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Will couldn’t remember the last time he’d been sober during class. Not for lack of trying, of course - he was usually still drunk from the night before, and sometimes the only thing he could do to keep the midday hangover at bay was to keep drinking between classes.
It was amazing his grades had been good enough to graduate, let alone for him to have been accepted into grad school.
He took his classes online, as much as he could, to avoid as many uncomfortable run-ins with fans or press on campus as possible. When he did end up with a lecture or lab that forced him onto campus, he kept his head down, and he didn’t stick around any longer than he had to. Most people pursuing a master’s in biochem, it seemed, didn’t have much of an overlapping interest in the LA music scene, so Will was safe from those awkward conversations as long as he didn’t share too many personal stories.
The work was hard, but seeing his grades come back after uploading each assignment was rewarding. And most important of all: he was sober.
Sometimes, on days when Will had only online classes on his schedule for the day, or when he needed a quiet space to lock in on a research paper, he drove with Nico to DOA in the morning and found an empty office to hide away in until he was done for the day. Then, he got to spend the rest of his day with Lou, or with whichever band happened to be in the studio that day, or off on his own in a practice room, plucking away at a borrowed guitar as he wrote something new on the fly. Sometimes, Nico would even cut his own day short so that he and Will could have a quiet evening alone together at home.
On days where Will chose to stay home, he spent whatever free time he had in the back yard.
He’d fallen in love with the front yard at Nico’s house early in their professional relationship: lush, green grass with vibrant, fake flowers decorating the window boxes on the front of the house. Will had laid in that grass for hours whenever he was stressed, up until the press had tracked him down and turned the front yard into a crime scene waiting to happen. Will hadn’t even had the chance to swap out the fake flowers in the window boxes for real ones before his downward spiral had begun.
The back yard, in contrast, was a small wasteland. There was a small shed in one corner, dilapidated and empty - proving to Will that Persephone’s lawn care gift must have come with a mowing service that Will had somehow never seen. The back deck was old and splintery, possibly at risk of caving in on itself at certain points. And the ground, where patches of dead grass no longer clung, was dusty and cracked, the desert slowly reclaiming its land.
Will was happy to let the desert be, but the deck was in desperate need of repair. Unfortunately, Will’s knowledge of fixing things stopped at finding an instructional YouTube video, and he was forced to call in reinforcements.
Leo arrived at the house in a sedan with a trunk full of power tools and a stack of two-by-fours bungee-corded to the roof. Will didn’t have time to question his decision to call in reinforcements before Leo had already gotten to work in the back yard.
The worst of the deckboards were removed and replaced before Nico came home from work. On Will’s next free day, he went out to buy a few gallons of stain to help keep the deck preserved.
After that, the yard really just needed a bit of sprucing up. Will ripped out some of the scragglier clumps of non-native grass. He put in a metal firepit in the back corner, tucked close enough to the tall wooden fence so as to be out of the way, but not close enough to accidentally burn down the neighborhood. He strung lights over the deck, and found a cheap second-hand grill that he placed on the edge of the deck, just underneath the kitchen window.
The entire time Nico had lived in this house, he had ignored the back yard so thoroughly that it was almost as though he’d forgotten it ever existed. He had absolutely no idea that Will had done anything to it at all.
The city was cast in the orange glow of streetlights when Nico returned home from work that evening. As much as he enjoyed the ambience of nighttime in the city, he didn’t love that the sun was still setting around five o’clock. It made him feel like, no matter how much he’d gotten done in the day, he had run out of time to be truly productive.
It was typical that Will would be with him at the studio throughout the day, and if not, Nico could generally find him seated at the dining room table with his laptop and notebooks spread out around him. Tonight, though, despite having on nearly every light in the house, Will was nowhere to be seen.
“Will?” Nico called out as he dropped his backpack on the couch. He was just about to kick off his shoes and begin a search when Will emerged from their bedroom.
“Hey!” Will exclaimed, hurrying to meet Nico at the door. He was dressed in jeans and a hoodie, his cheeks flushed. “Don’t take off your shoes just yet - I want to show you something.”
Nico frowned, even as he closed the distance between them. “Something like what?” He reached up, and seemingly without a second though, Will leaned in to meet him for a kiss. Nico’s fingers brushed over Will’s cheek, the skin cold to the touch. “Why are you so cold?”
“I was outside,” Will answered plainly, like it should be obvious.
“But why?”
