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Nico didn’t remember how much he hated high school until he was right back in that stupid building, shoes sticking to the ugly tile floors as he sipped lukewarm punch and pretended to be engrossed in the dusty trophy case in one of several maze-like hallways.
He hadn’t even wanted to come. Especially during senior year, it wasn’t like Nico had a good high school experience. He was just a weird little emo kid who was obsessed with a weird card game and just sort of sulked around Percy and Jason until they gave in and adopted him into their friend group.
There was exactly one person in high school who was Nico’s Friend– someone Nico became friends with all by himself, someone he hung out with regularly one-on-one even when they no longer had classes together. And then Nico went and developed the world’s most obnoxious crush on him before completely ghosting him for a decade.
God, Nico really hoped Will Solace wasn’t here. He was pretty sure that if he took even one glance at Will’s freckles and toothpaste-commercial-smile, he’d start falling all over again.
“You could at least be pretending to mingle, you know,” Jason said, looming over Nico’s shoulder while holding his own cup of terrible punch.
Nico scowled. “Just because you forced me to come doesn’t mean I have to enjoy myself.”
“Oh, come on, when was the last time we hung out?” Jason tapped his Red Solo cup against Nico’s. “This is bonding time. I miss you, Neeks.”
“Don’t call me Neeks. And next time you want to hang out, just invite me to lunch or something, instead of dragging me back to my high school.”
When Jason had first brought up the topic of the reunion, he’d seemed shocked that Nico hadn’t been planning on attending. It was a four hour round trip, Nico had argued, just to spend another few hours with people he didn’t like. If anything, the prospect of two two-hour car trips with Nico seemed to make Jason more excited.
Jason’s phone rang and he frowned, making a quick excuse before rushing away. Nico checked his watch; it was barely even eight-thirty. How long was this stupid reunion supposed to last, anyway? Nico glanced down the hallway where Jason had disappeared; if he was secretly hoping Jason just had some emergency that would require him to rush back home and take Nico with him.
Jason came back, and sure enough he looked panic-stricken. “So apparently Piper’s cat got sick, and I need to get back home.”
“Awesome! Let’s leave!”
“Is everything alright?”
Nico froze. He knew that voice. Feeling as though his flight or fight response had kicked in, he turned around slowly, before his eyes finally landed on that familiar sunny grin. Will Solace was leaning up against a row of rusted lockers, wearing khaki shorts and a green plaid shirt that Nico knew for a fact he’d had since high school, because Nico had had countless vivid daydreams of stealing it and wearing it until it stopped smelling like him.
“Hey, Will!” Jason exclaimed. “Everything’s fine, I just need to get back home quickly.”
Will held up his keys, eyebrows pinched in concern. “Where do you guys live? I can drive you home or something if you need me to.”
“Two hours south of here,” Jason said.
“I’m going in the same direction, I can drop you or Nico off.”
“That’s okay, I think Jason can–” Nico started.
Jason cut in quickly. “Actually! It’d be great if you could take Nico home, so he can stay at the reunion a little longer and mingle !” He shot Nico a pointed smile, and Nico glared back.
“Yeah, I’d be happy to,” Will said. Nico could hear the amusement in his voice.
“Great, thanks! Have fun Nico!” Jason called out, before picking up his phone again and all but running out the building.
Nico and Will exchanged glances, and Nico was hoping Will still filled awkward silences so he wouldn’t have to be the one to say something first.
“You want to leave as early as possible, don’t you?” Will asked as soon as Jason disappeared from view, a smirk playing on his lips.
“I never even wanted to come in the first place,” Nico said.
Will laughed. “Same old Nico. Let me go say goodbye to some of my friends and then I can take you home.”
Going home included spending two hours alone in a car with his old crush. Suddenly, the reunion didn’t seem too bad. “We can stay if you want to. Really, I’m fine.”
“No, it’s okay, I should head back home anyway. I’ll be right back.”
Nico slurped the rest of his punch and threw the cup away with much more force than necessary. If Piper’s cat survived the night, then Nico was going to kill Jason Grace.
Will’s car was a tiny blue Nissan sitting at the very back of the parking lot, because apparently he still hadn’t grown out of being nervous about parking next to other people. Nico shoved his hands in his pockets as they walked through the parking lot. The sun was still setting, but it was just dark enough for the streetlights to be turning on, bathing the cement in an orangey glow.
