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“God traffic was terrible,” Phoebe tells him as she climbs out of the car and throws herself into his arms. “Took us five hours to make a two hour drive.”
Dylan pulls her close and squeezes, more happy to see a sibling than he ever expected to be. “Sorry, rush hour sucks.”
The driver’s door clicks open, and Christina steps out, pushing her sunglasses into her hair and grinning widely. “It also doesn’t help that we stopped at that bakery and café you guys love so much to grab dinner.”
Dylan lets go of Phoebe and spins to hug Christina. “You brought food? God, you’re the best.”
“Technically, Dad and Helen paid for it,” Phoebe says. “They said something about wanting to make sure you two are eating more than just peanut butter and jellies and ramen.”
Scoffing, Dylan pulls away from Christina and goes to pop the trunk and haul out their bags. “I’ll have you know we can cook for ourselves. I made spaghetti carbonara the other day, and Will said it was the best thing he’s ever tasted.” Dylan doesn’t mention they’d eaten it naked on the couch because Will had come home with news about a summer internship he’d been hoping to get. Dylan thinks the good news coupled with great sex might have affected his judgment, but it was still damn good carbonara.
“William can eat anything,” Christina contests, “so that’s not saying much.” She pulls their bedding from the back seat, while Phoebe grabs the food from the front.
“Especially when he doesn’t have to cook it,” Phoebe adds.
Dylan takes offense in Will’s absence. “Hey, he’s gotten a lot better since we moved here. He made chicken and potatoes last week without burning anything.” Granted, Dylan had promised him a blowjob in the shower if he had dinner ready before he got home from his late shift, so that might have helped provide some motivation to not burn their kitchen down.
“No way,” Christina says as they follow him inside and up the stairs. “There’s no way he made dinner without your help without setting something on fire.”
Dylan shrugs and fishes his keys out of his pockets. “It’s true. I bet he’d make something while you’re here, if you asked.” He pushes the door open, and they pile into the apartment, Dylan directing Phoebe to the kitchen while he tells Christina to drop the bedding on the couch. “I can grab the air mattress later and blow it up for you. You can share it, or one of you can take the couch. Whatever works.”
“Your place is so cute!” Phoebe gushes as she looks around. “You’ve definitely done some decorating since August. Where did you find this stuff?”
“Thrift stores, the flea market, a couple of the posters are old ones from work that they let me bring home.”
Christina eyes the purple couch and the old, wooden coffee table with amusement. “Can’t believe William let you do the decorating.”
Dylan snorts. “If I left it to him, the whole place would be as boring as the bathroom.”
“Bathroom?” Phoebe repeats with interest. She strides across the living room, grabs the knob, and throws the door open before Dylan can tell her that the bathroom door is on the right, not the left.
His blood runs cold, and his stomach drops to his feet as she stands in the doorway, looking over their room.
“Dylan,” she says in a strange voice before turning back towards him with a furrowed brow. “Where’s the other bed?”
“Other bed?” Christina repeats curiously, trailing after Phoebe to peer into the bedroom where there is definitely only one bed.
Fuck.
She turns to stare at him. “Why is there only one bed?”
They were going to tell them. They were. They had planned it all out, scripted what they were going to say, rehearsed together until it didn’t feel quite so scary. They had a whole list of steps that Will had carefully drafted, steps that Dylan was meant to follow, yet here they were, looking at each other across the room with only one, incriminating bed figuratively standing between them.
Dylan can’t remember what he’s supposed to say, something about this all being so unexpected and needing to take their time to figure things out between them before they told anyone else, something about how they still love the girls and all of their siblings with all their hearts.
Dylan can’t speak past the lump in his throat.
Phoebe is wide-eyed and gaping. Christina looks caught between shock and anger.
There’s the faint sound of keys in the hallway and the distinct scrape as one slides into the lock. It clicks open.
