The Fix Is In

Will was upset.

That was a bit of an understatement. He had just been caught kissing an ex by his boyfriend. He did not even like Paul anymore, and he had just been caught up in instinct. Paul was the one who had cornered him, who had pushed him against the wall, who had kissed him.

Will was too shocked to do anything but sink into instinct and kiss back.

Cal was upset. Of course he was upset. Will would be hurt, too, if he was in Cal's shoes.

Will had screwed up. He knew it was not entirely his fault, but he knew that it was definitely not entirely Paul's.

He was walking back to his dormitory, but he was a bit lost in thought, and he practically ran into someone. When he looked up, he saw that it was someone he recognized.

"Hi Izzy."

Izzy was walking through the school, wasting away from free time. She was accompanied by a device she'd rigged up to play muggle music, because wizard music was really weird in her opinion.

If she hadn't been listening to the music, she would have noticed the person walking in her general direction before they basically ran into her.

She removed her headphones with the intention to snap at the other person before she saw who it was. "Oh. Hi Will."

Will smiled slightly. He hadn't seen Izzy much lately. He felt kind of guilty about that, figuring his friend wanted to avoid any PDA or new couple awkwardness between Will and Cal. He had missed Iz, but he couldn't really blame her.

Despite his smile, he knew he probably didn't actually look happy. "Sorry about that. How are you? I've missed you."

Izzy looked at him. "I'm sorry too," she said. She also hadn't been paying attention, after all. She offered him a tiny smile in return for his attempt at one. "What's up?"

Rather intentionally, she had avoided the rest of what he'd said.

"Erm... well, my gut instinct is to say, 'Nothing much,' but that would be a bit of a lie. That's a mess and a half, though, and it will take a while to tell. I know you are probably busy... you have been a lot of the time lately."

"I'm not busy, actually." Izzy could tell that this was not the time to run off again. She wasn't half as busy as she claimed to be anyway. "Want to go somewhere so you can talk about whatever the mess and a half is?"

"If you want. I was just planning on going back to the dormitory." Will thought for a second. "I guess having someone to talk about it with would be helpful, and you're good for the whole talking thing. Actually... I should probably talk about it with Renee later, too. It affects you both."

Izzy frowned. "Uh oh. I'm actually worried now." She reached forward and grabbed Will's forearm, pulling him along behind her as walked to somewhere they could talk.

"It's not... well, it's not fun, but it's not something to be worried about. You probably saw it coming, since you know me so well." Will knew he was babbling, but Izzy was pulling him along behind her and he didn't know where they were going and he was just glad that someone had stopped him.

He needed to be around another person.

Finally, Izzy stopped and turned to look at Will, letting his arm go. She had half a mind to keep a hold on it in case he decided to bolt for whatever reason, but he had brought it up so she didn't think that was all too likely.

"Talk, William."

"Do you remember Paul, Izzy? I don't really know how well you paid attention back in those days, or how much you actually knew, but you at least know who he is, right?"

"Yes, Will, I know who he is. What does that matt-- Why do I feel like I know what happened already?"

"What do you think happened?" Will asked, grimacing.

Izzy shook her head at him. "Nope. I want to hear it from you. You know how I am about theories. I never go first in case I'm wrong."

"Well, you know Paul and I dated..."

"You're stalling, Will."

"I'm not going into all of the details. That's not a story for today. I'll just say that it ended really, really badly. I was done, Paul wasn't. You know this much, right?"

"Yes, Will."

"And, er... well, you know I don't kiss other people when I'm dating, right?"

Izzy just nodded.

"Paul still wants me, Iz. He cornered me earlier and started kissing me and I don't kiss other people when I'm dating but I was caught off guard and I kissed back because what else do you do when someone kisses you? It was around that point that Cal walked in."

"I thought as much.." Isabelle sighed. "Did you ever consider maybe pushing Paul away rather than kissing him? That's what you do when people you don't want kissing you kiss you."

Will looked down. "I know. I'm a bloody git, and I can't blame Cal for being angry."

"No, you can't. And if you did I'd have to hit you, no matter how pathetic you're acting right now." Iz thought for a moment. "Is that everything?"

"Pretty much," Will said, cringing. "Cal and I had a bit of an argument... and we are probably going to end up splitting, honestly."