#4: FIC: Seven Facts For William Moseley, PG-13
Title: Seven Facts for William Moseley
Pairing: Moseley/Keynes, initial Barnes/Moseley
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Clumsy!snogging. Otherwise, none.
Summary: “And furthermore,” Ben continues, after a pause, “You’re utterly in love with Skandar.”
Disclaimer: All not mine.
Notes: Thanks to beta readers forochel and ailura. Part One of darong's birthday present.
Fact #1: Snogging is Rarely Perfect
Will ends up kissing Ben in a public toilet, one hand fisted in Ben’s shirt, the other slip-sliding against the damp porcelain sink top.
They kiss with tongues scraping against teeth, with teeth clacking wetly together, with noses bumping and fingers clutching, harsh and messy and vicious. The angle is not quite right and Ben bites Will’s bottom lip just a little too hard, but it only makes Will gasp into Ben’s mouth and nudge his hip forcefully into the edge of the sink.
Ben makes a sound in the back of throat that might be, fuck, without the consonants, explosive and guttural, sliding a wet hand up under Will’s shirt. This elicits a slight shudder from Will that has more to do with the fact that it is ice-cold and dripping than anything else.
“Sorry,” mumbles Ben against the side of Will’s mouth, removing his hand and beginning to fumble with the fly of Will’s trousers just as Will moves to do the same. Their arms bump awkwardly in a moment of confusion.
“Sorry,” says Will hurriedly, pulling away so they can position their hands properly. He leans in to kiss Ben again but gets his chin instead. “Um-”
“Fucking button fly,” Ben grits out, jerking his head back so that he can get a good look at Will’s trousers.
“Sorry,” says Will for the third time, reaching forward to work on Ben’s jeans. “Fuck,” he adds involuntarily, when Ben yanks his fly open with astonishing urgency, shuddering as Ben’s hands pause over his-
A phone goes off.
They freeze for a moment. The phone continues to ring, getting louder.
Ignore it, ignore it, Will thinks frantically.
“That’s mine, sorry.” Ben disentangles himself from Will and reaches into his trouser pocket to answer it. “Ben speaking- oh, hello, Mum.”
Will tries not to look too petulant as Ben asks his mother how the weather is, but he cannot help but scowl as he does up his fly.
Fact #2: The Same Goes For Sex
This time, they manage to get Will’s trousers off.
It is no easy feat, considering that Ben has Will pushed up against a corner of their hotel room, shoving up against him in a way that makes getting at his fly almost impossible. Ben barely manages to, through some stroke of genius, but abandons Will’s open fly to work on his shirt-buttons. Will shucks his trousers off easily and tries to guide Ben across the room in the vague direction of the bed. They attempt this, however, while snogging and walking backwards, which works in the movies but only causes Ben to stumble over the corner of Will’s suitcase.
“My ankle,” Ben yelps, bending over to clutch at it and causing Will to lose his balance.
Will’s succinct reply consists of an anguished, “-- Fuck!” as he trips over backwards and lands rather painfully on his hip.
“God, I’m so sorry-” he begins, trying to push his suitcase away, but Ben just sits down very abruptly and begins to chuckle.
“What’s the matter?” Will asks, uncomprehendingly, but Ben doesn’t seem to be able to stop laughing. Will, in the meantime, is absolutely certain there is a bruise blooming across his left hip. He’s also pretty sure this sort of thing never happens to other people, like Skandar (though he really doesn’t want to think about Skandar in such a situation, and why he even thinks of Skandar in the first place is something that baffles him completely). Or even Ben, for that matter, under normal circumstances. “Ben?”
“I’m sorry,” is all Ben can say, biting his fist to contain his laughter, evidently in no mood to continue what they started.
With some resignation, Will reaches for his discarded trousers and starts to put them on.
Fact #3: Anna is Never Wrong
He manages to catch Anna the day before he leaves for Sydney.
“Well, it does take practise,” says Anna somewhat knowingly, “Though yours seem to be slightly more disastrous than normal.”
“He’ll probably never want to come near me again,” Will groans, burying his face in his hands. He thinks he hears Anna say, “Good,” under her breath.
“What?”
