Work Text:
Will Solace was the kind of person Nico had always seen around campus, but had barely ever spoken to before. He always seemed annoyingly chipper in the mornings they had that eight AM biology lecture last semester. Nico knew the guy couldn’t be all that perfect, though, because Nico had been in his peer review group for that research course first semester, where he learned two things: Will Solace had a weird Star Wars obsession, and he hadn’t escaped that curse that made all STEM majors bad at writing essays.
Yeah, that peer review session was probably the only time he’d ever spoken to Will Solace. But now they were both standing outside Mr. D’s office, making awkward small talk about majors.
“Nico, right? I think we had biology together.” Will said. He smiled politely, extending his hand for Nico to shake. “I’m Will, I’m a second-year pre-med major. Are you also here for the General Chemistry LA position?”
“Forensic Pathology.” Nico shook Will’s hand; it was surprisingly warm and slightly calloused. “And, actually, I’m here for the vodka he keeps stockpiled in the bottom drawer.”
Will looked at Nico for a moment, trying to work out what that was supposed to mean, and Nico would be lying if he said that he didn’t feel a tiny rush of pride at the fact he’d managed to knock the golden boy of their biology lecture off his toes.
“Oh! You were joking.”
Before Will could say anything else, Mr. D opened the door, wearing a vibrant Hawaiian shirt that made Nico almost want to shield his eyes. He slurped the can of Diet Coke in his hands, looking at Nico and Will with an unimpressed, almost judgemental stare.
“Just you two? Come on in, then.”
Nico followed Will into Mr. D’s office, a cramped, dark space that was overflowing with papers and scattered with empty soda cans.
“So, it looks like you two are going to be my first semester LAs for the simple chemistry lecture,” Mr. D said, taking a seat and motioning for them to follow suit. Nico took one glance at the wooden chair in front of him before deciding standing would be better. “I assume you already know what you signed up for?”
That was an understatement. Throughout freshman year, every one of Nico’s STEM classes had ingrained into his brain what a Learning Assistant was supposed to do– attend the lecture, answer students’ questions, facilitate group discussion, and get paid a measly rate per hour. The biggest time commitment was arranging weekly office hours and trying not to sleep through Mr. D’s lectures.
And, apparently, he’d be doing all of this with Will Solace. He really hoped Will wouldn’t bring up Star Wars that often, because Nico needed money, but not that badly.
Will turned to Nico, that stupid polite smile glued onto his face again. “For office hours, I was thinking Tuesday afternoons? Maybe starting at four? I can get us a study room in the library, I know the process from when I did it for the campus GSA.”
GSA, huh? Nico resisted the urge to check to see if the bottom hem of Will’s jeans were cuffed, only to realize that the other boy was wearing khaki shorts. It was going to be a long semester.
“I’d be coming right from the organic chem lab, but sure,” Nico said.
Mr. D clapped his hands together. “Fantastic. Bill, Nico, I’ll see you at noon on Monday for the first lecture. You’re dismissed.”
At least he wasn’t going to have to deal with Will Solace at eight AM every day again, Nico thought, leaving Mr. D’s office. He didn’t get very far before he heard Solace calling his name.
“Hey, Nico!” He turned around, watching Will racing to catch up with him. Thankfully, the stupid, fake smile was gone, replaced by an earnest, curious look. “How’d you do it?”
“Do what?” Get the LA job? It wasn’t that hard, and Will should know that, since he’d gone through the same process Nico had.
“Get Mr. D to call you by the right name.”
Will looked so distraught that Nico almost felt bad for him. Almost.
Nico smirked; maybe the semester wouldn’t be too bad after all. “Who do you think bought him the vodka in his desk?”
He turned to leave again, smiling to himself as he pretended to ignore Will’s reaction.
When Nico imagined being an LA, it was always him being swarmed by clueless freshmen bombarding him with questions. Mr. D’s class was hard– there was a reason the university stopped letting him teach organic chemistry– but the freshmen in the lecture seemed more intent on complaining about how they were failing rather than actually showing up to his and Will’s office hours.
