As I mentioned before, Will was dating Gabi, his stepfather's younger sister (it's a soap, remember?), and they did lose their virginity together. After that first time Gabi couldn't seem to get Will anywhere near the bedroom again. In fact, any time they were even close to becoming intimate, Will would suddenly become very interested in playing a video game or claim to be worried about someone walking in on them.
Things finally came to a head after Will saw his mother, Sami, having sex with his ex-stepfather, all around town villain and Mayoral candidate EJ DiMera. EJ and Sami didn't know that Will had seen them, but afterward Will couldn't bear to be around his mother and tried to convince Gabi to get an apartment with him. Gabi was all for the idea until she realized that Will still didn't want to be intimate with her and that his promises that things would change once they moved in together weren't likely.
Gabi broke up with Will, which caused a kitchen smashing meltdown in front of all his friends from the normally mild mannered Mr. Horton. In the weeks that have followed, Will has remained tormented both by what he saw between his mother and EJ and by his own personal identity struggle. He's largely dealt with this by being nasty to his still clueless mother at every opportunity, including sneaking a few drinks (shades of Luke Snyder!) at Christmas time before calling her a hypocrite in front of the whole family.
What I've truly been blown away by during all of this is the barely contained raw pain Chandler Massey manages to convey with Will's (often tear filled) eyes. Will isn't the sort who'd normally be nasty to anyone, let alone his own mother, but the guy is being torn up inside by these secrets and Massey has impressed the hell out of me by being able to convey that with body language or just by the look in his eyes.
Will has been able to talk with his grandmother, Dr. Marlena Evans, who also happens to be a psychiatrist. Marlena could tell that something was eating away at Will (and I suspect that she even knows just what it really is) but rather than coming out to her, Will blurted out his other secret, that he'd seen his mother cheating on her husband.
While all of this has been going on, Will has remained good friends with the openly gay Sonny Kiriakis. In fact, the two partnered in a failed college sports website along with Will's best friend Chad (the less said about that ridiculous storyline the better), and are now at work together on turning The Cheatin' Heart, a dive bar Sonny's parents just signed over to him, into a hot new coffee shop to be called Common Grounds.
It was Sonny, a former world traveller in spite of his young age, whom Will talked to about possibly leaving town. Sonny, speaking from experience, cautioned that you can't really run away from your troubles, but seeing just how much pain Will was in, Sonny agreed that it might be a good idea for Will to leave town and figure out just who he is.
Unfortunately for our Mr. Horton, he's not exactly as rich as his friend Sonny. To get the money to fund his escape, Will did something else that was very unlike him: he attempted to blackmail EJ DiMera, saying that he'd tell EJ's wife and the voters of Salem all about what he'd seen if EJ didn't give him the money to leave town.
If you're going to try your hand at blackmail, you should probably start small and not with the son of a legendary crime boss who has his own long history of evil deeds. Will found this out the hard way when EJ turned the tables on him, letting Will know that not only had EJ figured out Will's secret by merely observing a few telling moments (though he never explicitly said "I know you're gay"), but that he also had a much, much bigger card to play.
Years ago, EJ was shot in a typical soap whodunit storyline that included several gloved hands aiming guns at him at the same time.Will's father Lucas eventually confessed to the crime, right around the time that Will left town to go live in Switzerland with his aunt and uncle.
I did wonder at the time if they were setting up a story about Lucas confessing just to protect Will, but since the storyline wrapped up and they never mentioned it again, I'd mostly forgotten all about it (especially since EJ has been shot again in the meantime, by Will's mother on what would have been their second wedding day!).
Well, it turns out that EJ has been patiently sitting on the knowledge that Will was the one who shot him, saving it up for a spot of blackmail on a rainy day. The end result is that not only is Will staying in Salem, he's also being forced to work on EJ's campaign and pretty much do anything that DiMera tells him to do.
Meanwhile, Sonny has introduced Will to more gay men in the last few weeks than Salem has ever seen onscreen in all forty-six years of Days of Our Lives combined, though that's not really saying much. Will seemed to be connecting with one of them recently over a shared loved of certain bands, but when the guy (forgive me for not remembering the character's name) suggested that they meet up the next day so that he could give Will some music from a new band, Will shut down and quickly made an excuse to leave.
When Sonny's friend wondered what had just happened, Sonny told him that Will "just isn't there yet", letting we the viewers know for the first time that Sonny himself knows exactly what's going on with his friend Will. The fact that Sonny is being so patient and supportive makes me like the character even more.
That just about brings us up to speed for yesterday's episode. The Sonny & Will scenes started with the two of them hanging out with two more of Sonny's gay friends at the Brady Pub. The two friends, Dustin and Kareem, were working on a marketing campaign for Common Grounds and mentioned to Will that they'd done the same thing for Unicorn Highway. When Will clearly had no idea what they were talking about, they told him that it was the hot new gay club near campus and offered to get him on the VIP list.
Will deflected the offer, nervously telling them that he had a paper to write, and after the two of them went to get a drink at the bar, Sonny asked Will what he thought of Dustin. Will, looking a bit like a deer caught in the headlights, stammered out "Are you asking if I'm interested in him?" Sonny explained that he was thinking of Dustin for himself, that they'd hung out together that weekend and he was thinking he might want to again.
A relieved Will quickly agreed that he could see Sonny and Dustin together and then turned playful, suggesting that if Sonny did go out with Dustin, he not try and be funny since he really isn't. It was a very sweet moment between the two of them and for the first time I saw some real chemistry between them as a potential couple rather than just as good friends.
After Dustin and Kareem came back to the table, they took turns telling their amusing coming out stories and then asked Will to share his. Will once again developed that deer in the headlights look but Sonny quickly came to his rescue just before Dustin and Kareem had to leave. Once Will and Sonny were alone again, Sonny apologized, but a still flustered Will said that it was okay that they'd assumed he was gay. My heart broke for Will in this scene, and I'm sure Sonny's must have, too. The pain he's carrying around is so obvious and that's thanks to what a fantastic actor Chandler Massey has turned out to be.
The scene that really, truly blew me away and had me taking to the old blog to begin writing about this story in earnest, was what happened after Will Horton went home. Will walked into an empty apartment, his eyes once again practically blazing with pain, and then stopped, having caught sight of his face in a mirror. After staring at his reflection for a few moments, Will spit on the mirror with disgust and self loathing and then turned away. It was one of the most powerful moments I've seen on daytime TV in a long time, an emotional gut punch that I'll never forget. Chandler Massey played it perfectly, and I find that in spite of how dangerous investing emotionally in a gay soap character has proved to be in the past, I'm now all in.
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