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“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in our hearts.”
(A. A. Milne)
So all things considered, Will really thinks he’s a pretty strong guy.
He lifts weights on a regular basis. He’s been working on lobster boats since he was fourteen, and that’s not easy work. He plays defense on an NCAA hockey team and takes checks from huge, angry dudes all the fucking time, and gets right back up to hit back. He’s a strong guy, is what he’s saying.
But this? This is not fair.
The this in question is Derek fucking Nurse, sitting on a picnic blanket in Will’s backyard, while Will’s little cousins crawl all over him. Katie and Ava are sitting on either side of him, jabbering about something, while Conor hangs off his shoulders. Nursey has Gracie in one arm and is gently breaking up an argument between Sean and Aiden over a toy truck.
“Billy, are you even listening to me?”
Will jolts himself back to the present as Megan punches him in the shoulder. “Don’t call me Billy,” he says, automatic, and then blinks. “I mean, what?”
Megan snorts, pushing her hair off her face. Like a number of his cousins, she’s more of a strawberry blonde than a proper redhead, but she still has just as many freckles as he does. “Dude,” she says. “Are you even trying to be subtle?”
“Subtle?” Will tightens his grip around the bottle of beer in his hand. ‘Legal drinking age’ is more of a suggestion than a rule at Poindexter barbeques.
“You’re looking at Derek like you want to eat him,” Megan says. She grins, showing all of her teeth. “Still no luck on that poker face, huh?”
Will groans and drops his head into his hands. “Shut up,” he says. “Okay? Shut up. It’s bad. I know.”
“Aw, buddy.” She slings a companionable arm around his neck. “I mean, I can’t really blame you,” she says, conversational. “Just look at him.”
“I am looking at him,” Will bites out between gritted teeth. In fact, as he’s looking, Gracie starts squirming, and Nursey, who’s apparently resolved the fight between Sean and Aiden, shifts his grip on her and rolls easily to his feet, bouncing her gently. The whole movement is more graceful than anything Will has ever seen from him off the ice. He might die. “That’s the problem.”
Megan snickers. “What’s getting to you? The tattoo? I bet it’s the tattoo. You’ve always had a thing for tattoos. Remember when Kevin Mitchell got that stupid Bruins tatt our senior year and you tripped over your--”
“Jesus Christ, shut up,” Will hisses. “It’s not the tattoo,” he says. “Okay? The tattoo is not the issue.”
Well, that’s not totally true. The tattoo is definitely kind of an issue. He’s been sneaking glances at it in the locker room and whenever Nursey wears a tank top and whenever Nursey stretches up his arms and his sleeves ride up to expose it, trying to figure out the pattern of the design, pretending he’s not fascinated, since freshman year.
Alright, fine, the tattoo is an issue.
But it’s not the current issue.
“It’s--it’s the kids, okay?” He can feel his whole face heating up as he says it. His ears are sunburned from the days on the boat, but he’s got no excuse for his cheeks. “The cousins. The way he is with them.”
There is a horrendously long silence. Eventually, Will drags his eyes up.
Megan is staring at him in absolute delight. “Oh my God,” she says. “Oh my God, Will. Will. That is so fucking embarrassing.”
“I know.”
“Will, he looks like a fucking model, and the last straw for you is that he knows how to handle a baby?”
“I know.”
Megan takes pity on him and pats his shoulder gently. “Oh, kiddo,” she says, like he’s not three very important weeks older than her. “I know. Life’s tough.” She gives him a playful shake, then lets him go. “Does he know?”
Will swallows a long sip of beer and shakes his head. “No.”
“Billy.” She sighs, tossing her ponytail. “No one likes a sad gay.”
“Except the Oscars.” He takes another drink.
“Except the Oscars,” she agrees, because Megan’s as queer as he is, and as closeted around the rest of the family, and she drives him up the fucking wall because they’ve antagonized each other since they were kids, but he loves her. “See, you should tell Derek that one! I bet he’d like it. Isn’t he into culture and media and stuff?”
“Poetry,” he mumbles into his beer. “Also, I hate you.” Megan makes a sudden soft, cooing sound, and Will snaps his head up. “What? What?”
Megan claps a hand over his eyes. “You don’t want to know.”
Will squirms against her grip. “Of course I--”
“You really don’t--”
“Billy,” she hisses. “He is in the hammock. With Gracie and Sean. And they are both asleep on him.”
Will’s stomach swoops. “No,” he whines. “No, that’s not fair.” His hand, of its own accord, creeps up to try and pry Megan’s off his face. “Lemme see.”
“You’re gonna regret it,” she tells him.
“I can handle it,” he says, and looks toward the hammock in the corner of the yard, and--
Oh. Oh, fuck.
