Chapter Text
The seat is cold underneath Wolfgang's backside as he shifts from side to side, eyes never moving from their fixed position, watching the large illuminated clock above the front desk as it ticks slowly from 2.31am to 2.32am, the memory of handcuffs still lingering on his wrists.
Sheriff Gorski has already been into see him, head shaking in disappointment as Officers Longkampf and Abbott hauled Wolfgang, sullen and silent, his fingers stained bright green from the spray can they'd caught him with. "Christ, Wolfgang, again?"
Gorski had planted Wolfgang in the chair, while he spoke to Abbott and Longkampf and listened to their report; Wolfgang, scaling the chain-link fence of the town's old cement factory, and spray-painting obscene words in English and German into them, in a shade of neon green not too dissimilar to Kermit the Frog's emerald hue. Wolfgang had picked at the skin around his fingernails and listed their mistakes and omissions in his head - namely that Felix had been there, a list on his phone helping Wolfgang spell the words correctly, and that Felix had run at Wolfgang's insistence.
"Dude. Seriously?" Wolfgang feels Will's weight on his side as he drops into the seat next to him. Wolfgang isn't sure if Will was contacted by his father in an attempt to scare Wolfgang straight, an attempt which is, according to Sun's half-joking, all-dry calculations, with about a 22% chance of success, at best, or if Will just happened to be in the police station, and overheard his dad.
"Not happy to see me, Will?" Wolfgang finally breaks his gaze away from the clock to see Will, tired-looking and frowning, two cups of the station's awful coffee in his hands, with one proferred to Wolfgang. Wolfgang hates the shit coffee here, it's over-processed taste, the fact it comes in a paper cup from a machine older than he and Will are.
He still takes the coffee because Will is one of his best friends, is the person who convinced his dad to take Wolfgang in, and he still has manners, surprisingly.
After a couple of sips in companionable, if slightly strained, silence, Will speaks. "I was here already, wanted to see my dad before I went home. Had a date with Riley."
Wolfgang smiles. "Did you leave out the part where you snuck into the rave at the Marquise tonight? Not exactly conduct befitting the son of a sheriff."
Will, to his due, blushes a little and takes another sip of awful burnt coffee to compose himself a little. "Not exactly. But anyway, stop deflecting: why were you doing it?"
"I was fucking bored. Spending my Friday nights inside watching shit on Netflix might be some peoples' idea of fun. Not mine."
"And you couldn't have just gone to the movies or come to the rave with me and Riles? It had to be scrawling swear words in German in ten foot high letters? I'll have some of those embedded in my brain, man."
Wolfgang snorts a little, and it raises a smile from Will. Wolfgang can spot traces of rave paint on Will - a pencil-thin streak along the nape of his neck, cerulean against Will's pale skin. "If I wanted to see you and Riley practically making the beast with two backs, I could always just turn to my left at lunch period. No need for a rave for that."
Truth is, Wolfgang has always had a rolling heat, a need, rumbling beneath the surface of his skin. Something he couldn't fight out or bite out or talk out; a desire to run wild, like a lycanthrope as the moon bursts into full silver shape. He knows he's quiet most of the time, and can even be the well-adjusted teenager everyone expects in a small town. Then something snaps and he thinks of his father and peanuts and beer and blood in his mouth and adrenaline surges like a volcano in his chest and he has to do something to sate it; otherwise it might pour out of him, burning the heart out of him, hurting the people he cares about. Felix. Kala. Will. Everyone.
Will blushes, and is almost at the verge of landing Wolfgang with a retort, when Sheriff Gorski ambles over, his own cup of coffee in one hand, and a manila folder in the other. "Boys." He takes the seat opposite Wolfgang.
"Wolfgang... you gotta stop doing shit like this, son. I mean, don't get me wrong, you graffiting the side of some old dive building with expletives isn't the crime of the century, but I've seen this kind of shit before with grown-ass men, who then get it down on their criminal records, and it fucks up their lives. No lies."
