When Natalie kicks him out, Will realizes he has two options for where to go. He decides to walk through door number three, instead - or at least knock on it.
The air outside was cold, and Will had anticipated that when he left the house with nothing but his phone in his pocket and the bag on his shoulder. It contained enought clothes for a few days, and the safely stored firearm tucked underneath everything, and he could deal with getting the rest of his things or whatever fallout awaited him after getting some rest. Wherever that was.
He had two options ahead of him, really, and neither of them were ideal.
If he went to Jay's to crash on the familiar couch, he'd have a safe place to rest, of course. His brother had never given him a reason to believe otherwise. But the only problem in that scenario would be his brother's loyalty. He wouldn't actually get any rest, not with the fact that Jay would immediately drive them both over to the house again to give Natalie a piece of his mind. It was great having someone on his side and in his corner, really, but that wasn't what he wanted.
part iv of sweet simplicity, a WillMouse series
dedicated to @kitweewoos for surviving a car crash with me
Mouse goes on his second date with Will, and they talk about work.
"Hey. Good morning." Will leaned down when he got close enough, pressing a brief, soft kiss to his lips. It was unexpected but welcome, and both of their smiles grew into mirror grins. "I support you being a morning person, I really do, but I need caffeine. Desperately."
Shaking his head, Mouse closed the browser window on his laptop and got to his feet. "Then let's get you some coffee. We can't have you desperate all morning. Have you eaten anything yet? I want a bagel."
"Oh, good, I'm dating a morning person who eats breakfast." Will let out a dramatic groan and then sighed. "No, I haven't eaten anything. I don't normally eat breakfast, unless you count coffee."
Mouse stopped and blinked at him slowly. Even when he was at his lowest and battling the claws of addition, he still ate breakfast. It was sometimes a stale muffin or a chalky protein bar, but it was still something. "But… it's the most important meal of the day. You're a doctor. You should know that. It wakes up your brain so that you can get going. Oh my god… you didn't even eat breakfast the weekend of Jay's wedding. And you didn't collapse?"
no one told you life post-grad was gonna be this way...
Growing up in Chicago as the son of a corporate lawyer, Gregory knew exactly what his life was going to look like. He would go to business school near home, then an Ivy League law school, just like his father. Once he had his law degree, he would work for his father's firm and establish himself in Chicago again so that all the right people knew his name and how to reach him.
And, by the time he was moving into an apartment in New York City, everything was going exactly as his parents had planned for him.
Columbia's law campus was close enough to enough bars and clubs that he could enjoy himself without going out of his way. He could buy drinks that were too strong. He could take a few pills from friends. He could hook up with an equally drunk hot local far away from anyone who knew him as the Gerwitz heir.
He was getting good grades. He was active on the social scene. He was a front runner for one of the best summer internships in the city. He was completely, totally successful in all the things his parents wanted him to do, and he hated every single second of it.
If it had been up to him, Greg would be a few hours away on the MIT campus, finishing up a master's degree in computers and technology. He never would have gone to Columbia, or even finished a business degree in the first place. He would have started his legacy instead of following in his father's footsteps. He would have been his own person, maybe even had a boyfriend, if such a thing wouldn't tarnish the family image beyond repair, or whatever his mother believed. With the weight on the entire family name on his shoulders, he didn't even have the option to imagine a life like that.
When he went back home, he would inevitably be married off to one of his mother's friend's daughters, and he'd have a new to do list for his life to start checking off.
On one night in particular, when he was even more upset than normal, he sat at a bar further from his apartment so that he didn't encounter any of his usual crowd. The last thing he needed was whispers about his bad habits spreading around right before midterms. He'd much rather do shot after shot of expensive whiskey poured by an exhausted looking student, based on the age of the bartender across from him, and ignore the look that was shot his way when the name on his credit card was read off with a level of disdain that was only used by half of Chicago.
"Gerwitz, huh?"
"Yup."
"From Chicago?"
"There's a number at the end of my name, isn't there? Take your best guess as to why that is."
Will knew he was lucky to get out of Canaryville when he did. A scholarship, even if it was only a partial one, got him from his tiny family home to a dorm in New York, and he could figure out the rest from there. The rest just so happened to include not talking to his father, and being too far away for a proper goodbye when his brother enlisted and was sent across the world, and having too much of his life in shambles when all he wanted was to go home for a funeral.
Through his first four years in college, he had... someone. He knew better than to call Matt his boyfriend, especially after he'd "met" Matt all over again when Moira invited him to breakfast while she was in the city. That didn't stop him from opening the door every weekend at the drop of a hat, ignoring his studies so that he could be laid out in his bed with a hot med student on top of him. It didn't stop him from doing anything with Matt, wherever they ended up or whenever he got the phone call. It should have.