Anna stirs her tea with some force. “Uh, I said, ‘give it time’. And don’t forget what I told you about Communicating.”
“Yes, yes,” Will agrees morosely, fidgeting with a slightly frayed corner of his scarf.
“Will, are you- wearing that because…” Anna trails off, making a face. Her eyes dart to Will’s neck.
“No!” says Will, mortified. “No, I just like it.” It is actually Skandar’s scarf; he’d gotten it for Christmas two years ago and promptly passed it on to Will.
“Have you spoken to him yet?” Anna asks.
“No, I haven’t seen him in ages-” Will starts to say, but Anna tuts impatiently and raises one eyebrow. “You mean Ben?”
“Yes, of course.” At times, Anna still slips into that exasperated mother tone she picked up while playing Susan. “Though you should also give Skandar a call, seeing as you haven’t spoken to him very recently, either.”
Will stares into his teacup and wonders if Skandar will mind getting an out-of-the-blue phone call halfway through his GCSEs.
“I think he’ll appreciate it,” Anna tells him slowly, and Will considers the possibility that she’s learned how to read his mind.
“Take care of yourself,” Anna says after they exchange good-bye hugs, giving him a meaningful look that is both quintessentially Anna and simultaneously unfathomable.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks Will, rather nonplussed, but Anna is already hurrying down the street.
Fact #4: Will is Seldom Right
In Sydney, Will works out exactly what time he should call Skandar, factoring in the time difference as well as Skandar’s examination schedule. It’s Skandar’s mother who answers the phone.
“Who is this?” she asks blearily, and Will hears a stifled yawn.
“It’s Will, Mrs Keynes,” he tells her, realising with a sinking feeling that he’s probably messed up the calculations anyway.
“He has his Physics paper tomorrow, Will, and-”
“-Mum,” Skandar says abruptly down the other phone, “Mum, I’m still awake.”
She tells them they only have five minutes, before stifling another yawn and hanging up.
“Hi-” says Will.
“I’ve got Physics tomorrow,” Skandar interrupts. “And you do know that it’s half past two in the morning, right?” Will can almost hear Skandar rolling his eyes on the other end. “How’s Sydney?”
“Good, overwhelming; it’s really odd without you though,” Will says, too quickly, and adds, “In a general, smaller-numbers sense.”
“Glad to know,” Skandar replies dryly. “Look, I should go-”
“Yes, get some sleep, mate-”
Skandar snorts. “I was trying, until you came along.”
“I’ll bugger off now, good luck,” and Will can’t help but smile to himself even after he hangs up, because it’s always so much less awkward, with Skandar.
Fact #5: Communicating, Like Snogging and Sex, Has a Tendency To End In Disaster
Will tries, yes, Will really tries to get Ben to sit down for a moment and talk to him, but Ben’s always all over the place before TV interviews, filled with a nervous excitement that makes him twitch and pace and say very little. Of course, it all disappears when he actually gets in front of the cameras, unlike Will’s nerves, which always cause him to talk too much and too enthusiastically.
After the interview, in the car, in the lift, in the corridor to their hotel rooms, Ben keeps turning to fix him with a significant look, before saying, “Yes?” in his patient voice, but Will realises that while he’s already internalised the fact that Communicating is key, he has no clue how to go about it with Ben.
‘TALK ABT FEELINGS Y N’ he texts Anna hurriedly, trying to formulate a coherent response to Ben’s latest “Yes?” while selecting her phone number off his ‘recent contacts’ list.
“I just thought that maybe- we’d want to figure this out?” Will finally says, haltingly. They’ve reached the door to Ben’s room and Will’s not sure if he’s meant to follow him in.
“Hm,” says Ben, taking out his room key card and unlocking the door. After a pause, “Come in.”
“Um, right.”
“Have a seat.” He remains standing as Will sits down on one of the chairs. “The thing is-” he begins. “The thing is.”
God, thinks Will, because nothing good ever comes after ‘the thing is’.
“I don’t think this really works,” Ben finally says.
Will takes a while to register this, but eventually he says, “Oh.”
“It’s not because of the falling down and interrupted whatever, or anything to do with you at all, really it isn’t - it’s just…” Ben bites his lip. “I don’t do younger men.”
