding the dogs, or the way that the A.C doesn't work sometimes, or the fact that the doors—all of them—squeak. All the buildings are old. Will knows exactly which doors in his house make noise, because that kind of knowledge you don't forget, same way you can't forget which way is up and what kind of sandwiches your brothers like or your twin's face in the mirror.
There's a man walking down the road who makes eye contact with Will, for a second, and looks away quickly. He's carrying two brown bags at his sides, full of groceries, and Will briefly wonders where he's going, if he's going home to a family, if he has a wife and kids he needs to put bread on the dinner table for.
He thinks about the cold sandwiches he'd packed for Bill and Jay this morning, the staleness of the bread, the emptiness of the fridge. Jay'd sighed when he realized it was baloney for the seventh day in a row. Will'd given the last of the lettuce to Bill.
His own stomach growls at him.
The popsicle stick is all but gone now. He chucks the stick in the bin nearby. There's footsteps winding around the corner—the distinctive scrape of sneaker against pavement, that half-gait he knows all too well. Will doesn't even turn around because who the hell else would it be? He looks up, across the street, and the man is gone.
"Hey."
"Hey," Will replies instinctually, and then hears Bill drop his backpack somewhere behind him. When he turns around, Bill's leaning against the worn brick and lighting a cigarette. The click of the lighter momentarily stops Will dead in his tracks.
"Where'd you get that?"
"Katie. She's quitting."
"So she's giving you her—"
"Yes, Will," Bill says, almost tiredly. He closes his eyes, and then opens one of them, just to look at Will through his lashes. His voice pitches slightly, like when he's trying not to be upset but he is, because he knows— "I know you don't like her, but man, relax."
"I'm relaxed."
Bill snorts. He takes a deep, long drag. His throat flexes, and Will follows the movement with his eyes. "You're never relaxed," he tells Will. And maybe that's true.
When they were very young, when they were identical down to the bone and marrow, it was only Jay who always seemed to be able to pick out the subtle differences—the pitch of Will's voice slightly higher, the way Bill held his pencils differently to Will. Not even Pop could do that—back when he was sober and spent most of his evenings at home; but then again, he didn't care all that much.
"Those things will give you cancer," Will mutters. "I keep telling you."
"So will all the junk you keep eating," Bill says. "Not much better, bud."
Will rolls his eyes, sidling up to his side, shoulder to shoulder with Bill. Not close enough to touch, but definitely close enough to feel the heat of his skin, the thin tank he's wearing not helping whatsoever with dissipating the heat. Sweat rolls off him, turning his skin clammy and sticky, and he smells a little like how all teenage boys do: musky and kind of sour and gross. It should be gross but it isn't, because Will has known Bill all his life, kind of like how you knew the back of your hand, and it's kind of hard to find anything gross when you patched up their scrapes and picked out the broken glass from their back, fed them, clothed them. Even if Bill's technically the oldest.
By two minutes, Will used to protest.
"By the way," Bill says, casual as ever—"Jay's at the Martens' tonight, I just walked him there. He'll be staying over."
"And he has—"
"His inhaler and a snack and a book, yeah."
"The Martens—"
"Have both our cell numbers," Bill nods, leaning his head against the worn brick—red on red—and taking a long, deep drag. "And also Viola's cell just in case. And Jay's allergies sheet."
Trust Bill to always be prepared. "Okay. Pop's out, too."
"He's at the factory?"
"Yeah. Just us tonight, I think."
"Good," Bill mutters. The bitterness in his voice isn't lost on Will, but Will doesn't say anything. Can't. "Just us tonight, then. I'll cook—it's your turn to do the dishes."
As if Bill doesn't help with the dishes every time it's Will's turn, as if Will's not going to be in the kitchen anyway when he cooks. Will squints at him, but wisely drops it.
He finds his gaze drawn to the cigarette.
It looks so— so delicate in Bill's hands.
Bill, sensing the question at the tip of his tongue, pulls the cig between his lips—end glowing a cherry red, like the cloth a matador might dangle in front of a bull—and offers it to him between slim, bruised fingers. "Want to try?"
Will takes a tentative sniff. It kind of smells—"Minty?"
