Chapter Text
The year Nico started at Goode, several interesting things happened. His older sister stayed in Italy for college, He started at his other sister’s highschool, as per the custody agreement of Marie and Hades. He finally learned to drive—crashed the car into a tree. Oh, and he met Will Solace. None of these things were particularly…good. But, nonetheless, interesting.
He started senior year with a bad attitude. There were a couple reasons for it, but Hazel wrapped it all up neatly in a little bow so he didn’t have to think of all the things that were really bothering him:
“It’s because you can’t shower without wrapping your arm up like a Subway hoagie, isn’t it?” She asked when they sat down for lunch. She was a sophomore, but she was already cooler than him. Not like he expected it to go any other way—Hazel was likeable and he was…Nico.
He rolled his eyes. “Nah, it’s because it’s a little humid—yes it’s because I have to wrap my arm up like a Subway hoagie to take a shower.”
She ‘hmphed’ at him and stared him down. “Maybe if you had gotten a colored wrap instead of a black one, people could actually sign your cast and you could make some friends.”
“Ah, yes. Superficial people who will only talk to me because of an injury and in three months when the cast comes off they’ll realize I have no personality and they can drop me guilt free, because, hey! He wasn’t grouchy because his arm was broken, he’s just a dick!”
“You can just say that you didn’t want it to clash with your goth aesthetic, it’s not like we’re straight, Nico.”
…She wasn’t wrong.
The standard school lunch was, for lack of a more flattering term, plastic and he decided he’d be packing the next day. Hazel was already digging into the instant mashed potatoes and chicken nuggets.
“Want mine?” He asked, pushing his tray towards her. She scraped his food onto her tray and stacked it underneath her own.
“It’s not good if you don’t eat—you know how fast you turn into a skeleton.”
“I’ll eat a big dinner,” he shrugged. “How do you even swallow this stuff? It’s barely for human consumption.”
Hazel tossed him the apple she’d picked up in the dessert line he’d apparently missed. “Or is your little Italian palette just spoiled?”
He narrowed his eyes and took a bite. “Maybe so.” Even the apples tasted different.
They were sitting with her friends today, because she somehow wasn’t embarrassed of her socially inept older brother and he didn’t know anyone yet. He was used to his old school, the one in LA, but that wasn’t flying with Marie who wanted her daughter on the weekends. She lived in NYC, and Hades had a summer home just outside the city which could easily be the main house until she graduated. So here he was, in the wrong country, on the wrong coast, with the wrong sister. He felt bad for even thinking it.
“I’m packing lunch for tomorrow, what do you want?” he asked, his voice going a bit softer. She wasn’t the wrong sister, she was just a different sister. She was sweet and she loved him and it’s not her fault that their father left his mother for hers—and now that they were in the same boat? Well, there was no reason at all to act like they were on separate teams. Now it was them against the new wife.
She tapped her pointer finger against her chin when she thought. “Uh…Spaghetti?”
His shoulders sagged. “After four years of living with us—me,” he corrected. She didn’t live with Bianca anymore, neither of them did. Bianca was an adult now. “You really haven’t caught onto any of the foods?”
She shrugged. “I mean it’s not like you know what goes in gumbo, so…”
“I’ll give you that one. Fine, I’ll pick and you’ll have a surprise tomorrow.”
She grinned at him and turned back to her friends, an interesting looking group. Only two of them actually had New York accents, so a New Orleans and an Italian twinge to their voices didn’t make them stand out too much. New York was just like that, even if you weren’t in the big apple specifically.
His eyes wandered the cafeteria, the round tables all filled to the brim with students. Overcrowding was a sad side-dish served with most American schools, so the amount of kids really shouldn’t have been surprising—but it always was when he was packed into 35 kid classrooms every day, like they were some sort of sardines. The cafeteria wasn’t much better. He suspected at least a third of the school was here, considering there were only three lunch periods.
Kids all looked different. There were a lot of kids speaking Spanish—he used to think it was close enough to Italian that he could just jump into conversations. Nope. Not that close. He couldn’t quite remember what he’d said back in Cali that got him beaten to a pulp, but it must have been offensive.
