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Tommy knew what he had to do. He had to talk to Will.
He went to Will's apartment and knocked on the door as soon as he could the next day. It was raining hard, and he wasn't even sure if Will was home. Tommy stood on the apartment stoop, drenched in water. He could hear the dogs barking, but that didn't really mean Will was home.....
But Will opened the door, and he wasn't dressed in his uniform. Today must've been a day off.
"Hey," Tommy said.
Will didn't look particularly happy to see him.
"Hey."
Tommy pressed his lips together, then launched right into it.
"You're not gonna press charges against Jimmy. Right?"
Will gave a heavy sigh and leaned against the door frame.
"Shouldn't I?"
"It - it would mean a lot to me and my brothers and Ma."
Will wasn't making eye contact when he said the next thing. Instead he was rubbing his forehead and looking at the ground.
"Would it be safe for you?"
"Huh?"
Will sighed again, then pushed off of the door frame and let Tommy come inside.
Tommy walked into the room, the dogs walking around his feet, Buster almost tripping him up. Will let him take his wet coat off and put it in the hallway, then led him into the kitchen. Will put the kettle on for tea, then sat down at the table. He gestured for Tommy to do the same.
Now that Tommy was inside a warm apartment, he really wished he wasn't soaking wet. The droplets dripped from his hair onto the table and his lap, and he tried to wipe the water away.
"Your brother grabbed and attacked me after leaving his bar, having taken me for a gay man. Shouting a lot about how I was making you gay." Will stated, saying what they already knew. "Now, I'm working on a variety of thoughts that I can't confirm or deny because I'm missing information."
Tommy furrowed his eyebrows. "What kind of information?"
"Like if you're gay."
Tommy's stomach shriveled up, and he found it hard to speak. But Will didn't need him to speak right then, apparently.
"It doesn't bother me if he thinks I'm gay. Jimmy thinking I'm gay doesn't actually hurt me. I am always going to be in a position of power over him as a cop. That's not going away. And because of that power, I have a responsibility to make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else. I don't know if he has a history of this behavior or if this is a single moment in the history of looking after his little brothers."
Will still wasn't looking directly at him, and Tommy wasn't sure why that was. He knew Will rarely made eye contact, but in that moment, it felt like Will was distancing himself from Tommy, and . . . that hurt.
"I need you to answer me honestly, Tommy. Because if you don't and something bad happens because I did something I shouldn't have, I'm not going to be able to forgive myself. Or you. Understand?"
Tommy nodded, swallowing hard. "Yeah," he said, his voice sounding restricted.
Will's eyes darted to look at him just for a moment, then he went back to looking at a spot on the table.
"Has Jimmy ever attacked anyone before under the premise that they were gay? Or used the fact that they were gay as justification for attacking them, even if the true reason was something else?"
"No," Tommy said, confident that it was true. He had never heard of it if it wasn't.
"Has Jimmy ever spoken derogatorily about gays in the past? Either actively complaining or just in passing? Is 'faggot' a normal word in his vocabulary?"
Tommy swallowed a little. "He cracks gay jokes sometimes, but no differently than anybody else."
Will's mouth pressed into a thin line, and Tommy doubted that was a good thing.
"Are you gay, Tommy?"
His stomach twisted, even though he knew the answer.
"No."
"Do you like men?"
His stomach felt like it shriveled up and was eating itself.
"Y-yeah."
Will still wasn't looking at him.
"Does Jimmy know that?"
"No."
Will nodded, taking that information in.
"Would you feel safe telling him that?"
"I - I wouldn't feel any safer telling him than I would feel telling my mother or my priest...."
Will looked up at Tommy, finally, then turned his body so that he could face him proper.
"If I don't press charges against Jimmy, are you going to be in danger?"
The kettle started to whistle, and Will got up to take it off the eye and pour the water for the tea. Tommy let the question hang in the air. Will brought the cups to the table and set one in front of Tommy and put the other in front of where Will was sitting.
"Jimmy won't hurt me," Tommy said. Will looked at him again as he sat back down. "He's my brother. He cares about me, even if he doesn't like certain parts of me, and he wouldn't hurt me."
"So he wouldn't beat you up for it?"
"No more than he'd beat me up during rough-housing. You know how brothers get."
Will shook his head. "Only child. No idea."
Tommy furrowed his eyebrows. "What about playing rough with the neighborhood kids?"
Will shook his head again. "I did not rough-house with other children. It was never 'boys will be boys' with me. That's what happens with you have a developmental disability."
Will took a sip of his tea, but Tommy was floored for a moment.
"You - you have a what?"
Will didn't even raise an eyebrow or blink at the question.
"I'm autistic. Autism is a developmental disability. No official diagnosis, but my mother left my father because I wasn't developing at an expected rate and not exhibiting expected behavior. Research on my own time seems to indicate that I most certainly am, but I've decided official diagnosis won't help me in the long run. No one wants a retard holding a gun."
"You're not a retard," Tommy responded quickly.
Will snorted a little and smiled, but in a way that showed that Will knew something - or a lot of somethings - that Tommy didn't.
"I had a lot of teachers who would disagree with you. Couldn't be interested in any gender without getting jabs of 'you're too stupid to know what genitals you're even looking at'." Will took another long sip of his tea.
Tommy's eyebrows lifted. "Either gender?"
Will gave Tommy another little smile that said he knew something Tommy didn't.
"I'm far from being someone who would indiscriminately sleep around, but I have no actual preference when it comes to gender presentation and genital possession."
Will laughed a little as Tommy furrowed his eyebrows, trying to make sense of Will's phrasing.
"It means that I can be attracted to pretty much anyone as long as I like them as a person."
"Oh. Okay," Tommy said, his mouth curving up a little. "There . . . anybody you're interested in right now?"
Will still was smiling at him.
"Just an Irishman who can't seem to keep himself and his brothers out of trouble."
Tommy blushed and ducked his head. Will laughed a little bit, but then the smile fell away.
"The thought of giving Jimmy a free pass doesn't sit well with me, though."
Tommy looked up, the smile that had been developing falling away a little.
"I promise it won't happen again. I'll talk to him."
"I don't care if it happens to me again, I care if it happens to someone else."
"It won't."
"How can you be sure?"
Tommy was quiet for a little while. Will sighed. They both knew he couldn't be 100% sure.
"Give me 24 hours to find out. Okay?" Tommy asked.
Will groaned a little bit.
"Five. You have five to find out."
"Okay."
There was a silence as Will continued to drink the tea and Tommy didn't touch his at all.
"I'm interested in you, too," Tommy said.
Will's smile returned as he lowered the mug.
"Would you like to do anything about it?"
Tommy watched as Will leaned back in his chair and tossed his hair back, only for the curls to more or less fall back almost exactly where they laid before.
"Yeah. I . . . I'd like to be close to you. Kiss you.... Spend time with you, mostly."
Will's smile widened. "I'd like that, too."
Tommy brought the mug to his own lips, and Will watched as he drank.
"Time's a-ticking if you don't want Jimmy going to holding," Will reminded him.
"He won't be that hard to get a hold of," Tommy claimed. Will snorted a little, then continued to drink from his own mug as well.