“What do you mean, you don’t do younger men? What have you been doing, then?” Will interrupts indignantly, regaining his speech through sheer outrage. “What am I?” he explodes, aware of how ridiculous he sounds but not quite caring.
When faced with such a question Skandar will probably smirk and say, “A younger woman?” but Ben isn’t Skandar (and once again Will wonders why he’s even thinking of Skandar at this point), so he just looks at Will like he’s gone slightly mad.
“And furthermore,” Ben continues, after a pause, “You’re utterly in love with Skandar.”
There is a long moment in which Will gapes, open-mouthed, at Ben. He is about to formulate a response, when his phone beeps loudly.
“Sorry, text message,” says Will, pulling it out of his pocket with trembling fingers, hoping very hard that it is Anna replying with some sagely advice.
It’s Skandar.
‘what! moseley are you high on smth?’
“Oh, God,” Will groans, slumping back in his chair. He’d texted Skandar by mistake.
“Are you all right?” asks Ben concernedly.
“Yes, yes- God, no- yes.” Will covers his eyes with his right hand. “Oh, fuck.”
Fact #6: There Are No Facts; Only An Interlude
“But I’m not,” Will tells Anna urgently, over the phone. “I’m not.”
“Of course,” says Anna placatingly. Will hears a brisk chopping sound from her end and knows that she’s making her morning fruit-and-milk shake again. “Have you replied?”
“…No,” says Will. “Was I supposed to?”
There is a pause in which Anna is probably pouring milk into the blender, before she replies, “Well, it’s probably a good idea, since-”
“But I’m not in love with Skandar,” Will reiterates, more forcefully than he means to.
Anna sighs and starts the blender. “I didn’t say you were, all I meant was-”
“I don’t understand,” Will groans, slumping back onto his bed.
“Talk to him,” says Anna firmly, turning off the blender. “Regardless of whether you are or not-”
“-I’m not-”
“Just talk to him,” Anna finishes.
Fact #7: When It Comes To Skandar, Most Facts Can Be Disproved
He fools himself into thinking that things haven’t changed a bit when he arrives at Skandar’s house and Skandar answers the door with a tatty old Star Wars blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a sheet of French grammar rules taped to his left arm.
“It’s cold, and I have French tomorrow,” says Skandar by way of explanation. “Come in.”
Will follows Skandar upstairs, taking in the comforting familiarity of the house. One particular pair of display cases on the staircase landing always catches Will’s attention, for their shelves are filled with every odd this-and-that that Skandar’s parents have collected over the years, from a life-sized mahogany carving of someone’s beaklike nose to a delicate selection of bamboo flutes.
“There’s nothing new there,” Skandar says with slight impatience when Will stops to examine the shelves. “Though Mum says you can take the teapot home with you if you like, since you’re so obsessed with it.” It’s an old joke, really, but Skandar says it in a way that makes Will start slightly and glance around at him; it’s biting, almost, bitter.
“Sorry?”
Skandar gives him a look that’s both puzzled and slightly hurt, before turning round, brows furrowed, and goes into his room. Will trails after him helplessly and slightly dismayed, sitting down on the edge of Skandar’s bed while Skandar rummages somewhat violently through a box of revision folders. He tries to remember the last time Skandar was as angry as he seems to be now, and comes up with nothing close to it. There was of course the time he went on a date with Emily Morgan and forgot to tell Skandar, but nothing of the sort’s ever happened since.
“Look, is there something wrong?” Will finally says, after witnessing Skandar pack and unpack the same box twice.
“No.” Skandar drops a paperback French dictionary onto his desk with a loud thud and turns to look at Will, repeats Will’s question with some amount of nastiness, “Is there something wrong?”
Yes, Will wants to ask, Why is it so awkward now when it never was before, and he means to tell Skandar, I’ll just go, then, and good luck for French, but what he actually does say is, “Ben says I’m in love with you.”
Skandar goes white, extremely white, and drops his mechanical pencil on the floor. Will knows he’s really fucked it up now.