“Hey, I saw the car outside, where are my two favorite girls?” Will asks, dropping his bag to the floor and kicking his shoes off in their entryway. He has a wide grin on his face that falters when he sees Dylan. “They made it, right?” he asks, concern painting the words. “They texted saying they had.” He crosses the room to Dylan, reaching a hand out, and that is apparently the last straw.
“Oh my god,” Phoebe breathes, staring at them. “Oh my god, I can’t— What are you— When—” She looks at Christina with a plea in her eyes, and Christina turns on them.
“Are you seriously fucking?”
Will’s hand drops like he’s been burned. “What are you talking about, Christina? That’s ridiculous.”
Christina shakes her head, frantic. “You are. You totally are. What the hell? What the actual hell, guys? This is messed up. This is so messed up. Oh my god. Oh my god!”
Dylan’s lips curl down as his shoulders rise, bunching around his ears like a shield. Will takes a step closer to him and rests a careful hand on the small of his back. “Calm down, Christina. We can talk about this.”
“Calm down? Calm down? Are you kidding me? I’m not going to calm down! This is insane. This is illegal!”
Dylan flinches, and Will’s face closes off. “Christina,” he snaps. “Stop.”
“Stop? Oh my god, you should stop! This is not okay. This is the furthest thing from okay! Oh my god, what are the other kids going to think? What are Helen and Dad going to think?”
A weight settles in Dylan’s gut, heavy and painful. “Christina, you can’t say anything to them. We weren’t going to tell them yet.”
“You were going to tell them? You think they’d be okay with this?”
Will frowns at her. “Christina.”
“Don’t Christina me, William. I can’t believe you’re sleeping with Dylan! And I can’t believe you didn’t say anything before!” There are tears in her eyes, angry tears that catch the light and make Dylan feel like he wants to both hide from her and comfort her. It’s a confusing tangle of emotions that he doesn’t know how to sort through.
“Christina,” Will repeats, softer but firmer. “We’re not going to talk about this right now. You’re mad, and I know you’re both surprised. Just,” he sighs, “go get some space. Phoebe can go with you. There’s a park right down the street, or you can drive somewhere if you want. We’ll talk about this. We were planning to talk about this, but not like this.”
Christina snaps her mouth shut at his words, and Phoebe raises a single brow in question.
Will waves toward the door, and they slowly make their way across the room, skirting around the boys as they slip out the door without a word.
Clutching a fistful of Will’s shirt, Dylan turns into him, rests his head on his shoulder, and lets out a heavy breath. His throat feels tight, thick with unshed tears and every conversation they’ve ever had about this. Will pulls him closer, wrapping both arms around him and pressing a gentle kiss to his hair.
Something in Dylan cracks, splinters, and pours out of him in a terrible flood. Sinking into Will’s arms, he sobs like he hasn’t since he lost his dad, all heaving breaths and pained gasps. Will holds him close, and Dylan can hear the quiet way he cries, the same way he had their first week in Boston, angry and hurt from too many callous comments and the realization that he would either have to lie or give up his dreams of serving.
Dylan aches to think that this is anything like that. This should have been a good thing. This should have been the best thing: something to celebrate, something happy to share with two of the people that matter most to them. This should have been nothing like that. Dylan still tries to forget that, tries to forget the way that Will had looked that night, the way he had climbed into bed and into Dylan’s arms and muffled his tears in Dylan’s neck. He never wants to go through that again, but this feels like that. Like that, but worse. God, so much worse.
He burrows further into Will’s arms, threading a hand through his hair to hold him close. He wants to say something to soothe the hurt, to dull the pain that he knows Will feels just as keenly as he does, but words seem inadequate.
When Will’s tears seem to have run dry, Dylan pulls back enough to give him a watery smile. “Hey,” he whispers, sliding his hand around to cup Will’s cheeks.
“Hey.”
“Shower?”
Will frowns. “We don’t know when the girls are going to get back. I don’t want them to be locked out.”
Nodding, Dylan pulls his phone out and fires off a quick text to Phoebe. “I told her to give us a half hour.” Then he hooks his fingers around Will’s wrist and pulls him toward the bathroom. “Come on,” he says, “we could use this.”
