‘Becoming Will’ is a prequel short story to The Story of Lizzy and Darcy, a modern-day queer re-telling of Pride and Prejudice. It tells the story of Will when he first came to live with Darcy, recovering from the lowest point in his life.

The Adventures of William Fitts is out now.

He looked in the mirror, studying his reflection.

It was odd, he mused, looking at his face and thinking ‘him’. Knowing that he could do that and he wasn’t hiding anything, he wasn’t lying to anyone. It had been three months since he’d last taken the time to look at his reflection, to really study it, and in some ways he could see all of the things that had changed, but in others… it was far too similar to how it had been before.

He was a lot thinner, for starters; skin and bones, really. And tired; he looked very tired. Even though the last few nights had been the first in a real bed since he’d left his parents’, he hadn’t been able to sleep. He saw shadows in every corner, and when he closed his eyes the darkness had swooped in. He’d ended up sitting there, curled up with the light on, willing himself to feel anything but fear.

It somehow didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel true that Darcy had spent weeks hunting for him, spent every spare minute searching when she should have been at home looking after her brother, when she had more important things to do. It felt out of place that she had carefully found some of Jordan’s spare clothes instead of her own, cut his hair short for him and presented him with a binder she’d ordered online.

There was a quiet knock at the door.

“Come in,” he said.

The door opened.

“Hi.”

It was Darcy. She was trying her best at a smile, but it didn’t really work; it’s not like she was particularly good at it before… well, before.

“Hi,” he replied, not turning to face her, staying with his eyes fixated on his own reflection.

“Dinner’s ready, I can bring some up if you want?”

“No. I’ll come down.”

She was being careful, so god-damn careful, and he just wished that something would happen. She’d cried when she found him – held him close and sobbed into his shoulder. He wished he’d felt relieved, but he’d felt nothing.

He’d thought that by now, he’d feel different. That somehow the world would look a little bit better once he had somewhere to go.

He’d been wrong.

There were three places set at the dinner table, although the chances of them all being occupied were minimal. He slid into the one nearest the door, trying to make himself as small as possible. He didn’t fit in here, he didn’t belong here.

Darcy came through with a steaming dish, placing it in the centre of the table.

“I made cottage pie, how you like it,” she said. “Or at least, I tried to. I couldn’t, um, I couldn’t do it quite like Mum does.”

There was a pregnant silence as they both registered the use of the present tense, neither of them correcting it.

“Thank you,” he said eventually, jerking his head slightly in lieu of making eye contact.

Jordan bound through as Darcy was serving up, grabbing his plate.

“I’m going to eat in my room. Hey, Darcy, could I have some money? The guys are talking of going away for the weekend, just to the beach.”

Darcy looked at Jordan, her eyes wide and hopeful. “I don’t think there should be any problem with that, we’ll just go over the details later, okay? How was, um, how was the last day of school?”

“What do you care?”

And Jordan was gone.

Darcy sank into her chair slowly, her face giving nothing away.

There was silence, once more, between the two of them.

“This is delicious,” he said. They both knew he was lying.

“Thank you.”

Silence.

“How are you doing? How are you… holding up?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

No more words were exchanged for the rest of the meal.

There was shouting that evening.

There had been shouting most evenings since he’d come here, and probably had been for weeks before that.

He sat there, curled up in the enormous bed, not caring that he could hear every word of their conversation. He didn’t have the energy to ignore it, or listen in, or pretend to do something else.

He didn’t have the energy to sleep.

“What is your problem?! I just want to go away for a few days with my mates, why is that such a big deal all of a sudden?”

The yelling reached every corner of the flat.

“Jordan, I don’t have a problem with you wanting to go away with your friends, I just think we should talk about how much these trips are costing! Besides, you’ve only just turned sixteen, you’re not old enough to go swanning off on your own.”

“Oh, so you don’t have money for me to see my friends but you have money for your charity cases? How is that fair?”

“He’s not a charity case, he’s my friend, and I’m willing to pay for this trip but I just want to know that you’ll be safe and responsible.”

“What the hell Darcy, you’ve never worried about that before!”

“Well, maybe I should have.”

“You’re not Mum and Dad, so stop pretending! Stop pretending to suddenly give a shit about what I do!”

The argument reached this point every night, no matter where it started out. It was all downhill from here, and he knew it wasn’t going to be pretty.

