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It begins, unfortunately, with a voice saying, “Did it hurt?”
Nico di Angelo — whose skull is ringing like a cathedral bell and whose vision is performing avant-garde theatre — has just enough consciousness left to register the line. That line. The one that should have died somewhere in the early 2000s along with low-rise jeans, dial-up internet, and whatever cultural lapse allowed frosted tips to exist.
Did it hurt? Gods. He hates that line. He hates the concept of that line. He hates that anyone thinks it works on people with functional frontal lobes. If someone actually fell from heaven, why would the appropriate response be to hit on them? Wouldn’t the logical reaction be to alert The Vatican? File a report? At the very least ask whether they’ve contaminated the atmosphere on entry? But no — humanity has collectively decided that the best course of action is to wink and try to get their number.
He groans, shifts, and tries to blink the world into a single, recognisable shape — or at least into something that isn’t tilting, spinning, and flickering like a dying stage light. There is cold against one side of him, something solid beneath him, a pressure near his leg, the blurred outline of someone crouched far too close.
His spine protests in seventeen different dialects of pain, each louder than the last, none making enough sense to prioritise.He forces his eyes to focus — or at least to stop doing whatever impression of a broken kaleidoscope they are currently committed to — and then, because the universe truly does have a taste for theatrical cruelty, he finally manages to look at the person who asked the question.
He freezes, because the man leaning over him is… well. Beautiful doesn’t even begin to cover it. He’s tall, warm-looking, golden in a way that feels personally offensive this early in the day, with wind-tousled hair and eyes bright with concern. His mouth is soft and distractingly shaped, even through the pounding in Nico’s skull — the exact sort of person who could get away with using terrible lines on strangers simply because statistically, people would let him.
Nico scowls automatically. Perfect. Great. Even if he’s painfully attractive, that line is still a crime, and Nico is not in such a compromised state — whatever that state currently is — that he’s going to let anyone get away with—
“I don’t know who told you that line works,” he mutters, already warming to the rant despite the ringing in his ears, “but it doesn’t. It has never worked. It is objectively the worst possible—”
The man blinks at him, visibly confused. “Dude… what?”
Nico glares harder, because embarrassment is a solvent that dissolves his last functioning brain cells. “If you’re trying to flirt with me, you should pick literally any other—”
“I’m not flirting with you,” the man interrupts, baffled, slightly amused, and entirely too earnest. “I’m asking if this hurts.”
He presses lightly at Nico’s ankle.
A white, electric bolt of pain fires up his leg so violently that Nico makes a sound he will spend the rest of his natural life denying — something between a strangled gasp, an affronted yelp, and a small noise that probably only dogs can hear.
The man winces sympathetically. “Yeah. Thought so. You slipped on the ice. Hit your head pretty hard too.”
Nico opens his mouth to argue, to reclaim whatever shreds of dignity he has left, but nothing comes out. His brain finally catches up to his body, and with that deeply inconvenient clarity comes the realisation that he is, in fact, stretched flat on an icy patch of pavement outside some nondescript apartment building, snow settling into his hair with the persistence of an overfamiliar acquaintance. Cold bites at his spine, his head throbs with the unsubtle ambition of someone auditioning to be a drumline, and every part of him feels slightly misaligned.
“And,” the man continues gently — too gently, really, as if Nico might break under conversational pressure alone — “your ankle is probably broken. Or at least very committed to the idea.”
Nico stares at him, blinking the snowflakes from his lashes.
The man stares back, patient and maddeningly steady, kindness radiating from him like an actual health hazard.
Nico shuts his eyes for a moment, long enough to resent the entire situation with fresh, concentrated purpose, long enough to catalogue every humiliation with the clarity of someone who knows this is a story that will absolutely haunt him at three in the morning.
Of course the most beautiful man he has ever seen wasn’t flirting with him. Of course Nico is simply lying on a public sidewalk like a tragic morality play about footwear choices. Of course he has managed to make himself look both delusional and theatrical before noon. Absolutely perfect. Precisely the kind of dignified start he had envisioned for his day.
He opens his eyes again, feels the cold seeping into his coat and dignity alike, and—because embarrassment is a force of nature in his bloodstream—defaults, without hesitation, to the only defence mechanism he has ever found remotely reliable: irritation.