He slid into the passenger seat. Was it weird that Nico thought the car smelled like Will? Will handed Nico his phone to type in his address, and Nico couldn’t resist the urge to check what Will’s home screen was, and the tiny rush of relief when it was just Will posing with a skeleton wearing sunglasses and not a girlfriend or boyfriend. At least, he hoped Will wasn’t dating the skeleton.
It was a long minute of just the sound of Will’s left turn blinker before Will finally broke the silence.
“So, it’s been a long time. How have you been?”
Nico was grateful that Will didn’t acknowledge the fact that it was Nico’s fault they never connected after high school. Will had tried to reach out– he’d even sent Nico a happy birthday message for a few years– but Nico rarely, if ever, responded. He’d wanted to put as much distance between him and high school as possible, even if that meant him trying to quit cold-turkey on his Will obsession.
“Good,” Nico said. “How have you been?”
“Oh, you know, living the dream,” Will replied dryly. “I didn’t realize you lived so close to me. We could’ve met up and hung out, or something if you wanted to. Unless, I mean–”
Apparently, Nico was grateful too soon. He groaned loudly, his head thumping against the headrest. “Just ask, Solace.”
“What happened during senior year?”
“Oh, you didn’t hear? I mean, Eros basically plastered that I was gay and desperately in love with Percy for everyone to see, but I guess you were probably too busy memorizing an anatomy textbook to see any of it.”
“Are you okay , though?” Will turned his sad, concerned eyes on Nico, who rolled his eyes if only to hide the fact that he was a little relieved that Will still cared.
“It was ten years ago, I’m fine.” And he was, really, even if Will didn’t seem the slightest bit convinced. “I work in a library. If I told my boss I was gay, he’d give me a raise.”
“Oh, you work in a library? Glad you finally got out of working for your dad’s funeral home business.”
They lapsed into an awkward silence again. Nico checked his watch; only an hour and forty-five minutes to go, he thought.
“But I wasn’t really talking about the stuff with Eros,” Will finally admitted. “I was talking about us. What happened to us?”
Nico fiddled with the leather strap of his watch, worried that looking up would mean meeting Will’s expression of pity again.
“Look, I was embarrassed, okay?” And worried that Eros would find out that Percy hadn’t been his crush since freshman year, or that, even worse, Will would figure it out. He was Nico’s Friend, after all, and Nico didn’t want his memories of Will to be tarnished, too. Of course, that didn’t seem to work either. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
“I’m sorry if I was being clingy or pushy or trying to force you into something you didn’t want,” Will blurted out.
He sounded so torn up about it, too, it almost made Nico laugh.
“Hey, no, I’m serious,” Will insisted, but he was smiling again. “I know I was a little bit of a stubborn dick in high school–”
“You threw an orange at my nose. Twice, if I remember correctly.”
“You told me you hadn’t eaten a piece of fruit in three days!”
“What teenager eats fruit every day?” Nico scoffed. “Discounting you, of course, Doctor Solace.”
The corner of Will’s lip twisted downwards, and his eyes adjusted on the steering wheel, and it was stupid that Nico could see that and tell instantly what it meant.
“Don’t tell me you went a day without completing your Food Pyramid, hypocrite.”
“No, no, I’m not a hypocrite,” Will said, forcing a smile. “I’m just...not a doctor,” he added. His eyes darted to the side, as if trying to gauge Nico’s reaction.
“ You’re not a doctor?” Nico asked, unable to keep the smile off his face. “You, who brought your medical textbook to lunch, who carried a first aid kit in your backpack, who cried the day you got accepted into that pre-med– you are not a doctor?”
“You sound like my dad,” Will said, groaning. “ Yes, I dropped out of pre-med school. I worked as a tutor my sophomore year and realized I liked teaching way more than the prospect of becoming a doctor.”
Nico leaned back in his seat, letting out a chuckle of disbelief. Somehow, he could picture Will as a teacher– probably a science teacher, one who was fun enough to apparently hang a skeleton in his classroom. He never would’ve guessed Will from High School would’ve dropped out from becoming a doctor, but this wasn’t Will from High School, was it?
They fell into near-silence again, but it wasn’t awkward this time. There was a phantom smile still lingering on Nico’s lips as he listened to Will quietly humming along to whatever country song was playing softly on the radio. Dark landscapes and the white-yellow glow of headlights raced past Nico’s window, and he watched them go past with tired eyes.