“I do care about you Jordan, I really do and I’m trying, cut me some slack here-”

“Oh, boo hoo, perfect Darcy can’t do everything perfectly! But it’s all okay, isn’t it, because you rescued him, you found him, you saved him, and he doesn’t even have a bloody name but apparently we’re not allowed to say-”

“JORDAN! Don’t you dare finished that sentence!”

“When will you get it into your head, you are not my parent!”

“Please, I just want to help. Tell me what I can do to help.”

“I want to go away with my friends.”

There was quiet, and he knew that Darcy was agreeing, giving in, because the same happened every night.

Twenty-four hours later and they were fighting again, only this time he was there to see it. He sat there, silently, not daring to make his presence known.

“It’s not like I have school tomorrow, why can’t I go out? I just want to spend time with my mates, why are you making it so difficult?!”

“Because you’re sixteen and you have a curfew which you’ve already broken this week. You can go out next week but for now you’re grounded.”

“I don’t believe this. Grounded? Like I’m a child? Darcy, you’re six years older than me, you can’t ground me.”

“I can and I have, deal with it.”

“You are just unbelievable!!! Prancing around like you’re so much better than the rest of us, but why don’t you just PISS OFF, DARCY!”

“Don’t you dare-”

He hadn’t realised that the shouting had stopped, or that he’d curled up into a ball with his hands over his ears, until felt gentle fingers prying his arms back down.

“Hey, hey, you’re okay now, you’re safe. It’s okay, there’s no more shouting, you’re safe here.”

He vaguely registered a heavy sigh followed by a “I’m going to my room. Don’t bother coming to talk to me,” as Jordan stalked out.

Darcy ignored Jordan, and focussed instead on him. “Are you… are you okay? I know that’s a stupid question.”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

She continued. “I’m sorry about all this, I really am. I’ll do anything and everything that I can to make things better for you, okay? I promise.”

He nodded again. “You’ve already done so much,” he said quietly. “More than enough. Thank you, Darcy. I mean it.”

She sighed, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’m your friend. It’s what we do.” She cleared her throat. “I was thinking, do you… do you want to go back to the doctor’s? Like you were before? It might help to talk to someone about everything that happened, and maybe if you wanted to you could start looking at the medical side of things? No pressure, of course; you have to do whatever’s right for you. But I’ll be here for you every step of the way.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Jordan needs you more right now, you need each other. Focus on him right now, he’s more important.”

Darcy sighed, leaning back against the sofa. “I don’t know what to do with Jordan right now. He’s my brother, and we’ve never been that close but we’ve always at least got on. Now, though… now I don’t know what to think, what to feel. I’m not sure I know how to feel. I’m just drifting, and I feel like I’m trying my best but that at the same time I’m barely trying at all.”

“You’ll figure it out,” he said, rubbing her arm in what he hoped was a comforting motion. “I know you will. You’re Darcy Williams, you can get through anything the world throws at you. I know you can.”

She smiled weakly. “So can you, Mr Fitts. So can you.”

And for the first time since coming out to his parents, he truly smiled.

“I was so cold and so scared. Every night, I curled up, afraid to sleep in case… in case something happened. Some nights there were some guys who would, um, they’d say things. Things that made me want to, want to, want to hurt myself. Sometimes I did. Some nights I found somewhere to stay, but most of the time…

“I told myself that, that if, that if things got worse, if I was there for a long time, that I’d end it. And I… I was going to. I had it all planned out. But she came, Darcy came to find me, she’d never stopped searching and she saved me. I owe her my life, literally. But I… I wish I could feel more grateful. I wish I could just get on with living my life. But I… I still don’t feel like I have a home. I’m still cold, I’m still afraid to sleep. And I just want it to stop.”

Silence.

“She sounds like a good friend.”

“She is. She’s the best friend anyone could hope for, but she doesn’t see that and sometimes I just want to shake her and make her see what she does for me, how much she does for everyone in her life. How much she sacrifices.”

“Maybe you should tell her that? It might be good for both of you.”

“…Yes. I think you’re right.”

Silence.

“I think it might be a good idea if she joined us for a few minutes next week. It would help her know how to help you best. How does that sound?”

“That would be okay, I guess.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Think about it.”

Arguments continued, every night, but he started to sleep a little better. He made sure to spend at least a few minutes each day talking to Jordan away from Darcy, doing everything he could to integrate himself into this little, massively dysfunctional household. Sometimes he wanted to shake some sense into the both of them, make them see that all they had now was each other and they couldn’t throw that away. But the thought of speaking up like that made him feel ill.