“So,” he says, aiming for cutting and landing somewhere closer to flustered, “do you usually diagnose people with broken bones on the street? Is that a hobby? A personality trait?”
The man — golden, annoyingly gentle, infuriatingly patient — lets out a small breath, the kind that sounds dangerously close to a laugh he’s trying not to release. “Only on weekends,” he replies lightly, then adds, with the earnestness of someone who thinks this is normal information to provide to strangers sprawled on the ground, “I’m Will, by the way. Dr. Will Solace. Emergency medicine.”
Nico shuts his eyes for one miserable beat. Naturally the universe wouldn’t just send him a beautiful stranger — it would send him a beautiful stranger who is also a doctor. The kind of man who probably rescues small animals in his spare time, volunteers at community events, and bakes bread from scratch like it’s a moral calling. Nico would roll his eyes at the cosmic humour of it all if they didn’t currently feel like two independent celestial bodies attempting an ill-advised realignment.
“Great,” Nico mutters. “Fantastic. Wonderful for you.”
He attempts to sit up, though his body responds with all the enthusiasm of a poorly assembled marionette. “I’m fine,” he announces anyway, because he refuses to let reality interfere with his pride. “Really. You don’t have to—”
But Will, apparently immune to the concept of listening to stubborn strangers, is already pulling something from his coat pocket. A penlight. Naturally. If the man produces a medical chart next, Nico might simply lie down and accept death.
“Can you look at me for a second?” Will asks, voice soft and steady, which somehow makes it worse.
Nico does his best, but the moment the light hits his eyes his vision stutters, ripples, tries to take a brief holiday. Will hums under his breath — a sound far too knowing — before beginning a gentle stream of questions, each delivered with the calm competence of someone used to triaging disasters on a Tuesday.
“Do you remember falling?”
“Any nausea?”
“Feeling dizzy?”
“Can you tell me your name?”
Nico answers through gritted teeth, each word escaping with the brittle dignity of a man who is painfully aware that his morning currently resembles a slapstick cautionary tale. Every response feels like an indictment: yes, hello, I am indeed the idiot who mistook a patch of ice for stable ground and face-planted accordingly, thank you for your interest.
Will listens with unnerving focus, head tilted, brows drawing together just slightly — not in judgement, but in a soft, infuriating concentration that makes something low in Nico’s chest twist. The tiny crease between his eyebrows deepens as Nico speaks, and Nico immediately resents it for being… attractive. Helpful. As though his humiliation requires accompaniment.
He hates this — hates the helplessness, hates the exposure, hates that the person witnessing this slow-motion disaster looks like he was carved to model empathy for medical textbooks. Completely unfair.
“Seriously,” Nico mutters, gathering what scraps of pride he can salvage. “I’m fine. I can stand.”
He cannot stand.
He attempts it anyway, because stubbornness is the one resource he has in abundance and he’ll be damned if he abandons it now. The moment he shifts his weight, his ankle sends a knife-bright pulse of outrage up his leg, the world listing to one side in a sick, unfriendly lurch.
Will moves without fanfare — no heroic dive, no overbearing fuss — just a steady hand braced at Nico’s hip, warm and stabilising and maddeningly gentle, holding him upright before he can topple backwards into further indignity.
“Okay,” Will says quietly, tone threaded with a patience that makes Nico want to throw something. “Let’s not do that again.”
Nico scowls at the pavement, furious at ice, gravity, weather, footwear, fate, and most of all at the fact that Will Solace has the nerve to be both kind and handsome while Nico is doing his best impression of a stunned feral cat.
“I’m fine,” Nico insists. “Totally fine. Walking is easy. I do it all the time.”
It would sound convincing if his ankle weren’t pulsing like a warning siren and if he weren’t clinging—subtly, strategically—to Will Solace’s sleeve just to stay upright. Unfortunately, reality has never cared about his dignity.
Will tries—actually tries—to swallow a laugh, which somehow makes the entire situation exponentially worse. His mouth twitches like he’s fighting for composure and losing in slow motion. “You definitely tried to walk,” he says, voice dipped in a softness Nico finds personally insulting. “Effort was made. I’ll give you that.”
Nico glares at him. Or tries to. It’s hard to pull off a compelling death-glare when the world keeps tilting like a lazy carousel. “I hate your tone.”
Will almost-laughs again. Nico can hear it — that warm, golden sound hovering behind his teeth, waiting for permission to escape. The fact that Will is enjoying this makes Nico want to lie down in the snow face-first out of spite.
