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“Something just broke.” Nico murmured, peeling his head away from the window, drawing a shape in the fog from his breath.
Will tried but didn’t look over quickly enough to see what it was before Nico wiped it away with his sleeve. “What do you mean?” he asked after waiting for Nico to finish and finding that he wasn’t going to.
“Something…” Nico paused and Will’s heart throbbed at the tightness in his best friend’s voice. He knew Nico was crying and he knew that Nico was doing his best to hide it, to keep it beneath the surface, out of the reach of Will’s perception. “Something broke inside of my head.”
Will watched his own fingers grip tighter on the soft leather of the steering wheel, stared at the whiteness spreading across his tanned knuckles.
“This world, the world, my world, it wasn’t a world anymore. It was smoke or fog or water and it just dissipated and it was gone. It was gone and I couldn’t cope with it.” His voice broke on gone and Nico let out a pained sob that had Will immediately pulling the truck over, throwing it into park, and sliding across the bench seat to pull his best friend into his chest before Nico had even really noticed.
For a stiff second Nico froze and Will held his breath just as tightly as he held the dark-haired boy. Then, after a few seconds, he sort of melted into Will, curled into his chest, and breathed in Will’s scent.
It helped.
It didn’t stop the sobs cracking out of Nico’s throat or staunch the tears spilling from his eyes, it didn’t heal the fissures in his mind or delete the scars of his self-abuse from his skin, it didn’t stop his heart from punching at his ribcage or give pause to the way that his lungs wouldn’t take in enough air.
But sitting in the dark cab of the truck on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with Will’s arms cradled around him, his best friend’s sunshine and warmth enveloping him in a way that for the first time in a while wasn’t crushing?
It helped. And Nico would take it and run.