Work Text:
Chicago in early December has a way of announcing winter long before the calendar agrees, the cold arriving not as a season but as a slow, inexorable occupation, settling first in the river’s surface sheen and then in the marrow of the city itself. By dawn the streets wear a thin blue light that feels borrowed from some colder country, breath rising in soft ghosts from every exhaust vent, windows filmed with frost like glassware left too long in a freezer, and the buildings — loyal, hulking sentinels — seem almost to lean inward as if conspiring to keep the warmth from escaping.
Somewhere downtown, garlands are already strung across lampposts and shopfronts glow with early Christmas optimism, but here on the quieter residential stretch the holiday spirit feels thinner, like an echo travelling through cold air, a suggestion rather than a promise, and the snow that fell overnight has settled into the kind of crust that looks picturesque from behind a window and catastrophic from the pavement.
Nico feels all of this long before he steps outside — the weight of the cold, the static-bright hush of morning, the faint scent of pine from someone’s over-enthusiastic wreath — and for a moment he lets himself imagine an idealised day at the museum, something serene and faintly scholarly, a quiet hour spent cataloguing a set of Etruscan fragments that behave themselves for once, maybe even a lunch break where the coffee doesn’t taste like despair. It’s a comforting lie for the eight seconds it lasts.
Because the moment the building door swings shut behind him the reality hits with its usual bleak precision: the wind cuts sideways as if personally offended by him, the pavement threatens to shatter his ankles, and the cold has transformed every car into a grotesque ice sculpture. Each windshield is glazed opaque and glittering like the lid of a tomb, the kind of sight that immediately lowers his mood by several degrees.
Nico trudges toward them with the air of someone approaching a firing squad, mentally bracing for frozen locks, uncooperative wipers, and the existential humiliation of scraping frost in front of early-rising neighbours. He is already rehearsing the unpleasant logistics of his morning — the light-sensitive textiles he needs to assess, the shipment of ceramics he isn’t emotionally prepared to touch, the temperature discrepancy in the Greek storage room that will definitely ruin his day — when he reaches his usual spot and finally looks up.
He stops short. Because somehow, impossibly, his car is the only one in the row that isn’t encased in ice, the windows wiped clean in smooth, deliberate arcs, the glass gleaming faintly under the weak sunrise as if it belongs to someone with a functioning adult life and not, disastrously, to him.
For a long, bewildered moment he simply stands there, staring at the clean windows as if they might clarify themselves under scrutiny. It makes no sense — nothing about his life is ever this convenient — and he feels the faint, intrusive suspicion that he must’ve done it half-asleep the night before and forgotten, which would be worrying in a new and exciting way. The alternative, that someone else scraped it for him, is so improbable he dismisses it immediately; not because his neighbours are unkind, but because that kind of quietly miraculous, perfectly timed kindness feels like something that only happens in Christmas movies, and he has never been reckless enough to assume he lives in one.
He tugs his scarf higher, mutters something into it that fogs the wool, and decides he’s too cold and too late to care about mysteries before sunrise. He gets in the car, cranks the heat, and lets the engine thaw whatever confusion he’s meant to be feeling. Work awaits. Answers can be scheduled for later.
The day unfolds with the usual winter sluggishness, everything muffled by the season: the museum’s stone floors holding yesterday’s cold like a memory, the temperature-controlled storage rooms even colder, the soft hum of dehumidifiers sounding almost like breath against the walls. Nico spends the morning squinting at accession numbers under poor lighting, cataloguing a shipment of terracotta figures so delicate he’s terrified of even exhaling on them, and by lunchtime he has the familiar museum ache in his back — the one that tells him he has once again spent too long bent over a worktable pretending he is made of marble. Outside, snow drifts lazily past the windows, thick enough to make the city seem softer but not thick enough to justify any kind of early closure, so the afternoon drags on in the usual rhythm of gloves on, gloves off, notes scribbled, fragments rotated, silence stretching.
By the time he finally heads home the sky has already gone that deep indigo that feels like late evening even though it’s barely five. The wind has picked up, gathering in the alleyways and rushing around corners as if it has urgent business elsewhere. Nico shoulders through it, clutching his bag and trying not to think about how long the walk from the car to the building’s entrance feels in winter, how the cold creeps under his coat like fingers.
He’s halfway up a set of stairs when he hears a familiar voice call his name — bright, warm, impossibly sociable in a way that feels almost foreign after a day spent with silent artifacts. Jason is locking the door to 1C, coat half-zipped, cheeks pink from the cold but smiling as if the weather is a minor inconvenience and not a hostile force. According to Jason, everyone in the building is wonderful, friendly, always hanging out, a claim Nico considers with deep and abiding skepticism every time he hears it, mostly because Jason’s definition of “everyone” tends to include him, and Nico is fairly confident he does not qualify as wonderful or friendly by any known metric.
“Hey, man,” Jason says, falling easily into step with him. “We’re heading up to Percy and Annabeth’s in a bit — couple of the others are already there. You should come.”
It’s not the first time he’s offered. It won’t be the last. Nico can already picture the scene upstairs: warm lights, too many people, Percy’s relentless enthusiasm, Annabeth’s intimidating competence, Piper leaning against a counter with a drink, Leo making something spark, Hazel inevitably noticing he looks tired. It’s… a lot.
He musters a polite smile, the kind that feels like placing a bookmark between pages. “Thanks, but I’ve got work to do tonight. Deadlines. Inventory notes.”
Jason nods like he expected that answer — like he expects it every time — but he doesn’t push, never does. “No worries. Door’s open if you change your mind.”
Nico promises he won’t and continues down the hall, grateful for the quiet that waits behind his own door, the familiar stillness of his apartment where nothing demands small talk, and no one expects him to be anything other than what he is.
***
The next morning arrives with the same low, pewter sky, the same thin suggestion of daylight that feels more theoretical than real, and Nico trudges downstairs already anticipating the unpleasant choreography of scraping ice while half-asleep. The cold hits him the moment he steps outside — sharp enough to make his eyes water and his bones stage a small, pathetic protest — but when he rounds the row of cars and finds his own windshield perfectly clear for the second morning in a row, he stops dead with a scowl that feels instinctive. Once is an anomaly, twice is a pattern, and Nico is not a person whose life contains patterns of kindness. He stands there for a moment, breath fogging, trying to decide whether he’s grateful or unnerved, then mutters something unfriendly at the universe at large and gets into the car because the alternative is being late, and the Greek storage room refuses to supervise itself.
Work is work: more textiles, more fragments, more of Reyna raising an eyebrow at him over a clipboard and telling him he looks like he crawled out of a crypt, which he finds deeply unfair considering he’s been awake for all of ninety minutes. The day drags, the cold deepens, and by the time he reaches his floor that evening Jason is emerging from the stairwell radiating warmth and friendliness and gently renewed optimism that Nico will someday accept an invitation upstairs. Today’s version involves board games and hot chocolate at Percy and Annabeth’s, and Nico offers the same polite refusal as last night, the same claim of work to finish, which is not entirely untrue even if it’s mostly an excuse to go home and sit in silence with a cup of tea and a heating pad.
On the third morning the cold has lodged itself so firmly in the city that everything feels brittle, even Nico. He shoulders through the wind, joints aching in that humiliating early-onset way that makes twenty-seven feel like seventy, and by the time he reaches his car he’s already questioning every life choice that led him to a climate that actively wants him dead. His fingers throb despite his gloves, his breath burns, and he is carrying the bone-deep fatigue of someone who did not deserve to be awake before sunrise. When he sees his windshield scraped clean yet again — flawless, deliberate, almost smug in its tidiness — he stands there in the freezing dark with the creeping certainty that he is either being stalked by a benevolent ghost or genuinely losing his grip on reality.