"Katie smokes menthols."
"Figures."
"What would you know about—"
Okay, that's not an argument he wants to rehash, like, ever. Will plucks the stem of the thing from his hands, cutting Bill off midsentence. He doesn't smoke but he knows Bill does, because his fingernails are always yellow and the smell of smoke follows him like a bad lover, even when Bill's stopped trying to hide it from him. (The fact that he used to hide it at all baffles Will. Bill has things he doesn't tell Will—both of them do—but at this point, keeping secrets is an exercise in willful ignorance when you're sharing a fold-out mattress, man, come on. Will would have caught on to the way that Bill's hiding lighters under the dirty laundry. In his backpack, in his pockets.)
"If I try it, will you stop asking me to make nice with Katie?" Will says, dangling the thing off his fingertips. He's tempted to just drop it and crush it underneath his heel, but Bill's looking at him with one lazily-raised eyebrow and a look of faint surprise and Will—for a second—gets possessed by the urge to just—
"I mean," Bill says. "I still don't know why you don't like her, you've already met."
And yeah, maybe it's stupid and irrational and Will himself wouldn't be able to fucking explain it to you, because Katie Howitzer is truly the nicest girl in their grade, and she carries herself with the fuckin' elegance of a princess who wears hand-me-down clothes because it's Canaryville and her mom works nine-to-twelves, just like Pop. Even though Will gets it. Will does—because she's just like him. She packs Bill little snacks to go in her flowery, beat-up lunchbox, even though she's down to her last dollar and walks him to the diner so they can listen to Nirvana on the jukebox, just like Will's mom used to do when she was alive. Even though they can't afford anything off the menu. And maybe Will is crazy for that, because he should want the best for his brother—as best as he can get, he guesses—but maybe it's because he hasn't seen Bill around much lately.
Separation anxiety, Will thinks for a flash of a second, and then he sidesteps the entire question to put the cig to his lips and take a big, deep lungful.
And then he promptly starts coughing.
Bill starts laughing. He takes the cig from between Will's limp fingers, thumping him gently on the back—"Wow, okay, that bad?"
"What the fuck," Will wheezes. "You put that in your body?"
"It's nice," Bill offers. "Relaxing. Thought you could use it."
Will coughs, and coughs, and coughs some more. His lungs burn. "That's horrible," he tells Bill, who's still smiling, faintly amused, and Will suddenly wants to take another drag, with the way his hands itch. He motions for Bill to hand it back over. "Let me have another."
"What, and have to carry your corpse home?"
"When I die," Will tells him primly, "It won't be to a damn cig. Let me have another one or I'll tell Jay about that time you snuck out on Christmas eve to—"
"Okay, okay, Jesus," Bill gives in, as Will thought he would.
Sometimes he's just that predictable. Then again, it's Bill.
Will takes the white stem and puts the thing between his lips, and holds the smoke in his mouth—mint flooding across his tongue, the taste of ash and Bill's dollar store chapstick. He holds it in his mouth and savors it properly, this time, before inhaling; slower, so he doesn't fucking choke and die. A plume of faint smoke wisps out of his mouth when he pulls away, dissipating into the air like a heatwave-induced hallucination.
"Very nice," Bill says. "Blow a ring next, it'll make you cooler."
"You're not cool either."
"I beg to differ."
Will sticks his popsicle-red tongue out at Bill. Takes a shorter, smaller puff, and then hands the cig back to him. "It's not nice to lie," he tells him.
"Not lying if it's true," Bill says, easily, mindlessly. It's almost second nature to them—bickering over the dishes, over Jay's math homework, passing quips between them on the sidewalk as they kick rocks on the way home. Bill takes a puff—the glow between his fingers flaring as he takes a breath, sighing as his shoulders lose some more of their tension. Will follows the movement, tracing invisible lines in the air around him, the way the sidewalk shimmers when Bill moves. It's almost unfair, Will thinks, because Bill's right. Something in the air had shifted between the ages of sixteen and seventeen for Bill. Because Bill had grown bigger, bulkier, and even if he looked the exact same as Will—even if he was still the exact same height as him—Bill was different, now.
He wasn't cool by any stretch of the word. It'd be a disservice to describe him like that. No, this was something else.
