Chapter Text
Will couldn’t believe that, three years in a row, he wouldn’t be taking Bianca trick-or-treating. He couldn’t even go to the costume parade at her school, but he’d convinced Nico to go and take pictures for him, and Nico had even agreed to take her around the neighborhood that night, so she didn’t miss out on the fun.
Will had already gotten Bianca dressed in her fairy princess costume by the time Nico arrived at the Solace home. Nico was the only one not wearing a costume (Will still had to wear his scrubs to work, but he had a cat-ear headband and whiskers painted on his cheeks), though the t-shirt he was wearing under his leather jacket had dancing skeletons on the front.
Bianca, however, didn’t seem to think that it was enough Halloween spirit. She marched right up to him when Nico entered the room, arms crossed, and looked him up and down. “Where’s your costume?” she demanded.
“This is my costume,” Nico told her. “I’m a college student.”
“That’s not a costume!”
“Yeah,” Will jumped in, “college students can’t afford leather jackets.”
Nico grinned at him. "Rich college student.”
“Changing an adjective doesn't change the fact that you don't have a costume,” Will said, rolling his eyes.
Bianca ran over to a box of unused Halloween decorations in the corner. She dug through it for a moment before pulling something out and holding it behind her back to hide it from Nico. When he went back over to him, she order him to close his eyes. When he did, Bianca held out a red devil-horn headband.
“This can be your costume,” Bianca told him when Nico took the headband from her hands.
“How fitting,” Will said with a grin, and Nico rolled his eyes, though there was a bit of a smile on his face, as well.
“Ha, ha,” Nico said, sliding the headband into his hair, tugging the dark strands away from his face in doing so. Will fell suddenly silent, glancing away quickly.
“Uh, anyway, I have to get to work,” Will said before turning to Bianca and dropping down to one knee. “Have fun at school, Bi, I wish I could go with you.”
Bianca surged forward to hug her father. “It’s okay, Daddy, Nico will take lots of pictures for you!”
“That’s right, Princess,” Nico told her, and Bianca pulled away from Will. “But we’ve gotta get going if you don’t want to be late.”
“Fairy Princess,” Bianca corrected him.
“Of course, Fairy Princess,” Nico amended.
Will knew that Halloween was always a busy time at the hospital - idiot fathers that thought that carving a pumpkin with a chainsaw was a good idea, children who ate too much candy with moms that think it’s appendicitis - and Will couldn’t have been happier to get to return home at the end of the day (though it still wasn’t soon enough to catch Nico and Bianca before they left the house that night).
He stopped at the store on the way home to buy a small bag of candy, then drove very cautiously through the neighborhood. He was able to hand out a few handfuls of candy to some of the neighborhood kids, and got to surprise Bianca when she returned with a pillowcase full of candy.
As soon as Bianca was inside the door, Will scooped her up and swung her in a circle. “Hi, Bi!”
“Daddy, Nico and I got lots of candy!” Bianca told him as she was gently lowered to her feet.
Will took the pillowcase out of her hands, dramatically over exaggerating how difficult it was to lift. “You’re right, this is a ton!”
Bianca made grabby-hands toward the bag. “I wanna eat some. Please, Daddy?”
“You know the rule, Bianca,” Will said, holding the bag out of her reach. “You’ve got school in the morning, which means you have to go to bed as soon as you brush your teeth and put on your pajamas.”
Bianca pouted. “Okay.” She spun around, wrapping Nico in a surprise hug. “Goodnight, Nico.”
Nico, slightly startled, hugged her back after a split second. “Night, Princess.” Bianca removed herself from the hug, darting past Will and heading to her room.
“Goodnight, Bianca,” Will called after her with a huff. He noticed Nico fidget out of the corner of his eye and seemed to suddenly remember that he was there. “You have pictures to show me!”
Nico nodded, reaching for his phone, but Will gestured for him to follow him into the living room. Will flicked on a lamp in the corner before dropping down onto the floor, dumping Bianca’s candy out in front of him.
Nico cracked a smile. “You’re going to eat all of her candy before she can get to it?” he asked, still standing with his arms crossed.
“I have to sort through it all to make sure she doesn’t accidentally eat something she’s allergic to,” Will told him. He patted the space on the ground next to him. “Come, sit, show me those pictures.”
Nico rolled his eyes, moving to sit next to Will with his back resting against the couch, and slipped his phone out of his pocket. He opened up his camera roll and leaned closer to Will, scrolling through the pictures.
There were multiple of Bianca and her friends in their costumes, and a few of some other random kids in theirs. One of the pictures that Nico lingered on for a moment was during the costume parade of a kindergarten-age girl with curly blonde hair and bright blue eyes, that was wearing all black with cat ears and painted-on whiskers.
“You probably just wanted pictures of Bianca and her friends, right?” Nico asked quietly, quickly scrolling around, looking for more pictures of Bianca. “I’ll try to find some other ones, sorry.”
“No, no,” Will said, dropping a handful of candy and bringing Nico’s phone closer to him. “I want the full parade experience, show me all of them.”
“Alright,” Nico gave in. “Honestly, though, I only took that last one because that kid kind of looked like you, with the whiskers and whatever.”
“Really,” Will said, turning to face Nico directly.
Nico glanced over (thankful that it was still a bit dark in the room - they were awfully close to each other). “Yeah, and, uh, speaking of? Your whiskers are kind of really smudged.” He reached up, almost completely unaware of his actions, and brushed his thumb against one of the smudges on Will’s cheekbone.
He pulled his hand back like he’d been shocked. “Sorry,” he said, eyes widening. “I don’t really know why I did that.”
“It’s fine,” Will said, grinning at him, though his eyes seemed like he was focused on something else. “Do you have glitter on your cheek?”
Nico reached up to wipe at his cheek with his fingers. “Bianca convinced me that she needed more fairy dust before we went trick-or-treating earlier. Not only did she get it all over herself, but all over me, too.”
“You’ve got that right,” Will told him, reaching over and running his thumb across Nico’s cheek, tan skin coming back stained with sparkles.
Nico groaned. “I’m never going to get rid of all of that,” he complained. “You don’t mind if I show you these some other time, do you? I need to get home to try washing this stuff off before it soaks into my bloodstream.”
“Yeah, of course,” Will said, drawing himself back. “You go right ahead. I didn’t mean to keep you here so late anyway, so, uh, yeah. I’ll see you...tomorrow?”
Nico smiled at him. “Of course, whenever you need me.”
Less of a need, Will thought, and more of a want. A nearly constant want, at that.
Will smiled back. “Tomorrow it is, then.”