It doesn’t help that his body handles winter like a Victorian orphan, every cold front sinking straight into his joints, making his shoulders ache and his lower back lock disastrously. Nico has spent years insisting he’s built for darkness, that he thrives in it, but the truth is uglier and more embarrassing: he actually likes the sun. Craves it, sometimes. Misses the warmth.
Reyna has often remarked — with that dry unimpressed tone she wields like a scalpel — that he looks like something chiselled from shadow and neglect, a creature that belongs in the museum’s lower archives with the broken statuary and forgotten fragments, and he’s never bothered arguing, not when cold this sharp seeps into everything he is. Even the things made for darkness — whatever he is, whatever she thinks he is — begin to turn instinctively toward warmth when the city freezes, craving some quiet, impossible sun to stand beside.
He sighs, gets into the car, and tells himself that the scraped windshield is not a message from above or a symptom of a spiralling mind, just a strange courtesy with no clear source. He tries to believe it. He fails. Winter presses in close around him, and the engine takes an eternity to warm, and all he can think is that something in this building is happening, and he is absolutely not equipped for whatever it is.
***
The days that follow fall into a pattern he does not trust. Every morning, without fail, the windshields in the lot glaze over in thick, unbroken frost — every windshield except his. Even on the mornings he doesn’t work, when he stays wrapped in blankets until guilt or hunger forces him upright, he’ll wander to the window with his mug of tea, peer down through the slanted blinds and find his car looking offensively awake while the rest sit entombed. It’s uncanny. It’s irritating. It’s verging on supernatural.
At first he tries to rationalise it. Maybe at his last service someone installed heated windshields without mentioning it — unlikely, considering the mechanic looked fifteen and held the clipboard like he’d borrowed it from a responsible adult. Maybe the angle of the building casts some strange protective microclimate over his parking spot — absurd. Maybe he’s sleepwalking, which would be deeply unfortunate for several reasons, not least because he would like to believe he’d at least remember being outdoors at five in the morning with a scraper.
By the next week he starts taking mental attendance of everyone in the building, running through the list like some frostbitten version of Cludo. Percy and Annabeth are out — they leave late, sleep in, live their lives with an authority that suggests they’ve never scraped a windshield in their entire adult existence. Piper could do it, but she’d tell him, loudly, and with added commentary about his work-life balance. Leo might out of sheer chaotic impulse, but he’d definitely leave scorch marks. Hazel is too honest. Frank is kind enough but also incapable of subtlety. Lou Ellen would enchant the ice instead of scraping it if that were possible, and Cecil would send him a fake invoice for additional services he never provided.
Which leaves only one name he can’t easily eliminate: W. Solace. Fourth floor. Occasionally seen in the lobby with a backpack slung over one shoulder, wearing hospital scrubs under a ridiculous puffy coat, looking warm in the way only people with stable circadian rhythms and meaningful careers can. Nico knows his name only from the mailboxes and the occasional package left in the wrong slot. He’s quiet, polite, always in a rush, the kind of neighbour who nods once in greeting and then disappears before Nico can decide whether to nod back. The idea that someone like that might be scraping his car before dawn feels ridiculous… but then again, the entire situation feels ridiculous.
By day sixteen the frustration has metastasised into fixation. He spends half an hour standing by the window with the lights off, staring down at the parking lot like he’s expecting divine revelation. He Googles “heated windshields not turning off” and gets nothing useful; he Googles “someone keeps scraping my car” and gets even less. Eventually, in a moment of weakness, he starts looking up home security cameras, scrolling through models with motion detection and night vision, imagining himself reviewing footage like a low-budget detective with chronic seasonal depression.
It’s only when he realises he has spent forty-three minutes comparing lens angles that he snaps out of it, clicks the browser shut with unnecessary force, and checks the time. Three in the morning. Winter pressing close against the windows. His tea long cold. And he, inexplicably, has become the kind of person who contemplates installing surveillance equipment to catch a phantom good Samaritan armed with an ice scraper.
“Enough,” he mutters into the quiet, shoulders curling against the chill as he drags himself toward bed. Whatever is happening, it can wait until daylight. Or until he has more dignity. Preferably both.
***
By the end of the week the cold has settled into him with a vindictive kind of determination, sinking past coat and scarf and whatever fragile insulation he pretends counts as a metabolism. The museum had been freezing — the kind of institutional chill that clings to your clothing long after you’ve left — and even the short walk from the staff entrance to the parking lot had been enough to make his joints seize. By the time he finally lowers himself into the driver’s seat and waits for the car to cough to life, he’s shivering so hard he can feel it in his teeth. The drive home is a blur of streetlights smeared through the windshield, the heater wheezing valiantly, the sort of chill that seeps into cartilage and stays there, leaving him feeling prematurely historic in a way that would be funny if it weren’t happening to him.
When he pulls into his usual spot outside the building, the cold slaps him again the moment he opens the door, a sharp, unkind reminder that whatever warmth the car managed to generate has done nothing to thaw the exhaustion lodged deep in his body. His stomach twists with hunger he’s ignored all day, his head feels overstuffed, and he’s caught in that miserable state where being cold makes him tired and being tired makes him colder. By the time he pushes through the building’s front door he is one frayed nerve away from abandoning adulthood entirely and sleeping in the lobby like a discouraged Victorian orphan.
Of course, that’s exactly when Jason appears, emerging from the stairwell with the bright, indefatigable cheer of someone immune to both weather and human despair.
“Oh, hey — perfect timing,” Jason says, falling naturally into step beside him. “Couple of us are heading up to Percy and Annabeth’s again tonight. Movie night, hot cider, blankets — you should come.”
There is a moment — just one — where Nico genuinely wishes he had the energy to accept, if only to stop the shaking in his hands. But the thought of warmth is outweighed immediately by the thought of conversation, lights, people, questions, and he can barely hold himself upright, let alone be social.
“I’m sick,” he says, voice low and scratchy, and he doesn’t even need to fake it. “I think I’m coming down with something. I’m just… going to bed.”
The worry on Jason’s face flickers brighter, but he nods, gentle and understanding in a way that makes Nico feel both grateful and deeply, irrationally embarrassed.
“Totally fair,” Jason says. “Rest up. Text if you need anything — seriously.”
Nico hums something that might be agreement and turns toward the next stairwell, ready for the refuge of quiet and central heating, when a thought barges in uninvited. He hesitates, turns back, shoulders hunched against a chill that has nothing to do with the hallway temperature.
“Actually,” he says, hating himself a little, “can I ask you something?”
Jason perks up, hopeful. “Yeah, of course.”
“Do you… know who’s been scraping the ice off my car?” The words feel absurd the second they’re out. “Every morning. Before I get outside. It’s the only one that’s clear.”
Jason blinks, eyebrows knitting, expression tilting toward bewildered concern. “Wait — what?”
Nico sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “My car keeps getting scraped. I’m not doing it. I don’t know who is. I thought maybe someone in the building— maybe one of you guys…”
Jason’s confusion does not lessen. If anything, it deepens. “I mean — I have absolutely no clue. I can ask around if you want? See if—”
“No.” Nico cuts in too fast, mortification flooding him so intensely it almost warms him. “Please don’t. Really. Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Jason lifts his hands, palms out, voice softening. “Alright. I won’t ask. Just let me know if you need help figuring it out.”
But Nico is already backing away, making a swift, graceless retreat up the stairs. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Goodnight.”
He nearly fumbles the keys in his haste, slips inside his apartment, and shuts the door with a definitive click, finally alone with his shivers and his embarrassment and the strange, persistent mystery of his aggressively cared-for windshield.