"You're so full of shit," Will tells him.
"Maybe."
It really was truly like looking in a mirror, sometimes. Will looks down. Studies his beat-up, ragged sneakers, Bill's unlaced and ratty Converse next to them. The small stitches Bill had sewn into the side of Will's pants, when he'd torn a rip in the cuff. (Bill hadn't known how to sew. But he'd learned. Same way they did everything else: learning as they went, because who would teach them?)
Bill offers him another puff. And despite everything, despite his numerous lectures and everything Will stands for—he finds himself taking the cig from Bill's fingers, passing it back and forth between them in comfortable silence.
The sun's starting to set. Will closes his eyes. Feels the smoke settle calmly in his veins. Something about the moment felt thick; like something important was just beyond Will's grasp, like this was something he should keep and capture forever in amber, preserved in the confines of his mind.
Soon, they'll have to make their way back home, because Pop gets home at one in the morning and if they haven't cleaned the house before then all hell will break loose. And Will still has to do the laundry, and Bill's gotta mow the yard, and they still have homework to do—but for now, he lets himself have this.
In the end, it's Bill who breaks the silence. "Hey." He's shifting, foot to foot. "So."
"So?"
"I gotta ask you something."
Will studies him.
And then he realizes that Bill's nervous.
Maybe to someone else, they wouldn't have seen it. Not Will. Will sees that face in the mirror every morning, when he gets up to brush his teeth; when he turns over in the middle of the night and—okay, Bill carries his face differently, of course, but Will's always known him like the back of his fucking hand. Literally. Because they have the same goddamn hand.
Maybe it's because Will's appraising him with fresh eyes, but Bill's never nervous, not with Will.
He really hasn't hung out with Bill one-on-one in a while. And then he finds—just for a second—that he doesn't want to hear whatever Bill wants to say. He wants to go back, preserve the moment, the scorching Chicago sun beating down on them and the dusk settling in the air and the heatwaves simmering off the goddamn pavement, and the fucking smoke curling in the space between Bill's mouth and the cigarette, and the nicotine to sink its claws into him as if it could make whatever bomb Bill's about to drop on him less heavy.
Stay like this. Don't say it, he tells Bill in his mind. Once upon a time they used to be borderline telepathic. If Bill was looking, he'd see it.
Bill's not, though. He's just gazing at Will expectantly, cigarette dangling limply in his hand.
Will schools his face into something resembling calm, feeling the hot brick press into his shoulder like a brand when he turns to face Bill properly. Bill blows smoke into Will's face and Will doesn't splutter, just inhales it with nary a complaint. "What's the question," Will asks. "If it's whether you think I believe in Jay's ability to not blow up the kitchen if we make him try learning how to cook for himself then I have some bad new—"
"It's not about Jay," Bill exhales. He's steeling himself for something.
Will—for a lack of anything better to do, takes the cig from his hands, takes a puff and drops it beneath his heel. Stomps on it—snuffing out that smoldering butt, never looking away from Bill the entire time. Bill almost looks like he's about to protest, but a glance from Will silences him.
"I just," says Bill, on one sweltering summer in July, so hot that Will's busy trying to blink sweat out of his goddamn eyelashes when he's trying to maintain eye contact with arguably the most important person in his life who just won't spit it out, whatever's making him look like that, looking at Will like that. "Katie wants to go to Michigan after school ends."
"Oh," Will blinks. That had, truly, not been on the list of things he'd expected. "And that's relevant how?"
"Will," Bill says, like he's not getting it. "I'm going with her. After."
For a second, Will thinks he's misheard. "What?"
"I'm moving out."
"To—Michigan?"
"Yes. To university. I got my acceptance letter."
"When was this?" How, why, when, where. The questions start bubbling at his throat but get stuck and can't leave because Will is also busy trying to remember how to breathe. He is, frankly, pretty sure he would have noticed if Bill had managed to receive a fucking university letter from under his nose. They share a room. A bed.
The shock of it settles on him like a blanket of snow in goddamn July, freezing him still, ice to his very bones. Suddenly he can't feel the sweat dripping down his forehead or the way his shirt sticks to him anymore; minor inconveniences in the scheme of things, because all Will feels is cold.