Will follows him without protest and sheds his clothes before climbing in the shower and turning the water on hot, steam curling upwards as water pours over him. Dylan tries not to get too distracted as he follows him in, dragging the curtain shut behind them.
They wash in silence, passing the shampoo back and forth and getting the hard-to-reach spots on the other’s back.
When the last of the suds have disappeared down the drain, Dylan steps close and blinks against the spray. “Hi,” he murmurs softly.
Will rests a hand on his hip. “Hi.”
“I love you.”
Will’s grip tightens. “I love you, too,” he says, features somber. “More than anything.”
Grinning, Dylan winds an arm around his neck and pulls him close. “More than anything?”
Will loops his arm around Dylan’s waist and drags him flush. “If you haven’t figured that out yet, I’m really not sure what else I could do to make sure you know.”
“I wouldn’t say no to a kiss.”
Will smiles and tips his head forward until their lips touch. “No?”
“Definitely not.”
Humming, Will skates his fingers over the skin of Dylan’s back. “How much time do we have left?” he asks, lips brushing Dylan’s.
“Enough,” Dylan answers and surges forward, pressing full-body against Will.
The girls return more than an hour later, long enough that Dylan has put the food in the fridge and Will has dug the air mattress out of the closet. The doorbell echoes through the apartment, and Dylan spins to look at Will, tipping his head toward the door with a silent plea. Will reaches out to squeeze his hand before moving across the apartment to open the door.
“Hey,” he greets.
The response is muffled, and Dylan strains to make anything out.
“If we’re actually going to talk, yeah.”
A quiet and bashful reply follows.
“Yeah, you just, you can’t say shit like that, okay? It’s not true, and it sucks to hear.”
“I know,” one of the girls—maybe Christina—says. “We know.”
“Okay.”
Will steps back into the living room, and Christina and Phoebe come through the door. Christina’s eyes are red-rimmed, and Phoebe’s lips look bitten raw. When they catch sight of Dylan, Christina scurries across the room and flings herself into his arms.
“I’m so sorry,” she cries, arms tight around him. “I’m so sorry for saying all of that. I’m so sorry for not letting you explain. I’m so sorry, Dylan.”
He pulls her closer and buries his face in her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so, so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have said any of that. Please, believe me. I didn’t mean it.”
Dylan nods. “I know. I know.”
“I was just so surprised and kind of freaked out, and I didn’t think. That wasn’t okay, and I know it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Dylan tells her, and it doesn’t even feel like a lie. “It’s okay.”
Christina pulls away to look at him. “It isn’t,” she says. “It’s not okay for me to say things like that, especially when I don’t know the whole story. Yeah, it caught me off guard—it caught both of us off guard—but that doesn’t make anything I said okay. I should’ve listened, but I didn’t, and I want to make it up to you—to both of you—now.”
Dylan nods in careful agreement, and Christina beams.
The break passes faster than any of them would like after that. In no time at all, they’re packing the girls back into the car with snacks for the road and the piles of homework that they ignored in favor of sightseeing and movie nights.
They’re doing a last sweep of the apartment, checking for any forgotten toothbrushes or misplaced shirts, when Phoebe brings it up, tone cautious. “Are you planning on telling Mom and Frank when you come home for the summer?”
Will suddenly finds the scuff mark they never managed to remove from the kitchen tile very interesting, and Dylan rolls his eyes. The guy is fearless in pretty much everything else, always willing to push and never the first to back down. Except when it comes to family. Dylan doesn’t know if he’s always been that way or if this is just lingering guilt from all the fights they caused in the beginning.
Sighing, Dylan turns to look at the girls apologetically. “We’re not coming home for the summer,” he says, quick like pulling off a bandaid.
“What? No way!”
“Are you serious?”
“Why not?”
“We can cover for you if that’s the problem.”
“Yeah, we totally have your backs.”