***
By Monday the cold has developed a personality of its own, mean and insistent, stalking Nico all the way from the museum to the parking lot and then home, where the building’s lobby greets him with a gust of artificial heat that feels almost painful after a day spent in climate-controlled chill. He’s peeling off his gloves, flexing fingers that haven’t felt properly warm in weeks, when he sees a familiar figure standing by the mailboxes — tall, broad-shouldered under a puffy coat, posture relaxed in a way that suggests exhaustion rather than ease.
Will Solace.
He’s wearing scrubs beneath his winter coat, navy fabric peeking through where the zipper slips open, and somehow — unfairly, obscenely — he looks warm. Not just physically warm, though the flush across his cheeks suggests the lobby heater has made quick work of him, but warm in that steady, human way Nico has never been able to explain: sunlight disguised as a person, radiance simmering under hospital fatigue, golden even under fluorescent lighting. His hair is flattened slightly from a beanie he must have taken off moments earlier, a curl falling loose across his forehead in a way that looks careless but probably isn’t. He reaches into his mailbox with the kind of practiced efficiency that comes from doing everything in a hurry and still making it look graceful.
Nico, wearing approximately seven mismatched layers and an offensively ugly hat-scarf combination, suddenly becomes acutely aware of how he must look — a small, colour-blind cryptid dragging in cold air and bad decisions.
He has no mail. He knows he has no mail. He still walks straight to his mailbox like a man possessed, turning the little key with exaggerated interest purely to justify being in Will’s vicinity for more than three seconds. The metal box opens into predictable emptiness. He stares into it anyway, as if willing circulars into existence.
“Hey,” Will says, looking up with that soft, polite half-smile he gives everyone in the building, the one that feels devastatingly like early morning sun through a curtain — warm, brief, and too bright.
Nico mutters something he hopes resembles a greeting and not the death rattle of a shy woodland creature.
He keeps his eyes firmly on the inside of his mailbox, because looking at Will directly feels dangerous, like staring at something incandescent for too long. It’s absurd, he knows — a man who spends his days handling thousand-year-old funerary figurines should not be undone by a doctor in slightly wrinkled scrubs — but the heart is stupid and winter makes him emotional, and Nico has never been particularly immune to tenderness.
Especially not his brand of tenderness.
He hadn’t expected it. Hadn’t even known it was possible until six months ago, when Cecil sliced the tip of his finger open making dinner and screamed like he’d been theatrically murdered. The entire building had come running — Percy with a mop for reasons no one has explained, Piper mid-face-mask, Jason looking like someone had shot him in the soul — and then Will had stepped through the doorway of 11B, summoned by the kind of professional instinct that supersedes personal time.
Nico remembers it too clearly: the way Will crossed the kitchen with quiet authority, assessing Cecil’s hand with the frowning concentration of someone who cared even when he absolutely didn’t need to. He remembers how gentle his voice had been, how steady his hands, how he’d delivered reassurance and wry humour in the same breath — It’s not that deep, Cec, you’ll live, save the obituary for something dramatic — and how the whole room had relaxed around him like he carried a small gravitational field of calm.
Nico had stood by the fridge, useless and transfixed, and something traitorous in him had clicked into place. He’d spent the rest of the week pretending he hadn’t replayed it in his head, pretending he hadn’t noticed Will’s freckles or the way his smile tilted when he was trying not to laugh, pretending he hadn’t developed a tiny, mortifying crush on the building’s resident miracle worker.
He’d even considered, once or twice, accepting one of Jason’s endless invitations upstairs, but Will never comes. Will is always working — shifts that start in the dark, shifts that end in the dark, overtime that eats every hour between — and Nico, who lives on the opposite end of the circadian spectrum, never has the nerve to seek him out.
So he stands there now, in the overheated lobby with snow melting down the back of his coat, pretending to check for mail he does not have, while Will Solace sorts envelopes with those same careful hands and glows faintly despite the winter outside.
And Nico, cold to the bone and wrapped in enough fabric to insulate a corpse, feels every bit as ridiculous as he knows he must look.
Will closes his mailbox and glances over at him, eyes sweeping — slowly, almost fondly — down the assemblage of mismatched layers Nico has trapped himself in. Will’s mouth lifts, just slightly, the way it does when he’s trying not to laugh outright.
“You feeling the cold?” he asks, gentle amusement threading through his voice rather than judgement, though Nico still feels the blow to his dignity with astonishing clarity.
Nico huffs, tugging his coat tighter in an attempt to salvage whatever pride he has left. “It was still very dark when I got dressed this morning,” he mutters, as if this explains everything. “Okay?”
Will laughs — not loudly, not theatrically, just a soft, warm sound that feels wholly out of place in a lobby that smells faintly of old radiators and wet boots. It rolls out of him, low at first, then curling at the edges like something half-coaxing, half-exhausted. Nico feels it like a spark struck close to the ribs, something unsettling and sweet that he absolutely refuses to examine too closely.
“Fair enough,” Will says, smile softening even further, which is frankly insulting to Nico’s cardiovascular system. “Scrubs make my life a lot easier. No decisions required.”
Nico’s mind offers a dozen unhelpful responses, all of them mortifying.
Yes, they do make your life easier, you irritatingly golden bastard. Yes, you look good in them, unfairly good, distressingly good. And beneath that, quieter but far more dangerous: Is it you? Are you the one scraping my car before dawn? Are you the warmth waiting for me at six in the morning without asking for anything in return?
He nearly asks. He feels the question rise, reckless and bright, pressing insistently against the back of his teeth. But the thought of actually saying it aloud is appalling. If Will said no, Nico would have to disappear — move to a different building, a different city, possibly a different plane of existence. And if Will said yes, that would be worse, because then Nico would have to live with the knowledge that Will Solace had peeled winter off his windshield every morning like some benevolent, frost-bitten guardian angel while Nico spiralled about it in his kitchen at three a.m.
There is no version of this that doesn’t end with Nico walking into Lake Michigan.
He swallows hard, clamps down on every foolish, hovering impulse, and manages a strangled, “I should go — I’ve got things to do,” which barely counts as a sentence but functions well enough as an exit strategy.
He makes for the stairs in what can only be described as the Nico-specific form of running — a kind of hasty, stiff-legged retreat that suggests panic disguised as efficiency. Halfway up the first flight he nearly collides with Jason, who appears carrying two grocery bags and the relentless optimism of a golden retriever in human form.
“Hey! We’re going up to Percy and Annabeth’s again, you should—”
But Nico is already slipping past him with the agility of a startled woodland creature, muttering something that could mean sorry or absolutely not or both, and Jason is left blinking after him in mild confusion.
Nico reaches his door, fumbles the lock like his hands are on loan from someone else, shoves it open, and closes it behind him with a soft, emphatic click. The apartment is dim and chilled, the radiator offering its usual half-hearted groan, but he barely notices. He leans back against the door, breath unsteady, pulse clawing its way up his throat.
And yet — despite the cold still clinging to his clothes, despite the ache in his shoulders, despite every indignity this winter has inflicted — he feels warm.
Ridiculously, traitorously warm.
As if something golden had brushed against him in the lobby. As if Will Solace’s laugh had slipped beneath his ribs and settled there, radiating a small, steady heat that refuses to leave.
Nico closes his eyes for just a moment, cheeks still flushed from cold and humiliation and proximity, and lets himself hold onto that warmth — fragile, improbable, entirely undeserved — as if it’s the only thing keeping the long Chicago winter from swallowing him whole.