Bill kicks at a rock near his shoe. It's funny, Will thinks. He can still see the hesitance in his movements, even when Bill is ostensibly telling him something he's made his mind up about. "About a month ago," he tells Will, quietly, as if admitting to sticking his hand in the cookie jar or punching a hole in the wall or slashing the tires of Will's first (and ex) boyfriend's car. Sheepish, like he was afraid to get caught, apologizing for the damage done but not sorry for having done it in the first place.
Maybe Bill should have struck him instead. It'd probably feel better.
"You kept this from me," he says, feeling like everything'd been sunk underwater, "for a month?"
"I was trying to figure out how to bring it up," Bill says, contrite.
Will stares at the red brick behind Bill's head, tracing the same cracks over and over without seeing. "Does Jay know?"
"No." I was hoping you would tell him goes unsaid. Whenever there were bad news in their household—money's getting tight again, Jay, no more comic books until next Saturday, or the food bank is closed 'till Tuesday or Pop broke a bunch of shit on his last bender and we can't afford to replace the faucet—it was always Will who sat Jay down and broke the news to him. Maybe it was out of favor to Bill. Maybe it was because Will didn't want Bill to have to sit down and watch as that quiet look spread over Jay's face, inevitably, because half the time it wasn't anything Bill or Will could do anything about. They've spent lifetimes trying to keep the ugliness of their lives away from Jay—who really did deserve to grow up without two neurotic kids raising him in the stead of a drunk who put holes in their walls and wrapped his truck around trees—but sometimes it still bled through. Chicago wasn't kind to three kids who was barely making it; no need to add to Jay's plate when he needed to focus on more important things. Like kid shit.
He doesn't need to know, Bill'd half-grunted at Will, when Will was busy looking up how to reset a dislocated shoulder when they were fifteen and fumbling in the dark because the alternative was going to the ER and Bill'd rather put it back himself. Biting his fist because the pain was agonizing, even when Will apologized quietly under his breath and pressed a cold towel to the motley of bruises covering Bill's back and shoulder, afterward. Don't tell him. Please, man.
Part of it was because Bill didn't want to make things—what, harder? But part of it was also about not shattering the illusion. Between them, Jay's always put Bill on a pedestal.
After all, what did the kid know about his big brother who always put on a brave face for him even though he was busy fighting their dad at night? Wrangling their raging drunk of a father so he'd cause less damage, like a matador out to wrestle bulls back into their pens?
And it was always Will who was left cleaning up the mess. Sorry Jay, Bill's too tired to play catch tonight, maybe tomorrow.
And now Bill's trying to get Will to play the bad guy again, to sit their kid brother down and explain to him that his big brother won't be around anymore because he's run off with his fucking girlfriend, yeah, to another state, yeah no he won't be home for dinner, it'll just be you and me, Jay. Forever.
They were three peas in a pod, Will thinks above the rushing patter-patter of his pulse, somewhere in the cavernous hollow of his ribs, Jay-Bill-and-Pop. Too alike.
"You're telling him," is what Will finally settles on, once he wrangles his tongue back in his mouth. "I can't believe you're fucking leaving."
"I have to," Bill says. He gestures around them—to the dripping, dilapidated buildings, sagging underneath the heat. The empty, dusty streets. The twilight beginning to fall around them. "This—all this—don't you ever get tired, Will?"
"Sure I do," Will snaps, shock tipping over into icy rage. He knows what Bill's saying. He does. All those nights spent awake and hushed conversations—
("Where would you go, if you had the choice?" Will tightened the bandage around Bill's thigh, grimacing as Bill hissed.
"Fuck," Bill muttered, and then straightened his leg out. He held his hand out for the ice pack, which Will handed to him. He pressed it to his bruised, swollen face. "What?"
"If you could go anywhere, where would you go? Anywhere in the world."
He had to think about it. Will could see the cogs turning in his brain, even through the pained scrunch of his face when Will eased the jacket off him. "Probably somewhere cold," Bill huffed, as an afterthought.
"Really? We're in winter."