Every table in the room was packed, he noticed. That was one thing about YA novels he could never understand, how the hell were all these kids sitting alone at tables every day, depressed as hell, when he couldn’t even find a place quiet enough to read? What kind of bullsh—
Way back in the corner, waaayy back by the garbage bins, there was a table where only one kid sat alone. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was a long shot, but he thought he’d ask anyway.
“Who’s that?”
Hazel pushed down his arm. “Oh my god—don’t point at him, Neeks! He’ll break your other arm,” she hissed.
“He’s…He’s wearing a yellow leather jacket. I don’t think he could rip out a perforated page from a coloring book—“
“Oh, Will Solace?” her friend Leo cut in. “He gave me a tour freshman year, before he got all scary. I saw him fight Clarisse La Rue once—brutal shit. Heard he used to study anatomy to figure out where to hit people to hurt them the most. Well, anyway, one punch to the head and she was out cold. He did walk away with a cut up face, though—“
“Oh no,” Hazel said. “I know that look. Stop it. Stop it right now,” She said, pulling Nico’s attention back to the table. “Don’t get yourself involved. You can save kittens abandoned on the road, not teenagers who can kick your ass.”
His face scrunched up. “Who said I was going to try to save him?”
Hazel sighed. “No one had to. Because you always do this. He’s a lost cause, dude. Let. It. Go.”
He put up his hands in mock surrender and went back to his apple. Maybe she was right. Or maybe Will Solace was his ticket to eating at a quiet table every day, even if that table was next to the trash. Not like he wouldn’t fit right in, anyway.
***
Listening to Hazel probably would have been a good idea. She was smart, certainly better at making the right friends than he was—then again, he’d never tried to have ‘the right’ friends anyway. He slipped on his ‘sorry for getting another divorce’ leather jacket his dad had gotten him for his birthday and hoped he looked…well, just that he looked enough of something that he wouldn’t immediately get punched in the face.
He’d managed to slip out of Hazel’s grip at lunch, and there was no way she was coming within ten feet of Will’s table. He sat across from Will, setting his backpack on the tiled floor under his feet and pulling out his lunchbox.
“Can I help you?” Will asked. His voice was tired, his arm was wrapped around his tray, he looked like he hadn’t slept in a few days. Still, there was the way his shoulders tensed that told Nico he was ready for a fight if that’s what Nico had come with.
He held his good hand out across the table. “Nico di Angelo. Every other table is super loud and I just want a place to read—is it cool if I sit with you?” he asked.
Will regarded his hand like Nico had just held out a live weasel. He didn’t shake it, just trained his eyes back on his food and let his shoulders loosen. “Do whatever the hell you want, dude. Just don’t bring a bunch of assholes here.”
Nico decided he was surprisingly un-cheery for someone who wore so much canary yellow. Whatever. He could work with this.
As the days passed nothing of much consequence happened. Will ate his lunch and Nico read and they didn’t talk to each other. Nico tried not to stare. He tried, but once he finished his book it got harder. It was only a thirty minute lunch period; he could go to the library any time now…but he couldn’t pull himself away. Will was much nicer to look at now that he had the opportunity to see him up close.
His hair was curly but had the telltale signs of being cut in a bathroom mirror, uneven on the sides, slightly longer in the back. It was curly enough to hide the rough edges, but Nico had cut his own hair enough times to pick it out. Freckles that dotted his face were dark against his tan and that only made the blue of his eyes and the golden blonde of his hair stand out even more. His nose looked like it’d been broken before but it didn’t manage to make him any less hot.
Oh god he was hot. Nico was in such deep shit now.
“What? Is there something on my face or something?” Will asked, snapping him out of his thoughts. Nico blinked.
“Oh. Yeah. Just in the corner of your mouth,” he lied.
Will’s eyebrows raised like he hadn’t expected that answer. He dragged a calloused thumb along his bottom lip, the pink flesh bouncing under the flick of his touch. Nico fought to keep his mouth shut.
“Did I get it?” he asked.
“Oh, um. Yep. You’re good,” he stammered.
Will’s smile only tugged up on one side of his mouth, but the dimple that formed in his cheek made up for it. “Thanks. I’m Will, by the way.”
I know. The bell rang and Nico stuffed his things into his bag, pulling it onto his shoulder. “Yeah, no problem—see you tomorrow, Will.”