“You’ll love it when you’re not conc—” Will stops himself, recalibrates mid-sentence like someone trained not to spook injured wildlife. “When you’re not… whatever’s going on with your balance right now.”
“My balance is excellent,” Nico lies. Boldly. Heroically. “Your bedside manner, however, is appalling.”
“I’m not at a bedside,” Will replies, perfectly deadpan. “I’m at a sidewalk. Entirely different environment.”
Nico feels the treacherous twitch of a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. Absolutely not. He crushes it with professional efficiency. No man this handsome should be allowed to wield humour, especially not while interrogating Nico’s pupils with a penlight like he’s checking a faulty flashlight.
“Where do you get this confidence?” Nico mutters, mostly to himself, but Will hears it anyway.
Will just shrugs, all infuriating golden-boy ease, like the freezing pavement is a red carpet and humiliating strangers is simply part of his oath as a medical professional. “Hospital’s only a few blocks from here. I can take you — get an x-ray, make sure nothing else is going on.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t up for a vote.”
“I don’t need an x-ray,” Nico insists, chin tilting up, pride flapping desperately in the wind like a tattered flag. “I need you to pretend this never happened.”
Will gives him a look — one Nico recognises instantly despite never having met him before: the expression of a man who has handled far more stubborn patients than Nico and considers this merely a light warm-up. There’s patience in it, yes, but also something else — a soft amusement that makes Nico’s skin feel too warm despite the snow.
“Look,” Will says, hands still annoyingly steady on Nico’s arm, “the perks of being found on the pavement by someone who works in emergency medicine—”
“Do you enjoy saying things that make me regret regaining consciousness?”
“—is that you won’t even have to wait in the ER. I can sneak you in.”
Nico blinks at him, appalled on several professional, ethical, and emotional levels. “You can’t just ‘sneak’ people into hospitals.”
Will’s smile turns bright — criminal, really. “I can,” he says breezily, “because I’m the chief resident.”
Nico stares at him. Long. Hard. Will simply blinks back, all dimples and disaster.
Finally Nico mutters, “of course you are.”
Will beams. Actually beams. “That sounded like admiration.”
“It wasn’t.”
It absolutely is, Nico thinks savagely, but he will sooner eat the ice beneath him than admit it.
Will just smiles — that soft, infuriating, sun-through-clouds smile — and adjusts his hold on Nico’s arm with an ease that suggests he has done this for strangers far more compliant than Nico di Angelo. “Come on,” he murmurs, maddeningly gentle. “Let me help you.”
Nico bristles on instinct. “No. Absolutely not.”
“You’re already leaning on me.”
“That’s gravity,” Nico snaps.
“That’s you nearly falling over,” Will counters, still maddeningly calm.
“That is,” Nico insists, “my business.”
“And that is,” Will replies smoothly, “my medical license on the line if I let you faceplant again.”
Nico opens his mouth, prepared to deliver something scathing, but his ankle chooses that moment to stage a violent protest — a sharp, pulsing bolt that goes all the way up his leg and into whatever part of the brain controls quiet suffering. The dizziness behind his eyes sways again, softening the edges of the world, and Nico realises — with bitterness, horror, and a small, unwelcome crack of realism — that he is losing this argument.
He exhales, sharp and resigned. “Fine.”
Will brightens in the deeply offensive way of golden retrievers and people who think optimism is a personality. “Great. Want me to carry you?”
Nico cannot tell if he’s joking. Which makes it worse. “Absolutely not,” he snaps. “If you pick me up, I will bite you. Hard.”
Will laughs — actually laughs, warm and bright and painfully pleasant — and Nico hates that his stomach reacts like it’s hearing music. “Okay,” Will says, still smiling. “No carrying. We’ll hop.”
“It is not hopping,” Nico mutters as Will slides an arm around his waist and urges him forward with infuriating care. “It is… strategic weight distribution.”
“Sure,” Will humours him lightly, guiding him down the slick pavement in slow, steady increments. “Whatever you need it to be.”
Nico grips the front of Will’s coat for balance — out of sheer necessity, absolutely not because Will radiates warmth like some sentient fireplace insert — and tries desperately not to notice the humiliating truth humming under his skin:
Without Will’s arm braced around him, he would already be back on the ground.