Nursey’s on his back in the hammock, the summer wind tousling through his curls. He has one arm around Sean, who’s tucked up against his side, fast asleep his thumb in his mouth. Six-month-old Gracie, her little auburn curls barely visible under her sunhat, is snuggled into Nursey’s other arm, small enough that her whole body fits into the curve of his bicep and forearm.
Will’s mouth goes dry. “I was wrong,” he croaks. “I cannot handle this.”
Megan pats his back again. “Look at it this way,” she says, not unkindly. “He’s only visiting for the week, and the baby cousins are only hanging out today, right? So you’ll only have to deal with this for the rest of the afternoon.” She pauses. “Oh. Wait, we have Aunt Cora’s birthday dinner Wednesday night, don’t we? So I guess that, if he’s still here--”
Will groans, and puts his head in his hands.
With all the family around, plus the chaos of cleaning up the backyard after the barbeque after most of the relatives clear out, Will doesn’t actually catch Nursey alone until they’re heading to bed that night. Nursey had gotten out of most of the yard work by helping Will’s mom do Tupperware-tetris in the kitchen with all the leftovers--“I usually only do this with takeout containers, Mrs. P, but it totally applies!”--and by the time Will gets upstairs, Nursey’s already stretched out on the camp bed they’d set up for him in Will’s room.
“Hey,” he says, closing the door behind him. “Feel like I haven’t seen you all day, man.”
Nursey puts his phone away and sits up. He’s already showered and changed for bed, wearing basketball shorts a Samwell tank top, and Will Absolutely Does Not check out the band of ink around his bicep as he flops down on his own bed. “You mean since you abandoned me to the hordes of Poindexters?” Nursey teases, grinning at him. “Yeah. You have a good time?”
Will squints briefly at him, trying to figure out if Nursey’s actually pissed about Will ditching him for most of the day, but Nursey’s face is relaxed, easy. “I did, yeah. You?”
“Honestly? Yeah.” Nursey smiles, and it’s a real smile, soft and honest, the lines of tension that always hover around his brows disappearing. “Your baby cousins are cute as fuck, dude.”
You’re cute as fuck, Will doesn’t say, because he has self-control. “Yeah.” He rolls up to his feet to change for bed. He’ll shower in the morning, fuck it. “You were, uh.” He clears his throat. “You were good with them. The kiddos.”
There’s a beat of silence behind him as Will pulls a clean shirt out of his dresser and swaps it for the dirty one he’d worn all day. When he turns around again, Nursey looks...almost embarrassed. “Uh,” Nursey says. He fiddles with his phone. “I mean. I like kids a bunch, and I don’t get to hang out with them a lot anymore? So it was fun.”
Fucking kill me, Will thinks. He takes off his shorts, throws them in the laundry hamper along with his dirty t-shirt, and sits back on his bed. “Anymore?”
Nursey does the nervous shuffle with his shoulders and duck of his head that Will, after a year of living with him, now knows would be a blush, if he could see it on Nursey’s skin. “Yeah, I--At Andover, we were encouraged to get involved in volunteering and shit? And there was a childcare center on campus, for faculty and staff, mostly, but the community, too. I volunteered there a few hours a week.”
Will tries, really, really tries, not to ask the next question, but he can’t help it. “How old were the kids?”
Nursey’s smile goes sweet and nostalgic. “Three months to six years,” he says, and Will’s heart flip-flops in his chest. He’s going to literally light himself on fire. “Dude, are you okay? You look really red.”
“Ha,” Will says, quickly. “Yup. Yeah. I’m good.” Nursey raises his eyebrows at him, and Will does everything he can not to picture Nursey the way he looked on their Taddy Tour, still soft around the edges with lingering baby fat, handling a kid Gracie’s age in a daycare center strewn with tours.
And then, worse, so much worse, he pictures Nursey with grey at his temples, and a baby in his arms, and a ring glinting gold on his finger, and oh, oh, Will is so fucked--
“Dex?”
“Yup,” Will says immediately, and then, “Yeah,” more quietly, rubbing his eyes. “Sorry. I, uh. There’s this, uh. Thing? Image. I guess. That I can’t get out of my head.”
Nursey tilts his head to one side. “Anything I can help with?”
“No, dude, it’s, uh--” Will swallows. He wants, he wants, so fucking bad. But this could ruin them. They’re partners, they’re friends, finally, they’re roommates, but--
Oh, fuck it. He and Nursey have been dancing around this shit for years. He gets up, crosses the few feet of space between his bed and Nursey’s cot, and sits down next to him. “Do you want kids?” he blurts out.
Nursey’s brows shoot up. “What?”
Will swallows. “Kids,” he says. “When you’re older.”