He's not an idiot. He knows this. He just... forgets sometimes. Wolfgang's already got a shit past behind him - mother dead, father dead in an automobile accident, history of abuse, of petty crime expunged by lenient criminal courts. It's only because Will has a saviour complex and a compassionate streak a mile wide that Sheriff Gorski had even agreed to letting Wolfgang stay with them in their spare room as a foster kid, rather than returning to the home.
"I know." He mumbles. Will nudges him with his shoulder but says nothing.
"If you... Christ, if you need like some counselling or some kind of creative outlet, then that's fine, we can work with that. Will had some issues when he was a kid, and finding the right outlet for him..." Gorski shrugs. Wolfgang is surprised; Will has big heart eyes for his dad's profession, keeps his room reasonably neat, and is even part of the basketball team in the winter months. He doesn't seem like the kind of kid who needed a 'creative outlet'.
He turns to Will, who shrugs. "I had some issues. Shoplifting, mainly. Dad found this sports camp for the summer, and they taught me a lot."
Gorski leans in towards Wolfgang. "The charges have been dropped, they won't even appear on your record as a pre-adult citation. Just... we'll talk tomorrow about the camp, alright? Will can show you the place online, right?"
Will nods, taking Wolfgang and his father's empty coffee cups from them. "Absolutely. I'll hook you up." He rises, heading over to the water cooler, where the appropriate trash can is.
"Thank you. I'm sorry for... me." Wolfgang says, deflating a little at the end. Gorski shakes his head. "Don't apologise. Or at least, not for yourself. Probably apologise for writing 'pussy ass motherfuckers' on a wall in bright green paint, but that I can deal with anyway." Gorski smiles, patting Wolfgang once on his shoulder as he stands, leaving Wolfgang alone. "Will'll take you guys home."
He checks his phone. Felix is back home, apologising for leaving Wolfgang, even though it had been his suggestion. Wolfgang shoots Felix a quick text, letting him know that he's not being charged, but that they'll have to do something else next time.
Wolfgang makes his way over to the front entrance as Will jogs over, keys to his vaguely sensible pickup truck in his hand. "Come on. Home. I need some sleep. You do too."
"And I don't suppose you'd get that Riley's." Wolfgang grins as Will flushes a deep shade of red. Riley's father is infamously open and accepting with his daughter's expressions of creativity and sexuality. According to both Will and Riley, in equal shades of mortification, he'd been sat downstairs one morning after Will had snuck into Riley's room well past curfew, and had greeted both Will and Riley with "thank God I have those noise-cancelling headphones after last night", forcing Will to flee without his wallet and Riley to take to her bed and play The Ramones until her blushing had subsided.
"Don't remind me," Will sighs, "her father still grins at me every time I pick Riley up. It's embarrassing, knowing my future father-in-law has at least heard... us."
"Isn't that the point of the headphones?"
"Unless he has psychic intuition letting him know in advance when his daughter and her boyfriend are going to be having sex in an audible distance, he must have heard something." Will looks patently horrified by this realisation, and glumly moves towards his car, unlocking it.
Once they're both inside, Wolfgang finishes buckling his seatbelt, to ask: "Father-in-law, eh? I didn't know things were that serious." Except that he did, because when the eight of them become something closer than friends, than family, stronger than blood and water, he knew deep in his bones that Will and Riley would end up together. "Or at least," he rectifies, "not so soon."
Will turns on the radio, the sound of some alt-indie stuff, all quiet acoustic guitars and half-murmured male vocals, floating out. "Not like right away. Finishing high school and college and careers and shit, but I have a plan. Anyway, make fun; Mr Dandekar won't let his daughter date a felon."
Wolfgang nods, as Will peels the truck away from the police station, and checks his phone. He has a couple more messages coming in from his friends - Nomi snarking about breaking him out of jail, if he needs to, and one from Capheus, all eager emojis, hoping that he will get out in time to meet them for a study session at Sun's the following day.
Wolfgang reclines against the seat, thinking of his warm bed at home, and of Will beside him, singing along to the song on the radio, and of Kala, her dark skin and soft hair and the radiant way she says his name.
Wolfgang signs up for the sports camp two days later.