***
The next morning comes too quickly, dragging Nico out of sleep before his brain has agreed to participate. The sky is still that pre-dawn grey that feels more like an unfinished thought than a colour, and the apartment is cold enough that getting dressed feels like a punishment. He shuffles down the stairs half-awake, scarf trailing behind him, boots unlaced, the early hour scraping at the edges of his consciousness like sandpaper.
He’s not even properly outside before the day gets worse. His keys slip from his numb fingers, skitter across the pavement, and vanish into a drift of snow like they’ve been waiting for their chance to betray him. He sighs — long, resigned, ancient — then crouches awkwardly to paw through the slush, shoulders hunched, muttering darkly at the universe and all its poor organisational choices.
When he finally closes his hand around the keys and straightens, shaking snow from his gloves, he looks up — and stops breathing.
A few cars down the street, under the icy wash of a streetlamp, stands Will Solace.
Will, in scrubs and a fleece-lined coat, hair flattened under his hat, scraping the frost from his windshield with quiet determination — and from here Nico can see the familiar rhythm of it, the same sure strokes his car has been mysteriously receiving for the past week. The cold hangs around them in glittering air, his breath rising in pale curls, boots planted steady on the icy pavement.
And Nico feels everything at once — confusion, mortification, disbelief, a punch of gratitude so sharp it borders on pain — all of it rising too quickly for his exhausted morning brain to organise. For a wild moment he considers turning around and walking straight back inside, climbing into bed, and refusing to acknowledge the existence of daybreak, neighbours, or windshield scrapers ever again.
But then Will looks up.
Their eyes meet across the row of half-buried cars, and Will gives him a small, tentative smile — soft, almost shy, the kind of smile that could convince a lesser person that winter isn’t a cruel and vindictive force.
Nico stands there like an idiot for a full beat too long before his feet carry him forward.
“It’s you?” he manages, words fogging into the cold air. “You’re the one who’s been scraping my car?”
Will’s whole posture jolts — a tiny startle — and then he’s babbling, which Nico didn’t know he was capable of. “Don’t— don’t be mad, okay? I swear I wasn’t trying to be creepy. I just— I heard you talking to Jason a few weeks ago about how much you hate dealing with the ice in the mornings, and you said you’re always late for work because of it, and I’m always out here stupidly early anyway—” He gestures back to his own perfectly scraped windshield, cheeks already tinged pink from something other than cold. “And we’re usually parked next to each other, so I thought— I don’t know —I thought I’d help you out.”
Nico blinks, struggling to catch up. “Why would I be mad?”
Will lets out a nervous laugh, breath curling white in the air. “I don’t know, man — you sort of look mad right now.”
“I’m not mad!” Nico blurts, which is unfortunate because he absolutely sounds mad. “I just— I didn’t— I mean—” He waves the keys vaguely, as though they might complete his sentence for him. “I appreciate it. Really. I just didn’t expect— I had no idea it was you.”
Will’s shoulders ease a little, the panic ebbing from his face as he realises Nico isn’t about to bite him or file a complaint with building management. He lets out a breath that fogs white between them, the tension in it dissolving into something almost sheepish.
“Okay. Good,” he says, scraping another clean arc across Nico’s windshield — slower this time, like his hands have finally caught up with his nerves. “I wasn’t sure how you’d take it. You’re… hard to read sometimes.”
Nico frowns. “What does that mean?”
Will hesitates, glancing at him sideways; there’s a flicker of embarrassment there, quickly swallowed by a kind of resigned honesty. “I mean you have a—” He gestures vaguely at Nico, at the coat, the scarf, the whole cold-poisoned silhouette. “—a vibe.”
Nico blinks. “A vibe.”
“Yeah,” Will says, and now he’s the one who won’t quite meet Nico’s eyes. “The whole building’s got opinions about you, actually.”
Nico stops breathing. “I’m sorry — what.”
Will laughs under his breath, nervous and fond and a little incredulous. “You’ve got a reputation,” he admits, running the edge of the scraper along the glass. “Cool. Mysterious. Quiet guy on the thirteen floor. Enigmatic. The kind of person who speaks in cryptic sentences and probably has a locked drawer full of secrets.”
Nico stares at him, scandalised on a cellular level.
“…Explain,” he says, flatly, because he cannot process the idea of being perceived, let alone mythologised.
Will pauses, lowers the scraper for a moment, and seems to weigh whether he should actually tell Nico any of this. Then he huffs a laugh — small, self-deprecating, fogging the air between them — and gives in.
“Okay, so… don’t take this the wrong way,” he says, scraping another steady line across the glass, “but people in the building find you a little intimidating.”
Nico nearly drops the keys again. “Intimidating?”
“Not in a weird way,” Will adds quickly. “Just— you never really hang out with anyone, you always look like you’re deep in thought, you walk around at night like you’re on some serious mission, and you work at the museum, which already gives you an air of… you know. Brainy mystery.”
Nico blinks at him, incapable of responding.
Will continues, warming to the subject despite himself. “And, okay, you get some really strange packages sometimes — big wooden crates, weirdly heavy boxes, stuff covered in ‘FRAGILE’ tape — so everyone sort of assumes you’re dealing with ancient artifacts or… old bones or something.”
Nico opens his mouth, then closes it, because that is — in fact — exactly what he deals with.
“And you always say you’re working,” Will goes on, “even at night, so Leo’s convinced you’re secretly translating dead languages into English for the first time, like some lone scholar. Jason tried to explain to him that Classics majors exist but Leo didn’t listen.”
Nico tries very hard not to die of embarrassment. “You— all of you think I’m…mysterious?”
Will shrugs, smiling hesitantly. “Kind of, yeah. Cool and mysterious. Not creepy. Just— the building’s resident enigma.” He gives Nico an assessing glance, gentle and curious. “It’s not a bad thing. Some people like being understood. Some people like being… observed from a distance, I guess.”
Nico has no idea what to do with any of this. Cool? Mysterious? He feels like a man constructed entirely from sleep deprivation and mismatched knitwear, held together by coffee and spite. The idea that his neighbours look at him and see anything other than a barely functional crypt-gremlin is so wildly off-script he almost laughs.
Instead, he hears himself ask, “And what do you think of me?”
The question lands in the cold air like something too fragile for dawn, and Will straightens, scraping paused mid-stroke, shoulders tightening just slightly.
“I—” Will fumbles, then recovers with an awkward little cleared throat. “I, um, actually… I should get going or I’ll be late for my shift.” He finishes the last sweep across Nico’s windshield with unnecessary focus. “But… I get off at seven? If you’re home, I could— I don’t know —swing by your apartment and tell you then.”
Nico’s heartbeat stutters like it’s been dropped on the ice. “Oh. I— yes. I mean… yeah. That works. I’ll be home.”
Will nods, quick and relieved, as though Nico has just agreed to something complicated rather than the simplest arrangement in the world. “Okay. Great. I, um— yeah.”
Nico clears his throat, the cold biting at the back of it. “And—” He forces the words out before he can lose his nerve. “Thank you. For scraping my car. That… meant more than you think.”
Will’s expression softens immediately, something unguarded flickering through it. “Of course,” he says quietly, the corners of his mouth tilting upward in a way that feels far too gentle for a frozen Chicago street. “And… you’re welcome. Really. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Nico says, and the sincerity in his voice surprises even him. “Seriously. Thank you.”
Will flushes again — a warm, blooming colour that almost makes Nico shiver for a different reason — and steps back toward his own car, the scraper dangling from his hand.
They both get in at roughly the same time, doors thudding shut in near unison. Nico starts his engine, watching condensation melt slowly outward from the warm centre of the window, but his eyes flick instinctively to the mirror.