And, honestly, that suited Nico just fine. He had plenty of homework to work on for the hour and a half every week, and he’d much rather get paid to work on that than try to explain to a nineteen-year-old how balancing equations worked. And Will wasn’t bad company either– he did bring up Star Wars a lot, but he was a smart guy who could hold a conversation. And his smile was much less annoying when it was actually genuine.
He and Will were sitting side by side at the study room’s table, comparing answers on their stats homework.
“Hey, Nico,” Will snickered, looking up from where he was doodling a box plot. “Do you wanna hear a bad statistics joke?”
“I’m fine, Solace.” At least he was self-aware enough to know it was a bad joke, though.
“Shut up, yes you do.” Will cleared his throat. “Three statisticians are going deer hunting. One spots a deer and tries to hit it, but his arrow ends up landing ten feet to the left. Another fires a second arrow, but this time, it lands ten feet to the right of the deer. The third statistician throws down his bow and says, ‘We got it!’”
Nico glanced up at Will, raising an eyebrow at Will’s proud grin. “This is why you’re failing stats,” he deadpanned.
Will gasped dramatically, clutching at his heart. “I’m not failing stats, I’ve got a 97%. Besides, it was my dad’s joke.”
“Your dad has horrible taste in jokes.”
“Trust me, his poetry is worse. Besides, I could’ve made a Star Wars joke, would you prefer that?”
“Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t.”
Will set down his pencil– which was decorated in little Star Wars faces, because apparently Will got his school supplies like a seven-year-old– and cleared his throat. Nico gave a perfunctory groan, even as his lips twitched into a smile. As much as he loved throwing deadpan insults at Will, out of everyone Nico could’ve been stuck with for hours on end every week, Will wasn’t anywhere near the worst. At the very least, it gave him someone to commiserate with about organic chemistry.
“Why doesn’t the Death Star have any stairs?’ Will paused, as if waiting for Nico to fill in, but Nico glared at him until he gave up. “Because everyone takes the ele-vader!”
“Are you done now?’
“Oh, never. I could go on for days. How long has Anakin Skywalker been evil?” Again, Will let a minute of silence pass before launching into the punchline. “Since the Sith grade!”
Nico snorted. “I know you know that’s not true. He had to be at least an adult when it happened or else he wouldn’t’ve had kids. I expected better, Solace.”
Will rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know how it works, but sometimes you have to sacrifice truth for the sake of art. Like Hamilton .”
“Please never bring up Hamilton in my presence ever again.”
Will laughed, but it was abruptly cut off. Nico glanced up to see what the problem was, only to see Will staring at him in confusion.
“What’s wrong?”
“How do you know how old Anakin was when he went to the Dark Side? You said you’d never seen Star Wars before.”
Nico could feel the heat pricking up in his face. He hadn’t ever seen Star Wars before meeting Will. But he needed background noise while studying, and it was just there, and maybe he was a little curious about it, sue him. It didn’t mean anything. Nico wasn’t even sure why he cared about the implication. Plenty of people like Star Wars, it wasn’t just Will’s favorite movie, and that wasn’t at all why he watched it.
“Percy made me watch one of the movies,” Nico scowled. “Don’t get too excited, it wasn’t like I enjoyed it.”
Will was fighting to contain his smirk. Nico wanted to punch him in the face. “Yeah, of course, I’m sure you hated every second. On a completely unrelated note, what are you doing Thursday night?”
“I’m not watching any more Star Wars movies.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I pushed ‘kidnapping you to make you watch the original trilogy’ to Saturday night. It’s just…” Will seemed to lose some of his confidence, and there was a warning bell flashing bright red in Nico’s mind. This sounded like something, and Nico wasn’t prepared for a something. “Me and some of my friends like to go bowling on Thursday nights, because it’s half off.”