He had some clothes of his own now. Darcy helped him pick them out; it was odd, shopping in the men’s section. He was used to standing in the women’s section, trying not to let his mother see him glancing over at the suits and the baggy jeans and the trainers.

He spent a long time each day looking in the mirror, analysing what he saw. He’d run his hand over his chin, imagining what it would feel like to have stubble there, standing sideways on to check that the binder was doing its work.

Sometimes things were bad. Putting on weight again had brought back the curves that he’d been so desperate to lose; the minute he noticed it, he didn’t realise until Darcy came running in that he’d smashed the mirror and was curled up on the floor, hand bleeding. She’d held him, talked to him, hushed him until he calmed down enough to let her treat his hand.

“Have you thought any more about a name? I understand that you’re uncomfortable with the name that you were given at birth, but having a name might help give you a sense of identity.”

“I… I’ve had some thoughts, but I… I know it’s stupid, but I don’t feel like I deserve it.”

“You don’t deserve a name?”

Shrug. “Something like that. It’s, um, it’s tradition in our family to name the firstborn son after his grandfather. I… sometimes I think that it might be nice to do that, you know? But then I remember that I’m not a part of that family anymore. And that hurts, so I stop thinking about it.”

“Do you think about your parents often?”

“Every day. All the time. I saw my dad, in the supermarket. I don’t think he saw me, and I was sort of glad because I don’t know what I would have done. I was… I was so scared, seeing him there, and remembering what happened the last time I spoke to him, when I… when I left. I mean, when they, um, when they t-told me to leave. But I – I wanted to, to go up to him and say that I’m sorry and that it was all wrong and could I p-please go home, because I just miss them both so damn much and I feel like I should hate them but I just can’t, they’re my parents. More than anything, I just… I just wanted him to look at me and see his son. Not a daughter that went wrong, a son. I mean, is that really too much to ask? I mean, the irony is, he always went on about how much he wanted a son, and then… well, yeah.”

“Did you come out to your grandfather? Does he know?”

A shake of the head. “No. He, he passed away a few years ago. I like to think that he would have been okay with it, you know? I mean, we were always quite close. But then, this sort of thing never came up. So I don’t really know. I guess I’m probably just kidding myself, but it’s a nice thought. But taking his name, it feels… it feels like a huge assumption. And I’m not sure that I’m ready to face up to the thought that maybe he wouldn’t have been okay with it.”

“What was his name?”

“William.”

Everything changed that night.

He was used to opening the door to Darcy and Jordan’s apartment and hearing shouting, yelling, and slamming doors, so it was unnerving when, that evening, he heard nothing through the front door. Not even Jordan playing music obnoxiously loud on purpose, or the sound of Darcy attempting to cook a meal.

He pushed the door open slowly, nervously, to see both Darcy and Jordan sat on the sofa, Darcy with her arm round her brother. A few steps into the apartment and he could hear that Jordan was quietly crying, apologising, while Darcy comforted him, whispering under her breath that it would all be okay, that she was sorry, that she would fix it, that she was there for him.

He didn’t know if they noticed him, but he didn’t mind. He slipped past them quietly, into his room, and sat in bed looking at baby names on Darcy’s old laptop. There was something very strange but sort of nice about picking out his own name; for once he was finally feeling in control of things, just a little bit. He must have looked at hundreds of names, from the usual ones like John and Jack to the weird and wacky ones that lacked vowels and were filled with Xs and Zs, but nothing seemed right. He couldn’t help but feel that he’d know his name when he saw it, but it was frustrating when nothing just clicked.

After a couple of hours, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in.”

Darcy slipped into the room, softly pushing the door shut behind her.

“Hi,” she whispered, perching on the side of his bed. “Jordan’s just gone to try and get some sleep, it’s been a… long day.” She rubbed at her red-rimmed eyes. “Do you… do you remember George Wickham? I think you might have met him once or twice at my birthdays or something.”

He nodded. “Yeah, vaguely. Friendly guy, looks like he stepped off the runway?”

“That’s him. He…” she took a deep, shuddering breath. “Jordan’s been spending all his time with him. All that time that I thought he was going to spend with his friends, and he was hanging out with George. All that money was going straight into George’s pocket, on gambling and drinks and God knows what else. I just…” She put her head in her hands as tears started to roll down her cheeks. “How did I not see this?! How did I let things get this bad, how did I let this slip by me? I’ve been so stupid, I’ve been ignoring my own brother. This is all my fault.”