Will grinned, rolling his eyes. “Because I wanted to do something nice for you on your birthday, so I went out and got a grill. I thought you’d like it if I cooked for you tonight.” He looped an arm around Nico’s waist, tugging him closer. “Did you have to ruin the surprise?”
Nico smiled, sheepish. “Sorry.” He pulled Will down for another kiss, quick. “You’re just too good to me sometimes.”
“I’m kind of the best,” Wil replied, causing Nico to scoff and shove him away. “C’mon, keep me company.” He grabbed Nico’s hand and started pulling him toward the back door.
“It’s cold out there,” Nico argued, though he barely resisted the pull.
“So stand close to the grill,” Will told him. “Or stand close to me.”
He gestured Nico toward the sliding door, and stepped away to hit the light switch. Nico hadn’t even realized he had outdoor lights - the backyard had always slipped from his mind entirely.
Will hit the lights at the same time that Nico opened the door, and a second later, he was met with a mixed chorus of, “Surprise!” and “Happy birthday!” that quickly dissolved into hushed arguments over, “You were supposed to say surprise!” and “We decided on happy birthday!”
The back deck was lined with string lights, illuminating the faces of all of Nico’s friends - the Lost Heroes trio, each member of Heavenly Bodies, Hazel, Lou, Reyna, Rachel. He saw Leo manning the grill. Hazel had her camera with her, likely documenting the party and probably catching the embarrassing look of surprise on Nico’s face. Everyone was bundled up as if the temperature was below freezing.
Nico looked over his shoulder at Will, who had joined him in the doorway with a bright, proud smile on his face. “Why are you making our friends stand around outside in January?”
“Because we wanted to celebrate your arrival to old age,” Jason offered helpfully.
“You’re older than me,” Nico shot back. “And I’m not old - I’m only thirty!”
“You’re thirty?” came Meg’s voice from behind the rest of the crowd, seated on the edge of the deck with her phone in her hands. “Yikes.”
Nico was sure he would one day regret signing someone who still hadn’t finished undergrad, but surprisingly, that day had yet to come. Even right at that moment, Nico was too happy to see how many people had come out to celebrate him to be irritated by one - probably - joking comment.
“Look,” Will said, resting a hand on the small of Nico’s back as he gestured out into the backyard with the other, “Leo helped me refinish the deck, and I put in a firepit back there, and I am going to be making your dinner - Leo was just taking over for a minute so I could get you out here.”
Nico surveyed it all - everything Will had done in secret just to surprise him while Nico was stuck in board meetings and agonizing training sessions. “Thank you all for coming,” he said, meaning it more than he felt his words could convey. “I-- Give me a few minutes to put on some warmer clothes.”
He ducked away from the group, slipping out of Will’s hold to disappear back into the house, shedding his jacket as he went. He’d gotten as far as the bedroom before Will came rushing after him.
“I’m sorry,” Will blurted out, shutting the door softly behind himself. “We didn’t talk about what you wanted to do for your birthday, and I had already done all the work outside, so I thought I could just do one big surprise for you, but I get it if this is a lot. I can ask everyone to leave--”
Nico was pulling on a hoodie from Will’s dresser when he cut in, “Why would you ask them to leave?”
Will paused, clearly surprised by Nico’s response. “You’ve been really stressed lately, with all the CEO training stuff. You probably wanted to come home and decompress, but now you have to deal with a party happening in your backyard. I thought it would be fun - I wasn’t thinking about how this might stress you out even more. I’m sorry for not--”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Nico told him, shrugging his jacket back on over the hoodie. He reached up, both hands on Will’s face, and pulled him down for another kiss. “I mean it,” he whispered. “No one has ever done anything like this for me before.”
Will’s arms snaked around his waist, still hesitant. “Nobody’s ever loved you like I do.”
Nico sucked in a breath, his heart stuttering under the weight of Will’s words. “Yeah,” he breathed, and pulled Will in again. “I love you, too.”
Will came in for another peck, then a kiss to Nico’s cheek before he dropped his head to Nico’s shoulder. “We should go back, before everybody thinks we’re ditching them.”
“I’d never ditch my own birthday,” Nico commented, and Will pulled back with a knowing look on his face. Nico rolled his eyes. “Not a party you threw for me.”
“I’m still not sure I believe that, either.” He led Nico back out of the room with a hand low on his back, tucked underneath the jacket and pressed to the fabric of his own hoodie.
