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Terminal 3A | Date: 13/09/25 | Time: 14:00 | Destination: ATL | Will
Will feels the pain start almost the second that James steps foot on the plane. He has the flight information tracked and an excuse on his tongue if Abbey decides to ask. She wouldn't ask - he always tells her it's the anxiety even if she doesn't look like she believes him. It's not a lie necessarily but the woman has some sort of 6th sense for his wafflin' at this point.
It's the same every time. Bloody soulmate bond. Will has been living with the knowledge for years but James is just too much of a big headed, daft bastard to figure it out.
Will could have sworn James had a crush on him those first few years of knowing one another. The lad never could hide the look in his eyes whenever they were together. But somewhere along the way, the intensity in his friend's gaze softened - it turned more towards warmth than passion. If he thinks too deeply about the timeline of how James looked at him, it turns his stomach. It is clear in his memory that when he and Mia had separated, when he was at his lowest, James had been there to pick up the pieces. The very night he became a bachelor, it's like a switch was flipped - James still made all of the same jokes but the tension that supervised their time together was all but gone. Looking back, it makes sense. Will was kind of pathetic in those first six months - not particularly sexy and debilitatingly needy. He had probably given James the ‘ick’.
‘Ick’ or not, had James never really considered Will to be his soulmate? How does a man look so besotted on camera and then not even consider the idea of it?
Hence why James is a daft bastard.
Will wants to laugh or cry. Calling James daft is a coping mechanism. Thinking that he was the only one James had feelings for was stupid. Will was the daft bastard that fell in love within a month of knowing the man and then proceeded to be so terrified that he got into a years long relationship that he knew wasn't right. He was selfish. He had never imagined that James would move to Brighton - hoped for, but didn't anticipate all of the world tours.
He had known James was the one - there is deniable but unmistakable video evidence of Will proclaiming almost that very thing.
Maybe before, if Will was ready to admit the whole ‘soulmate’ part of their relationship - it might have been reciprocated. Now? Now their dynamic has shifted. James no longer looks up to him and it's the other way around. Will would bend over backwards just to make filming convenient, just to make sure James has a reason to spend time with him.
Will lets out a tired sigh. This is his burden. A one sided soulmate miss-connection. He is the one left feeling the pain of separation between them. He feels it deeply. It's an ache in his ribs on a good day and on a bad day it's a weight on his heart so heavy that he can't get out of bed. His soul shatters and cracks at the distance each time - you would think that years of separation with James in Brighton would make it bearable.
It does not.
Brighton is one thing, one week on a separate continent is another and a whole month in the U.S feels like a death sentence.
Will closes his eyes as he feels the tug in his stomach corresponding to James's plane ascending.
The one small mercy in this is that Will is sure James loves him…even if it isn't special, it's still an anchor for Will's sanity. James loves many people with that same single focused intensity. Will had witnessed how James’s friendships all look so similar to the one he shares. Each one of James’s relationships is held carefully in his palms and cherished deeply. All Will can be is thankful to be part of that special group because otherwise…He doesn’t want to think of ‘otherwise’.
Will considered telling James about the ‘soulmate’ of it all countless times, but that urge only comes on the worst days when James is across oceans and continents where Will can't reach him.
He has to reassure himself that It's not worth it - Will knows he is a mess on the regular and can only get himself together when he has to be on camera these days. James deserves someone functional and free and happy not whatever this creature is that Will has become. Seeing James once a week, once a month, once a year is going to have to be enough eventually for him. His greedy heart needs to stop yearning for someone that deserves to fly under the open sky and not be stuck with a codependent bond.
James is a free spirit with a heart on his sleeve and Will could never dream of taking that away.
Date: 02/10/25 | Time: 13:48 | Will
Will can feel the distance growing with each mile that James spends in the air, each day he is on the road. He listens to James's albums on repeat, schedules himself like crazy to be too busy to think, crashes on couches and goes to pubs to be too battered to dream properly. For the most part it doesn’t look so different from how he normally is these days. The same coping mechanisms have been his crutch ever since James moved away. He doesn’t know what he was like before all this anymore - maybe this is just who he is.