And worst of all — unmistakably, inexcusably — Will knows it.
***
Nico di Angelo is in a hospital bed, and he is—objectively—sulking, the sort of low-level simmering that feels entirely justified when the world beyond the curtains is all cold draughts and distant Christmas music leaking from the nurses’ station like a taunt.
Time has thinned into something abstract. He has no clock, no charger for his dead phone, no sense of anything except the relentless throb in his ankle and the even more relentless echo of Will Solace’s voice in his head, asking neuro-check questions in that maddeningly calm, professional tone, as if interrogating him about the date were a perfectly reasonable thing to do to a man who has already suffered the indignity of slipping on a pavement dusted with festive black ice.
Will had sworn—actually sworn—that he would “be back in a minute,” and then vanished behind a curtain like an especially hot magician with a hospital ID badge. Nico folds his arms, which is impressive considering one is still trapped in a blood-pressure cuff, and stews in the knowledge that he absolutely should not be here.
He has made this point twice already, with the kind of morally superior energy usually reserved for academic debates and poorly behaved seminar groups, because nothing fans the flames of righteousness quite like being forced to answer “do you know what day it is” under fluorescent lighting that actively hates him.
It is ridiculous, he had informed Will; downright unethical to skip the queue, to occupy a bed that ought to belong to some poor soul in cardiac arrest, to break the sacred social contract of waiting rooms where everyone suffers together.
Will, utterly unfazed, had simply looked at him with the expression of a man who could probably talk a reindeer back into its harness on Christmas Eve and said, dry as winter air, “Nico, you briefly lost consciousness, you were disoriented, you couldn’t stand without falling, and you’re still complaining of dizziness. You’re not taking anyone’s bed. You are the red flag.”
Nico hates that he’d had no rebuttal. He hates even more that Will had been right—about the headache blooming behind his eyes like frost forming on glass, about the occasional slow pirouette the world attempts whenever he blinks too confidently. He hates the penlight Will had used to check his pupils; he hates how gentle Will had been with it; he hates that gentle is, inexplicably, worse.
And he especially hates that Will has left him here long enough for the heating to stutter, for the blanket to feel too thin, for the bed to reveal its true nature as a medieval torture device masquerading as medical equipment. Worst of all, he cannot even storm out in dramatic protest: he cannot put weight on one foot, cannot limp anywhere with dignity intact, cannot follow Will into whatever corridor he’s disappeared into and demand an update.
He is, for the moment, reduced to sulking under harsh lights in the middle of December, listening to the faint jingle of a staffroom playlist, waiting for a boy he has no business wanting this much to come back.
Nico exhales sharply, glaring at the curtain as if it has personally offended him, as if it has conspired with the universe to prolong his humiliation on this freezing December evening when he should, by rights, be at home with a blanket and aggressively overpriced hot chocolate. He is mid-glare when the curtain finally draws back.
And there he is.
Will Solace, now wearing scrubs.
Cobalt-blue, slightly rumpled, sleeves pushed up in a way that feels almost indecent, hair a little messier than before, cheeks faintly flushed from whatever task he has been commandeered for, the ghost of a mask-line still pressed across the bridge of his nose. He looks as though the hospital lighting has chosen him specifically to flatter, which is frankly unforgivable.
Nico’s brain short-circuits with humiliating efficiency. Of course Will looks better like this; of course the universe has decided to weaponise scrubs against him. His suffering, apparently, is a seasonal tradition.
“Hey,” Will says, soft enough that the word seems to slip beneath Nico’s ribs and warm a place he refuses to acknowledge. “Sorry, got pulled for something. I’m back now.”
Nico attempts a scowl, but it emerges weakened by betrayal and the ambient glow of Will existing within three metres. “You abandoned me.”
“I was gone for seven minutes.”
“That’s abandonment in hospital time.”
Will’s mouth does that thing—that treacherous little twitch—as if he’s fighting a smile out of respect for Nico’s delicate emotional state. “Right. Noted. I’ll alert the head of department.”
Before Nico can deliver the cutting retort forming on his tongue, Will wheels a wheelchair to the side of the bed with the serene confidence of someone who knows he’s about to win an argument.
“We’re heading for scans,” Will says, brisk and professional, already half in motion. “X-ray first, CT after.”
Nico feels his soul make a break for the exit. “A wheelchair? Seriously?”
