Work Text:
When Nico walked into the Solace household, neither residents were in the kitchen where he expected them to be.
“Uh, hello?” he called down the hall toward their bedrooms. “Anybody home?”
Will poked his head out of the bathroom, toothbrush in his mouth. “Hi! Can you turn the coffee pot on for me? I’m running late.”
“Yeah, sure,” Nico replied, and turned around to hit the switch on the coffee maker. Behind him, he heard doors opening and closing, and Bianca ran into the kitchen to hug him in greeting. “Hey, Princess, what kind of cereal do you want for breakfast?”
“Can I have Lucky Charms?” she asked, and when Nico nodded, she made her way to the table, setting her backpack in one chair and sitting in another.
Nico took a bowl from one of the cabinets and a spoon from one of the drawers before collecting the cereal from the pantry. “Do you want milk in the bowl or in a cup?”
“In the bowl,” Bianca answered, and Nico took the milk out of the fridge, pouring it over the cereal he’d already shaken into the bowl.
He noticed Will standing at the edge of the kitchen with his phone in his hand as Nico went to put away the milk. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing!” Will said quickly, stuffing his phone back into his pocket. He made his way over to the coffee pot, pouring its contents into a travel mug, as Nico delivered the bowl of cereal to Bianca.
Once Will had his coffee made - with plenty of cream and a little bit of sugar - he went over to Bianca and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll see you after school, Bi,” he said. “I love you.”
“Love you, Daddy!” Bianca replied, and went back to her cereal.
“Bye, Nico,” Will said, grabbing his keys as he started toward the door.
“Bye, Solace,” Nico said, and once Will was gone, he asked Bianca, “Do you have everything you need for school?” She nodded. “All of your homework is done, and you have a jacket to wear?” She nodded again. “Alright. Ten minutes, and we have to leave, got it?”
“Can I go in late?” Bianca asked.
“Why?”
“Daddy gets to be late, so why can’t I?”
“Your dad is probably going to get in trouble if he’s late too much, just like you would be,” Nico told her. “So eat your cereal so that we can leave and you won’t be late.”
Will was going to be late, but he had something more important to deal with right at that moment, in his opinion. Lou Ellen had been pestering him for a picture of Nico, ever since Will had started mentioning the fact that there was a hot twenty-something at his house watching over his daughter. So, in a childish move, Will had secretly snapped a picture of Nico that morning while he was making up a bowl of cereal for Bianca.
However, since Will couldn’t have his phone on him while he was working, he had to go into one of the empty offices to hook his phone up to the printer. While he was waiting for the picture to print, he kept glancing around, afraid to get caught using hospital equipment for something as childish as this. As soon as the picture was printed, Will snatched it off the paper tray and ran to Lou Ellen’s room.
She had clearly just woken up, though she seemed to brighten when she saw Will in her doorway. “That’s a face that looks like it has gossip to spread,” Lou commented, waving Will into the room. “Whatcha got?”
Will held out the picture.
“Who’s this?” Lou asked, though the look on Will’s face told her everything she needed to know. “Oh! This is him, isn’t it? This is your boy? What’s his name again, Nicky? He’s cute, Will, you should totally hit that.”
“Lou!” Will scolded. “No! His name is Nico, first of all, and no, I should not hit that, because I’m technically his boss, or something!”
Lou rolled her eyes. “Did he sign some agreement about no workplace relationships? Ask him out, I bet he’d be into it. Maybe he could even be into you,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.
“Lou!”
“Sorry, you’d be into him--”
“Lou Ellen, please!”
“Fine, fine! I’ll stop,” Lou said with a sigh. “You’ve got work to do anyway, don’t you? Get out of here already.”
Will snatched the picture of Nico out of her hands before she could hide it from him, and said, “I’ll see you for lunch,” before he left the room.
The first thing that Nico always did as soon as he picked Bianca up from school was to ask how her day had been. The second thing he did was ask if she had any homework, because if she didn’t, that meant that he had to think of something to occupy her time before the short car ride home ended. When Bianca told him that she was homework-free for the night, Nico decided that it was a good day to make cupcakes, and so they drove to the store for ingredients instead of heading straight home.
