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Will was in love. He’d been in love with Nico since their first date, not that he would ever say that to Nico’s face and risk freaking him out. They’d been together for almost a year, and Nico was spending more and more nights wrapped possessively - protectively? - around Will while they slept, which always made it so unbearably lonely whenever Nico chose to sleep in his own home away from Will. Will had tried every day for the past month to convince Nico to move in with him, but no matter how hard he tried, Nico kept coming up with excuses not to.
It didn’t help that whenever Will tried to bring it up again, Nico would get an “important work call” or he would have to leave for a “business trip” that he hadn’t even told Will about beforehand.
Will was almost certain that these business trips were a front for something, but for what, he didn’t know. The only thing that his mind kept reaching for was the possibility that Nico was cheating on him. He couldn’t be, right? He wouldn’t.
Will hadn’t ever planned on bringing it up - because Nico would never, so he shouldn’t be expressing doubt in his boyfriend, who he loved - but he’d always had a tendency to blurt things out when he was tired.
They’d been watching a movie on the couch in Will’s apartment, late enough for Will to have fallen asleep on Nico’s chest not even halfway through it. He’d been so deeply asleep that he hadn’t heard Nico’s phone starting to ring, hadn’t hear him answer the call or hang up later, only waking when he felt Nico’s fingers brushing through his hair.
“Will,” he said, the rumbling of his voice in his chest finally causing Will to stir. “Wake up, Dollface.”
Will grumbled and turned his head to press his face into Nico’s chest. “No. Sleep.”
“Babe, c’mon, let me up,” Nico tried again, scratching lightly at Will’s scalp. “I need to leave, Will.”
He gripped Nico’s shirt in his fists and shook his head. “It’s too late. Stay here.”
“No, Will, I have to leave,” Nico said, no longer trying to be gentle about it. “Let me up.”
Will whined tiredly before finally lifting himself off Nico’s chest. “Where’re you going?”
“Emergency work thing,” Nico replied, sitting up and swinging his legs off the couch.
“What’s the emergency?” Will asked.
“It’s a long story.” Nico rose from the couch and went to grab his coat.
“It’s awfully late to be going to work,” Will pointed out, crossing his arms and slumping into the corner of the couch like a grumpy child.
“I know.” He pulled on his shoes.
“Are you cheating on me?”
Nico froze. After a few seconds, Will seemed to realize what he’d said, and tried to sink further into the couch in shame. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean--”
“Why would you even think that?” Nico asked, genuine hurt in his voice. “Why would I cheat on you, Will? I love you.”
“I didn’t mean that! I’m sorry, I didn’t--” He hesitated. “You didn’t say no.”
“I don’t have time for this, Will,” Nico told him, walking to the door but waiting to open it. “I have to leave, now. I’ll call you in the morning, okay? I love you.”
Will drew his knees up and hugged them to his chest.
“Will?” He didn’t respond. Nico opened the door and walked out, feeling a stab in his heart before his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He made his way down the stairs and out the front door of Will’s building, where a car was waiting for him at the curb. Nico climbed in the passenger’s seat with a huff, staring longingly up at the building as the car started to pull away.
“What happened?” Reyna asked from the driver’s seat.
“He thinks I’m cheating on him,” Nico replied.
“Why don’t you just tell him the truth already?”
Nico slouched in his seat. “I don’t know how.”
Will was awake for hours after Nico left. He couldn’t stop replaying the scene over and over in his head, picking apart Nico’s words, analyzing his excuses and explanations, and trying to determine whether or not Nico was actually splitting his time between Will and somebody else.
What would he do if Nico was cheating on him? He wanted to know who the other person was, but at the same time he knew that he would be comparing himself to that other person for the rest of his life.
He didn’t want to break up with Nico, but shouldn’t he? How would he even do it? Wait until Nico called him in the morning and simply tell him it’s over? Do it in a public place in the hopes that it won’t turn into a scene? Ignore his calls and texts, completely ghost him until he gets the idea? He didn’t think he could do any of those things. He’d never broken up with someone before, he’d only ever been the one getting dumped, he couldn’t do that to someone else!