Will doesn’t rise to it; he simply gives Nico a look—frustratingly calm, annoyingly correct—that acknowledges the obvious without needing to spell it out. Nico can’t walk, not properly, not without listing sideways like a dying Christmas tree, and Will knows he knows it.
“You’re bossy,” Nico mutters, because dignity is a finite resource and he’s losing it fast.
“I’m correct,” Will smiles.
Nico glares at him—because glaring is the last semblance of agency he possesses—and manages, with all the wounded pride he can muster, “You enjoy this, don’t you?”
Will meets his eyes with that steady, infuriating kindness that always feels like more than it is. “I enjoy keeping people safe. And not letting them pass out in hallways. So yes… a little.”
The retort Nico is preparing never makes it out. Something shifts in the air between them—subtle but unmistakable—as Will steps closer, the cobalt fabric of his scrubs brushing the cold edge of the bed. The brief exchange of snark dissipates, replaced by a quiet, efficient gravity as he reaches for the bed rails and lowers them with practised ease, his movements gentle in a way that feels designed to undermine Nico’s resolve.
Will doesn’t rush him; he simply waits, steady in that infuriatingly patient way of his, hand offered without pressure, letting Nico come to the moment in his own time. The warmth of him spills into the cold air like a small, unfair mercy, a quiet reprieve from the December chill sneaking through the hospital walls, and Nico finds himself leaning towards it before he can stop himself. He swallows, furious at the treachery of his own body relaxing, furious at the way Will’s closeness makes the sterile room feel almost bearable, almost safe, almost something he could sink into if he weren’t determined to remain annoyed.
There is no winning here. Not against physics. Not against Will, who stands like he’s simply waiting for the inevitable.
So he lets Will help him into the chair.
And then the evening dissolves into a strange, disjointed sequence of indignities and clinical corridors, each one softened—annoyingly—by the fact that Will is the one navigating him through them. The X-ray suite is all harsh light and cold metal, the air colder than the hallways, the technician speaking in a brisk monotone that Nico tolerates only because Will stands just off to the side, arms folded, radiating that calm authority that suggests he could operate the machine himself if forced to.
The CT is worse. The table is narrow, the scanner loud, the plastic headrest unforgiving against the growing pulse behind his eyes. Still, Will is there as the machine whirs to life, speaking to the tech in a language of clipped medical shorthand Nico barely follows, checking the angle of Nico’s head with a gentle hand beneath his jaw. It is humiliating how much steadier that makes him feel.
Between each test, they travel through a maze of corridors that all smell faintly of disinfectant and brewing coffee, and this, Nico discovers, is where the true horror begins: apparently everyone in this entire building knows Will Solace.
Nurses wave at him as they pass, calling out his name with the brightness usually reserved for long-lost friends. Junior doctors stop him mid-stride to ask for quick opinions on charts, murmuring things like solvent exposure and lactate clearance and does this look weird to you, and Will responds without hesitation, skimming pages with one eyebrow raised, offering concise advice that makes the other doctor nod with something approaching relief. An older consultant gives him a fond clap on the shoulder and says, “Good lad,” before disappearing into an exam room, and Will blushes in a way Nico absolutely should not find attractive.
Meanwhile, Nico sits in the wheelchair like an abandoned Victorian orphan, trying to appear dignified while Will casually solves the hospital’s problems one corridor at a time. It is mortifying. It is enlightening. It is, above all, deeply unfair.
Because Nico had known—abstractly—that Will was smart. A doctor, hard-working, head full of facts he dispenses with irritating ease. But watching him here, in his natural habitat, Nico realises with growing horror that Will isn’t just smart; he is frighteningly competent, effortlessly respected, the sort of person whose presence seems to ease an entire department.
Nico folds his arms, trying to look as though this revelation isn’t doing something unhelpful to his heartbeat.
Of all the humiliations tonight, this might be the worst: discovering that the boy pushing his wheelchair is brilliant in a way Nico hadn’t accounted for.
And now there is absolutely no hope of not falling for him.
***
Time slips again, losing its edges in the way it only does after too many fluorescent hours strung together. The scans are over, the parade of Will’s absurd popularity through every corridor has ended, and Nico finds himself back in his cubicle with his ankle neatly bandaged and propped on a stack of unforgiving pillows. The worst of the chaos has settled; now there is only the dull throb in his ankle, the lingering headache, the dead phone, and the creeping boredom that arrives once a person realises they are, unfortunately, going to live.
