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He keeps coming here, but he can never bring himself to get out of the damn car. He fumbles with his CDs in the glovebox, tries to think of reasons why he shouldn’t, since, apparently ‘because it’s fucking ridiculous, that’s why’ hasn’t sufficed.
The hulking green and blue building; two storey, light on in that one window. And Will watches like some creep for any kind of movement, some kind of cosmic sign that Sean wanted him to be there.
He looks at the quarter sitting on the dash, glinting silver in the moonlight. Like it’s taunting him. Saying, what’s the worst that could happen? It was the one Chuckie had graciously tossed to him when they were still at the bar, even though Will was a cagey bitch about who he planned to spend it on at the payphone.
“You don’t wanna know,” He’d told him over the music. Because it’s fucking ridiculous, that’s why.
It could wait until next week, probably. When there’s daylight and a controlled environment. Fucking ridiculous.
So next week comes, and it’s the same damn thing. He tells himself he’s just here for the session, for the back-and-forth, the sharp-edged debates, the challenge there, ever-present in Sean’s gaze. The potential he sees in Will that he doesn’t even see in himself but kind of just trusts him anyway. It’s never been irrelevant—he could sit here all day, soaking up all his wisdom. Just existing in the same space as him. And that’s the problem.
He was supposed to be long gone by now, soaking up the sun on some Californian beach with a girl who says she loves him.
He’d meant to say it back both times; he swore he had. But it would always get caught in his throat, falling apart, just there, where words meet tongue. He’d rather that than tell her something that isn’t true. He loved her in that way only: that she could know so little about him and still want to take a chance on him.
But there’s always been that shadow of complicatedness trailing him, the thing that keeps him restless, that keeps him searching. And lately, it’s been taking the shape of a man with tired eyes and a voice that’s too damn calm all the time and sees through his bullshit like no one else ever has. He wished it weren’t the case; that he weren’t so goddamn messed up—and that it didn’t take a niche kind of he-doesn’t-know-what to break down the walls he’d added a new brick to over all the days of his life.
There was this quiet, gnawing thing that latched onto his ribs and pulled every time he thought he might actually be free of it. He wanted to be simple. Wanted to be the kind of guy who could take a woman’s hand and walk off into the sunset, no ghosts in the rearview. But life had never let him be that guy, and somewhere along the way, he’d stopped holding out hope that it ever would. It was a naive thing to believe.
Bad things happen to good people; and Will hardly even considers himself one to begin with. He just wasn’t made for easy love.
He wished he could love her back so he could just get on with things already. So he could move forward. So he could stop sitting in this fucking car, every night, staring up at that glowing window like a man waiting for a sign from god.
Doctor Sean Maguire had felt the warmth of other suns. A life well lived was what he saw in those irreparably tired eyes. But still, even after all the war and the death and the dirtiness of the world, he sat here, calmly.
He sat here, trying to help a fuckup like Will achieve something he hadn’t even had for himself. (Peace.)
That careful balance of love and loss weighing so heavily in the way he spoke, the way he carried himself, the way he looked at Will sometimes, like he was something to figure out rather than something to fix. Will didn’t know what to do with that, feeling like his project, his muse, and trying not to be a girl about it. He didn’t know what to do with any of it. Will was used to being the smartest guy in the room, the one with all the answers.
(But around Sean, all he had were questions.)
It fascinated Will. Everything about Doctor Maguire was fascinating. It was stupid girly stuff, like the way Sean could thread poetry into conversation about the most mundane thing, how he could swear like a sailor and still make it sound wise. How every painting or book in his office felt like a piece of him, a story Will only had pieces and fragments of. How he could take the most obscure anecdote about his wife or his youth or the war and turn it into something profound—something Will felt in his bones even if he couldn’t say why.
Will, responsible an adult as any, had started to wonder if maybe it was a bad idea, becoming his friend. He’s not some sissy; he can walk away whenever he wants. Get in that car, drive off and never look back. There’s more to life than Boston.
There’s more to life than some old headshrinker.