“And you want me to come?”
Will let out a shy chuckle. “I mean, I know you’ve got that whole Mr. Dark and Mysterious vibe going on, but we are friends, right?”
“I do literally get paid to hang out with you.”
“Okay, yes, but it’s, like, barely minimum wage. I mean, if we’re going to spend all semester together, we should at least get along, shouldn’t we?”
Nico bit back a remark about how they were technically required to spend all semester with Mr. D, too.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve got a big test Friday morning,” Nico lied. “Have fun, though.”
“Right, right, of course. Good luck on your test.”
Awkward silence fell over them. The sound of Will’s Star Wars pencil scratching against his paper reverberated in the empty room. Nico fidgeted in his seat, doing his best to not glance over at Will, unable to focus on his own homework.
There wasn’t normally silence. Usually Will filled it with something. Nico couldn’t believe he actually missed not being able to hear his own thoughts in their tiny little study room.
He was almost grateful when that blonde girl with twin braids– the only person who seemed to come in anymore– entered the room. She cast a nervous glance at Nico before sheepishly asking Will to explain significant figures to her “one last time”.
Watching Will out of the corner of his eye, Nico couldn’t help but think what might’ve happened if he’d said yes. Which was stupid. Nico hated bowling. The constant chatter, the bright flashing lights, the bad graphics on the TV screens, the clunking sound of the heavy bowling balls hitting the floor– it all just gave him a headache. And it wasn’t like he had any desire to meet Will’s friends, either.
So why was there a pit forming in his stomach just thinking about it?
“You know the lecture got canceled, right?”
Nico’s footsteps reverberated around the lecture hall as he made his way down to where the professor’s desk was. Will was standing by the chalkboard in the back, drawing out reactions Nico remembered from their last organic chemistry lecture.
Nico had never realized how large the lecture halls seemed when they were so empty. He normally wouldn’t have shown up at all, not when Mr. D canceled class because of a family emergency, but he was meeting up with Hazel for lunch afterwards and he had homework to get done, anyway.
Apparently Will Solace had the same thought. He turned around, grinning when he saw Nico. “I could say the same thing to you.”
It had been two weeks since the whole bowling incident, and although Nico was still being haunted by late-night thoughts of weirdly patterned carpets and red and white bowling pins, Will hadn’t mentioned it once, which Nico was very grateful for.
He still wasn’t sure what he’d say if Will asked again. He wasn’t even sure why he kept thinking through the event of Will asking him again. Because Will wouldn’t, right? Nico had made it pretty clear he didn’t think of them as friends, and maybe that was starting to change, or maybe he’d just completely blown his chance.
Nico stopped in his tracks, staring at Will’s form as he drew more complicated molecular shapes on the chalkboard. Being alone in the lecture hall room with Will suddenly felt so intimidating, as if he was stepping out of the comfortable safety bubble that the library study room provided.
It wasn’t too late to just head to the dining hall early, was it?
“To answer your question, I have my stats class at one, in the room down the hall,” Will said. He stepped back, twirling the piece of chalk in his fingers in a smooth movement that almost felt mesmerizing. “Does this mechanism look right to you? I keep forgetting if hydroboration is regioselective or stereoselective.”
Nico threw his bag down beside Will’s, stepping up to the board. He slipped the chalk out from Will’s grasp, adding a dotted line to Will’s diagram. “Yeah, it’s regioselective, you got that part right. But the transition state isn’t quite right. It’s supposed to look like a square, remember?”
Will huffed a laugh, running a hand through his curls. “I’m not sure I really remember anything at this point, but sure.”
“Just be glad we don’t have Mr. D as our organic chemistry teacher,” Nico muttered. He tossed the chalk at Will, who looked slightly impressed as his own ability to catch it.
“Oh, I’m sure he could teach the alcohol unit right, if nothing else,” Will snorted. He started to erase his mechanism, but froze halfway through. Forcing a nonchalant tone, he asked, “How did you get Mr. D to know your real name?”