“I’ll… just. Go-” he starts to say, getting up, but Skandar swivels round in his chair and demands, abruptly, “Were you high when you sent me that text?”
“No, I-”
“Was it serious? Why didn’t you reply?”
“I wanted to, but Anna said to talk to-”
“And are you?” Skandar interrupts.
“Am I what- high?”
“No,” Skandar snaps impatiently and doesn’t meet Will’s eye, like he always does when he’s mortally embarrassed. “No, the other… thing.”
And quite suddenly, it dawns upon Will that everything - the startling Skandar asides that pop into his mind at odd times of the day, Anna’s meaningful look, the way a two-minute conversation can be so much more personal than anything he’s had with Ben - point to the same thing.
He realises that Anna has known this for a fact, and so has Ben, and maybe even Skandar; maybe everyone else but himself. This is a new feeling for Will, a breathtaking of course that happens when someone shows you the solution to a puzzle, when everything (or most of it, anyway) falls perfectly into place.
“I think so,” says Will, slightly disoriented and heart in his stomach. “More… more than a little bit. Are you-”
“Possibly,” Skandar replies hoarsely, ducking down to pick up his mechanical pencil and knocking over a stack of loose notes with his elbow.
It takes Will a while to actually even move from where he is, frozen, but after a long moment he stands up and picks his way across the room through scattered stacks of notes (‘Conjugaison’ and ‘THE HABER PROCESS’, among others) until he is standing next to Skandar at his desk.
“Do we-”
“Are we-” they say at the same time, and Will laughs just a little as he leans down to press his lips to Skandar’s.
His aim is little bit off because he gets the corner of Skandar’s mouth instead, but his hand is cupped around Skandar’s jaw and though they’re both not very good at it, not with each other, there is no awkwardness in this kiss, just a breathless slide of tongue against lips, against teeth, quiet wet sounds in the warm silence. The small perfections lie in the slight trembling of Skandar’s fingers around Will’s wrist, the way his eyelids flutter shut and his breath catches in his chest.
It is not entirely comfortable; Will is stepping on at least three of Skandar’s half-completed vocabulary exercises and Skandar’s neck is starting to hurt just a little bit, but they are laughing even as they kiss.
Pairing: Moseley/Keynes, initial Barnes/Moseley
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Clumsy!snogging. Otherwise, none.
Summary: “And furthermore,” Ben continues, after a pause, “You’re utterly in love with Skandar.”
Disclaimer: All not mine.
Notes: Thanks to beta readers forochel and ailura. Part One of darong's birthday present.
Fact #1: Snogging is Rarely Perfect
Will ends up kissing Ben in a public toilet, one hand fisted in Ben’s shirt, the other slip-sliding against the damp porcelain sink top.
They kiss with tongues scraping against teeth, with teeth clacking wetly together, with noses bumping and fingers clutching, harsh and messy and vicious. The angle is not quite right and Ben bites Will’s bottom lip just a little too hard, but it only makes Will gasp into Ben’s mouth and nudge his hip forcefully into the edge of the sink.
Ben makes a sound in the back of throat that might be, fuck, without the consonants, explosive and guttural, sliding a wet hand up under Will’s shirt. This elicits a slight shudder from Will that has more to do with the fact that it is ice-cold and dripping than anything else.
“Sorry,” mumbles Ben against the side of Will’s mouth, removing his hand and beginning to fumble with the fly of Will’s trousers just as Will moves to do the same. Their arms bump awkwardly in a moment of confusion.
“Sorry,” says Will hurriedly, pulling away so they can position their hands properly. He leans in to kiss Ben again but gets his chin instead. “Um-”
“Fucking button fly,” Ben grits out, jerking his head back so that he can get a good look at Will’s trousers.
“Sorry,” says Will for the third time, reaching forward to work on Ben’s jeans. “Fuck,” he adds involuntarily, when Ben yanks his fly open with astonishing urgency, shuddering as Ben’s hands pause over his-
A phone goes off.
They freeze for a moment. The phone continues to ring, getting louder.
Ignore it, ignore it, Will thinks frantically.
“That’s mine, sorry.” Ben disentangles himself from Will and reaches into his trouser pocket to answer it. “Ben speaking- oh, hello, Mum.”