That’s what this was, right? Friendship. It was a mentor-protégé type deal. Will was learning a lot. It’s not like they saw each other everyday, but more than the regularly-scheduled once a week was probably (definitely) starting to do things to his head.
Not to mention the one time he’d fallen asleep at his place when they’d been scouring The Boston Globe and other newspapers for job postings for Will. The next morning, Sean in his stupid robe had set a mug on the table in front of a still sleep-groggy Will and said haven’t made it for two in years, let me know if my measuring skills have gone to shit. The kitchen smelled like fresh coffee, mixed with the smoke of Will’s cigarette Sean had reluctantly allowed him to smoke last night, and something fried from earlier.
The radio on the counter buzzed softly with some old Bob Dylan song, half-static because Sean never bothered to adjust the dial. The whole place looked like it belonged to a guy who hadn’t redecorated since the fucking 80s, but for some reason, that made it (better) worse. More familiar. More lived-in.
More him.
And Will snorted, a little too fondly and then realized, with a horrible lurch in his stomach.
Too vulnerable.
This is not normal. Not for him.
Not in the way it felt—something warm, something easy, something dangerously close. It was the kind of thing that should roll off him without a second thought, just another act of kindness from a man who had already given him too many. Instead, it stuck. Clung. Like hands on him in a way they shouldn’t be, even though there was no one touching him at all.
It felt different than his friendship with the guys, but he couldn’t (wouldn’t) pin down what exactly was making it feel this way. Maybe it was because Sean wasn’t like them—because he was older, because he was wiser, because this dynamic demanded a different kind of respect. Will wanted to give him that. He needed to. Because Sean had done more for him than anyone else ever had, and he couldn’t fuck this up by misinterpreting things. By making it weird.
Will had felt stupid—so fucking stupid—for looking over and feeling that burn in his chest, fingers curled too tight around the warmth of that mug. Sean’s robe hung loose around his tired frame, and Will had the misfortune of noticing how soft he looked. At ease. Like he wasn’t the same guy who cut straight through his bullshit every week. Like he belonged in a setting like this, quiet and domestic, making coffee for two.
Something clawed up Will’s throat and lodged there. A tight, hot ache.
A different ache than the one that sparked when he showed up early to his session and saw Lambeau slinking out of Sean’s office, mouth pressed into a thin line, sparing only a stiff, sheepish wave for Will Hunting, his failed experiment.
That one made something in Will coil tight, a visceral, irritated little twist in his gut. He hadn’t even been inside the room yet, but he could tell Sean had been giving him hell. Maybe he was calling him out on his savior complex— because god help him, that man has a savior complex— or whatever weird possessive investment he had in Will’s alleged potential. Maybe he was knocking him off that pedestal he put himself on, one smug remark at a time. Sean had a lot of those; smug remarks.
Or maybe it was nothing at all, just two old colleagues talking, but it still made Will’s teeth clench.
But then Lambeau was gone, and Will stopped watching. That’s when the ache started.
Sean stood there, leaning against the doorframe, hands in his pockets, a knowing little quirk of his lips just barely visible beneath his beard.
“Good afternoon, Will. Come on in.”
Like it was just them again. Like it was always just them.
The ache sharpened when he realized he’d left his lighter behind, but the cigarette was already between his lips, and Sean was drawing up close, holding out a lighter from one of his desk cabinets. He flicked it open without a word, offering the flame.
Will dipped in, bringing the end of his cigarette into the flame and inhaling slow, eyes never leaving his. The old man hates smoking. Even lectured him about it a few times. But here he was, lighting it for him. Will should probably take that as some kind of quiet disapproval, or maybe just another one of those weird contradictions that made up Sean Maguire, but instead, his eyes lingered too long on the way the light flickered between them, the way Sean’s fingers curled steady around the lighter, his gaze unreadable.
Jesus Christ.
Will tears his eyes away before he can do something really embarrassing, like let them slip to Sean’s mouth. He pulls in a long, merciful drag, hoping the feeling in his chest dies in the smoke.
He exhales slow, through his nose, watching the smoke curl and vanish.
(And, shocker—yeah. The feeling is still fucking there.)
The fonder he grew, the more he sobered up to something. Something subconscious.
