Chapter Text
This is how it begins.
Nico wakes up on a gasp and stumbles through the dark and into Will, and he does not know where he is. He must be dreaming.
(But then, what is life if not a bad dream, and sleep if not a worse one?)
Will catches him and the next thing he knows, they half-fall together onto something, and Nico can't keep his eyes open. His eyes blink open and shut of their own volition, slurred words slip out of his mouth, and everything he sees feels unreal. His vision warps at the edges, strange and bright, and all he hears is the rush of blood in his own ears, like being underwater. It's cold.
(Never trust your senses. They'll betray you at the worst time.)
The next time he opens his eyes, his cheek is pressed to a warm chest and his hair is in his face. Then there's a hand stroking it away. He looks up- or tries to- but he can't see before he is falling away again.
(There is darkness, and the look on Bianca's face when she went away.)
The world is bright, and cold, and echoey, and here it's warm. He doesn't bother to open his eyes when the darkness spits him out again.
-
This is how it begins.
Will Solace is fourteen when he sees Nico di Angelo for the first time. He is skinny and short and looks like he hasn't slept in twelve weeks, and Will is watching him across a crowded cafeteria. There are many things he has to be doing. He can't tear his eyes away.
Will Solace is fourteen when he comes out. Will Solace is fourteen when he gets jumped walking home. Will Solace is fourteen when they knock him to the ground, hold his arms down, and kick him until he can't breathe.
Will Solace is fourteen when he's called a faggot for the first time in his life.
Will Solace is fourteen and close to passing out when he hears a boy yelling next to him and thinks, just get it over with.
Will Solace is fourteen when he opens his eyes and sees a boy with a blooming bruise on his left cheek and a split lip leaning over him, the most concerned he's ever seen someone be about him, and thinks, is this Death? He's too pretty to be Death.
Will Solace is fourteen when he wakes up properly, in the hospital, to his mother fussing over him and the nurses looking at him. He accepts their care distractedly- he says he's tired when he stares into space too long, when he sleeps more than he should. Really, all he's thinking about is the boy. He remembers looking at him what seems to be a lifetime ago, across a cafeteria, before everything changed.
Will remembers every detail of his face. And he wishes, in some small, sick way, that he could forget.
-
There are some truths that can't be managed. There are some stories, older than time, that beg to be told.
(But stories never die, although their exact words may be lost to the ages. There are some ideas that will outlive stone and the stars.)
-
It was three in the morning on a Friday night in the city- Saturday already, if you really wanted to be pedantic- and Will was awake. There was a paper due on the first of the month, in two weeks, but it wasn't enough time. Not for him. No, Will Solace was a neurotic of the highest caliber, and an academic besides; he had a love-hate relationship with deadlines.
Which meant, plainly, that he claimed to have his best thoughts tired. He was wrong about that, as people so often are.
He sighed and put his laptop on the coffee table, next to the magazines him and Nico ordered and yet never bothered to read, and last night's takeout cartons. He got up to make another pot of coffee. Normally he hated coffee, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and Will was starting to feel the desperation set in like a sickly undercurrent to his vision.
He could have been a farmer, for fuck's sake. He disliked dirt, but he was absolutely sure that if he saw a patch of Tennessee green in New York, he would probably go feral and blind and start telling passersby it must be fake. God, he missed when life didn't involve papers. And professors. And caffeine addictions. And being afraid to go to the bodega because he lived in a really shitty part of town and he was afraid he'd get shanked. Will stood at the counter, tapped his foot, and thought these thoughts for approximately fourteen and a half minutes.
The coffee was nearly done when Nico stumbled into the kitchen, hair too messy to have been achieved with nature alone, and Will paused within the action of heaving a dramatic sigh. He sighed anyway.
”What are you doing up?”
Nico didn’t answer, and Will’s brow furrowed. He walked forward a few steps, until Nico’s features were sharply in focus. His eyes were closed.
“Nico-“
The boy in question crumpled to the ground, all five foot four of him, and Will reacted on instinct. But Nico was dead weight, surprisingly heavy, and his skin was like hot, dry fire under Will’s splayed fingertips. Will could hear his heart beating.
“Mm. Will.”
”Dumbass,” Will breathed. “The fuck were you doing?” Nico’s face was pressed into his chest.
”Where are we?” came a muffled reply, and Will sighed again.
“Kitchen floor.”
”Can we stay here? I’m tired.”
Will almost laughed. “I haven’t seen you like this since high school. Are you okay?”
Nico didn’t answer. The silence bled and rung in Will’s ears. The coffee pot stirred him back to life. He jolted, and Nico made a tiny noise, hardly audible; but Will could feel the vibration in his chest. He scooped up Nico- he’d grown since high school, he was definitely heavier- and carried him to the couch.
He went back to the kitchen, poured his coffee, immediately scalded his tongue, and hissed.