Will tries not to look too petulant as Ben asks his mother how the weather is, but he cannot help but scowl as he does up his fly.
Fact #2: The Same Goes For Sex
This time, they manage to get Will’s trousers off.
It is no easy feat, considering that Ben has Will pushed up against a corner of their hotel room, shoving up against him in a way that makes getting at his fly almost impossible. Ben barely manages to, through some stroke of genius, but abandons Will’s open fly to work on his shirt-buttons. Will shucks his trousers off easily and tries to guide Ben across the room in the vague direction of the bed. They attempt this, however, while snogging and walking backwards, which works in the movies but only causes Ben to stumble over the corner of Will’s suitcase.
“My ankle,” Ben yelps, bending over to clutch at it and causing Will to lose his balance.
Will’s succinct reply consists of an anguished, “-- Fuck!” as he trips over backwards and lands rather painfully on his hip.
“God, I’m so sorry-” he begins, trying to push his suitcase away, but Ben just sits down very abruptly and begins to chuckle.
“What’s the matter?” Will asks, uncomprehendingly, but Ben doesn’t seem to be able to stop laughing. Will, in the meantime, is absolutely certain there is a bruise blooming across his left hip. He’s also pretty sure this sort of thing never happens to other people, like Skandar (though he really doesn’t want to think about Skandar in such a situation, and why he even thinks of Skandar in the first place is something that baffles him completely). Or even Ben, for that matter, under normal circumstances. “Ben?”
“I’m sorry,” is all Ben can say, biting his fist to contain his laughter, evidently in no mood to continue what they started.
With some resignation, Will reaches for his discarded trousers and starts to put them on.
Fact #3: Anna is Never Wrong
He manages to catch Anna the day before he leaves for Sydney.
“Well, it does take practise,” says Anna somewhat knowingly, “Though yours seem to be slightly more disastrous than normal.”
“He’ll probably never want to come near me again,” Will groans, burying his face in his hands. He thinks he hears Anna say, “Good,” under her breath.
“What?”
Anna stirs her tea with some force. “Uh, I said, ‘give it time’. And don’t forget what I told you about Communicating.”
“Yes, yes,” Will agrees morosely, fidgeting with a slightly frayed corner of his scarf.
“Will, are you- wearing that because…” Anna trails off, making a face. Her eyes dart to Will’s neck.
“No!” says Will, mortified. “No, I just like it.” It is actually Skandar’s scarf; he’d gotten it for Christmas two years ago and promptly passed it on to Will.
“Have you spoken to him yet?” Anna asks.
“No, I haven’t seen him in ages-” Will starts to say, but Anna tuts impatiently and raises one eyebrow. “You mean Ben?”
“Yes, of course.” At times, Anna still slips into that exasperated mother tone she picked up while playing Susan. “Though you should also give Skandar a call, seeing as you haven’t spoken to him very recently, either.”
Will stares into his teacup and wonders if Skandar will mind getting an out-of-the-blue phone call halfway through his GCSEs.
“I think he’ll appreciate it,” Anna tells him slowly, and Will considers the possibility that she’s learned how to read his mind.
“Take care of yourself,” Anna says after they exchange good-bye hugs, giving him a meaningful look that is both quintessentially Anna and simultaneously unfathomable.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks Will, rather nonplussed, but Anna is already hurrying down the street.
Fact #4: Will is Seldom Right
In Sydney, Will works out exactly what time he should call Skandar, factoring in the time difference as well as Skandar’s examination schedule. It’s Skandar’s mother who answers the phone.
“Who is this?” she asks blearily, and Will hears a stifled yawn.
“It’s Will, Mrs Keynes,” he tells her, realising with a sinking feeling that he’s probably messed up the calculations anyway.
“He has his Physics paper tomorrow, Will, and-”
“-Mum,” Skandar says abruptly down the other phone, “Mum, I’m still awake.”
She tells them they only have five minutes, before stifling another yawn and hanging up.
“Hi-” says Will.
“I’ve got Physics tomorrow,” Skandar interrupts. “And you do know that it’s half past two in the morning, right?” Will can almost hear Skandar rolling his eyes on the other end. “How’s Sydney?”