Something that felt like slipping.
So, there was a man who knew how to make all of it seem manageable. Sure, alright. Fine. A man who, without ever saying it outright, made it feel like Will’s sadness—the thing that had shaped him, haunted him, defined him —was not some inevitable fate, but something he could eventually learn to live with. Which, by the way, was fucking inconceivable to Will. He didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know what to do with the fact that every time he sat across from Sean, he felt a little less like a lost cause.
He never lent credence to the idea that he’d ever be anything besides this; this creature of misery, poorly disguised in the skin of a jerk. It wasn’t his skin. He's been wearing the damn thing so long, he’s forgotten it wasn’t even his!
So, they start spending more time together, outside the office. It was easy, how it happened. A game. A beer. A casual conversation that ran longer than either of them had expected. It was strange, seeing Sean in the wild, outside of that room where Will had laid himself bare, told him things he’d probably never be strong enough to open up about again. Especially not to someone else.
Out here, he’s not just a therapist collecting his dues. He was a real person, a guy who could make him laugh, who had strong opinions about baseball, who cursed at drivers under his breath and never let Will get away with half the shit his friends did. A guy who made him think. A guy who made him stop and look.
Will did look.
And that was fine. That was normal. You looked at people when they talked to you. It was called paying attention.
But maybe he looked too long sometimes. Or too hard. Because there were moments when it wasn’t just Sean’s words that made him stop and think—it was him. The lines in his face, the tiredness in his eyes, the way he carried himself like he’d already lived a whole life before this one. The way he fit into this space like he’d always been there, steady and unshaken.
Will doesn’t see anything he likes. At least, not the way he does when there’s a pretty girl. That would be ridiculous. That would be wrong. Sean was just a guy, an old guy at that, molded and shaped by age in a way that was… fine. Objectively fine. He could picture him in his youth—the professor with too much intelligence for his own good, admired by all his students. Maybe he had a combover back then. He seemed the type.
He told himself it wasn’t a big deal. That it was just admiration, or respect, or some pathetic, twisted need for a father figure he never had. That’s all it was. It had to be.
So then why did it make him feel like this?
Why did it make him feel older than he was, the way he wanted to sink into it, the way he let himself imagine it in quiet moments—just to see what it felt like? And why did it make him feel younger at the same time, small and uncertain and desperate for something he couldn’t name?
It was fucking weird. It put this warmth in his gut that he couldn’t decide he wanted there or not, like a slow burn of something he should’ve stamped out before it even started.
People probably saw them together and thought father and son. It was an easy assumption. A comforting one. And Will let them. Because they’d never know the extent of it. They didn’t know about the way he got beat, or the burns he still had from having cigarettes put out on his skin, or anything else he’d talked about in Sean’s chair. They didn’t know about the riverbank and the geese or the exact moment, sitting beside Sean, that Will decided he was really going to try.
And they sure as hell didn’t know about the way Will’s thoughts had started to wander into places they shouldn’t.
Not about another man.
Not about this man.
Not about a man who was twice his age, who had lived a whole life before Will had even been born, who should’ve been nothing more than a shrink with a nice voice and some half-decent advice.
Jesus.
He felt sick.
(Because what kind of fucked-up, broken person did you have to be for this to happen?)
Will’s mind had always been a little too crowded. With voices, telling him he can never leave here. With expectations, and too many different versions of himself fighting for dominance. It was easier this way—keeping Sean separate, keeping him in this little bubble, just between the two of them.
Chuckie and the guys—they were his real friends. They’d known him since he was a kid. They didn’t expect him to be anything other than what he was, flaws and all. They’d joke around, share a beer, and talk shit about the world, but it was simple. It was easy. There was no complicated, sticky stuff weighing them down. He could keep his guard up with them. He could hide.
(He couldn’t hide anything from Sean.)
But what’s he supposed to do? Fuck everything up? Back him against some wall like a goddamn lunatic and whisper in his ear that he’s in love with him? That he thinks about him at night, in ways he shouldn’t, in ways that make him feel wrong?