Dylan shakes his head, and they fall quiet. “No, that’s not really the problem. It’s just that things are going well for me at the store, and Will got an internship with one of the local engineering firms. Also, we don’t want to try and figure out subletting for the apartment.”
“We’ll visit though,” Will adds because he likes to steal Dylan’s thunder and share the good news. “I finish finals mid-May, but the internship doesn’t start until the end of May. We’ll probably come home for a week or so.”
Christina pouts but doesn’t object, and Phoebe nods in understanding.
“Are you going to tell them?”
Dylan looks to Will because Frank has always been their biggest concern. His mom will be shocked, surprised, maybe a bit upset because they’ve been keeping it from her for so long, but she’ll accept it, saying something about how their happiness is all that matters. Frank, though, is a different story. Breaking the news about Will’s decision to drop ROTC and a future career in the military had been bad enough. Dylan doesn’t know how he’ll react when he learns his first-born son, his pride and joy, his protégé is dating his step-son. Knowing Frank’s temper, it could end poorly, and Dylan doesn’t want to push Will before he’s ready.
Will sighs. “Maybe.”
“Dad will be okay with it,” Christina tells him, and he gives her a dubious look. “Eventually,” she tacks on. “It might take him a while to get used to it, but he’ll come around. Helen will make sure of it.”
They all laugh, easing some of the tension that has built up.
“You guys should probably hit the road soon,” Dylan tells them, glancing at the clock. “Boston traffic doesn’t get any better the later it gets.”
There are hugs all around and numerous reassurances that Will and Dylan will visit in May and that Phoebe and Christina still love them, even if they question their taste in men. They watch the girls climb into the car and pull out of their space, turning up the street and disappearing around a corner.
When they crawl into bed later that night, Dylan spreads himself over Will’s chest and laces their fingers together. “Do you want to tell them?” he asks, voice soft.
Will drags in a slow breath, deep enough that Dylan can feel the rise of his chest. Then, he lets it out carefully, fingers tightening around Dylan’s. “I don’t know,” he replies. “I mean, obviously, someday we’re going to tell them. There’s only so long we can get by with excuses about wanting to be roommates and being too busy to date. If we don’t tell them, they’re going to find out eventually.”
Dylan nods and busses a small kiss to Will’s chest where his chin is propped. “But do you want to tell them soon?”
“It’d be nice not to have to sneak around when we go home. One of the best parts of being in Boston is that we can just be ourselves. We can go on dates and come home together, and none of our friends think it’s weird or wrong. It’d be nice to have the same thing at home.”
“Yeah, but are you ready to tell them? Are you ready to tell your dad?”
Will catches his eye, then looks away. He swallows thickly. “I don’t know,” he murmurs. “I feel like he’s only just getting over the military thing. I…I don’t want this to disappoint him.” He squeezes Dylan’s fingers. “Not that this is something I think could ever be disappointing, but I just…don’t think I could handle it if he was disappointed.”
Dylan knows he wouldn’t be Frank’s first choice for his son’s boyfriend. Hell, he wouldn’t be his five hundredth choice. But it still hurts for Will to say that, the confirmation of his greatest fears.
“Stop that,” Will says, and Dylan refocuses on him.
“Stop what?”
Frowning, Will lifts his free hand to rub away the creases that have formed in Dylan’s brow. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop it. That didn’t come out the way I meant it. You’re not a disappointment, Dylan. You could never be a disappointment.”
He curls his fingers around Dylan’s jaw and looks him in the eye. “You’re the most important person in my life, and I don’t know what I would do if my Dad wasn’t okay with this. His opinion matters; it always has.” He licks his lips. “But I’m starting to realize that you matter more. You matter more than anything else, than everything else, and I need my dad to be okay with that. I need him to accept this and accept us.
“But I know that if he doesn’t, I’ve already made up my mind about what I’ll do, and I think that’s what scares me the most in all of this. It’s such an easy decision it doesn’t even feel like I’d be making a choice, and I don’t…I don’t know how to feel about that. My dad’s always been there for me. I’ve always gone to him with questions or problems, and he’s supported me. But, if he asked me to choose between you and him, I’d pick you.”