This was much better than being stuck in a car for two more hours with Jason, Nico thought, even if he’d never admit it.
“Why did you come anyway?” Will said, inserting the gas pump and leaning up against the car.
“Jason made me.”
“So you and Jason are still friends?”
“Why? Are you jealous, Solace?” Nico teased.
Will rolled his eyes. “ Jason didn’t buy you gummy worms for a week straight during junior year.”
“You only did that because you lost that bet,” Nico reminded him. His eyes flickered over to the convenience store, which was lit up like a neon sign in the semi-darkness. “I bet they have gummy worms, for old time’s sake.”
“For old time’s sake,” Will agreed. “Glad I finally got you to buy me gummy worms for once.”
“Who knows? I might steal your wallet.”
“I’d steal the money back,” Will replied confidently. In the artificial light of the gas station, his smile seemed somehow even whiter.
“Careful, Solace,” Nico warned teasingly, already heading for the convenience store. “Words like that is how you ended up buying me all those gummy worms in the first place.”
“Why’d you come?” Nico asked, carefully opening the large package of worms as Will turned out of the gas station parking lot. “I can’t imagine you were exactly excited to tell everyone we graduated with that you aren’t a doctor.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I was more than happy to let people keep assuming as long as they didn’t ask me directly about it. Besides, really I just wanted to see how many couples were back together.” He held out his hand expectantly. “Gummy worm me.”
Nico obediently placed the gummy worm– a red one, and if red just so happened to be Will’s favorite, then that was a complete accident– into Will’s hand. He pretended not to be fazed when their fingers brushed, even if he swore he could feel his skin growing warm at the contact.
“Leo and Calypso got engaged like four years ago,” Nico said, biting into his own gummy worm. “They broke it off soon after, though.”
Will snorted. “No offense to them, but that doesn’t surprise me at all. Oh, did you see that Travis and Katie got married last spring?”
Will held out his hand for another gummy worm. Nico dug around for another red one, before ignoring Will’s hand completely and using the gummy worm to instead poke at the corner of Will’s mouth until he opened it and grabbed at the gummy worm with his teeth.
Yeah, Nico thought dumbly, that was a way better idea than just touching Will’s hand again.
“I wasn’t invited to that one. I heard the flowers were really pretty, though.”
“If you had wanted to go, you should’ve just asked me. I would’ve brought you as my plus one.”
“Everyone would’ve thought we were dating, you realize that, right?” Nico pointed out. “Not that they didn’t already think that in high school.”
He regretted the words as soon as they came out of his mouth. He really, really didn’t want to talk about crushes with Will. He’d always known his feelings for Will were unrequited, but he didn’t need Will talking about all his hot, smart, talented past crushes and partners that were probably way better than Nico.
A car swerved in front of Will, and he cursed lightly as he hit the brakes. Nico watched in slow-motion as one of the gummy worms flailed out of the bag and onto the floor of Will’s car before he could catch it.
“Sounds like a Hallmark movie,” Will grinned. “Fake dating to get my aunt to stop asking me when I’ll get a girlfriend? Sounds good to me.”
Nico wrinkled his nose, feeding Will another gummy worm. “I thought your aunt was, like, biphobic.”
“I’ve been single for three years at this point, I think she’d be so happy that I had someone that she’d completely skip over the fact that they weren’t a girl.”
Nico certainly didn’t perk up that, or anything. “Yeah, I’m single too.” He quickly stuffed another gummy worm into his mouth to prevent himself from saying anything else. Why did he say that ? He resisted the urge to slam his head into the dashboard in front of him. But doing that would mean Will asking him what was wrong, and probably pulling over so he could patch Nico up with the first aid kit that was probably in his trunk, his fingers gently trailing over Nico’s forehead as Will’s blue eyes gazed tenderly into Nico’s–
“Look at that! We’re a perfect match for a fake dating romcom!”
Either Nico was hallucinating, or Will’s eyes lit up at that. But either way, this was getting too close to “I had a massive crush on you in high school and probably wouldn’t mind if you kissed me right now because apparently I never got over you or your stupid freckles’ territory.
“If you’re going to pretend to be my boyfriend, you could at least pretend to be my hot doctor boyfriend who pays my bills so I can be a stay-at-home dad.”
Will made a dramatic disgusted face. “You want kids? No thank you, that’s a dealbreaker.”