“He knows everybody’s names, or else he wouldn’t be able to call people by the wrong one,” Nico said. He glanced up at Will, who was still staring down a half-erased carbon atom. “It really bothers you, doesn’t it?”
That sprung Will into action; he quickly erased the rest of the reaction, a faint pink tinge appearing on his cheeks. “What? No, I don’t care. It’s just weird.”
“He really does do it to everyone, you know.” Nico wasn’t even sure if Will would find the words comforting, but he wasn’t sure what else to say. “Don’t worry, though, you were always our biology professor’s favorite.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure he knew my name either,” Will said, scribbling down a new set of mechanism problems from the organic chemistry textbook in his hands.
Nico snorted, leaning up against the desk. “I’m pretty sure he learned it after you were answering every question he asked.”
Seeing as how everyone was mostly asleep during that lecture, it was impossible to miss Will Solace’s hand shooting up any time Professor Underwood asked a question. Not that Nico was really looking; more days than not, he was one of the people falling asleep in the very back of the lecture hall.
“You noticed that?”
“Everyone noticed that.”
Will groaned, hiding his face in his hands. “You’re right, I don’t want Mr. D calling me by the right name. I could do with less people noticing me.”
“It’s a big campus, Solace. You’re not that special,” Nico said dryly. He couldn’t deny that there was a tiny part of him wondering what was actually bothering Will, the thing Will wasn’t actually saying.
Will glanced up at Nico, his face flushed red. “Sorry, it’s just– my dad’s been…more overbearing than usual lately. He’s always asking me about my grades and adding more clubs to build my resume and if I’ve been applying for internships yet, and…” Will trailed off, staring at the chalkboard again. “Sometimes I just feel like his eyes are bearing down on me, constantly.”
“But that’s the goal, isn’t it? Go to college, make all the right connections, find a job you don’t hate, and work the nine-to-five for the rest of your life– or whatever crazy hours you doctors work.”
Will sighed. “You make it sound so easy. I have no idea what I’m doing at the end of all this.” He motioned towards the reaction mechanism on the board, though Nico was pretty sure he wasn’t literally referring to it, because everyone knew cyclohexanol reacting with sulfuric acid ended with a double bond. “I mean, I don’t even know what kind of doctor I want to be.”
“There had to be a reason you wanted to become a doctor in the first place. People don’t just go to med school for kicks and giggles.”
“If you’re expecting a story about how when I was three years old, I put a Star Wars bandaid on some kid’s hurt knee and an angel came down from the heavens to tell me I’d saved the kid’s life and that this was my purpose in life, you’re out of luck,” Will said dryly.
Nico snickered at the mental image; he could easily imagine a young Will, probably missing his front teeth but still wearing khaki shorts, dutifully bringing his first aid kit to the playground with him. But then again, he could also imagine a much older Will, who was freshly-graduated and wearing a real tie instead of a clip-on, starring in one of those medical dramas where everybody kissed everybody in hospital supply closets.
He wasn’t entirely sure where that second image was coming from.
“If anything, it was my dad, I suppose,” Will mused. “He was a surgeon, and he saved lives everyday. As a kid, hearing his stories, it just felt like that’s what I was supposed to do too, you know?”
Yeah, Nico knew plenty about being ‘supposed’ to do something. “You know those stories were all greatly exaggerated, right?”
“Oh, trust me, I know. But…” Will sighed. “From the way he tells it, you’d think he was a god among doctors. His old classmates sing his praises like he’d single-handedly saved their lives. You should’ve seen his face when I told him I was accepted into the pre-med program here, I–” Will cut himself off, but there was a nostalgic smile on his face, like he was still basking in his father’s praise. “He was– he is – impressed. He wants me to do well. Wouldn’t you do anything to impress your dad?”