"Summer's too damn hot," Bill said, flinching when Will took out the tweezers and started work on his shoulder. The shoulder that had remnants of broken glass in it, because Bill's an idiot and kept throwing himself into fights for no discernable reason. "Maybe I'd go east. New York seems—ugh—nice."
"Don't be a Yank," Will advised, carefully squeezing a shard of glass out. "Hold on tight."
Bill took a deep breath, and steeled himself.)
("What about you," Bill asked, much later, when Will'd helped him lay down with that fucked-up leg of his. "Where'd you go?"
Will looked up from his work of folding Bill's bloodied letterman up for him. They'd do laundry in the morning when the house was quiet. "Wouldn't want to go anywhere," he said, with a practiced, familiar ease, the tone that always worked to soothe Jay back to sleep when the kid woke up from having another nightmare. These days, those were rarer. Will kind of envied him. "All I need is right here."
Bill appraised him, and then nodded and closed his eyes.)
—and that hurt worse than anything Bill could've said.
"You could come with me," Bill says, tilting his chin up. "We'll bring Jay. We can get out. We can leave, man. It's not like we have to stay in this fucking shithole forever."
"To fucking Michigan?" Will cannot believe what he's fucking hearing. "Are you crazy? Jay's fifteen."
"We could make it work."
"You could make it work," Will throws his hands up in the air. "Jay needs me. Jay needs us."
"It's not like I'm leaving him behind," Bill argues. "I just—Will, we're meant for more than this." He takes a deep, steadying breath. Tries again, more controlled this time.
"If you wanted, you could get into school anywhere—you're a honors student. I had to fight to get my scholarship. You—you're smarter. You don't have to stay here and just—waste away. We can take Jay with us. We can leave."
At this, Will snorts, because that's one of the things that they've never managed to quite agree on, a living landmine that Bill doesn't talk to Will about because it always—without fail—starts an argument between them. At twelve years old, they'd made a pact: hide their shit and pretend like everything was normal and fine, because the alternative was too horrible to think about. CPS hung over their heads like a goddamn guillotine—if they got split up, what would happen to Jay? And, alright, Bill's always had the bigger plans, has always talked about the future like there was something there he could grasp—full-bodied, with both hands, something he could grab and take off running with. But Will—well. He's always just followed along in Bill's wake.
The future has never looked so goddamn cloudy when Will looks at Bill and wonders what would happen if they just fucking booked it. If they packed their shit and just—left.
Well, he doesn't have to wonder now, does he, because Bill's trying to make that pipe dream a goddamn reality. And for all the bullshit he's saying about taking Will and Jay with him, it's bullshit—Jay's a freshman, and Will has no idea what he's going to do after he graduates, because he'd just naturally assumed Bill would be there helping him figure it out.
Something about assumptions, or whatever.
"That's insane," Will says. "You're running the fuck away because what, you think this—all this—" he gestures to the street, always deadly silent after five pm. In the distance, the business district of Chicago hummed and thrived, the sounds of traffic and commute managing to drift its way down to the bastard end of Canaryville. To the sleepiest end of suburbian living, where shit went down in the streets and no one even batted an eyelash. "You're just suddenly too good for this, now, is it?"
Bill, to his credit, didn't explode, not like Will thought he would. He just huffs a short breath and tilts his head back until those curls met brick, and—Will thinks, being with Katie must have really mellowed him out. And then he promptly wants to scrub the thought, the whole of it, from his mind.
"See, this is why I didn't want to tell you sooner," Bill says. "I knew you'd get mad."
"Mad is not even remotely close," Will says, half-laughing from the incredulity of it. The crush of his pulse thuds through him, a steady thump-thump-thump that beat a tattoo inside his skull. "How the hell am I supposed to explain this to Jay?"
"He's fifteen," Bill emphasizes. He meets Will's eye. "Maybe you have to stop babying him, too, you know."
"Babying him?"
"We both do everything for him," Bill points out. "Sooner or later, one of us won't be here to do that. What happens if you get sick? What happens if I get hit by a car and then suddenly the kid's gotta walk himself home?"
"Don't say that," Will breathes. "What is wrong with you? What's gotten into you?"
The line of Bill's mouth flattens. He just looks confused, like he can't understand why Will is furious. "I'm just saying," he says, gentler. "He has to grow up sometime."