“Good, overwhelming; it’s really odd without you though,” Will says, too quickly, and adds, “In a general, smaller-numbers sense.”
“Glad to know,” Skandar replies dryly. “Look, I should go-”
“Yes, get some sleep, mate-”
Skandar snorts. “I was trying, until you came along.”
“I’ll bugger off now, good luck,” and Will can’t help but smile to himself even after he hangs up, because it’s always so much less awkward, with Skandar.
Fact #5: Communicating, Like Snogging and Sex, Has a Tendency To End In Disaster
Will tries, yes, Will really tries to get Ben to sit down for a moment and talk to him, but Ben’s always all over the place before TV interviews, filled with a nervous excitement that makes him twitch and pace and say very little. Of course, it all disappears when he actually gets in front of the cameras, unlike Will’s nerves, which always cause him to talk too much and too enthusiastically.
After the interview, in the car, in the lift, in the corridor to their hotel rooms, Ben keeps turning to fix him with a significant look, before saying, “Yes?” in his patient voice, but Will realises that while he’s already internalised the fact that Communicating is key, he has no clue how to go about it with Ben.
‘TALK ABT FEELINGS Y N’ he texts Anna hurriedly, trying to formulate a coherent response to Ben’s latest “Yes?” while selecting her phone number off his ‘recent contacts’ list.
“I just thought that maybe- we’d want to figure this out?” Will finally says, haltingly. They’ve reached the door to Ben’s room and Will’s not sure if he’s meant to follow him in.
“Hm,” says Ben, taking out his room key card and unlocking the door. After a pause, “Come in.”
“Um, right.”
“Have a seat.” He remains standing as Will sits down on one of the chairs. “The thing is-” he begins. “The thing is.”
God, thinks Will, because nothing good ever comes after ‘the thing is’.
“I don’t think this really works,” Ben finally says.
Will takes a while to register this, but eventually he says, “Oh.”
“It’s not because of the falling down and interrupted whatever, or anything to do with you at all, really it isn’t - it’s just…” Ben bites his lip. “I don’t do younger men.”
“What do you mean, you don’t do younger men? What have you been doing, then?” Will interrupts indignantly, regaining his speech through sheer outrage. “What am I?” he explodes, aware of how ridiculous he sounds but not quite caring.
When faced with such a question Skandar will probably smirk and say, “A younger woman?” but Ben isn’t Skandar (and once again Will wonders why he’s even thinking of Skandar at this point), so he just looks at Will like he’s gone slightly mad.
“And furthermore,” Ben continues, after a pause, “You’re utterly in love with Skandar.”
There is a long moment in which Will gapes, open-mouthed, at Ben. He is about to formulate a response, when his phone beeps loudly.
“Sorry, text message,” says Will, pulling it out of his pocket with trembling fingers, hoping very hard that it is Anna replying with some sagely advice.
It’s Skandar.
‘what! moseley are you high on smth?’
“Oh, God,” Will groans, slumping back in his chair. He’d texted Skandar by mistake.
“Are you all right?” asks Ben concernedly.
“Yes, yes- God, no- yes.” Will covers his eyes with his right hand. “Oh, fuck.”
Fact #6: There Are No Facts; Only An Interlude
“But I’m not,” Will tells Anna urgently, over the phone. “I’m not.”
“Of course,” says Anna placatingly. Will hears a brisk chopping sound from her end and knows that she’s making her morning fruit-and-milk shake again. “Have you replied?”
“…No,” says Will. “Was I supposed to?”
There is a pause in which Anna is probably pouring milk into the blender, before she replies, “Well, it’s probably a good idea, since-”
“But I’m not in love with Skandar,” Will reiterates, more forcefully than he means to.
Anna sighs and starts the blender. “I didn’t say you were, all I meant was-”
“I don’t understand,” Will groans, slumping back onto his bed.
“Talk to him,” says Anna firmly, turning off the blender. “Regardless of whether you are or not-”
“-I’m not-”
“Just talk to him,” Anna finishes.