“No,” Nico snorted. He thought back to countless moments of his father’s unimpressed stare and cold words, and the way he’d regarded Nico with nothing but disappointment when he’d announced he wanted to become a forensic pathologist in the wake of his sister’s death.
Bianca was always the one supposed to take over their father’s business empire. And when she was gone, Nico’s dad made it pretty clear that Nico’s only real use was being her replacement. So, yeah, Nico had no intention of impressing his father. He couldn’t imagine choosing a career path just for his dad’s sake.
“Right. You probably have it all figured out yourself, huh? Nothing to prove to anyone?” Will’s lips were quirked up in a smile. “Let me guess, you’re a true bad boy loner with a heart of gold?”
Realizing what Will was doing, Nico scowled and playfully shoved Will. The movement only caused Will to laugh harder, brushing traces of smeared chalk from his arm where he’d made contact with his forgotten reaction diagrams.
“It’s not like that.”
“Don’t tell me you’re secretly a tortured billionaire who’s never experienced love before because people only use you for money.”
Nico couldn’t help but smile at that; his father certainly wasn’t a billionaire, but… “Now you’re just listing love interest tropes. Got something you want to tell me, Solace?”
Will’s smile faltered, and he quickly looked away. “Nope, just…c’mon, Nico. How’d a guy like you end up studying dead things?”
“I got addicted to Criminal Minds as a kid,” Nico deadpanned.
Will rolled his eyes. “I want the real reason. I showed you mine, you show me yours, or however that saying goes.”
Nico studied Will for a moment. For some reason he couldn’t quite place, he trusted Will. They’d already spent more time together than anyone else Nico had met in college, and yet, there was a certain level of anonymity to their relationship that Nico found oddly comforting. It wasn’t like he and Will were going to keep talking after the semester ended, or anything; even if they had shared classes, well, Nico was very good at ignoring and avoiding people.
“Alright. My sister died.”
The shift in Will’s reaction was instantaneous, and funny. “Oh my god, Nico, I’m so sorry.”
Nico shook his head. “It was a long time ago. It’s just…she was always the one supposed to inherit the family business. I was told I could do whatever I wanted. And when they never found out who did it, that’s what I wanted to do–help solve what happened after people died. But…”
He trailed off, feeling his voice growing thick, but Will stepped in.
“Your dad wanted you to take over the business, didn’t he?”
Nico nodded. “I mean, can you imagine me as a business major?”
“I think you’d make a terrible business major.”
Despite himself, Nico found himself smiling. “Thanks, Solace.”
Will turned back to the board, a budding smile on his face that turned into a full-on laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
Will gestured to the reaction mechanisms. “If I fail this next ochem exam, then both of our dads will be disappointed in us.”
Nico couldn’t help himself; he laughed a little, too. He’d always thought he and Will were different, two opposite ends of a spectrum. Maybe they had more in common than he thought. Maybe being friends with Will wouldn’t be so terrible after all.
When Nico arrived at their library space the following Tuesday, the first thing he saw was Will’s graded organic chemistry exam hanging on the door. He took it down, looking at the score with a smile. It was a 67– definitely not the A Will’s dad bragged about getting, but still impressive considering the average was somewhere in the low 50s. Then, he remembered Will’s words from the week before, and he had to stifle a laugh; Will had technically failed after all, and now they had something else in common besides being Gen Chem LAs.
“Nice job, Will.”
Nico handed Will the test back as he took his normal seat. Will seemed to beam under the praise, his smile brightening. Nico had never been a sappy person, but it was nice to see Will happy.
“It’s a solid B with the curve,” Will said, putting away the test. “Of course, if that a-hole curve-ruiner hadn’t gotten that B-plus, I probably would’ve done better. How’d you do?”
Nico couldn’t have contained his smile even if he wanted to. “I was the one with the B-plus.”
“Dick!” Will exclaimed, though he was laughing too much for the insult to carry any weight. “Don’t be surprised when I sit next to you in the final.”