He says something else, but Will's not listening. It makes sense—Bill's always been the pragmatic one, the one who could see point a to point z, all the way through, unburdened by his feelings. Oh, how Will envies him sometimes.
Jay's just like him, sometimes, just as angry and twice as cutthroat about it.
"And what about Pop, huh," Will interrupts.
"What about Pop?" Bill echoes back to him. The half-puzzled look on his face melts into one of derision. "Pat can handle himself."
"Like he was handling himself before he started drinki—"
"So what if he does," Bill says, acridly. "So what, Will? He's going to work himself—or drink himself—into an early grave."
"And you're okay with that."
"Why aren't you?"
Did you forget when he threw me into the garage goddamn wall, did you forget when he threw a bottle at Jay, were you not there when—
The scrolling list of sins flash through Will's eyes for a moment.
Bill knows that Will knows. He's been there through each and every one. "Bill," he says, quietly.
Bill shakes his head, as if to get rid of a fly. "Don't answer that. Your loyalty to the man is astounding, Will."
"He's our dad."
"He's also a piece of shit."
"Two things can be true at the same time," Will says. "Don't lecture me on loyalty when you're, what, running away? To Michigan. With Katie."
"You say that like I'm leaving you behind," Bill says.
And the kicker is: he sounds so earnest about it, too. Will can't fault him for that. Maybe he's been lying to himself; Bill might be pragmatic but he's idealistic, moreso than Will is, and he cares so fucking deeply about whatever he's investing himself in that it bleeds out of him. For years it was Will, and Jay, and—once upon a time—their mom, too.
Now it's Katie.
"Whatever, man," Will says, the fight leaving him in a rush. He's just—so fucking tired. There's only about two more months 'till they graduate—which is absurd enough, but up to this point Bill had been suspiciously quiet about that approaching date. Will hasn't broached the topic either. Maybe he should have. Maybe Bill would have managed to break the news to Will then, wouldn't have looked at him all shifty-eyed and askance, would have given Will time so he can figure out how to feel normal about the whole thing, figured out how to explain to their little brother that hey, your older brother won't be around anymore. Possibly forever.
Maybe Will is overreacting. He's always believed that if anyone was going to get out, it would be Bill. He just hadn't expected it to be like this.
The shock, the anger, it all twines around his fingertips much like the cig smoke had. Will feels about a fraction of it, numb to it all, feels like a facsimile of himself. The whole time Bill hasn't really taken his eyes off Will. The whole time, Will keeps thinking that any second now, he's going to wake up and ask man, what the hell was in that popsicle? Like Bill'd taken a frying pan and hit him around the head with it; cartoon birds and stars flying around his head, leaving Will reeling.
Except he won't. Except he won't wake up, because this is the reality that he's living, now, and it sure as hell isn't going to get any better, so Will just—needs to deal with it. He always does.
He exhales through his nose. Bill looks at him like he's a bomb ready to go off. Will feels like it. "When are you leaving?"
"Katie wants to move out in August."
"Of course." So mere days after they're officially done, then.
"There's a flat in the ads that her mom was looking at," Bill explains, evenly, like he's not taking Will's heart and crushing it underneath his heel like Will'd done to that poor fucking cigarette. He must be crazy if he's empathizing with a cig, but you know what, recent events have changed him. "It's cheap. Not that far from the university. When Katie flies out first she'll take a tour. We'll sign the lease if it's good. She'll get a job first, and then I'll follow."
"So, what, you'll be gone by October?"
"Hopefully by November."
"How are you going to afford the student loa—"
"Told you," Bill says, smiling—for the first goddamn time this whole fucking conversation—"Scholarship, remember?"
"Right," Will nods, clenching his jaw with the effort not to say anything. "Scholarship."
So a free ticket out, no consequences. It's crazy, Will thinks. He doesn't even know what Bill wanted to study prior to this. A year ago he didn't even know that Bill was considering it; would have assumed that—at best—he'd go to community college, like their mom had, like Will himself was going to do. "In what?" he asks, because he needs to know.
"Law," Bill says. "Katie's going into environmental science. She's always liked it, and I don't know—it seemed right."