He can wreck all the shit he wants, drink down a poisonous amount of beer, force himself through a workout until his body gives out—but at the end of it all, when he catches his pitiful reflection in the mirror, he’s still just going to see himself. And he’s still going to hate it.
That feeling—this feeling—is still going to be there, no matter how many times he tries to rip it out by the root. He can retrace his steps, dissect the why and the how, try to solve it like it’s some equation he just needs to crack—but the answer is always the same.
He still wants it.
He still wants him.
That stupid, young-looking man in his white wife beater, sweated-out hair falling into his face, and that dumb, dangerous hopeful look in his eyes—like this could actually be enough. Like he isn’t built to want things that’ll only ruin him.
Too young.
Too fucked up.
It’s delinquent bullshit. Sean’s no delinquent, not like Will. He’d never go for it. Not because he’s some saint, but because he’s normal. Because he’s spent his whole life following some kind of moral compass, and Will—Will is a goddamn outlaw. That’s all he’s ever been.
His buddies razz him, teasing like it’s some chick who’s got his head all twisted. They ask for dirty details, grin like he’s holding out on them. And how could he ever make them get it? This smoked out bar and its too-loud playing of The Rolling Stones was not the place to find out that the guy you’ve known since forever is a sicko.
‘Yeah, so, she’s not a woman, actually. By the way, I’m into guys now. Just one guy, really, but fuck it, if I’m taking the plunge, might as well go all the way down, right? Oh, and did I mention he’s my goddamn psychiatrist?’
Fucking joke. They’ve got a word for losers who do this kind of thing. Who fall in love with the man paid to fix them.
Because that’s how pathetic it is. That’s how predictable it is for people like him.
But Will’s an even bigger loser— about the biggest fucking loser there is—for thinking, even for a second, that this was different. That he was different. That this wasn’t just another cliché, another textbook case of some pathetic, broken asshole mistaking basic human decency for something else.
He wasn’t like them.
Not some statistic. Not some sad, desperate fuck fiending for a warm body to unload his trauma onto. Not some tragic little case study of a kid who never got hugged enough, latching onto the first person who gave half a shit.
Grow the fuck up.
Bad shit happens to everyone. The world doesn’t stop spinning just because someone roughed you up, just because life wasn’t fair, just because you got dealt a shitty hand. Will wasn’t the type to sit around licking his wounds for the rest of his life.
And sure, okay—so maybe that’s exactly what got him here in the first place. Maybe he never did stop to look at the damage until it was too late. (Read: sobbing in Sean’s arms like a fucking child.)
But that had nothing to do with the feeling in his chest when he was around him. That warm, soft, treacherous thing blooming behind his ribs, threatening to turn him inside out.
And if it did?
If everything —the way his shoulders went loose when Sean looked at him, the way his whole body recalibrated when they were in the same room, shifting from combative and sharp to something calmer, something softer—if all of that meant something worse?
The thought comes fast and ugly: Jesus, I sound like a fucking fairy.
It makes his teeth clench, like he can grind the thought down into dust before it settles. Before it becomes anything more than a passing lapse in judgment. Because that’s all this is— some weird fucking lapse, a mistake in the wiring, a wrong turn he wasn’t paying attention to.
He scrubs a hand over his face, stares too hard at a crack in the floorboard. It’s nothing. It has to be nothing.
But then he thinks about Sean again—about that half-smile under his beard, the way he always fucking listens, like Will’s got something worth hearing. Thinks about how it felt, a few days ago, when Sean had leaned over him again to light his cigarette (because no, Will didn’t start purposely forgetting his own lighter) close enough that Will could feel the warmth of him, catch the faded scent of his aftershave. And that thought, the one that should’ve burned off like the smoke between them, is still here. Sitting in his chest, refusing to leave.
His stomach twists. He wants to move, shake it off, join in on the guy’s heated debate over whether Seinfeld or Friends was superior. But it’s like his feet are glued to the ground. Like there’s cotton in his throat.
A couple of guys pass by on the street outside, laughing loud, shoving each other around like he does with Chuckie, and Will barely catches what one of them says—something about a couple of fags sitting too close at the bar, some offhand remark spat out between slurred words.