“Oh, please don’t give that TA with the ugly haircut another reason to suspect we’re cheating,” Nico said.
“Hey, in his defense, he could just think your hair smells really nice or something,” Will snorted.
Nico resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair. Did Will think his hair smelled nice? Not that it mattered, or anything. “If anything, I think he’d be trying to flirt with you.”
“Do you think if I invited him to bowling on Thursday, he’ll grade easy on the next exam?” Will perked up.
Bowling night. Will was talking about bowling night again. The words rushed out of Nico’s mouth before he could even register the thought.
“Speaking of bowling night, any chance you have room for one more?”
Will turned to Nico, his expression lighting up as if he had been the one to receive the top score in the class. “You want to come to bowling night?”
Nico shrugged, aiming for nonchalance, but probably failing because Will’s smiles were always stupidly contagious. “Why not? We’re friends, right?’
“Right,” Will said eagerly, his bright gaze still fixed on Nico. “But just to let you know, half-price bowling night is an arena that no friendships survive. I’m going to destroy you.”
Nico had no doubt Will would, but somehow, he didn’t really mind losing this competition.
Sure enough, Will didn’t win bowling night, but he did beat Nico by a few dozen points. The most surprising part of Nico’s Thursday night was actually enjoying himself by the end of it. Will’s friends, an eclectic mixture of pre-med majors and arts majors (and one person, Lou Ellen, who Nico was pretty sure was just straight-up majoring in witchcraft), weren’t nearly as lame as Nico would’ve assumed at the start of the semester.
He ended up going to bowling night just one more time. And then one more time. And then the end of the semester was quickly approaching, and Nico was getting slammed with research papers and exams, and the only times he saw Will were during Mr. D’s lecture and their office hours.
Speaking of Mr. D’s lectures…Nico leaned back in the uncomfortable wooden chair, staring blankly at Mr. D’s powerpoint on thermochemistry. Across the room, Nico searched out Will’s familiar form, hoping to commiserate a little. He’d forgotten how boring Gen Chem could be when you weren’t being graded.
To his dismay, Will seemed wrapped up in trying to explain something– probably sig figs again– to that blonde girl with the braids. He was leaning over her desk, pointing something out on the paper there, while she stared up at him.
Nico suppressed a snort of disgust. He could practically see her batting her eyelashes from across the room. Did she think Will was in charge of grades or something? Because he wasn’t. She had no reason to flirt with him!
The longer he watched them, the more some unnameable feeling burned in his stomach.
Then Will looked up, his eyes deep blue and sparkling as they made contact with Nico’s, and he rolled his eyes playfully, the expression accompanied by a tiny smirk.
And, oh, that feeling was jealousy. Nico was jealous.
Because Will looked stupidly pretty even in the artificial lighting, his hair a halo of mussed-up golden curls that Nico was suddenly desperate to run his hands through. He wanted to know what it’d feel like to grab Will by the front of his soft-looking plaid shirt and kiss him breathless. He wanted to know what it would feel like to fall asleep in Will’s warm arms, if Will’s voice took on more of his Southern accent when he was tired. He wanted to cuddle up on a couch somewhere and pretend to watch Star Wars or whatever other movies Will wanted, and he wanted it to last forever, and he wanted to know if they could still be eighty years old and still arguing over who would win during half-price bowling night.
Still meeting Will’s gaze, Nico felt his heart skip a beat in his chest, wondering if Will could hear what he was thinking. If Will wanted to kiss him, too.
Then Will’s attention was re-captured by Sig Fig Girl, and Nico was left to sit with the realization that he’d fallen, hard, for his best friend.
He was still sitting with it the next day, when he showed up to their second to last office hours. Second to last– had it really been a whole semester already? Some days it felt like he’d known Will all his life, and other days it felt like only yesterday he was meeting Will Solace, second-year pre-med major, outside Mr. D’s office. And, suddenly, without intending to– or even realizing it– Nico had spent countless hours every week of the semester talking with Will Solace, studying with Will Solace, teaching chemistry with Will Solace, bowling with Will Solace.