He'd spent the night with Matt just hours before he missed his flight home. He still knew exactly where the blame lay for his alarm conveniently not going off when he needed it to. Jay didn't, and that meant everyone else blamed him for skipping out on an important weekend that his brother never should have spent alone.
After that, during the summer between graduating with his four-year degree and starting at the Columbia med campus, he decided he wanted nothing to do with Matt ever again. He had the support of his rival, of all people, and Stevie quickly became his best friend when they formed a truce long enough to sign a lease on an apartment close to campus. He would have to work multiple jobs to keep up with his half of the rent, but that was something he'd been doing for years just to keep himself fed, as much as he could.
Between classes, and his job in the dining hall, and his job in the library, and a new job at the bar a few blocks down from their apartment, he didn't have the hours in the day to even let Matt Cooper cross his mind, and that was exactly how he wanted to keep it. The only thing he wanted to do was focus on becoming a doctor so that he could go home again, eventually, with his head held high. He wanted to prove he could do what he'd said he would do, even if he was the only one in his own corner.
Without Matt on his mind, the idea of another boyfriend was a distant one, at best, and completely impossible when he took what spare seconds he had to think about his life. It wasn't like he could take a man home to meet his Irish Catholic father, and he doubted that Jay - safely home from Afghanistan, just barely, and dressed in blue while he patrolled Chicago to keep it safe - would approve much, either. Still, being flirted with came with being a bartender, and no one would shame him for flirting back to get a bigger tip so he could afford lunch one weekend.
Especially when the name Gerwitz came up on a heavy platinum credit card.
That name was synonymous with royalty, back home. The only family names that were more recognizable were Rhodes and Sheffield, and they all traveled in the same circles. He just never expected to encounter that circle of people in a dive bar five blocks from his shitty apartment. But there, on a worn out bar stool no more than three feet away, was Gregory Gerwitz IV, heir to one of the biggest fortunes anyone in Chicago could imagine. And he'd been downing shots like a man who got left at the altar and fired within hours of each other since Will started his shift.
They weren't the same, they never could be, not when life dealt them such different hands, but they weren't exactly all that different. They were both alone, in a city far from their home and their families, and maybe being alone didn't always have to be so lonely.
Other Moustead + "I’m not used to this lack of reciprocation." Hehe
shocking no one, this is also in the same little universe as the other two prompt fills, because I love them and I think they're neat. I'm sorry it took so long for me to finish this one, but I had fun!
[ i’m in a Will/Mouse prompt mood ]
Mouse couldn't remember how he'd gotten there, sat in the middle of a nice restaurant with a candle in the middle of the table. There was even a vase with a single rose in the water, like he was the lead of some 90s romantic drama. It was a position he'd never been in before, waiting for a date that he actually knew the identity of, fully aware that he wouldn't be going home with them that night. He wanted to, for a reason that had absolutely nothing to do with sex, and that was probably the scariest part. The fear made him anxious, and he fidgeted with the silverware on either side of his menu, not daring to disrupt the careful arrangement by more than a few millimeters.
Actually, he could remember exactly how he got there.
Less than a month after spending a weekend in Wisconsin, and falling asleep wrapped up in the same arms three nights in a row, Mouse had been the one to reach out. A part of him knew that he'd have to, if he wanted to speak to Will again without some event bringing them together. Waiting another eleven months for Jay and Hailey's anniversary to come around didn't seem doable. He wasn't exactly known for his patience. So, he'd texted first. For the first time ever.
Can I have some facts about an Other Moustead au, single dad and their child's teacher? Is that anything?
babe, this is EVERYTHING, and you know it
Single Dad!Mouse + Teacher!Will
Hello. Mouse is Noah's dad. Will is a middle school science teacher. Why are all of my teacher AUs middle school science teachers? Couldn't even begin to explain that one.
Noah my beloved music child does not have a science brain, and that's okay. But it means his math and science grades are slipping, and Will is just concerned enough to reach out to his parent/guardian on file (Mouse) to make sure everything is okay at home and he has support and all of that fun stuff
Of course, he has support at home, his dad is Mouse, so Mouse swings into the school for a parent-teacher conference just to discuss options with Will for like extra credit and stuff, and discuss tutoring options, etc, while Noah is at an after school music thing (guitar lessons? probably guitar lessons, his vocals are great, but he wants to expand his knowledge of other things, you know?)
It turns into private tutoring sessions (that Will offered to do) on days that Noah doesn't have some music commitment, and frequent email updates to Mouse to keep him in the loop while his son's grades recover
By the end of the semester, Noah has a high A, and they don't have to keep talking about his grades, but Will and Mouse are still emailing, and maybe it's about what Will does with his Friday afternoons now that he isn't doing private science lessons for his kid, and if he maybe, kinda, sorta, might want to go grab coffee some time instead?