They set to work as soon as they got home, washing their hands before pulling out mixing bowls and measuring out ingredients. Bianca had to stand on a stool to be able to reach everything on the counter.
When it came time to mix everything together with the electric mixer, Bianca asked if she could do it, so Nico gave her quick instruction - hold the mixer in the batter, turn it onto the lowest setting, move it around until everything is blended - before handing it over to her. Bianca took the mixer eagerly, following Nico’s directions until her finger slipped on the switch, turning the mixer on to full blast and throwing batter all over the island and their clothes.
Nico hurried to switch the mixer off before the mess grew, quick to laugh it off before Bianca got upset, and turned the mixer back on to low before handing it back to her.
Once the remaining batter was mixed and poured into the cupcake pan and the pan placed in the oven, Nico turned to Bianca and said, “How about you go and put on some pajamas, and bring me these clothes so I can wash them. Sound good?”
Bianca nodded and ran off to her room, coming back a few minutes later in clean pajamas with a bundle of dirty clothes just as Nico had finished wiping down the counter.
“Thanks, Princess,” Nico said, taking the clothes from her. “You can go ahead and watch some TV or something while we wait for the cupcakes, okay?”
“Okay!” Bianca said happily, and turned toward the living room.
Nico took the dirty clothes into the laundry room, starting the washer and setting Bianca’s clothes aside so that he could go and change himself. He searched through his backpack for the spare clothes he always kept in there, but couldn’t seem to find them. He didn’t remember leaving any of his clothes behind there before, either, which meant he only had one option if he wanted to get out of his dirty t-shirt and jeans - which he really did, since he didn’t want to risk ruining his favorite shirt and one of his only good pairs of pants.
He walked down the hall to Will’s room, opening the door slowly like he didn’t want to get caught sneaking inside, and he realized suddenly that this was the first time he’d stepped inside Will’s room. His first thought was that it didn’t look anything like it had in his dreams and he felt himself blush at that - now was not the time. He refocused his thoughts, walking over to the dresser and opening one of the middle drawers which happened to hold Will’s t-shirts. Nico grabbed one at random before going into the next drawer down and taking out a pair of sweatpants.
With a quick glance at the door to make sure it was closed, Nico changed out of his own clothes and into Will’s - he had to roll the sweatpants at the waist so that they wouldn’t slip off his hips and fold up the cuffs around his ankles. There was no way that Will was that much taller than him, right?
He hurried out of the room and threw his clothes in the wash with Bianca’s before going back into the kitchen to check on the cupcakes.
The cupcakes were cooled and frosted by the time the washer finished its cycle. Nico went to move the clothes into the dryer, eager to get back into his own clothes before Will came home and saw him in his. He had no trouble moving Bianca’s clothes and his own jeans into the dryer, but his t-shirt seemed to get caught on something inside the machine, ripping more and more no matter how carefully Nico tried to remove it.
His shirt - his favorite shirt - was in shreds in his hands. He slammed the dryer door shut, angrily tossed his ruined shirt in the trash, and dropped back onto the couch next to Bianca, grumpily watching whatever cartoon was on the TV.
Eventually, they moved on from TV to video games, and Nico lost track of time - he didn’t hear when the dryer finished, and didn’t register the sound of the door opening until he heard Will’s voice. The panic he felt at Will seeing him in the borrowed clothes was overshadowed by the loss of his shirt, so his heart only skipped a single beat instead of stopping completely when Will stepped into the living room.
“Hey, those cupcakes look great!” Will said as a greeting, and Nico noticed his smile flicker when he stopped Nico’s attire. “What’s up with the PJs before dinner? And...are those my clothes?”
Nico cleared his throat awkwardly before answering, “There was a mishap with the cupcake batter, so I had to wash our clothes, but… I, uh, I didn’t bring anything else, so I had to borrow this.” He glanced down at the shirt he was wearing before looking back at Will. “Actually, I think I’m keeping this shirt. Your washer tore mine to shreds, so you owe me. Kind of.”
He thought he saw Will’s cheeks redden slightly. “Oh. Um, yeah, that’s fine, don’t worry about it.” He turned and started walking toward his bedroom. “It looks better on you, anyway.”