Will had stayed with him for quite a while—long enough for Nico to forget the clock entirely. It was Will’s day off, a detail Nico had seized upon with theatrical indignation until Will, maddeningly placid, pointed out that sitting with someone wasn’t classified as medical labour.
They’d talked, properly talked, in that unhurried way emergencies sometimes allow. Not about work—Nico didn’t ask, and Will didn’t volunteer—but about the city in winter, the way December makes everything smell faintly of cold metal and cinnamon, about favourite films, about Nico’s disastrous cooking attempts, about Will’s habit of collecting obscure medical trivia.
It was far too easy, far too comfortable, the kind of conversation that made the bed feel less like a bed and more like a pause in something neither of them had named yet.
And then, just as Nico was beginning to drift dangerously toward contentment, Will had jolted upright with an “oh—hang on, I need to sort something,” and slipped away through the curtain before Nico could demand clarification. That had been… some indeterminate unit of time ago. Ten minutes? An hour? The ER soundtrack of distant voices and rolling trolleys makes it impossible to tell.
Now Nico lies back, ankle throbbing, stomach growling, staring at the ceiling tiles as if willing them to provide entertainment. They do not. They are aggressively uninteresting.
He exhales, long-suffering, imagining the exact moment Will returns so he can complain with appropriate flourish.
Which is, of course, the moment the curtain pulls back—and all his relief, embarrassingly disproportionate, crashes straight into the sight of Will standing there.
He’s still in scrubs, but now also half-swallowed by a puffy winter jacket so oversized it looks as though it’s trying to devour him whole. The effect is disarmingly earnest: snow dampening the curls at his temples, lashes catching the last of the melt, cheeks and nose flushed a tender winter pink that makes Nico look away far too quickly, as if averting his eyes might save him from the sudden, ridiculous sweetness of it. It doesn’t. Nothing could.
“Sorry,” Will says, still slightly breathless, brushing melting snow from his shoulders. “Got pulled away. Again. But I’m here now.”
He steps closer, and the shift is immediate—back to that quiet, deft professionalism as he begins the final neuro check of the night. Pupils, tracking, orientation. His voice is soft, precise, the kind of tone that makes even irritation feel like compliance. Nico answers each prompt with dutiful annoyance, pretending he isn’t absurdly aware of Will’s proximity, the warmth coming off him in waves, the faint scent of cold air and hospital soap.
Will nods, satisfied. “Everything looks good. I’ll grab your discharge papers. Once I sign off, you’re free to go.”
Nico blinks at him, dazed by the idea of escape. “Right. And then what? I limp dramatically into the night?”
There’s a flicker—barely a heartbeat—before Will rubs the back of his neck, eyes darting away with a sheepishness that makes something low in Nico’s stomach tilt.
“Er… no. I mean, unless you want to. But you said your phone was dead, so I figured you couldn’t call anyone to pick you up, so…” He clears his throat. “I, um. Walked home. Got my car. And came back. I thought I could take you.”
For a rare moment, Nico can only stare at him, because the words settle slowly, like snow finding its shape on a windowsill. Will shifts under the scrutiny, cheeks warming further—no longer just the cold, but embarrassment blooming in real time.
“Maybe I should’ve just offered you my phone,” he mutters, mortified. “To call a friend. That would’ve made more sense. I just—didn’t want you putting weight on that ankle.”
Nico swallows around something treacherously warm. “No—no. It’s okay. Thank you. Really.”
Will exhales, tension easing from his shoulders beneath the enormous coat.
Nico lets a smirk tug at the corner of his mouth. “Maybe you do have decent bedside manner, after all.”
Will groans softly, dragging a hand down his face before peeking at Nico through his fingers with that helpless, lopsided smile that should frankly be illegal.
“I’ll take that as a win,” he says.
And Nico has to look away again, because if he looks any longer he might give something away that has nothing to do with concussions or ankle injuries.
Discharge happens in a blur of signatures and instructions, Will talking him through each point with the calm authority of someone who has delivered this speech a hundred times but somehow makes it sound tailored just to Nico. Concussion precautions. Rest. Hydration. No heroic gestures or sudden bravado. Nico opens his mouth to argue at least twice, but Will fixes him with a look so gently immovable he ends up nodding instead, which is its own humiliation.