He quickly put the laptop to one side, leaning forwards to wrap Darcy in a hug. “Darcy, this isn’t your fault. You two have both had a really tough time of it in the last few months and what matters now is that together you fix this. And I know that you can, because I know you. You can do anything you set your mind to. You’re my best friend, Darcy, and if anyone can fix this it’s you.”

“I couldn’t do this without you, either,” she said, her voice stifled from the tears. “I admire you, so much. The things you’ve been through, that you’ve fought against… Your strength and your will are inspiring. Honestly, they are.”

He didn’t realise that he’d frozen until Darcy sat up straight, looking into his eyes, concerned.

“Hey, are… are you okay?”

He nodded, humming. “Yeah, yeah, I was just… thinking about what you said.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What… exactly?”

He smiled. “Nothing.”

He didn’t say anything that night; he wanted to sleep on it, to try it out in his head for a while before committing to anything, but by breakfast the next morning he couldn’t hold it in much longer.

“You’re in a good mood,” Darcy said, almost suspiciously, as he came into the kitchen.

He shrugged, unable to wipe the grin off his face. “I just have a great feeling about today. In fact, I’m feeling better than I have in months. And that’s because-”

He was interrupted as the doorbell rang.

“Hold that thought,” Darcy said, going to answer the door. He began to make the tea, keeping one ear out for what was going on.

“George,” he heard Darcy say coolly as she answered the door. “I see you got my message.”

“Yeah,” he heard the visitor’s voice drift through the flat. “What’s going on, everything okay?”

He tiptoed through to the sitting room, peering around the corner to see what was going on.

“Jordan told me everything.”

He saw George’s face fall as soon as Darcy spoke, dropping his façade immediately. George squirmed, trying to talk his way out of it.

“What, that we’ve been hanging out? You, er, you didn’t know that? You know what it’s like, we’re basically family, and it’s like he’s my brother, I’m just watching out for him.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’ve been doing much ‘watching out’, as you put it. Sounds more like you’ve been dragging him into bad situations and taking money off him, taking advantage of him!”

“I wouldn’t call it taking advantage, he just helps me out occasionally like friends do, you know?”

He stepped out from his hiding place, surprising them all when he piped up, “Friends don’t do that, George.”

George looked at him disbelievingly, looking at him with scorn. “Oh, really? And how much do you know about friends, huh? I know all about you and your little sob story, you’re Jordan’s favourite thing to moan about. How’s not being homeless going?”

“George-” Darcy said warningly, but he cut her off.

“I know that friends are there for you when you need them the most, and that they do everything they can to build you up, not tear you down.”

He flinched as George strode towards him but kept his ground, looking George straight in the eye and ignoring how small he suddenly felt.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” George growled, his voice dangerously low.

He drew himself up, trying with all his might to appear more confident than he felt.

“It means that you need to get out and leave my friends alone. You’ve done enough damage here; now go and enjoy your sorry little life somewhere else.”

He heard Darcy gasp and it took him a second to realise that George had drawn back his fist, his face fierce with anger. He shut his eyes, ready for the blow, but it never came; George Wickham was frozen where he stood, trembling with restraint.

He opened his eyes as slowly as he dared, not daring to look at Darcy’s terrified face.

George spit on the ground in front of him, before growling, “You’re lucky I don’t hit girls.”

He felt like the breath had been knocked out of him. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t see anything, he couldn’t hear anything. He shrank, smaller and smaller, the room spinning around him, the cold and wet of an outdoor night seeping into his bones. He heard their voices, all their voices, telling her that she was wrong, that she was disgusting, that she should get out, that they never wanted to see her again, that she deserved to die. He hit his head over and over again, desperate to get the voices out, to tell them to leave, but that just made them louder and louder, and she wanted them out out out they needed to be gone. He needed them gone. He needed her gone.

“Shut up shut up shut up shup up shut up shut UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!”

And they shut up.

He opened his eyes. He was on the floor, George was gone, Darcy was there, Jordan was there. Neither of them said anything, concerned and worried but silent.

He took deep breaths, filled with a fire that he’d forgotten about, that he didn’t know he had.

He spoke.

“My name is William Fitts. I am Will. And I am me. I know who me is now. And that’s my name. Will.”