#will reckless

Despite whatever Nerron may think, Will Reckless isn't stupid. He knows Nerron hates him, has known since the first day he followed his brother to the club after school, months ago. How mistified he'd been by the charged silence in the hall, interrupted only by the ticking of the clocks or the brushing of the pieces against the boards, the creaking of a chair and the occasional low hum as players try to think their way to a checkmate.

After observing seemingly random moves at a distance that culminated on a player toppling his own king, he'd decided he'd rather learn doing, as most fifteen year olds are bound to. And this is how Nerron had intercepted him with a story or other about his brother. Jacob Reckless, always hovering over him with his energy. Through his derision for his brother, Nerron had been up to showing him the ropes, if begrudgingly and always happy to point out his blunders. But he'd taught him. Will Reckless is not stupid, and so it doesn't take him long to figure it out; Nerron loves him.

He doesn't say it, won't try and risk this. He enjoys their matches, the caustic affection he guesses through Nerron's words. He won't say it, for he wouldn't know what to do with it. So they play. He's a fast learner and takes well to blockades and pursuit, demolition, deflection and annihilation, decoys. In his mind, they’re playing a different game. Nerron hates him because he hates Jacob, but he loves him for everything he is other than his brother. And he deflects and pursuits so he can show he's, against even what their teachers think, way more than that.

So they move past that. Will is, after all, loving and lovely. Not that Nerron would think about it in as many words, but they develop a friendship outside of the club. And inside, their pieces skirmish for a victory that more often than not cristalises as a draw. So they draw, again, with two knights versus a bishop. Will would have been happy to work through it, but Nerron says it's impossible on either side and finds the exercise pointless.

Will goes to get coffee whilst Nerron returns the pieces. Nerron drinks it black and Will does too to posture usually, but today he gets cream and sugar. Nerron joins him and, true to form, grabs Will’s cup right just as he's lowering it after a sip instead of the one he's offering. He's nothing if not distrustful, though Will cannot say of what. He'd take it as an insult but he knows it's more of a habit. It's something else too.

‘You've got to stop indirect-kissing me.’

Nerron's expression doesn't change, but it's not like he expected it to. ‘It's sweet .’ He says it like it's a bad thing, shakes his head.

‘Sharing spit or my coffee?’ Will shrugs. ‘Yours isn't.’

They exchange and finish their drinks chatting halfheartedly about whether Will's knights could have still checkmated Nerron, as long as they left his bishop alone, and how Nerron's bishop wouldn't have allowed it.

Will doesn't try to linger once they've finished. He's only distantly thinking of a forced mate, instead wondering whether he should have stayed silent. The problem with interpersonal relationships, he thinks, is there are no real rules of engagement. The problem with Nerron, specifically, is his expression never betrays anything that could tell him if he's doing wrong. And so now, as he goes in for their postmatch/farewell handshake, he gets pulled closer with no warning, Nerron's eyes searcing his for an instant before he’s pressing their mouths together.

It's forceful as he thought it'd be, and for no reason as usual. He's welcoming, reciprocating, expectant. And Nerron is, if he had to put a word to it, bellicose. He presses back, just enough to be a participant, and it seems to sap the fight from Nerron. He pulls back, letting his eyes linger on Will's mouth. Just as Will thought, he doesn't know what to do now. As if sensing it, Nerron shifts his stance.

‘You said to stop doing it indirectly.’

Will Reckless had always kept his own counsel.

As a child, when his body had felt like it was growing into the wrong shape, he hadn’t told his brother -his brother was never there- and he hadn’t told his mother -she worried enough already, about the possibility that Jacob would leave one day and never return-, and over time, the secrecy became habit, and fear, and something so difficult to break. 

Maybe he would have told Clara, eventually. He’d introduced himself as Will (never Wilhelmina, always Will, just Will). Maybe she had seen already, the way he tensed when she introduced him as her girlfriend, or the distant way he looked when she ran her hands over his body. 

-

When the jade had spread, there had been no amethyst. Will had not realized the significance, not until it had spread much further, had reshaped far more of him. Jacob had not registered the lack of amethyst, or if he had, he had not understood what it meant. It was written on Jacob’s face and underneath everything he said, “the goyl are stealing my younger sister”.

It was so, so easy to punch him. 

-

Beyond this, were the memories that he was not meant to recall. Jacob and Fox and Clara assumed that the time had been peeled away from his mind just like the stone had been peeled away from his skin. 

But it had been woven too deeply into Will to forget. He had basked in the perception of himself that others held, like stepping into the sun on a cold day. “Ah, there goes the jade goyl” they said at the palace, “He is the strongest of Kamien's men, - fearsome soldier”. The rightness of it all settled into Will’s soul. He was a man, he was one of Kamien’s men. He was strong, he was a fearsome soldier. 

And days later, through the mirror, in New York, in the dark of the night -that he had once been able to see through like it was midday- Will Reckless lay next next to Clara and felt utterly alone. 

-

The Bastard had called Will Jacob’s sister (“He carries a picture of you in his pocket”). Will was alone, with no one he knew, in a world he barely knew. “His brother, actually”. The look of relief on Nerron’s face was almost funny. 

-

“Do they not have witches, on the other side of the mirror?” Nerron asked, guestering vaguely at Will, from head to toe. “What mirror” Will replied, both of them perfectly aware that he was lying through his teeth. Nerron didn’t bring it up again, but Will filed away the comment as a point of consideration. Something to think about.

-

Damn it felt good to wear the jade again. 

-

Will looked away from where the fairy had died, busying himself with 16’s injuries to ignore the part of his heart that wailed “I am lost, I am lost, I have lost my truest self”. He may be lost, but 16 wasn’t just yet, despite the wood that kept their form static, that couldn’t flow between faces and shapes like the rest of them could. The trunk of the tree that had once been 17 was gnarled and bent, and still seemed to snarl their anger to the world. Nerron had the crossbow. Will didn’t care. It had served its purpose. 

It was almost a relief when Nerron threatened him, and the familiar anger swept through Will, followed by the familiar stone. The same relief was reflected in the twitches of Nerron’s face. The expressions were small enough that a human likely wouldn’t have noticed. 

The mirrorworld was vast, and there was magic everywhere. Magic enough to restore 16’s form, and to change Will’s. Perhaps a witch, or a tree, or a curse, or even returning to New York and the cold, quiet magic of medical science.