Will is buckling his seatbelt, pushing the beanie up from his forehead, adjusting the heater dial with one hand. Then he glances over, catches Nico’s gaze in the reflection, and offers a grin — small, lopsided, stupidly endearing — followed by a brief, almost shy wave before pulling out of the space.
Nico sits there for a long moment, gripping the steering wheel with cold-numbed fingers, heart knocking unreasonably hard against his ribs, the morning finally beginning to feel like it belongs to something other than the winter.
***
Nico storms into the collections office with all the elegance of a blizzard breaking through a poorly insulated window. He’s still half-covered in snow, scarf askew, hair damp from the cold, eyes wide with the unfocused hysteria of someone who encountered an emotional situation far too early in the morning. Reyna is at her desk, pristine as ever, drinking her coffee like someone immune to both weather and melodrama.
He starts speaking immediately — or something like speaking.
“I— okay— you’re not gonna believe this— I mean, maybe you will— you’ve been saying I’m losing it for weeks— but it was him, Reyna, he was just— out there scraping my car like it was nothing, and I dropped my keys— into the actual snow— and then he looked at me like he does that every morning which apparently he does, and he said I looked mad which I wasn’t, I wasn’t mad, I was— I don’t know what I was, but he said he heard me talking to Jason and then he started apologising and then he said the building has theories, actual theories, about me, which is ridiculous because I’m a disaster, you’ve seen me, and Leo thinks I’m translating dead languages at night which— I mean, sometimes, but not in the dramatic way he means— and Will said— he said he’d tell me what he thinks of me at seven, and I don’t know how to— I don’t— Reyna, seriously, what am I supposed to—”
Reyna puts her mug down with such deliberate calm that even the air seems to stop moving.
“Di Angelo,” she says, voice smooth as the edge of a blade, “chill the fuck out.”
He freezes mid-gesture, looking vaguely like someone who has been caught rummaging through a bin.
“Sit,” she adds, pointing at the chair as though commanding a small, distressed animal. “And start again. Preferably in a way a human being could follow.”
So Nico sits.
And he tells her everything — properly this time. How he found Will in the cold, scraping his windshield with this focused, earnest expression; how the conversation derailed instantly into apologies and flustered explanations; how apparently the entire building has constructed an elaborate persona around Nico (mysterious, intimidating, enigmatic — absurd, all of it absurd); how Will flushed when Nico asked what he personally thought; how he offered to swing by Nico’s apartment at seven and “explain,” like that isn’t the most destabilising sentence Nico has ever heard before breakfast.
Reyna listens with the weary patience of someone who has chaired too many committee meetings and survived them all.
When he finishes, she lets out a low whistle and stands, smoothing her jacket. “Well. You’d better get started on those archives. You don’t want to be stuck here late and miss your date.”
“It’s not a date,” Nico says instantly, horrified.
“Mm,” Reyna says, clearly unconvinced.
“It’s not,” he insists, as if force alone could alter reality.
She moves toward the door, entirely unbothered. “Whatever you say.”
“Reyna,” he calls, panic blooming again, “is it a date?”
She laughs — one elegant, merciless sound — and keeps walking.
Nico stands up, voice cracking in something close to desperation. “REYNA. IS IT A DATE?”
But she’s already gone, heels clicking down the hall, leaving him to the cold archives, the impending arrival of seven o’clock, and the horrible realisation that he is catastrophically underprepared for whatever comes next.
***
Nico has been pacing his apartment for the better part of an hour, wearing a groove into the floor so deep it could probably be added to the building’s maintenance log. It’s 7:07 p.m. Seven-oh-seven. Which is arguably still “seven,” but his brain has never cared for nuance, and tonight it cares even less.
Will isn’t here.
Which means one of three things is happening:
- Will forgot.
- Will reconsidered.
- The entire building has orchestrated some elaborate psychological experiment to see if Nico will finally snap, reveal latent telekinetic abilities, and ascend to his true form as the neighbourhood cryptid.
He is strongly leaning toward option three.
He paces into the kitchen. He paces out of it. He stares at the clock like it’s personally responsible. He mutters to himself, quietly and rapidly, in a way that would alarm anyone who wasn’t familiar with him. Seven-oh-nine. Seven-eleven. Seven-thirteen.
This is punishment for something.
For all the times he avoided social interactions, probably. Or for that one summer he told Percy to shut up during a fire drill. Or for the fact that he once, in a moment of weakness, thought Will Solace was attractive. (Which he regrets deeply because now it is interfering with his ability to behave like a normal human being.)
His thoughts spin back unhelpfully to every time he’s seen Will in passing around the building: the soft good-mornings in the elevator, the nods in the lobby, the day Will held the door for him even though Nico was ten steps too far away. And the worst — absolutely the worst — the morning last summer when Nico looked out his window and saw Will returning from a run, golden and glistening and drenched in sweat in a way that should have been vaguely disgusting but somehow wasn’t. Nico had closed the blinds and sat on the edge of his bed for five full minutes questioning the fragility of the human condition.
By 7:15 he is bordering on manic. This is it. This is how he dies. Death by anticipation. Death by hope. Death by Nico’s own thinning grasp on reality.
Then — a knock.
Soft. Polite. Terrifying.
Nico thinks, briefly, that he might actually pass out. But he forces himself toward the door, hand shaking slightly as he opens it —
And Will is there.
Will Solace, hair still damp from a shower, cheeks tinted pink from the cold, smelling clean in that hospital-fresh way that somehow doesn’t feel sterile. He’s holding a large box of pizza balanced atop a six-pack of beer, looking like someone who has run up every flight of stairs in the building to get here.
“Sorry I’m late. My last patient had a— well.” He lifts the pizza box like a visual aid. “Do you know what a pilonidal cyst is?”
Nico blinks once. Slowly.
Will barrels on, clearly already half-regretting the question. “It’s basically when hair follicles— actually, no. You don’t want that sentence. Not before food. Not before anything, really. It’s one of those medical situations where you’re like, ‘Nature had options and still chose violence.’” He grimaces. “I’ll give you the full lecture another time. Preferably in daylight. When you’re braced. And maybe sitting.”
He clears his throat, tries again. “Anyway — pizza.” He lifts it slightly, as if reminding himself what he is holding. “I got pepperoni because it felt like the least controversial option, but if you hate pepperoni I will take that as an opportunity for character development, not a personal attack. And before you ask—” He raises a finger. “No deep dish. None. I would never disrespect your culture like that.”
Nico’s eyebrows twitch upward, the only observable sign of life.
“You are Italian, right? I assumed you were Italian. ‘Di Angelo.’ It felt like a safe assumption. Also because Percy thinks you’re in the mafia — not in a bad way, just in the Percy ‘you walked past me once wearing black and therefore you assassinate people for a living’ way — and, yeah, I told him that was stereotyping, but he said it was ‘vibe-based’ which somehow made it worse.”
Nico continues to stare, a man suspended between fascination and cardiac arrest.
“And I brought beer,” Will says, brandishing the six-pack like an exhibit. “I don’t know if you drink beer. I don’t know if you drink at all. Honestly, I barely drink — long shifts, on-call hours, trying not to accidentally kill anyone — but I thought…” He hesitates, then ploughs ahead in a rush. “I thought maybe I might need some liquid courage. Although, now that I’m standing here, I’m realising I should’ve had one before coming up because I seem to have entered a fugue state and started saying things out loud that don’t strictly need to be said.”
Nico’s mouth opens slightly — perhaps to respond, perhaps because oxygen is suddenly difficult — but Will is still going.
“And I know this looks weird,” he continues, “me showing up at your door with a pizza and beer and a deeply regrettable amount of medical trivia, but I promise this evening has a structure in my head. Or it did. Before I got here. Now it’s just—” He gestures vaguely at the air between them. “This.”