The hair on the back of his neck stands up.
It shouldn’t mean anything. Just some drunk asshole running his mouth. But it lands, sharp and mean, and suddenly Will feels watched, like someone’s taken a good, long look at him and figured out the exact thing he’s trying not to think about.
It makes his blood run hot, makes him want to punch something, break something, prove something. I’m not— But the sentence cuts off before it even forms, because he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to be proving.
Just that he hates this. Hates this thing crawling under his skin, this feeling in his ribs that won’t go away, no matter how hard he tries to kill it.
But still, Will continues to be the younger guy trailing behind, following Sean like a shadow, tagging along on whatever errands filled his off day. Tall and sharp-jawed and just there, like some stray dog waiting to be let inside. And what business did they even have together? What did they look like to other people?
Was there some off chance that someone saw them—two men, one older, one younger—and thought, Oh, the old guy’s beau?
The thought lodged in his throat like a sickness.
Why was he obsessed with this? With things that aren’t happening? With things that aren’t there?
It was just a fucking walk, but it ached, bone-deep and awful, a low and throbbing thing beneath his ribs. Empty, even though Sean was right there, so close that Will could reach out if he wanted to.
The worst part— the sick part —was that he kept picturing it. Walking beside him down the broken sidewalk, hands in his pockets, head ducked just enough to make steady eye contact, to glance down every so often, soaking in what Sean was saying. Like the good kid Sean had turned him into. Like the kind of guy who listens—who stays close, who wants to be close because companionship is a basic human thing.
Cars passed them on the street, the headlights cutting through the dusk, and Will thought, that ought to be me.
His car fixed up enough to get him to the next state over, the tank full, the highway open—finally leaving this place behind.
(But what could he find out there that feels anything like this?)
Later, the whiskey burns on the way down, but it’s nothing compared to the fire already licking up his throat. It’s nothing compared to the slow, humiliating realization that’s been creeping up on him for months now. His head feels light, his limbs loose, and suddenly, telling Sean the truth doesn’t sound like the royally fucked idea that it always did when he was sober.
He knows how things work with girls. That’s easy. You wine them, you dine them, you pay attention, you say the right things, and they get all soft, all sweet, and suddenly, you’re exactly where you want to be. It’s like an equation—plug in the right variables, get the expected outcome. No goddamn guesswork.
But this?
This throws the whole fucking rulebook out the window.
Because none of that shit is gonna work on Dr. Maguire. He’s too old-fashioned for that kind of thing, too steady, too fucking aware of every thought that flickers through Will’s fucked-up head. And, more importantly, he’s not a girl.
The thought sours in his stomach, tangling with the whiskey burn.
What the fuck is he even doing? What is he thinking?
It’s humiliating. Mortifying. The lowest he’s ever been. He grips the glass a little too tight, jaw clenched so hard it aches. This has got to be the most pathetic he’s ever been.
He’s had too much. He knows that. Knows it in the way the neon lights of the too-hyper sports bar smear in his vision, in the way his feet don’t quite feel like they belong to him anymore as they carry him to his car. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters; not California, not his future, and not whatever other goddamn chance at life he likes to think are there, waiting for him to get his shit together.
Yeah right. He’d have to believe in fairytales to think any of that crap was gonna happen, and tonight, Will can hardly see past the next red light—let alone someday when he’ll look back and think of all this as growing pains instead of his own actual piss-poor reality. Not some humble beginning—his real life. That shit doesn’t change; especially not when it’s been this way for twenty one years.
There’s the familiar crunch of tires over salt and gravel as he pulls up to the curb. Same spot as always. The green and blue duplex looks dark, save for one window glowing soft amber above. The quarter on his dashboard flashes gold under a streetlamp and he stares at it for too long, watching the light flicker against George Washington’s stupid, knowing face. He watches it with the tiredest look in his eye, the most complicated tight feeling in his sternum.
You don’t wanna know.
Because it’s fucking ridiculous, that’s why.
He buzzes the door. The harsh, nasal sound rattles in the empty street and suddenly feels too loud, too desperate.