Will had tried to finish the movie they’d been watching, but couldn’t stand sitting around and being left to his own thoughts. Instead, he’d gone to his kitchen and washed the dishes he’d been neglecting, folded the clean laundry that had been sitting in a basket at the foot of his bed for about a week, and vacuumed the entire apartment while silently apologizing to his neighbors for the noise.
After all of that, he’d finally tired himself out enough that he could sleep, and so he’d dropped onto his bed and let himself drift off toward sleep, leaving his relationship discussion a problem for the morning.
However, his rest was cut short by a pounding on his front door. Will groaned as he dragged himself away from sleep for the second time that night, and meandered over to the door, not bothering with the peep hole before he opened it.
Nico was standing on the other side, brown dried blood on his face and neck, red wet blood coating the front of the button-down shirt he hadn’t been wearing when he left earlier that night. He had a wild, panicked look in his eyes as he stumbled inside, past Will, already heading toward the bathroom.
“Nico? What the hell happened to you?” Will demanded, chasing after him. “What’s going on? Is this your blood?”
“Please stop freaking out,” Nico said, voice strained from pain. “Please help me.” He pushed open the bathroom door, leaving a bloody handprint against it, and sat down on the edge of the bathtub.
“What happened?” Will asked again, stopping in the doorway.
“I got shot,” Nico said bluntly, and saw in Will’s eyes the exact moment that he started freaking out again.
“What?” Will shrieked, rushing forward and dropping to his knees in front of Nico. “What do you mean you got shot? Where? What happened? Let me see.”
Nico tipped forward, resting his forehead on the top of Will’s head. “Please don’t be mad,” he whispered. “This is my job.”
“It’s your job to get shot?” Will pulled back so that he could look Nico in the eyes.
“Can you please just take the bullet out before we do all this?” Nico pleaded.
“No, I can’t do that, you need to go to a hospital!”
Nico shook his head no, and continued tipping forward until his head was resting on Will’s shoulder. “No hospital, gunshot wounds get police involved. Can’t do that.”
Will pushed Nico back with one hand, his other coming up to cup Nico’s cheek. “Whatever this is that you’re doing, is this even legal?”
Nico hesitated. “I can’t answer that.”
Will took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, lay down in the bathtub and show me where the bullet is. I need… I’ll need tweezers… And disinfectant, give me a second.”
Nico lowered himself backwards into the bathtub while Will went to the medicine cabinet, pulling out the tweezers and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. He doused the tweezers in the disinfectant before bringing them back to Nico, who had unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a bleeding hole just a few inches over his hip bone.
“I’ll try to do this as quick as I can,” Will told him, and leaned in over Nico’s abdomen.
The pain had Nico drifting in and out of consciousness, but Will had managed to get him changed out of his bloody clothes and into the pajamas he’d been wearing the night before. He’d had to carry Nico to bed and forced him to drink a glass of water before allowing him to rest.
Will crawled into bed next to him, certain that Nico was already asleep, until Nico said, “I’m sorry I never told you.”
Will felt himself tense, but tried to ignore it. “We can talk about it in the morning. You need to rest.”
“No,” Nico said stubbornly. “You need to know so that you stop thinking I’m cheating on you. Which I’m not doing, because I love you. I just wanted to keep you safe, and the more you know the more dangerous it is for you, and--”
“Nico,” Will cut in, reaching for Nico’s hand and squeezing it. “Thank you. And...don’t tell me. Just keep me safe, I trust you.”
Nico brought Will’s hand up to his lips and kissed his knuckles. “I love you so much, Dollface. I want to move in with you, I really do, but I don’t know if it’ll be safe.”
“I’ll be even safer with you by my side all the time,” Will told him. “I love you, too, Darling.”