He exhales, an uneven breath that fogs into the cold hallway, and the silence that settles is soft, awkward, fragile — the kind of silence Nico feels all the way down to his fingertips.
Only then does he realise — with dawning horror — that Will said all of that in three breaths maximum.
Nico tries to speak.
Fails.
Will shifts his weight, curls a little more unruly from the damp, voice dropping into something small and hopeful. “Um… can I come in?”
“Yeah,” Nico manages, stepping aside before his nerves can mutiny. “Come in.”
Will crosses the threshold, pizza balanced expertly on one arm, beer clinking softly in the other hand, and immediately does a slow turn like he’s taking in a museum exhibit. “Damn,” he breathes, not bothering to hide his amazement. “This place is nice.”
Nico blinks, thrown. “Is it?”
“Uh— yeah?” Will says, as if this should be obvious to anyone with a pulse. “You have a dining table. With chairs. Real chairs. Like, multiple. And your TV actually works. Mine has this line down the middle that won’t go away, and Leo said he could fix it but then he broke it more, and— wait.”
Will’s gaze focuses properly on the television — where Love Actually is playing, full volume, entirely unapologetic in its festive mediocrity.
Nico feels his soul leave his body.
“I wasn’t watching that,” he blurts, far too fast. “It was just… on. It’s December. It’s the only thing on any channel. And I thought maybe if I watched other people ruin their emotional lives in spectacular fashion it would make me feel better about my own— it didn’t, by the way — I was not sitting here watching Love Actually as, like… a choice.”
Will raises both hands, palms open, laughing softly. “No judgement. Seriously. November and December are basically national masochism months.”
Nico glances at the screen — some unfortunate subplot is happening, probably one involving unfaithfulness or idiocy — and he is suddenly and painfully aware that this entire situation could be an alternate sequence from the film: lonely man watches increasingly dubious Christmas anthology film while making a series of increasingly catastrophic decisions. It’s too on-the-nose. Too thematically pointed.
He wants to turn it off, except turning it off suggests shame, and shame suggests caring, and Nico refuses to open that door.
They end up on the couch — not quite near each other, not quite far enough, an awkward liminal space where their shoulders don’t touch but could, if one of them breathed too deeply. Will opens the pizza box; steam drifts upward like a small domestic blessing. Nico takes a slice because he needs something to hold besides his panic.
They eat quietly, the kind of quiet that isn’t empty so much as expectant. The TV flickers in front of them — Love Actually in all its chaotic, ill-advised glory. Nico watches Hugh Grant dance through 10 Downing Street as if trying to scrub the inside of his brain clean with embarrassment. He watches Emma Thompson steel herself for heartbreak in her bedroom, watches Andrew Lincoln commit cinematic war crimes on that doorstep with those cue cards, and thinks:
Honestly, yes. There’s something reassuring about the fact that even fictional people can make such profoundly terrible choices and still have friends, families, mortgages, and basic dignity. Maybe that’s the point of the season. Catharsis through secondhand disaster.
Will shifts next to him, leaning forward to grab his beer, the movement sending a soft wash of warmth toward Nico’s arm. Nico pretends not to notice. He stares harder at the TV as if attempting to absorb the plot through sheer force of will.
Will takes a slow bite of pizza. Chews thoughtfully. Swallows.
Then, quietly, like an afterthought: “You know, the guy with the cue cards? Absolutely the villain of the film.”
Nico snorts before he can stop himself.
Will shifts a little closer — a subtle lean, nothing dramatic — and the air between them feels charged in a way Nico can’t name without combusting.
Eventually Nico clears his throat. “So,” he says, as if the word has weight.
“So,” Will echoes, matching Nico’s tone perfectly, eyes still locked on the screen like Love Actually is a military briefing.
Nico exhales, long and measured. “I believe,” he says quietly, “you have some information for me.”
Will turns his head just enough to look at him, amusement flickering in his eyes. “You know,” he murmurs, “you really lean into the whole mafia vibe when you talk like that.”
Nico snaps his gaze toward him, genuinely affronted. “I do not have a mafia vibe.”
Will shrugs — helpless, maddening, far too pleased with himself. “That is, unfortunately, exactly what someone in the mafia would say. First rule of Fight Club and all that.”
“That’s not even remotely the same thing,” Nico says, scowling, indignation settling over him like a second coat. “And if I were actually in the mafia, I wouldn’t be living in a one-bedroom apartment and microwaving pasta at midnight.”
Will lets out a laugh — low, warm, entirely too gentle for a conversation about organised crime. It curls softly around the quiet of the room, making Nico’s stomach tighten in ways he refuses to name. “Okay,” he concedes. “Point taken. Very un-mafia of you.”
Nico raises one eyebrow — slowly, deliberately — and Will deflates with a tiny sigh, setting his beer down with the air of someone surrendering to his fate.
“Okay,” he says. “You want to know what I think of you.”
Nico nods, even though his pulse is doing something both ridiculous and medically concerning beneath his ribs.
Will sits for a long moment as if he’s weighing something in his hands, though he’s holding nothing but the faint warmth of his beer bottle. The light from the muted TV flickers over his face — that soft glow of Christmas lights and bad decisions — and when he finally speaks, it’s with that quiet, careful tone Nico has heard twice before in his life: once when Will checked Cecil’s bleeding finger, and once this morning, when he looked at Nico like he already knew what he wanted to say but wasn’t sure he had the right to say it.
“I think,” Will says finally, the words slow and deliberate, as though he’s choosing each one with care, “that you’re… a good person.”
He doesn’t look at Nico when he says it; he watches his own hands instead, the way they rest against his knees, as if keeping his eyes anchored there might stop the thought from spilling too far.
“I don’t mean it in the vague, everybody-has-hidden-depths way,” he goes on, voice quiet but steady, “I mean — I’ve watched you hold the door open for people even when your hands were so full you had to do that awkward elbow push thing. And that time the elevator was out for two days? Hazel still talks about how you carried her bags up all four flights while she tried to convince you she could manage. You didn’t make a big deal out of it. You never do.”
Nico feels something in him tighten — like a string pulled too sharp beneath his ribs — the strange, startled ache of being seen in a way he didn’t anticipate.
“And it’s little things too,” Will continues, thumb brushing absently over the condensation on his beer bottle. “You don’t shove past people in the lobby when everyone’s trying to get inside out of the cold. You let the older tenants go ahead, even when you’re obviously freezing. You’re quiet, but you’re never rude. You listen when people talk to you — even when it’s Leo rambling about his newest death-trap invention on the third floor.”
Nico can’t help the faint twitch of his mouth at that — Leo does corner strangers with deranged enthusiasm — but Will’s face is still serious, still focused.
“People make up stories about you,” Will says, softer now, “because they don’t have anything concrete. You don’t give them the big dramatic entrances, or the loud opinions, or the over-sharing. So they fill in the blanks. But no one has a bad thing to say.” He lets out a breath, half-laugh, half-sigh. “If anything, you make them curious. Half the building thinks you’re some kind of mysterious old-world scholar. The other half thinks you’re a ghost with a day job.”
Nico blinks — slow, stunned — as if the air in the room has shifted. “Theatrical,” he snorts under his breath, tasting the word like something fragile and odd.
“Not in a bad way,” Will adds quickly. “Just… you walk quietly, and no one ever hears you coming, and then you’re suddenly there, holding a door or picking up something someone dropped or apologising because they bumped into you and—” he shrugs, helpless and earnest, “—people notice.”
