Chapter Text
As he walks, Nico blasts the album All We Know Is Falling by this band called Paramore. He’d never heard of them before, but when his friends started talking about them he’d become obsessed.
He pulls the hood of Will’s sweatshirt over his head as the sky begins to drizzle, making sure his iPod doesn’t get water damage. Will, oh how he misses him. Nico knows that it’s only been two days but they normally hang out on the weekends! And Will only lives down the street!
Speaking of down the street, Nico walks up the steps to his person’s home. Knocking only twice before he hears immense chaos and shouting, the door swings open and shuts just as fast.
“Neeks!” Will shouts before embracing his person in a giant hug. Nico turns bright red, squeezing back for a moment before shoving Will off quickly.
Nico ruffles Will’s hair until the pout that appeared when he let go disappears. Nico feels a little sad at making his person upset, “Will, you know I wanna hug you forever, but you know we can’t get caught.”
”You mean you can’t get you caught, everyone knows I’m a fag,” Will mumbles so Nico doesn’t hear but of course, he’s always listening.
Nico stops walking, turning to face Will, “why would you say that?”
”Because. Everyone says it.” Will kicks a rock into a puddle, making water splatter all over his yellow Converse. “It’s not that big of a deal,” he adds on.
The drizzle had stopped by then, so Nico pulls down his hood in an attempt to look at his person better. “You know you shouldn’t listen to them right? You know that this isn’t wrong?” Quickly looking at both sides of the street, Nico reaches up and kisses Will on the cheek, “I love you, you know.”
Will tries to hide his sniffles in his coat sleeve, trying to continue walking down the street to school. Nico, noticing that Will didn’t say it back, grabs his wrist, forcing him to stop.
“Nico. We’re going to be late. Please, just leave it.”
“No. Look at me. Honey, I need to make sure you’re okay,” most would assume that the emo kid with pitch black, dyed hair and a hand cut fringe wouldn’t be one to use pet names, but Will brings out the best in everyone.
As Nico makes eye contact with his person, Will just lets go. Tears flow down his face as he crumples forward, his body shaking with sobs. ”I don’t know anymore Nico! I just don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!” Will’s hands tug at his curls, misplacing the colorful hairclips that stick to practically every strand.
Nico decides to just take the risk. It doesn’t really matter if anyone sees them, Will needs help, and Nico would rather die than let him struggle in the street alone without anyone to help him. He walks the few steps forward to Will and embraces him, making sure to rub his back and whisper soothing words.
Will seems to bury his face in Nico’s neck, wetting his sweatshirt with snot and tears. After a minute Will pulls away, moving a few feet away from his person. “Nico! How do we know we’re going to be okay? For fucks sake! I can’t even get married to you! I could pull out a ring and propose right now, and no matter your answer we’d get turned away at the courthouse! They’d laugh and spit in our fucking faces! We can’t get married, we can’t adopt and start a family, all they see us as is fucking broken!” Will is full on screaming in the middle of the streets, but Nico doesn’t know what to do about it. He can’t really bring them back to Will’s and Nico doesn’t even want to know what would happen if his family found out about Will.
Will starts up again, “I can’t hold your hand in the hallway or the street or even in my own fucking house! If I want to hug you for more than a few seconds I have to wait till we’re alone in your room or in the fucking woods! The woods! That’s the only place where we’d be truly safe! I’m so, so, so mad! Or hurt! Or scared! I’m fucking scared! I’m scared of what would happen if your parents caught us, I’m scared of what would happen if they made us break up! They’re gonna put us in those fucking camps! Shock us until we forget everything but pain!”
Nico needs to stop this before the whole neighborhood wakes up, he cannot have Will get hurt. “Will, honey, please, I know. Believe me, I fucking know. But I need you to calm down for me okay? We can’t have you freak out like this here. I won’t let anyone hurt you, okay? I’ll steal the fucking church money from my dad’s office, or like steal the diamond jewelry from my mom, and we’ll run. I won’t let them force us apart. I love you Will Solace, and we can deal with this together.”
Nico tries again to approach his person, this time Will lets himself be comforted without much fight. They sit there for a while, until the sun goes up and they realize that they’re thirty minutes late for first period.