And then—Sean. Solid in the doorway, his shoulders filling the frame like a statue that just happened to grow a beard and a tired look in his eyes. He blinks once, twice. Confused. Concerned. Then his gaze lands on Will, and the truth sinks in.
Will watches the realization crawl across his face—quiet but unmistakable. That he’s drunk. That he shouldn’t be here. That whatever this is, it isn’t just a late-night visit.
And then comes the look. That soft one. The one Will hates. The one that makes Will want to break shit. The one Sean probably doesn’t even know he’s making. Gentle and still, like he’s looking at a wounded animal that keeps biting the hand that feeds it. Pity, maybe. Or something a million times worse, like fucking grace; the one thing he realized early on that he didn’t deserve. But here’s Sean, giving free handouts.
That makes Will love him. The slow, marrow-deep kind.
Will Hunting loves Sean Maguire, and he wishes he fucking didn’t.
He hadn’t made it easy. Fucking hated the guy’s guts at first, hated being in his stupid office with all his paintings and organized clutter. He’d given Will a hard time—the hardest time anyone’s ever bothered to give him in his entire life. Pushed him, tested him, challenged his crafted bullshit defenses. He saw right through all of it and it pissed Will off. Pissed him off so hard that at some point, he was laughing at himself too. The quivering mess he was after Sean had broken him down, all vulnerable and too open and too transparent. Sean was staring right at him. Not the skin he put on to cover it all up. He was looking at him. Hell on earth. God, he’d made it hard.
(And who knew, after everything, that he’d end up like this? On his doorstep, mad fucking in love with him.)
He swallows, but it doesn’t go down. The sensation lingers, thick and unmoving, like something lodged in his throat. Dread blooms first, sharp and immediate, a weight in his stomach, but then—just as quickly—it ebbs. A strange calm washes over him, eerie in its inevitability, like the moment before a car crash when you realize there’s no stopping it. It’s already happening.
(He’s pretty sure this wildly violates the doctor-patient relationship.)
Two long strides, and he’s there—close enough that Will can feel the weight of him, the quiet authority in the way he holds himself. He’s not smiling, not frowning. His expression is careful, measured, but there’s something else beneath it, something unspoken. The booze dulls the edges, makes him look softer than he should, more accessible than Will can afford him to be. It’s a trick of the light, a trick of the mind, but for a second, Will lets himself believe it because he’s untouchable when he’s like this.
When he’s like this, nothing can hurt him. (And that’s all he’s ever wanted.)
And then he sees it—really sees it. Sean doesn’t have everything figured out. He never did. He’s been painting pictures this whole time, selling the illusion of certainty, the illusion of peace. And Will had believed it. Had let himself fall for it, just like he fell for everything Sean had ever told him, every damn story, every little anecdote meant to teach him something about the world.
But Sean was just a guy. A guy who was fighting for his life too. They’re both stuck here, in Boston, meant to be somewhere else by now. But Will had stayed, and so did Sean.
And maybe Will had known that all along.
Will also knows it’s on purpose that Sean has been so receptive to everything except for this. He’s not fucking stupid.
He’d listened when Will talked about the beatings, the bruises, the cigarettes put out on his skin. He’d listened when Will got angry, when he tried to push him away. But this? This was the one thing he refused to acknowledge. This was the one thing he couldn’t help him with.
Will could see it now, written right there in the tension of his shoulders, the furrow between his brows. For the first time, Sean doesn’t know what to tell him. Fuck.
Will’s voice shakes as he tries to grin, but his vision is blurred, distorted, the world blurring at the edges. “Look, I don’t know if you’re dense, or—or what,” He tries to force a laugh into the words, tries to make it sound lighthearted, but there’s something wild beneath it, something frayed and desperate. And somewhere in the middle of it, he realizes—he’s angry. When the hell did he get so angry? “But I don’t think it takes a fuckin’ scholar to see that I’m in love with you. Okay?”
It hangs there. The confession. Raw and severe like he’d just plunged his fist into his chest and tore out his heart, blood dripping through his trembling fingers. He wanted Sean to take it. Please, just take it.