Nico sits very still, unsure how to fit himself inside the version of him Will has just offered — a version assembled from moments he’d never imagined anyone noticed, let alone kept. The room feels tilted, faintly off-axis, as if the air has thickened around the space between them.
“Oh,” Nico murmurs, not quite a word, more the sound of a thought trying to find somewhere to land. It slips out before he can reel it back, soft and startled, the kind of noise a person makes when something gentle brushes unexpectedly close.
Will nods, almost sheepish, and takes a sip of beer as if he needs the briefest shield. “And you’re smart,” he adds, voice returning in a quiet rush. “Obviously smart.”
Nico lets out a dry, incredulous laugh — the kind that escapes before he can stop it. “You think I’m smart.”
Will frowns at him in mild confusion, as though Nico has missed something obvious. “Of course I do.”
Nico doesn’t mean to confess, but the memory of the funerary masks is still too fresh. “I spent half the morning begging Reyna to fix a disaster I caused,” he mutters, rubbing a hand over his face. “I mixed up accession numbers and nearly redirected a shipment of Roman masks to geology. Geology, Will.”
Will’s expression softens — not with pity, but with that warm, grounded amusement that makes Nico’s stomach twist. “Everyone makes mistakes,” he says quietly. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you write papers about things most people can’t even pronounce.”
Nico goes still. “…you read my papers.”
Will shifts in place, embarrassed, tugging absently at the hem of his shirt like it’s a grounding point. “A couple of them,” he admits. “I was curious. You were new to the building, and I kept seeing your mail come in with journal names I recognised from med school tangents. Half of what I read went over my head, but the half that didn’t? Yeah. You’re brilliant.”
The room seems to tighten around Nico, the air suddenly too sharp, too full of something he cannot name without falling apart. “And?” he asks, voice low, nearly a whisper, as if the question itself might bruise.
Will lets out a slow breath, the kind that sounds like surrender. Colour rises up his throat in a spreading warmth that reaches his ears. He looks down for a moment, gathering himself, then back up again — and whatever he is holding behind his ribs finally slips through.
“And,” he says softly, “I think you’re… beautiful.”
The word hangs there — suspended, bright, startling as a match struck in the dark.
Nico feels it like a physical thing. Not soft. Not flattering. More like an impact — something crystalline cracking open under the weight of unexpected light. It hits him in that old, familiar way emotions sometimes do: a mixture of hunger and fear and something perilously close to wonder, flooding beneath his ribs all at once.
For one disorienting moment, he feels fifteen again, barefoot in grief and bone-deep loneliness; then the feeling shifts, warmer, steadier, like the first breath of air after surfacing from deep water. Beautiful. Will Solace called him beautiful, and the world did not laugh, did not tilt, did not collapse — it simply kept turning, a little slower, a little brighter.
Will swallows, clearly terrified by Nico’s silence but too far in to retreat. “I’ve… liked you for a while,” he says quietly. “Since the day you moved in. You walked past me in the lobby and didn’t even realise you’d walked past me, and I remember thinking—” he stops, shakes his head, a small helpless laugh “—I don’t even know what I was thinking. Just that you were something I wanted to know. And every time I tried to say hi after that, you’d vanish under four layers of winter gear like Chicago itself swallowed you.”
Nico makes a soft sound in his throat, some tremor of disbelief that doesn’t quite make it into words.
“The car thing…” Will continues, voice tapering into something almost shy. “It wasn’t a big plan. I just… saw how cold you always looked. How exhausted. It’s brutal out there before sunrise. I figured if I could make your morning a little easier… maybe it would help.”
He lifts one shoulder — that small, earnest movement that feels almost like an apology.
“And,” he adds, barely above a whisper now, “it meant I could do something for you without… risking saying the wrong thing.”
Will goes quiet after that, eyes dropping to his hands, thumbs working over the bottle label as if the condensation might tell him what to say next. The room stills around them, city light seeping in through the window, catching on skin and glass, the moment suddenly intimate in the way private things are when you weren’t planning to say them out loud.
Nico doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say.
He can feel the panic rising behind his ribs in slow, deliberate curls, the kind of creeping dread usually reserved for discovering he’s mislabelled another set of artefacts or left a crucial email unanswered for three days. It is absurd — genuinely absurd — that his brain can conjure a thousand catastrophes at work but cannot form a single coherent sentence in his own living room.
He is very aware of the fact that Will is still looking down, waiting, like he’s giving Nico space to decide whether this moment is going to bloom or die quietly in their laps.
Then Will glances up — not dramatically, not with expectation, but with the soft, slightly hopeful look of a man who is trying very hard not to push. A look that says any minute now would be great.
Nico clears his throat, which does nothing to clear anything. “I… didn’t think you ever noticed me,” he says. It comes out small, ridiculous, humiliatingly sincere.
Will lets out a laugh — warm, disbelieving, a little breathless. “Gods, Nico,” he says, shaking his head like he can’t believe the words even need to be spoken aloud, “I’ve never stopped noticing you.”
Nico stares at him, that single sentence rippling through him like heat moving through cold metal. “…So you like me?”
Will huffs another soft laugh. “I don’t get up ten minutes early to scrape Frank’s car, do I?” He shakes his head again, fondness brightening him from the inside. “Of course I like you.”
Nico lets out a breath that isn’t quite a laugh, though it tries to be. “Will, I’m—” He gestures vaguely at himself, at the chaos of mismatched layers and the fatigue that has etched itself along his bones all winter. “I’m not exactly… put together.”
Will looks at him like he’s waiting for the rest, so Nico gives it to him — haltingly, awkwardly, words tumbling over each other until they find some shape.
“My apartment’s a disaster half the time,” he mutters. “There are journal articles stacked on every surface, I forget to eat unless Reyna threatens me, I sleep like a Victorian child with consumption, the cold makes my joints feel about ninety years old, and every morning I look in the mirror and wonder if I’m actually deteriorating as fast as I feel.” He gives a weak shrug, trying for humour. “It’s not exactly a compelling sales pitch.”
Will’s face softens — not with pity, but with that grave, steady concern Nico has only ever seen directed at patients or people Will genuinely cares about. “I wish you wouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” he says quietly.
Nico huffs, not quite a disagreement but not a concession either. “I’m not— I’m not trying to be dramatic. It’s just… true.”
He hesitates, the next part catching in his throat like it’s been waiting there for weeks.
“I guess I just don’t understand why someone like you—” The words feel dangerous, but he keeps going. “You’re a doctor. You work impossible hours. You deal with life-or-death things every day. You save people. And then you’re still getting up early to scrape my car? I don’t—” He shakes his head, staring down at his hands. “It feels like I’m taking something I don’t deserve.”
Will’s eyes widen slightly — a soft, startled sadness flickering across his face, like Nico has said something he didn’t expect, something he wishes he could undo and rewrite for him.
“That’s not how this works,” Will says gently. His voice dips, warm and steady. “It isn’t… transactional. It isn’t about deserving.”
Nico looks up at him then — tired, defensive, wanting so badly to understand.
Will flushes, but this time it’s not embarrassment; it’s that quiet, glowing sincerity that seems to rise from his chest, climbing all the way to his cheeks. “I like doing small things for people,” he says. “I always have. It’s not about effort. It’s never felt like work.”
His eyes flicker across Nico’s face, and something in the way he looks at him is almost unbearably tender. “And with you…” He clears his throat, softer now. “Taking care of you doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels like—” He stops, exhales, finds a simpler truth. “It feels good. That’s all.”
Nico swallows, throat tight in a way he doesn’t quite know how to handle.
A part of him wants to laugh it off, to brush it away as something small, something undeserved — but another part, the one that has been quietly freezing all winter, understands with unsettling clarity that someone doing a gentle, ordinary kindness for him is not small at all.