“I’ll be a stay at home dad for our three cats, then,” Nico amended.
“I can get behind that. Not sure I can actually afford it.” Will laughed. “Talking about getting married is so crazy. I mean, could you imagine getting married right out of college? Or even getting married now? It feels like only yesterday that we were in high school.”
Will’s words reminded him of hearts and “Mr. Nico Solace” scribbled into the margins of his notebooks. That Nico would’ve proposed to Will at nineteen if he could, if only to make sure it was harder for Will to leave him if Will ever got tired of him.
“No,” Nico lied, swallowing the last of the gummy worms. “Not at all.”
“Turn left here.”
Will frowned at his phone, which was mounted on his dashboard and chirping out directions. “Are you sure? GPS says straight.”
“I live here, Will, turn left.”
Will jerked the wheel, getting into the left turn lane and trying to beat the protected left arrow that had just turned yellow. “Forgive me for not trusting you after the junior year prom fiasco.”
Privately, High School Nico had thought that the only fiasco part of junior year was that Will had tacked “as friends” at the end of his “would you like to go to prom together”, and the way he’d then invited Kayla and Austin and Lou Ellen and Cecil.
“It was dark and I misread the street name,” Nico shot back. “Are you ever going to let that go?”
“Are you ever going to give me the correct directions to your apartment?”
On the bright side, Nico thought, at least High School Nico’s worst fears never came true– Will never did pick up on the fact that he’d purposely lied in a pathetic attempt to spend more one-on-one time with Will.
Nico’s apartment appeared in view, and something sunk in his chest. Maybe he should’ve let Will follow the directions. He almost laughed at himself for the thought; with all the things that had changed since high school, some things still stayed the same.
“You never did go to senior prom, did you?” Will asked.
The car slowed to a stop, perched on the curb outside Nico’s apartment. Nico considered reaching for the door handle and just ending the conversation then and there, resigning himself to never speaking to Will again until the fifteen year reunion, or Percy and Annabeth’s wedding, or god forbid, Will’s wedding.
But there was something about Will’s soft blue gaze that was keeping him frozen in place, in the passenger side of Will’s car.
“No,” Nico replied, still feeling a little cagey even after a decade. “After everything happened with Eros, I really couldn’t bring myself to face everyone.”
“I was going to ask you, you know,” Will said. There was a slight smile on his face, tinged with fond nostalgia. “To prom, I mean. I had this whole big thing planned, complete with a classic prom-posal sign with some stupid pun you would’ve hated written on it.”
Will let out a soft chuckle as he gazed out the front windshield, apparently lost in the memory. His voice, low and tinged with a hint of that Southern drawl, did funny things to Nico’s stomach. He’d long since memorized the way Will’s accent curled over his words when he was just a little too tired, and apparently he’d never forgotten– like when you hear your favorite childhood song on the radio, and you still know every second of it.
“Of course, then the whole thing with Eros happened, and I…I lost confidence, I guess. Because he said you were in love with Percy, and how could I ever compete with that?”
Coaxed by that soft, wistful voice, Nico admitted, “You never had any competition, Solace. Eighteen-year-old Nico was practically waiting by the phone, hoping you’d ask him to prom.”
Will licked his lips, gazing up at Nico. The dusky orange light from the streetlamps casted an almost ethereal glow on Will’s features, highlighting his curly blonde hair and the constellations of freckles across the bridge of his nose.
“And what about twenty-eight-year-old Nico?” Will asked. “Is he still waiting?”
Nico laughed, even as he felt himself being pulled closer to Will by some invisible force, leaning forward slightly over the console separating them. “He’s certainly not going to let you take him to someone’s senior prom.” He let his gaze flicker pointedly down to Will’s lips, soft-looking and pink. “He might invite you inside for a drink, or something.”
“I can do drinks,” Will breathed, before leaning in.
Nico’s eyes fluttered shut as he pressed his lips against Will’s. He could barely keep himself from smiling into the kiss, which tasted of Will’s chapstick and lukewarm punch and gummy worms and thrown oranges and a cringey promposal that only happened in some alternate universe.
This wasn’t the same Will as he fell in love with ten years ago, Nico thought, as one of Will’s hands tangled up in his hair, grounding him in the kiss. But he wasn’t the same Nico, either. And maybe they never quite worked out in high school, but they could work now.
Nico really, really wanted them to work out now.