Maybe…
Except that Will knows it's slowly killing him - his heart problem has slowly but surely been getting more pronounced with each new ‘hot date’ James has told him about. He has to pretend to be excited for his friend through gritted teeth. That's the worst part - knowing that James seeks romance and physical connections outside of his friendships. And worse still is that Will can’t stop pretending to be excited for him. If James stops confiding in him - stops sharing this part of himself, then that would be much worse than knowing that there are people out there that got to have him. At least this way Will has proof that he isn’t holding James back from carrying that beautiful heart on his sleeve no matter how much it hurts.
Terminal B | Date: 14/10/25 | Time: 19:30 | Destination: LHR | Will
By the time James’s tour is over, Will feels like he is running on fumes and his spark plugs are misfiring. His heart stutters and races all in one breath - it feels unsecured in his chest. Every thought about James risks his heart ripping right through his throat. He still can’t decide if the few calls they had shared made it more or less manageable. It was hard to decide anything through the thick fog in his head. Thankfully distance from James is half of the problem - his brain thinking more clearly as soon as James crossed the Atlantic. Soon enough the ache in his chest will loosen, soon he will be sitting across from Jim, drinking coffee and devouring a scone, soon enough he will be able to breathe.
Date: 16/10/25 | Time: 10:00 | James
James is finally, finally back on home soil. He has given himself 24 hours to come back to the living after a grueling month on the road but he is not without plans. Will had agreed to grab a coffee with him and debrief properly now that they are in the same time zone. He desperately needs to be around someone that he has not spent the past month in close quarters with…he specifically just needs to see Will if he is being honest with himself. Even through all of their years of friendship, the need to see Will in person never waivers. Their relationship post Mia has gotten a bit codependent but James finds himself being a little bit selfish with all of the attention Will has afforded him since. Will has always been a strange, mopey, and emotional guy - at one point having convinced James’s impressionable brain that that lad may have developed a crush on the account of all the touching he was doing. At the time, James had poked and prodded any which way he could to try and figure out what it could mean but Will had always reacted platonically. It was a worthy effort but whatever had Will be so suddenly open with physical touch (specifically with James of all people) remained unexplained. Well…not entirely unexplained - James was only (maybe, kind of) sure that Will wasn't entirely straight, and even that was something he heard for the first time during their hotline interview. So the touches could have been anything or nothing or something but it was too presumptuous of him to think it was because of him. James wasn’t any better. He stole hugs and touches at the same frequency as Will - their friendship always pulled them to more physical connections without discriminating piggyback rides or hits to the back of his head. It all scratched an itch.
Unlike whatever was going on with Will, James’s itch was aggravated by the love he still felt for Will even if now it has cooled off and buried itself deeply in his chest.
Before he knows it, he is knocking at Will's door and watches as it's opened wide. It is immediate, almost like Will had timed his train and has been waiting by the door just to open it with flourish. It’s hard to think when Will is beaming up at him and rasping something unintelligible out in excitement. There are lanky arms wrapping around him carelessly and a large hand aggressively hitting his back over and over again. James is sure he hears a ‘daft cunt’ muffled against his sweater but can’t be bothered to point it out. His mind is too busy racing because Will feels different against him. Will is seeming skinnier again.
Maybe he just forgot how lean the man was…
There is a red flashing light hitting the back of his retina as they sit in some new coffee spot Will wanted to try. Will orders decaf with a casual wave of the hand and a "Doctor said I can’t have caffeine no more" when James asks.
Will doesn’t go to the clinic…Will is scared of the clinic.
When James presses he gets dismissed. His best friend is acting like this is no big deal, and sounds downright annoyed when he explains. He's quit smoking and drinking already - caffeine and sweets were the last things on the ban list. Waves of irritation roll off of Will as if James is asking some repetitive thing - as if Will has had to tell him this many times before. What is he missing? Was he not paying attention?
Will looks at him with a hardness in his eyes that is rarely aimed at James - the thin line of his lips makes it clear that the conversation is over. James feels his heart breaking in the moment because whatever Will is going through, he clearly doesn't want to share with James.
His brain doesn’t help by connecting the dots, ‘it's his heart.’