He went bowling for this guy. How did he not realize then and there how much Will meant to him? But Will was the one who invited him – what did that mean about how much he meant to Will?
“So, you and Sig Fig Girl seemed to be getting flirty during the lecture.”
He and Will were friends. That was a perfectly reasonable thing for a friend to ask, and said friend didn’t sound jealous at all. Will laughed sharply, and the sound echoed in Nico’s chest. “She was flirting with me, I was just trying to do my job.”
“So no Mx. Solace, then?”
He’d been assuming Will wasn’t straight since the beginning of the semester, but it had never mattered before like it did now. And Will had never mentioned dating someone before, but what if he was?
“Well, I hope you don’t think I’m the type to get married halfway through college,” Will said. “But, to answer your question, no, I’m not dating anyone. Especially not Sig Fig Girl. She really isn’t my type.”
Was Nico dreaming, or did Will’s eyes flicker towards his lips? Nico’s tongue darted out almost unconsciously, wondering what Will’s lips would taste like.
“What kind of person would be your type, then? Another Star Wars fan?”
“Not necessarily,” Will said, and Nico’s heart fluttered in his chest. “I think forcing them to watch Star Wars would be a perfect first date. They do have to be good at organic chemistry, though, mostly so that I can cheat off their final exam.”
That was– oh. Will sent Nico a playful smile, and Nico fought to swallow down the insistent butterflies that were swarming in his stomach. It almost sounded like Will meant him.
“Maybe you should tell them how you feel.”
“I don’t know about that,” Will said, breaking eye contact in favor of staring sheepishly at the table in front of them. “What if they don’t like Star Wars?”
“Only one way to find out, right? Besides, I don’t think anyone hates Star Wars. It’s one of the most popular movie franchises for a reason, right?” Nico clamped his mouth shut before any other weird, rambling sentences could escape.
Will was nodding, but he still wasn’t meeting Nico’s gaze. He couldn’t tell if that was good or bad, but there was a distinct sinking feeling in his stomach. “I should go, I’ll see you next week, Nico.”
Yep. Next week. Their last precious hour and a half together. Nico could hardly wait.
Hands still smelling sharply of acetone, Nico all but raced into their reserved library room. This was his last time with Will. He’d seen how easily friendships dissolved when you didn’t have that one common thread connecting you together. He had nightmares of what could happen two months from now, passing by Will in the hallways and being too nervous to say hi because it had been too long.
Sure, it had seemed like Will was talking about him last week. But that didn’t mean anything. Maybe his only hope at even a friendship with Will hinged on signing up to be a Gen Chem 2 LA, and praying Will was thinking the same thing.
He pushed open the door to the study room and stopped dead in his tracks.
Will was grinning brightly, perched in his usual seat. And above him, directly above the space between their chairs, was a white piece of paper with “MISTLETOE” typed out in large font.
Nico walked to his chair, fighting to suppress a smile. “Mistletoe, huh?”
Will made a show of looking around the empty study room. “Funny, there’s no one else here. Guess it must be talking about us, then.”
“Really, Solace? You couldn’t even get real mistletoe?”
“I’m a poor college student, I can’t afford to buy mistletoe.” Will straightened up in his seat. “Would it have worked if I had gotten real mistletoe? Because I can definitely spring for the prime shipping and get it–”
“God, you’re adorable,” Nico muttered, before cutting Will off by pressing his lips against Will’s. Will stilled under the touch, his lips soft and sweet against Nico’s, tasting faintly of those sugary flavored coffee drinks he loved.
Nico pulled away, trying to memorize the sight of Will this close to his face, from the way his eyes fluttered open to the constellation of freckles spanning his cheeks to the tiny “oh” on his lips.
“For the record,” Will said, his voice slightly breathless. “And I know this isn’t a competition or anything, but I definitely think you’re more adorable.”