Then Will disappears briefly—only this time Nico recognises the rhythm of it—and returns with a pair of crutches tucked under one arm. He adjusts them to Nico’s height with practised ease, then steadies him as Nico gets upright, discovering within seconds that hobbling is, in fact, excruciatingly undignified. Will pretends not to notice how often Nico stumbles, which somehow makes it worse.
They make their slow procession toward the entrance, Will walking half a step behind as if prepared to catch him at any moment. Nico pretends not to notice that either.
But when the automatic doors part and the night opens before him, he stops.
For a moment, the world is nothing but breath and brightness.
Snow has fallen heavily in the hours he’s been inside, transforming the city into something hushed and glittering. Streetlamps cast soft halos over drifting flakes, roofs and pavements blurred into clean white lines, car windows dusted with frost like powdered sugar. The sky is dark enough that the snow seems to glow from within, each flake catching the faint light and holding it. The air is still—no sirens, no voices, just the quiet, crystalline hush of winter doing its slow, inevitable work.
Nico feels it settle over him in a way that steals his breath. The cold, yes—but also the stillness. The strange, suspended beauty of a city briefly softened.
He lets himself stand there, leaning on his crutches, absorbing it.
And then—
“You know,” Will says gently, breaking the spell, “for someone with a concussion, you’re really testing the limits of hypothermia. My car’s right there. Two metres. Maybe three if you insist on dramatic pausing.”
Nico scowls at him, because that’s easier than admitting he was struck by the beauty of the moment. “You ruin everything.”
“Occupational hazard,” Will says lightly, and guides him the rest of the way.
Will has parked as close to the entrance as physically possible, the car sitting like a dark stone in the snow. Nico fumbles into the passenger seat, breath coming out in white clouds. Will darts around to the driver’s side, sliding in and immediately cranking the heat up with a single, decisive gesture.
The vents sputter, then release a wave of warm air aimed straight at Nico.
“You were shivering,” Will says, as if he needs an excuse.
“I wasn’t,” Nico lies through chattering teeth.
Will doesn’t comment. He just nudges the heat a little higher.
Nico gives him directions, pointing vaguely through the windshield as the snow-laden city drifts by in softened, glowing shapes. Will drives carefully, both hands on the wheel, occasionally glancing over as if checking for signs of dizziness or discomfort. Nico refuses to meet his eyes, which does nothing to stop the warmth gathering in his chest.
When they pull up outside his apartment, the world is quiet again. Snowflakes drift lazily past the streetlamp, catching in the car’s headlights. Nico grips the door handle—but doesn’t move.
He doesn’t want to get out.
Not into the cold. Not into the silence. Not away from the warm cocoon of the car or the easy, impossible gentleness radiating from the driver’s seat. He tells himself it’s the concussion, or the cold, or the hunger, or anything except what it actually is.
Will notices, of course. Will always notices; it’s one of his most irritating and disarming qualities. He glances over, the dashboard light catching faint pink in his cheeks from the cold, or embarrassment, or both.
“You okay?” he asks softly, his hand still resting on the ignition, the heater humming warm air across Nico’s fingers as if Will is personally insisting he not freeze to death on his watch.
Nico swallows and nods—too quickly, too stiffly, a gesture that fools absolutely no one.
But still he doesn’t reach for the door.
The snow taps lightly at the windscreen. The heater sighs. Nico’s breath fogs the air between them, and he realises with a kind of horrified clarity that he is shy. Actually shy. At twenty-seven. In front of a boy in a ridiculous puffy coat.
Will tilts his head, voice gentler this time. “Nico… do you want a minute? Or—do you need something?”
Nico exhales, mortified, gaze fixed on his hands as if they might produce a script. “I just—” The words knot in his throat, clumsy and earnest and entirely too revealing. “Thank you. For today. For… everything. And sorry for being—” he gestures vaguely at himself, “—like this.”
A smile ghosts across Will’s mouth, small and soft, dimpling the corner. “Like what?”
“You know.” Nico attempts a shrug that jostles his ankle and immediately regrets it. “Moody. Difficult. A nightmare patient.”
Will huffs a quiet laugh, looking down at his lap as if the admission requires courage. When he glances up again, his lashes still dusted with melting snow, he looks almost shy. “I don’t think you’re moody,” he says, and then, after a beat, with a tiny breath of bravery: “I think you’re funny when you’re in a huff. And… kind of cute when you sulk.”