Lots of things seemed right to Will before he realized that Bill hadn't factored him into the whole equation. "Okay," he says, instead. "Alright. Will you need anything with the school before—"
"No, I'm already all set up. I just—" Bill hesitates. "I know you'll be okay, because you're you, but I just wanted to know. If you're not coming with—"
"Think the ship's sailed on that," Will tells Bill. "We'll be okay. It's fine, Bill."
"Is—"
"Just promise to keep in touch," he says. It's about as pathetic as he'll allow. "It's all I'll ask. Don't forget about us."
"Why would I?"
To his credit, Bill looks genuinely offended, even though there's a small twitch at his lip that belies his amusement, as if he can't see how much it's destroying Will to even get these words out in the first place. Maybe he can. Will entertains the idea for a whole fucking minute.
"Man, I don't know," Will says, suddenly more tired than ever. It's dark out. There are cicadas in the distance—the loud hum of their wings, shrill against the descending night—and the horizon's dipping into its twilight colors, turning everything a muted color of blue-purple. Blurple. There's insects buzzing angrily against the streetlamps and his ankles hurt from standing all goddamn day, and his head's starting to hurt because he hasn't had enough water today and they haven't had dinner and Will should be hungry but he isn't. He doesn't want to sit down at the dinner table (or what passed for it) with Bill and pretend like it's okay and he's happy for him.
He wishes that Bill hadn't told him. He wishes he could lie down and cry, right now, on the concrete, but his pride won't allow it.
"I mean it," Bill continues. "Even after I leave, just—reach out if you need anything."
"Anything," Will echoes.
"Yeah."
Anything would necessitate Bill not upping and leaving, but hey, at least Will has two more months to figure out what he's going to do when he leaves. Jay's been talking about getting a job, anyway, and Will had told him he didn't have to but Jay'd been set on it. And Bill's right: maybe it will teach him some responsibility. Even if the thought makes Will want to hurl.
Jay doesn't need to be paying bills at the age of sixteen.
(Bill'd gotten his first job at thirteen and nine months. It was some gas station clerk gig, barely paid him enough for lunch for the day, but Bill's good with numbers: he managed to always scrounge up an extra fifty bucks, somewhere.
It probably hadn't been legal. Neither of them cared much, just relieved to be able to be putting food on the table. And Will counts it a blessing: he'd barely managed to find his first job at the age of fifteen, and two paychecks was always better than one. Paying bills suddenly became a lot more feasible when Pop stopped being able to pay off the gas bill, and then the electric bill, and then—
—well. It's fine. They had it covered.)
Bill eyes him for a moment. "Just ask," he says. "Whatever you need."
"When you're in school, you'll be too busy to be working extra shifts," Will says. "It's fine. Don't worry, really." When Will graduates, he'll have extra hours on his hands to work some more. He can pick up the slack. Really, he can.
Bill sighs. "Fine. Play it your way." He stands up, film-reel-slow, playing in the back of Will's eyelids. And then, just like that, the whole moment ends, and Bill's sliding his neutral-face on, the one he uses when he just wants to pretend like he doesn't give a singular fuck.
Or maybe he doesn't, truly, and Will's been reading misplaced signals all along. "Let's just go home, Will."
Soon enough it won't be their home. "Okay," Will murmurs. He steps on the faded, discarded butt of the cig when he turns to follow Bill. He pauses, hands in his pockets, watching as Bill makes it a few more steps—his retreating back turned to Will. "You go on ahead," he says, quiet in the night. "I'm going to buy myself another soda."
Bill turns to look at him. A few metres of space stretched out between them, and yet it felt like it went on forever. "Will?"
Will plasters a smile on his face. "Don't worry," he lies. "I'll catch up."
Bill frowns, but shrugs and shoulders his bag a little bit more firmly on his back, shoulders a little less tense than when Will'd first seen (or heard him, really) stroll up. He blinks, once, twice. "Fine, but I'll take the first shower."
"Asshole," Will calls after him. His heart's not in it. Bill flips him off, and then rounds the corner and disappears. And then Will's alone. Alone with the moths and cicadas buzzing and the rustle of leaves in the warm breeze. Not that it's much of a breeze. He's still sweating. His eyes are sweating. Goddamn it.