“Oh.” Nursey does the shoulder shift again. “Yeah,” he says. “Uh. I do. Two or three, probably? But, like. I’ve always kind of expected I’ll have to talk about the, uh, logistics. With the person.”
Will blinks. “Why?” Nursey’s at least somewhat interested in girls. Unlike Will.
Nursey shrugs. “I’ve got some mental health shit that goes back in my family,” he says. “Not really interested in passing those genes on, even if I do end up with a woman. I’ve always wanted to adopt. From the foster system, maybe. Those are the kids that really need it, you know?”
If Will had ovaries, he’s pretty sure they’d be doing that explosion gif thing Megan likes to send him whenever he texts her a particularly cute puppy video. “Huh,” he says, trying not to look too hard at Nursey’s lips, or the way he’s twisting his hands in his lap, or to think too hard about Nursey with kids that don’t look much like either of them but somehow look like a mix of both of them and Jesus Christ he should just launch himself into the Atlantic--
“Yeah.” Nursey rubs the back of his neck. “Anyway.” He gives Will a lopsided grin. “What about you? Got a plan for a horde of little red-haired Poindex--”
Will puts a hand on top of Nursey’s, stilling his fidgeting fingers, and Nursey trails off. “Nurse,” he says. Nursey makes a questioning noise. “I wanna kiss you.”
Nursey’s eyes go wide, and his mouth drops open. The sound that leaves his mouth is dangerously close to a squeak, and then he says, “Um?”
“Unless you don’t want me to,” Will says. He doesn’t let go of Nursey’s hand, and Nursey doesn’t pull away. “But fuck, Nursey, I--”
It’s not smooth, the way Nursey moves, but Will finds himself with a lapful of defenseman, Nursey’s hands cupping his face and warm, soft lips pressing against his. And Will should have known, fuck, should have fucking known that Nursey would have been an absurdly good kisser, but he’s not prepared for this. He threads his hands into the fabric of Nursey’s tank top and tilts his mouth up and just holds on.
They’re both breathless when Nursey finally pulls back. “Uh,” Will says, staring up at him. “I--holy shit.”
“Sorry.” Nursey’s bottom lip is swollen. Will doesn’t remember biting it, but he must have. “Sorry, I just--I’ve been waiting to kiss you for fucking years.”
Will gets a brief headrush. “You--have?” The fuck. What the fuck. “Why didn’t you--?”
Nursey shrugs one shoulder, shifting on Will’s lap, and Will is suddenly acutely aware that he’s only in boxers, and Nursey’s ass is really, really nice. “I was waiting for you to make the first move,” he says.
He pauses, looking suddenly thoughtful, and Will thinks, oh, no, don’t ask, don’t ask--
“Will,” Nursey says, his voice curious, his thumbs stroking gently over Will’s throat. “Why did you make a move?”
“You. Uh.” Will swallows. “It’s just--” Will takes a deep breath. Well, he’s already in this deep. “You were just really good with the kids, and I saw you sleeping with Gracie, and it was just--”
It’s embarrassing. It’s so, so fucking embarrassing, this is the worst thing, Will wants to disappear into the floor. He dares a glance up, expecting a mocking grin, but Nursey is just grinning, the way he does when he’s found the perfect angle for a shot, or the last slice of pie.
“Oh my God,” he says, and his eyes are bright and glinting. He looks delighted, and Will feels a little relieved--he’s about to get chirped to shit, but not mocked. “Oh my God, Poindexter, you baby-crazy bastard, you want me to have your little ginger babies, don’t you?”
Will feels his face heat to burning. “Our anatomy doesn’t work like that,” he says. “And I’m gay, I’m obviously not married to my kids looking like me.”
Nursey’s grin broadens, and he slings his arms around Will’s neck. “But you’re totally married to the idea of them being mine,” he says. “Aren’t you? You watched me hanging out with your baby cousins all day and thought, ‘yup, that’s him, that’s gonna be the father of my children.’”
“No, I--”
“You did,” Nursey says, leaning closer, kissing up his jaw. “You totally fucking did. You want to marry me. You wanna have kids with me. You’ve got a notebook somewhere with our last names mixed together--”
“I do not,” Will says, but it’s a totally token protest, and Nursey’s mouth feels really good, and--
“Yeah, sure,” Nursey says. “Whatever. I’m not taking your last name, Poindexter.”
Will groans. “You don’t have to take my last name when we get married, Derek, Jesus.”
“Ha,” Nursey says, drawing back, eyes glinting victoriously. “You do want to marry me!”
Rolling his eyes, Will knocks him off his lap, grabs the nearest pillow, and hits him with it as hard as he can. Nursey laughs, his eyes bright and gorgeous.
Will thinks, I am absolutely going to marry you, hits him with the pillow one more time just to make his point, and then leans down to kiss him quiet.