Fact #7: When It Comes To Skandar, Most Facts Can Be Disproved
He fools himself into thinking that things haven’t changed a bit when he arrives at Skandar’s house and Skandar answers the door with a tatty old Star Wars blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a sheet of French grammar rules taped to his left arm.
“It’s cold, and I have French tomorrow,” says Skandar by way of explanation. “Come in.”
Will follows Skandar upstairs, taking in the comforting familiarity of the house. One particular pair of display cases on the staircase landing always catches Will’s attention, for their shelves are filled with every odd this-and-that that Skandar’s parents have collected over the years, from a life-sized mahogany carving of someone’s beaklike nose to a delicate selection of bamboo flutes.
“There’s nothing new there,” Skandar says with slight impatience when Will stops to examine the shelves. “Though Mum says you can take the teapot home with you if you like, since you’re so obsessed with it.” It’s an old joke, really, but Skandar says it in a way that makes Will start slightly and glance around at him; it’s biting, almost, bitter.
“Sorry?”
Skandar gives him a look that’s both puzzled and slightly hurt, before turning round, brows furrowed, and goes into his room. Will trails after him helplessly and slightly dismayed, sitting down on the edge of Skandar’s bed while Skandar rummages somewhat violently through a box of revision folders. He tries to remember the last time Skandar was as angry as he seems to be now, and comes up with nothing close to it. There was of course the time he went on a date with Emily Morgan and forgot to tell Skandar, but nothing of the sort’s ever happened since.
“Look, is there something wrong?” Will finally says, after witnessing Skandar pack and unpack the same box twice.
“No.” Skandar drops a paperback French dictionary onto his desk with a loud thud and turns to look at Will, repeats Will’s question with some amount of nastiness, “Is there something wrong?”
Yes, Will wants to ask, Why is it so awkward now when it never was before, and he means to tell Skandar, I’ll just go, then, and good luck for French, but what he actually does say is, “Ben says I’m in love with you.”
Skandar goes white, extremely white, and drops his mechanical pencil on the floor. Will knows he’s really fucked it up now.
“I’ll… just. Go-” he starts to say, getting up, but Skandar swivels round in his chair and demands, abruptly, “Were you high when you sent me that text?”
“No, I-”
“Was it serious? Why didn’t you reply?”
“I wanted to, but Anna said to talk to-”
“And are you?” Skandar interrupts.
“Am I what- high?”
“No,” Skandar snaps impatiently and doesn’t meet Will’s eye, like he always does when he’s mortally embarrassed. “No, the other… thing.”
And quite suddenly, it dawns upon Will that everything - the startling Skandar asides that pop into his mind at odd times of the day, Anna’s meaningful look, the way a two-minute conversation can be so much more personal than anything he’s had with Ben - point to the same thing.
He realises that Anna has known this for a fact, and so has Ben, and maybe even Skandar; maybe everyone else but himself. This is a new feeling for Will, a breathtaking of course that happens when someone shows you the solution to a puzzle, when everything (or most of it, anyway) falls perfectly into place.
“I think so,” says Will, slightly disoriented and heart in his stomach. “More… more than a little bit. Are you-”
“Possibly,” Skandar replies hoarsely, ducking down to pick up his mechanical pencil and knocking over a stack of loose notes with his elbow.
It takes Will a while to actually even move from where he is, frozen, but after a long moment he stands up and picks his way across the room through scattered stacks of notes (‘Conjugaison’ and ‘THE HABER PROCESS’, among others) until he is standing next to Skandar at his desk.
“Do we-”
“Are we-” they say at the same time, and Will laughs just a little as he leans down to press his lips to Skandar’s.
His aim is little bit off because he gets the corner of Skandar’s mouth instead, but his hand is cupped around Skandar’s jaw and though they’re both not very good at it, not with each other, there is no awkwardness in this kiss, just a breathless slide of tongue against lips, against teeth, quiet wet sounds in the warm silence. The small perfections lie in the slight trembling of Skandar’s fingers around Will’s wrist, the way his eyelids flutter shut and his breath catches in his chest.
It is not entirely comfortable; Will is stepping on at least three of Skandar’s half-completed vocabulary exercises and Skandar’s neck is starting to hurt just a little bit, but they are laughing even as they kiss.