Will watches Sean watch him, his expression tepid, head tilting as everything clicks into place. Sees that he’s serious. So serious. He’s not fucking around.
“Son,” Sean says, not moving, not reacting—not the way Will had wanted him to, anyway. There’s no sharp inhale, no instant rejection, no anger or disbelief. Just that look, that goddamn look that makes Will’s stomach curdle like spoiled milk. A quiet understanding, a resignation, and definitely pity now, and fuck—fuck, he can’t stand it. “Son, no you aren’t.”
And he almost looks disappointed, like he’d hoped they’d never get here. Like he’d hoped he’d never have to hear him say it out loud. Sean had trusted Will; trusted him with stories he hadn’t told anyone in years. He trusted him to make the right decisions, he trusted him to be a good person, and he had trusted him to figure this out on his own.
He shouldn’t have trusted him with this.
Sean had known. Of course, he had. And he’d never said a damn thing. Never called Will out on the too-long stares, or how laughter came too easy in his presence, or the way he suddenly had no problem talking about his future, as long as he was in this town that he so desperately needed to leave.
(As long as Sean was in it.)
Will knows what it feels like to be stabbed, and this was like the miniature version of that, just without the blood and broken skin—and damn it, if the invisibility of it all didn’t make him feel like a goddamn psycho. Like he dropped it somewhere and now he can’t find it. Can’t take it back.
“Do you want to talk about this?” Sean ventures, soft, quiet, already knowing the answer. Of course he does. But still, he always thinks they should talk about it.
But Will, with a mean laugh, no smile, says, “No. Fuck no.” His jaw is set hard, lips in a trembling pout. Too-young, too-blue eyes glassy and red-rimmed. He’s looking down at him, and they’re too close. Will’s too intent, too determined.
He wanted the other thing. Or at least he really, really believed he did.
“Fuck’s sake, Will…” Sean mutters. And he lets him.
The thing he’d been wanting to do, and the thing Sean never thought it would come to, right in front of his apartment at seven P.M on the utmost unremarkable Thursday. Will feels it immediately—the roughness of Sean’s beard against his too-eager mouth, a stark contrast to the way Sean is handling him with such careful restraint. It scrapes against his skin, unfamiliar, older, real in a way that nothing in Will’s life has ever been. Too real.
Sean kisses like he’s been here before—like he’s lived long enough to understand what’s happening here in ways Will hasn’t even begun to process, and it makes Will so goddamn soft, like he doesn’t exist—can’t exist in a world where it was okay to feel like this. He feels the grief there, how sorry he is that he has to pretend Will is someone else in order to get through this. Sean focuses on staying still, bracing himself, letting Will take what he needs. Listening, like he does best, as his most troubled client-slash-friend slowly loses composure at his lips because he’s so young, and he’s so broken, and he isn’t sure how else to process his feelings.
The panic creeps in, insidious and mean, a voice in Will’s head that doesn’t sound like his own: This isn’t you. This isn’t what you do. He’s never wanted anything like this before, never let himself think about anything like this before, and maybe he should’ve left it that way. Maybe he should’ve kept his goddamn mouth shut instead of saying something so fucking wrong out loud.
Will doesn’t want careful. He wants urgency, a frantic grasp at something real before it’s gone. He wants it to feel like it does in their last minute together in his office, when time is running out and he’s trying to shove everything important into the space between breaths, before Sean tells him that he made a lot of progress today and that we’ll pick this up next week.
(What if next week never comes?)
A prickle of anger churns in Will’s gut, because this is exactly what he feared: someone knowing him better than he knows himself. It’s terrifying. Maybe he’s wrong about everything, maybe this is all wrong—maybe that’s what Sean wants him to figure out for himself. The son of a bitch and his hard lessons, always teaching.
Sean does know better, and still, his hands don’t push Will away. Instead, they steady him. Slow him down. A palm cradles the back of his neck, like it did when he’d reassured him again and again; it’s not your fault. It’s the same thing here, the same kind of dire reassurance in a horrible moment of vulnerability that Sean has every right to judge him for but won’t. Never will.
He won’t even bring it up unless Will wants him to.