The interior of the car tilts—not physically, but in that way things do when someone says something that lands too close to the truth Nico has been trying desperately not to acknowledge. His breath catches. His heart stumbles. His mouth forgets how to exist.
“Are you even allowed to say that?” he manages, voice embarrassingly breathy. “Isn’t there some rule about calling your patients cute?”
Will rolls his eyes, but the smile tugging at his mouth ruins any attempt at indignation. “You barely count as a patient. I mean—come on. I literally smuggled you through the back entrance. Textbook medical ethics went out the window about three minutes after you hit the pavement.”
Before Nico can breathe, let alone form a reply, Will is already reaching into the pocket of his scrubs—quick, flustered motion like he’s afraid he might lose his nerve. He pulls out a small notepad and pen, flips it open against the steering wheel, and starts writing in neat, deliberate strokes.
He hesitates—just long enough that Nico can feel the entire moment holding its breath—then tears off the page and offers it across the console.
“This is… I hope you don’t think this is too much. Or that I’m crossing some line,” Will says softly. “And I don’t talk like that to everyone I wheel around the ER.” A shy laugh escapes him. “I liked today. Talking to you. Even when you were glaring at me like you were weighing up the legal consequences of homicide.”
Nico takes the paper. His name and a phone number. Will Solace’s handwriting, small and precise. A tiny smiley face tucked in the corner, like Will couldn’t help himself.
“I don’t want to make it weird,” Will adds quickly. “You don’t have to call. Or text. Or anything. I just—wanted you to have it. In case you… wanted to talk again. When you’re not concussed. And not covered in snow.”
Nico’s stomach swoops. His chest feels too full. The heater hums on, warm and steady, as snow drifts past the windows like the city is holding its breath just for them.
He closes his fingers around the note.
And finally—finally—he lets himself look at Will properly.
It hits him all at once: the damp curls still clinging to Will’s forehead; the faint flush on his cheeks; the way he’s watching Nico with this strange mixture of concern and hope, like he’s waiting for an answer to a question he hasn’t quite asked.
And Nico thinks, with a jolt that feels suspiciously like gratitude, how bizarrely lucky it is that he happened to slip on the ice today of all days. That Will had been there. That the universe, which usually delights in inconveniencing him, had chosen—for once—to hand him something gentle.
He hates how soft he feels. How warm. How stupidly aware he is of the way Will’s presence steadies the air around him, coaxing the chaos back into something almost coherent. It’s infuriating. Disarming. Addictive.
He looks down at the slip of paper in his hand, then back at Will — who is trying, with limited success, not to hold his breath.
A smile tugs at him, wry and unwilling. “Well,” he says, voice low, “I’m not saying I recommend it, but… this might actually have been worth the broken ankle and the concussion.”
Will’s laugh breaks out, warm and helpless, filling the car like another source of heat, and something inside Nico gives a small, startled shift.
And suddenly that terrible line — did it hurt? — drifts back through his mind, warped and half-dissolved in the dim glow of the dashboard and the snowlight catching in Will’s lashes. Because Nico never fell from anywhere; he’s certain of that. There were no heights, no haloes, nothing remotely resembling heaven in the places he came from. His life has been all sharp edges and low ceilings, the kind of existence that teaches you early there is nowhere soft to fall from, and nowhere soft to land.
But Will sits there in the half-dark — cheeks flushed from the cold, hair still dusted with melting snow, warmth radiating off him like it’s instinct rather than physics — and something about him looks unreasonably, unfairly celestial. Not the saccharine, storybook kind; something quieter, more human, more dangerous for how easily it slips past Nico’s defenses.
And for one breath, one impossible flicker, Nico feels the ground tilt under him in a way that has nothing to do with concussion. As though the universe, in some bureaucratic error, has let him step into a moment he was never meant to qualify for — a narrow, impossible pocket of warmth where the boy beside him looks almost angelic, and Nico has no idea what to do with the gentleness of it.
Maybe he didn’t fall. Maybe he was never in heaven to begin with. But sitting here, bruised and breathless, with Will Solace lit up like some accidental seraph in borrowed snowlight, he thinks — reluctantly, incredulously — that this might be the closest he’s ever come.