It is seismic.
“That…” Nico says, voice a little rough, “might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
And he thinks — with an ache that feels like thawing rather than breaking — that scraping ice from a windshield should not feel like an act of devotion, and yet here he is, undone by it, held together by it, warmed by it in a way nothing else has managed in months.
For a long moment, neither of them speaks. The room feels suspended — like the air itself is listening, waiting, holding its breath in the same unsteady way Nico is. The muted Christmas lights flicker across Will’s profile, softening the edges of him, turning him into something both impossibly close and impossibly gentle.
And then Will moves.
Not dramatically, not in some sweeping cinematic gesture — just a quiet shift closer on the sofa, knees brushing, the kind of movement that feels accidental until it very much isn’t. His hand lifts, hesitates for half a heartbeat as though he’s giving Nico a chance to step back, then continues, fingertips threading lightly into the curl that has slipped forward over Nico’s forehead.
He tucks it back — slowly, reverently — but his hand doesn’t retreat.
It slides instead to the curve of Nico’s cheek, warm against skin that has only ever known the bite of a Chicago winter. His palm cradles him there, thumb ghosting across the faint cold flush along his cheekbone, and Nico swears something in him shatters so quietly he feels it rather than hears it.
Will’s breath comes out soft, almost a murmur against the hush of the room. “You’re freezing,” he says, fingertips gentling along the line of Nico’s jaw as if trying to coax warmth into him by touch alone.
Nico exhales, long and shaky, leaning into the heat without meaning to. “I know,” he says, voice barely a breath, “I always am.”
It’s meant to be wry — a little self-deprecating, a little shrug-of-the-universe — but it comes out softer than he intended, almost confessional, as if the cold has been living not just in his bones but somewhere deeper, somewhere Will has now found with the simple act of touching him.
Outside, the wind rattles faintly against the windows, that low winter moan that slinks between buildings and through poorly sealed frames; the kind of sound that has followed Nico his entire life, a reminder of how easily the cold gets in, how stubbornly it stays. But here — with Will’s hand warm on his cheek, with Will leaning in just a fraction, with Will’s breath brushing his lips like a promise — the cold feels distant, something pressed against the glass instead of inside him.
Will’s eyes flicker down to Nico’s mouth — a small, unconscious movement — and Nico feels the moment tilt, a slow, inevitable shifting of gravity.
“Nico,” Will murmurs, like a question, like a warning, like his name has become something fragile and valuable in Will’s mouth.
Nico doesn’t answer.
He leans in — barely, but enough. Enough for Will to understand.
And Will does.
He closes the distance with the kind of certainty that feels almost tender, almost hesitant, as if he’s afraid the smallest misstep might break the spell. Their lips meet — softly at first, a careful press — before the kiss deepens into something unhurried and sure, not rushed or greedy but full in its own quiet way, the first warmth after too many winters, the softest exhale of relief after weeks of frostbite mornings.
Nico inhales sharply into it, the warmth of Will’s mouth a shocking contrast to the cold carved into him by the Chicago wind. Will’s lips linger, fitting to his with gentle insistence, and Nico feels the kiss steady him rather than take from him. He feels Will’s thumb brush along his cheek again, a small, grounding touch, as though he’s mapping warmth back into the parts of Nico that forgot what it felt like.
Will pulls back just a breath — close enough that their foreheads nearly touch, close enough that Nico can feel the whisper of his voice rather than hear it. “You’re still cold,” he murmurs, the words a soft accusation wrapped in concern.
Nico lets out a breath that isn’t quite a laugh. “I know,” he whispers, “but it… helps.”
Will’s smile lingers — not bright, not showy, just the faint upward pull of someone who has finally stepped into the light of something they’ve wanted for too long. Nico feels it more than he sees it, a warmth unfurling beneath his ribs in slow, deliberate spirals, the kind of warmth that doesn’t rush to declare itself but settles instead, unfolding as if it intends to stay.
Nico exhales, trying to gather himself, trying to decide where to put his hands or his eyes or the sudden, fragile hope crowding his chest. He feels foolishly light-headed, as if he’s been spun too quickly. So he does the only thing he can think to do — he reaches for humour, even though the humour trembles a little at the edges.
“So,” he murmurs, trying for nonchalance and failing spectacularly, “you’re… not going to stop scraping my car now that you’ve, um. You know. Got me.”
It’s meant to be wry, a little teasing, but it comes out softer — embarrassingly earnest — as if some part of him is genuinely terrified Will might rescind the kindness now that the mystery has been solved.
Will’s eyebrow tilts upward in a slow, amused arc. “Got you, have I?”
The heat that surges into Nico’s face is instant and catastrophic. — mortifyingly, traitorously hot — and the words scatter in his throat. “I— I didn’t mean— not like— I just thought— or hoped—”
Will laughs — a warm, breath-soft sound that seems to settle directly into Nico’s spine. “Nico,” he murmurs, thumb brushing a faint arc along Nico’s cheekbone, “relax. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
And before Nico can decide whether to die on the spot or hide under the couch until spring, Will leans in and kisses him again — slow, certain, almost greedy in the way someone is when they finally taste the thing they’ve spent months pretending they didn’t crave. This time the kiss doesn’t stop at careful; Will’s mouth presses in with intent, lips parting just enough to pull Nico closer, to ask without words. One of Will’s hands slides to Nico’s waist, warm and steady, fingers settling there like an anchor.
Nico melts into it without meaning to, breath catching as the kiss deepens, his own hands finding Will almost instinctively — first at his shoulders, then slipping up into his hair, fingers threading through and tugging him closer, closer. The warmth of it pulls at him like gravity, like something long-denied finally asserting itself, and for a moment Nico forgets to be careful at all.
When Will draws back, he doesn’t really retreat. He stays close — forehead nearly touching Nico’s, breath mingling, one hand still firm at Nico’s waist while the other lifts to the back of his neck, thumb resting there, warm and deliberate. Nico can still feel the shape of Will’s mouth on his, the echo of pressure, the ache of wanting more.
“How about,” Will murmurs, voice softer now, almost tender in its certainty, “you let me take you somewhere real. A proper date.”
Nico opens his mouth, but nothing emerges. He feels undone in the gentlest possible way.
Will nudges their noses together, faint and sweet — and then he kisses him again. The third kiss is deeper, surer, the last of the hesitation gone; Will’s hand tightens slightly at Nico’s waist as if claiming the space between them, while Nico’s fingers curl at the nape of his neck, holding him there, not ready to let go. It’s warmer, more insistent, a kiss that lingers, that says I’m here without needing to say anything at all.
“And I’ll scrape your car every morning,” Will adds quietly against Nico’s mouth, the words brushing his lips, “for as long as you’ll let me.”
Nico closes his eyes for a heartbeat — not to hide, but because the warmth of the words lands somewhere deep, somewhere cold and neglected. He thinks of all the mornings he shivered alone in the dark, all the small, practical kindnesses no one ever gave him, all the quiet ways Will has already reached for him without asking for anything in return.
“Deal,” he says quietly — not because he’s trying to be coy, but because the word feels like a vow when it leaves his mouth.
Will smiles again, the small, devastating kind, and kisses him once more — slower but fuller, hands steady and sure, a kiss that feels like a door opening rather than a line being crossed.
Outside, Chicago gnaws at the windows with its December teeth, wind threading cold through every crack it can find, but inside the apartment Nico feels the same quiet miracle he’s been waking up to all month — the sense that something sharp and frozen is being cleared away with care, that visibility is returning, that for once he isn’t bracing himself for the cold because someone else got there first.