Dylan’s heart hammers in his chest.
“I’d pick you, and that scares me. It’s just a lot. It’s a lot, and sometimes I don’t feel like I can keep it all in. I feel too small for things this big, and I feel young and dumb and reckless, but there are days when we wake up and all I can think about is how I want to do this every day for the rest of my life.” He flushes and looks away. “That’s crazy, I know it, but that’s just, yeah…”
“It’s not crazy,” Dylan says, meeting Will’s eyes. “It’s the furthest thing from crazy.”
Will’s brow lifts. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Dylan breathes. “Everything you said, I feel the same. All of it.”
“All of it?”
“Every word.”
Will rolls them suddenly, bracing himself over Dylan and settling in the vee of his thighs. He dips down for a sweet but filthy kiss that has Dylan curling his toes and whining when they part.
Will places a proprietary hand on Dylan’s thigh, fingers spread wide like he’s staking a claim. “I’m going to ask you to marry me someday,” he says lowly, and Dylan moans. “After graduation, when we both have steady jobs and can pay off all the fucking student loans, I’m going to marry you, and we can move into one of those brownstones on the North End that you love so much. Or maybe find a nice place in the suburbs.”
“Suburbs?” Dylan murmurs, barely able to concentrate on Will’s words because he keeps rolling their hips together in a way that has him seeing stars.
Nipping at his lips, Will hums. “Yeah, with a nice house for us and our 2.5 kids and the dogs you’ll want since we’ll have a real yard for them to run around in. Maybe in Lexington or Brookline.”
Dylan cries out when Will’s teeth sink into the skin of his neck, and he locks his legs around Will’s waist to keep him in place. “Kids?” he gasps, hitching his hips in search of friction.
“Of course,” Will states as he grinds against Dylan. “What would our life even be without a couple little monsters running around?”
Dylan’s laugh is breathy and weak, cut in half by a moan that comes out far too loudly. “And how do you suggest we get these children?”
Will wraps a hand behind Dylan’s knee to tug him impossibly closer. “I was thinking adoption,” he rumbles in reply, “but if you want to try the more traditional route, I’m more than up for it.”
Dylan keens. “Lube,” he pants. “Grab the lube.”
Will scoffs, “What, baby, you aren’t already wet for me?” and, with a smirk, skims a couple of fingers over the back of Dylan’s thigh and across his entrance.
To his utter mortification, a full-body shudder wracks through Dylan, and his hips hitch in invitation. “No,” he whines.
Will rubs a dry finger over the tight furl of muscle, and Dylan shivers. “We’ll have to change that,” Will murmurs. “You want me to eat you out, hmm? Get you wet and ready with my mouth?”
“Will,” Dylan moans, fingers digging into the skin of his back.
His plea is met with a dirty grin. “You want that, don’t you, baby?” Will says, already shifting lower. “I know how much you like it.”
Will settles between his legs, and Dylan tosses an arm over his face to cover his flaming cheeks.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Will teases, running his hands up and down Dylan’s thighs. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Dylan isn’t ashamed, not about Will rimming him. He likes that; he’ll be the first to admit it. What he can’t get over is the way his body responds to every dirty, impossible phrase, the way he burns each time Will calls him baby. He feels almost betrayed by his body, wanting things he’s never even considered.
“Hey,” Will calls, softer, gentler. “Dylan, is this alright?”
Dylan lifts his arm enough to look down at Will where he’s perched between his thighs, eagerness giving way to concern as he looks at Dylan. God, he looks good down there.
“I thought you were going to put that mouth to better use,” Dylan taunts because he can freak out about this later. “Or are you all talk?”
Shock, delight, and offense war on Will’s features. Carefully, he lifts Dylan’s legs, settles beneath them, and lets them fall over his shoulders. “I’m going to have you begging for it in two minutes,” he swears.
Dylan lies back and hums. “You keep that promise, and I might even let you fuck me raw later.”
He doesn’t miss the way Will shivers.