Will kept grilling until everyone was so full they could barely move. Nico made sure to talk to everyone, whether he’d last seen them earlier that morning or more than a month ago. Reyna was hard to separate from her phone, likely always working even when she was supposed to be off the clock. Percy, despite not being in a band, tried tirelessly to convince Nico that he was a good enough instrumentalist that he should be allowed unsupervised access to the basement studio. Will had laughed, claiming that he was barely allowed unsupervised access to the studio.
Slowly, people started to leave, either claiming an early start that day which left them exhausted, or anticipating a long day ahead of them tomorrow. No one batted an eye when Jason and Leo left together, but whispers followed Rachel and Reyna when they headed out within minutes of each other. Eventually, all that remained around the fire were Will, Hazel, Nico, and Lou, and the feeling that this could be any night.
Will sat with his head tipped back, imagining the starry sky from back home replacing the orange-tinted dome above him. He felt something press against the side of his shoe, and his head rolled toward Nico.
“Are you alright?” he asked softly.
Will let out a sigh. “Yeah. I just wish Kayla was here.”
“She’ll be back,” Lou assured him. “Bands can’t tour forever.”
“I know,” Will replied, “but as soon as she comes back from this tour, she’ll just ask to go back out with someone else right away, and we won’t get a chance to talk.”
Hazel’s eyes had been bouncing back and forth around the fire like she was watching a tennis match. “Doesn’t she live here?”
“She does,” Nico answered, “but she’s been on the road as either a guitar tech or touring bassist since Solace broke up. When she does come home, she’s never here for more than a week at a time. And even then, she’s not really here - she’s off rehearsing with whichever band she’s going out with next.”
“But she’ll come around eventually,” Lou insisted. “And she’ll come around sooner once you decide to get back into music.”
“I can’t drop everything now,” Will argued. “I have a year left before I get my master’s. What if, by then, some other band has decided to bring her on full time?”
Nico knew he should keep his mouth shut, but he couldn’t let Will continue to spiral. “She has to come back for the wedding.”
“You guys are getting married?” Hazel exclaimed.
Really, Will made himself too easy to manipulate, sometimes. He’d gone from winding himself tighter and tighter with stress and worry to practically melting in his chair, reaching out for Nico’s hand like he suddenly couldn’t stand the thought that they weren’t touching. Nico should have been nauseated by it, but it made him want to curl himself into Will’s lap, instead.
“We’ve talked about it,” Will said, his voice soft, almost dreamy.
Nico rolled his eyes, fond. “Will is under the impression that we’ll be getting married once he finishes school.”
Lou snickered. “You seem like you’re in a real rush to make that happen.”
“If he wasn’t so much like the boy who cried marriage, maybe I would believe him,” Nico scoffed. “But he asks me to marry him with the same frequency that he asks what we should have for dinner, so I think I’m desensitized to it, at this point.”
Hazel cooed. “That’s adorable.”
Lou slumped down in her chair. “Not when you’re forced to listen to it at work.”
“If he would just marry me already, you wouldn’t have to hear about it,” Will said.
Nico tugged on Will’s hand, pulling him closer. “Finish your degree and get me a third album, and then we’ll talk.”
Will pouted. “Don’t move the goalposts like that!”
“Don’t flirt in front of an audience,” Lou shot back, pretending to gag. “I gotta get out of here before you guys make me puke. Hazel, I don’t recommend remaining in close proximity.”
Hazel laughed. “I should head home, anyway.” As she pushed herself to her feet, Nico stood with her, pulling her into a hug.
“Thank you for coming,” he whispered to her.
“Thank you for sticking around long enough for us to celebrate you,” she replied. “I love you. You deserve to feel this happy every day.”
Nico pulled back. “Leave before you make me cry,” he demanded, then kissed her on the cheek. “I love you, too.”
He said his goodbyes to Lou as Will spread out the fire, then poured a jug of water over the embers. As Hazel and Lou started toward their cars, Nico and Will made their way back into the house. Once the door was locked and the outside lights were shut off, Will drew Nico in with his arms around his waist and asked, “Well? How was your birthday?”
Nico let out a sigh. “I’m freezing, I’m exhausted, and now I smell like smoke.” He reached up, grabbing Will by the strings of his hoodie. “You’re going to have to do something to make it up to me after putting me through so much.”
Will grinned. “Need me to keep you warm?”
“I was thinking something more like a shower.” Nico rolled his eyes, pushing himself out of Will’s hold and starting toward their bedroom. He glanced over his shoulder when he realized Will wasn’t following. “Aren’t you coming?”