Cursed Will and non-orphaned, non-poisoned Jem meet as adults.
Healthy Jem doesn’t need a mission in life, he has a mission in life, he’s a Shadowhunter and he kills demons and protects people. Jem was also raised by dedicated Shadowhunters. Not just in the sense of dedicated to their jobs but true believers in the cause.
(Citations for that headcanon: his reaction to the idea of being a vampire, his warrior soul belief, his refusal to get off the battlefield until he is literally on his death bed)
Will is a showboat with a bad attitude. Good. Very good. But also his heart isn’t in it. He doesn’t line up with Jem’s belief that their purpose is to save the world. Will seems to demon hunt because it’s fun and then he comes home and alienates his team and that’s going to get people killed.
Jem is not interested in tolerating any of that.
Then there is a moment.
I’m imagining a moment with a kid where Will utterly drops the act because he thinks there’s no one around to see except this kid who’s going to be gone from his life by the end of the mission so he can’t hurt her by being nice to her and Jem catches him being all super reassuring and kind and like an entirely different person.
And from that point forward, Jem’s paying attention.
Will’s a dick to his teammates but he is also always there to watch their backs. He actually is a lot more careful about watching over the rest of the team than any one notices until Jem’s watching. He’s reckless but he tends to be reckless in ways that endanger his life in order to protect someone else’s.
Will’s got a death wish. There’s an CC ask running around out there where she says that if Tessa had never shown up and shaken everything up in London, Jem would have died the death he intended and Will would have eventually committed suicide. Without the added grief/guilt, Will’s not quite suicidal but he’s also pretty sure that ending his own life to save someone else’s, anyone else’s is fitting justice for his sister and all the suffering he has caused.
I also am a big fan of the headcanon that Will is kind if he can hide it. Like he’s kind to barmaids in taverns he’ll never go back to or to strangers in the street if there’s no one he knows who might see it. He’s holding onto himself and the person he wants to be in those little scattered moments.
After a battle in which Will tried to throw himself at death and Jem hauled his ass out of it at the expense of someone else getting injured.
“I knew what I was doing!”
“You’re both alive, you would have been dead!”
Then Jem confronts him with a surprising array of evidence as to how he’s putting on this massive act. Jem sort of comes at it from a “What is wrong with you? If you weren’t such a tool, you could probably be running an institute by the time you’re 30.” Expect without the anachronisms but I’m just sketching ideas so you get Jem calling Will a tool, roll with it.
And Will’s had a very bad day.
And no one has ever actually reached out past the barriers he built. Not since Charlotte tried when he was 12 years old. And Will slips up and is a little bit too honest.
“Would it kill you to be nice?”
“It would kill someone.”
And now Jem has an in and Will is so tired, so fucking tired, and he knows that Jem hates him and he’s pretty sure that Jem’s using this as an excuse to find a way to have him removed from the patrol their on, so what does it matter? He’s been worried that someone would find out and then come to love him and he’s sure that Carstairs isn’t that person.
So he tells him.
And Jem’s reaction is simple and direct and he says it in this voice that is so much softer and kinder than anything Will has heard in years: “Curses can be broken William, I think it’s time you tried to break yours. I think I know where we can start.”
And then he holds out his hand.
“Careful, I’ll kill you.”
“I’ve survived worse things than you, you bloody stupid bastard.”
And Will lets out a bark of laughter that isn’t cruel or aimed like a weapon, it’s just a laugh, not happy but a real laugh.
Jem holds out a hand and Will takes it.