He sniffles. Fuck.
Will takes the long way home. His limbs are buzzing, in that strange way that they tend to do when he's crashing—from adrenaline or anxiety or panic or all three at once—and his head's pounding like someone's beating a hammer into his skull.
He's not sure he recalls the walk home. He could have walked into traffic and he wouldn't have noticed.
But when he does get home, almost forty-five minutes later, Bill's still awake—his beat-up nokia casting a strange, greenish glow on his face as he's texting someone, laying in the dark. Katie, probably. His hair's wet—but Bill's been considerate enough to lay down a towel so he doesn't get their shit wet. Great.
"You're back," Bill says, into the dark. "You're late. I left some dinner for you in the fridge."
"Thanks," Will says, half-heartedly. He tosses his jacket over a worn, wooden chair. It creaks ominously under the added weight. "I'll eat it later."
Bill's prone figure—bathed only by that green, digital glow and the light of their window—go still. It almost looks like he's thinking about what to say next, but Will's trying not to look at him in the eyes.
"Just make sure you eat," is what Bill finally settles on. "Jay'll eat it all otherwise."
Will resists the urge to snap back a I know, because who the hell has been feeding them for the past five years and a half?
But he just nods, although he's not even sure that Bill can see it—given that Bill hasn't looked up at all. "Okay," he says, soft. And then he goes to take the most lukewarm shower of his life—it tends to go cold within the first few minutes because the plumbing in this house sucks—and pointedly doesn't think about it all.
Bill, as Will discovers, has made baked potatoes and left half a Costco chicken in the fridge for him. Which he knows is Will's favorite. He only breaks out the good stuff when he knows Will's about to be mad at him for something.
Goddamn it.
Will stares at the whole thing, realizes he hasn't eaten in almost seventeen hours, and yet—he's not even hungry. He just feels nauseous, instead.
So he skips dinner. Brushes his teeth and goes to bed, slipping under the covers quietly as to not wake a sleeping Bill, who's fallen asleep with his face turned towards the window. Breathing easily, seamlessly, eyelids fluttering with a dream.
It doesn't seem to be a bad one, judging from the peaceful way his face's relaxed in his sleep. He looks younger like that. Softer, almost—stress-free. No worry lines to even speak of.
Will looks at his face and swallows, something heavy nestled in his stomach. He reaches for Bill's jacket—fishes around in its pockets, and comes up with a cigarette.
Another one that Bill's probably filched from Katie. Will doesn't try to find a lighter. For a moment, he just stares at it, at Bill's sleeping face.
And then Will puts the stem between his lips—a taste, inhaling the faint scent of tobacco and mint and whatever the fuck else they put in these things; mouth dry and chaste.
For a moment, he just—holds it. Sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark in just his boxers.
And all of the sudden he feels like he could cry, the overfull feeling he's been carrying around in his throat threatening to swallow him whole; busy biting back hitched sobs so he doesn't wake up Bill, which is so fucking stupid because Will wants to shake him and make him see what he's done.
But Will doesn't. He holds the cig, imagining his hand is Bill's, imagining he's not Will anymore, as if he could crawl out of his skin and become someone else. It's fucked, is what it is, because they haven't been Bill-and-Will in a minute, just Bill and Will, two separate halves becoming different pieces of the damn puzzle, and who the hell would want to be Bill Halstead anyway, that guy's more fucked in the head than anyone Will has ever met, and Will knows himself.
Who the hell would want to be Will Halstead?
He looks at the back of his hand, the cig. He throws it in the trash.
When Will lays down and stares at the ceiling until he can feel something that isn't just utter hysteria, tense and stiff, because the alternative is breaking out into banshee–worthy wailing or putting a new hole in their recently-patched bedroom wall and then he'd really have something to explain to Bill.
Or to Jay, probably.
He breathes, and breathes, and breathes. Closes his eyes. His head pounds, and his pulse beats a steady rhythm behind his eyes, the choked-up feeling he's been carrying around ever since he got home.
Outside, the summer night gets cooler, heavier. Clouds gather in the sky. Will closes his eyes and does not dream.